LaQuan Smith SS27: Diva Alert, All Day Long

“My woman has evolved,” LaQuan Smith said backstage. “She’s coming to me for a full 24 hour perspective.” For a designer whose name has become almost inseparable from after-dark glamour, that single sentence opens a much larger wardrobe. Spring 2027 asks what happens before the party starts, when the same woman has meetings to attend, streets to cross and daylight to conquer before she ever reaches the velvet rope.

Smith answers without domesticating her. Tailoring acquires sharper shoulders, animal patterns prowl through the middle of the collection, and evening gowns eventually reclaim the runway with all the bare skin, movement and unapologetic glamour one expects from LaQuan. He framed the season through contradiction, pairing danger with delicacy and softness with harder attitudes.

Business Hours, Bombshell Rules

Apparently, the boardroom has acquired a bombshell situation.

Smith calls it “bombshell suiting,” but it also reads as a very LaQuan form of power dressing. The shoulders carry authority, the waist keeps the body unmistakably present, and the tailoring turns corporate polish into something charged. Denim sharpens that confidence further, while powder blue gives the same silhouette a cooler, cleaner finish. The boardroom remains intact; the woman inside it simply owns more of the space.

Dark denim gives some of the strongest daytime pieces their edge. Cut into fitted jackets, skirts and elongated trousers, it brings a familiar material into a far more polished register. Certain pieces can also be zipped open or closed to control how much skin appears, letting the wearer decide exactly how corporate the day needs to become. The powder-blue tailoring takes another route, smoothing the same confidence into something cleaner and almost icy.

Nothing here asks the office siren to disguise herself. The clothes simply give her a sharper vocabulary for daylight.

Hair pushes that attitude even further. Sculpted high above the head, the volume gives the models the hauteur of women who entered the building fully aware that every elevator door might open like a runway entrance. It is a beauty choice that pulls the collection toward the great supermodel eras before the evening dresses even appear, linking office polish with the kind of glamour that traditionally waits until much later in the day.

Work starts at nine. Diva time apparently starts whenever she arrives.

Predator, Prey, Diva

Civilisation begins slipping sometime after office hours.

Animal pattern spreads through the collection with the restlessness of something recently released from a cage. Smith plays with python, doe-like markings and a hybrid print that merges the gentleness of deer spots with the aggression associated with cheetah patterning. The tension is built directly into the surface, allowing sweetness and danger to occupy the same woman.

That duality keeps the animal story from becoming a straightforward safari fantasy. Prints travel across fluid shapes and sharper tailoring alike, changing temperament each time the silhouette shifts. A body-conscious line can turn predatory through shine and pattern, while softer movement gives the same wildness a more seductive rhythm. Skin appears between these surfaces almost instinctively, sharpening the sense that the LaQuan woman has wandered somewhere beyond polite behaviour.

The collection slips into a more tropical, feral register once exotic-skin motifs enter the picture. Python and spotted patterns bring the heat of something untamed, turning polished silhouettes into skins for a woman who looks perfectly comfortable moving between predator and prey. The prints carry their own libido, giving even the more covered shapes a dangerous kind of sensuality.

Perhaps feral is simply another form of confidence here.

Bring Back the Bombshell Walk

By night, the 24-hour woman stopped pretending she came for anything except the entrance.

The final stretch of LaQuan Smith SS27 taps directly into the bombshell fantasy of the early 2000s, when a runway demanded attitude from the woman wearing the dress as much as spectacle from the dress itself. Deep necklines lengthen the torso, high slits release the legs, and long transparent panels trail behind the body with the kind of movement that seems designed for slow-motion replay.

The association with the Victoria’s Secret era comes through strongest in performance. Big hair, elongated bodies and gowns that shift dramatically around the legs recall a moment when supermodels were expected to sell an entire fantasy through the walk. LaQuan Smith taps into that theatrical femininity with ease because his own design language is always surrounded by the power of the body in motion.

Sheer fabric lets the dresses float around areas held close to the skin, creating a silhouette that alternates between exposure and sweep. In stronger colour, the movement becomes almost cinematic, while metallic surfaces turn the body into its own source of light. The orange gown drew audible reactions from the audience as it crossed the runway, exactly the sort of response Smith’s eveningwear has long been engineered to provoke.

The gowns carry a 2000s supermodel spirit because they demand confidence, posture and movement, not because they copy a specific archival moment. Smith is interested in that older runway idea of the woman as an event.

The dress enters. The diva arrives a second later.

LaQuan Smith SS27 Owns All 24 Hours

LaQuan Smith has already mastered the hours after dark. Spring 2027 just effortlessly makes daylight a bit more interesting than ever.

His ambition now reaches beyond being the designer someone calls for a spectacular party dress. He wants the LaQuan woman to have tailoring, daywear and enough range to move through an entire life while keeping the sensuality that made the brand recognisable in the first place. Smith has said he hopes people see that he can “dress women all around the world” and that the label is “here to stay.”

The woman herself remains unchanged. She can put on denim for a meeting, drift into something animal by afternoon and reclaim the night in chiffon and shine without ever becoming three separate characters.

The schedule may have expanded to twenty-four hours, but the diva at the centre of LaQuan Smith SS27 never really clocks out.