LONDON, April 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — “We think of those nights spent with one or more friends, nights when we merged with the shadows and could see the world with eyes that were not our own” – Whipplesnaith
Inspired by 1930s secret society the elusive Night Climbers of Cambridge, KENT&CURWEN looks to the style of Whipplesnaith – the ‘Butterfly Collector’, author and ringleader of this cult nocturnal sport, and the pen name adopted by Noel H. Symington – and celebrates seeing things from another perspective.
The courageous Night Climbers set their own rules; changemakers, rebels, defiant in the face of a revered establishment which they adopted as their hallowed playground in the shadows. With it emerged a sense of belonging to something, a playful attitude that riffs on the set codes – an approach embodied by KENT&CURWEN since the brand’s inception in 1926 and still today as it marks its centenary.
For Autumn/Winter 2026, KENT&CURWEN explores this viewpoint in codes of British dressing, with a color palette that emerges from midnight blue and black through muted taupes and autumnal browns, uniform greys and soft pastels, punctuated with an array of bolder shades of collegiate reds, bright lilacs and burnt oranges.
Unexpected takes on traditional British outerwear and slim silhouetted suiting sit alongside whimsical volumes and deconstructed knits. The classic trench is reimagined in patent finishes, soft shaping and high-collared capes. Playful accessories and delicate corsage detailing intermix with identifiable house embroidered insignias.
Together with the Night Climbers of past and *whisper it* present, KENT&CURWEN invites you to seek inspiration, not restriction, in the shadows, to a richness and imagination beyond society’s confines. To endeavor to find beauty in the unexpected and of joy in belonging. For those in pursuit of adventure and of themselves.
‘Multum in parvo’ – ‘Much in little’
The Night Climbers of Cambridge – Oleander Press, @booksofcambridge.
