Fashion’s Key Muse For 2025? Mum’s The Word

When the British-Nigerian designer (and British Vogue cover star) Tolu Coker was working on the guestlist for her spring/summer 2025 show in central London, she told her closest friends to bring their mums along too. “My collection wasn’t just about one story,” Coker says of her forthcoming spring offering, which she dedicated to her wildly stylish mother, Olapeju, who had no idea about her daughter’s celebratory theme until the day the show took place. “It’s also the stories of so many other mothers who have experienced the notion of displacement and fostering a sense of new community,” explains the designer, whose mother grew up in Lagos before emigrating to west London and building a new circle of African, Caribbean and Irish immigrants from her living room. “Seeing my mum’s joy [at the show] was like seeing the joy of unseen others… it was a special moment for mothers and matriarchs to feel seen.”

Mum, it seems, was quite literally the word on the spring/summer 2025 catwalks in London, where a whole host of designers explored the concept of motherhood – be it the notion of matriarchal lineage or motherly metamorphosis – within their collections. Chet Lo dedicated his collection to his mother Ma-Wah Cheung, a trailblazer in the computer sciences industry in New York in the ’90s, who went on to be CIO of television broadcasting behemoth Univision before finally turning to painting and teaching. The collection allowed Lo to recalibrate his label from something synonymous with club-kid wear and 3D spiked knits into something more C-suite chic. “This was me trying to elevate the brand, and say something that’s really elegant,” Lo told Vogue.

Elsewhere, who needs a changing bag when you could carry Chopova Lowena’s multi-pocketed “mommy” bag, a playful collaboration with Hellman’s featuring plasters, a rattle, a toy car, a fish-and-chips-friendly jar of mayo and an emergency antique spoon? The brand’s subterranean spring/summer 2025 show was staged soon after co-founder Laura Lowena-Irons gave birth to twin girls, and included the suitably subversive style dictums she intends to pass down to her daughters. These included: “Show your knickers because they are ruffled and laced up satin bloomers. Spill your guts on an emotional hoodie printed with poetry and verse. Wear your heart on your sleeve, wear it on your shoe, your bag, your necklace…”

Chopova Lowena’s multi-pocketed “mommy” bag.

Victor VIRGILE/Getty Images

Laura Lowena-Irons’s note to her baby twins? “Wear your heart on your sleeve, wear it on your shoe, your bag, your necklace…”

Victor VIRGILE/Getty Images

At Chopova Lowena’s recent sample sale in Deptford (which saw carabiner-clip skirt obsessives queueing in the dark from 3am), Lowena-Irons could be seen greeting friends and family with a twin on each hip. Mothers have long been key to the South London-based brand: it’s Emma Chopova’s Bulgarian mum who sources the second-hand textiles for the label’s signature skirts, like embroidered aprons and tartan blankets – pieces that would have formed part of a bride’s dowry up until the mid-19th century. “There would be a weaving loom in every household and mothers would work on these dowries from the moment their daughters were babies,” Chopova previously told Vogue. “It’s an incredible thing to be able to repurpose, because once traditional dress stopped being worn, these textiles would often be thrown out or forgotten about in old cedar chests.”