Daniel W. Fletcher Spring 2025 Menswear

Daniel Fletcher has been busy living his life. That is why it’s been a minute since you’ve seen his label on the runway, and why this season he opted for a lookbook rather than a show. It’s also why he’s been playing around with his presentation schedule—that and the fact that he’s now repositioned his business to focus on direct-to-consumer and made-to-measure tailoring.

But back to the fun part: Fletcher, who left his post as artistic director of Fiorucci last summer, has taken some time for himself. He took a trip to Antarctica this past winter, and another to Komodo Island in Indonesia earlier this summer (both of them on a boat, but more on that later). He also took the time to see his friend, the dancer Marcelino Sambé, perform Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. And then he got another job.

As of February, Fletcher is the creative director, and the first ever at that, of Royal Ascot. It’s a particular kind of gig, which entails “influencing the style” of the famous annual week of races, he explained over video call, while finding ways to preserve its British heritage yet welcoming modern riffs off its tradition. This is also why Fletcher was absent from the men’s mini schedule at London Fashion Week this summer: the Ascot happens in June. And so Fletcher worked on top hats and tails and waistcoats and all those things gentlemen wear. Then he worked on this collection, where he merged, he said, his “personal life, work experience, and these moments of dipping my toes in British high society.”

The result of this blend was quite charming. “I really enjoyed seeing the people who come to this event and who have been going for 40 or 50 years,” said Fletcher, “guys in their 70s who would be having a picnic out the back of their Rolls Royce, mixed with these young guys who have seen their grandfathers doing it and want to get involved, but in their own way.” It’s this very approach Fletcher took to examining British elegance this season, turning it upside down or inside out, and filling it with feathers or covering it with sequins. 

Fletcher took the outdoors waxed jacket he’d worn as a teenager and rendered it in a soft but glossy lambskin, but preserved its corduroy collar. He extended the collars in shirts to fashion them as ties, and the tuxedos he developed last season with Huntsman on Savile Row found new proportions in handsome wide-legged trousers and jackets with the classic WIP basting left untouched. His sailboat experiences inspired him to make captain blazers with golden trims, in homage to his late uncle who “always looked quite smart and like he was about to step onto a cruise.” Fletcher also reconsidered his now signature corsets to merge them with the waistcoat, adding the latter’s classic button closures as ornaments on the front and corsetry closures in the back; to all but one of these styles, that is, which he filled with leathers and then lined in silk—a nod at the Swan Lake experience “with a touch of duvet cover.” “At the Royal Ascot you have to wear a waistcoat,” the designer explained, “so I made these so they can’t really argue.” Mission accomplished. 

Fletcher also covered playful check prints in clear sequins and bought a load of vintage suspender clips online, which were here hanging off the hems of tiny shorts or worn as kinky little chokers. There was a friskiness to the lineup that reflects all the fun Fletcher has been having. “I went on some trips because I needed to feed my brain again,” said the designer. “I was relying on experiences from my youth, but the ones I had now made a really huge impact.” He should book another trip soon.