Where craft, memory, and sculpture converge in a new expression of fashion design.

Ladbroke Hall has long been a place where creative disciplines collide; an architectural landmark reimagined as a living stage for art, design, performance and craftsmanship. Its evolution into a home for fashion felt less like a new direction and more like a continuation of its design‑led ethos: a space where ideas move, shift, and take physical form.

That made it the ideal setting for designer Daniel Del Valle, whose debut presentation, The Narcissist, blurred the lines between runway, installation and autobiographical storytelling. Rather than staging a traditional catwalk, Del Valle built an environment, a living garden he

calls The VXLLEY, where garments grew from memory, ritual and material experimentation.

Craft as Heritage, Garment as Vessel

Del Valle’s work is shaped by craft traditions passed down through his family in Pilas, Seville. Embroidery from his grandmother. Ceramics from his mother, and baking from his father. These inherited skills surface in unexpected, sculptural ways, transformed into wearable objects that sit closer to art than apparel.

Several pieces in The Narcissist encapsulate this fusion of material, memory and design:

A ceramic T‑shirt constructed from thousands of Victorian pipes recovered from the River Thames — archaeology turned architecture turned fashion.
A living bodice that must be watered daily, extending the designer’s obsession with orchids into a literal, breathing sculpture.
Wax embellishments meticulously added to his mother’s wedding dress — a quiet, poetic act of preservation and reinvention.
A garment made from bread, developed with his father, where the domestic becomes monumental.

Each work is an artefact shaped by biography yet elevated through experimental design.

A Multidisciplinary Stage for Creative Expression

Set within Ladbroke Hall’s restored Beaux Arts architecture, the grand portico, the Edwardian proportions, the interplay of collectable design and contemporary art — the presentation felt like an extension of the building’s own character. The space has always championed cross‑disciplinary expression; fashion arrived there not as a guest, but as another creative language.

By hosting Del Valle’s debut, Ladbroke Hall reinforced its role as a platform for emerging voices who treat design as a fluid ecosystem. Here, fashion sits comfortably alongside sculpture, performance, floristry, sound, craft and culinary experimentation. The boundaries dissolve, and what remains is pure creative intent.

Walking Through a Living Archive

Del Valle describes The VXLLEY as a garden, a place where each garment reflects a part of him. The result is a collection that behaves like a living archive: pieces that age, evolve, absorb life and give it back. In this way, The Narcissist becomes less a fashion collection and more a meditation on growth, care and the emotional weight of making things by hand.

Presented in a venue built on multidisciplinary foundations, the show felt like a quiet but powerful shift; a reminder that fashion, at its most expressive, is simply another form of design. And at Ladbroke Hall, design is the heartbeat.