Uncaging Femininity? Dilara Fındıkoğlu’s Cage of Innocence (SS26)
Words by Lena Sophie Eckgold
Edited by Rachel Hambly and Bailey Tolentino
On Sunday, 21 September 2025, Istanbul-born designer Dilara Fındıkoğlu, a Central Saint Martin’s graduate, presented her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Cage of Innocence, at London Fashion Week, which quickly went viral across social media. Fındıkoğlu, a long-established name in the international fashion world, has gained fame through collaborations with Kim Kardashian, Charli XCX, FKA Twigs, and others. Rosalía, for instance, wore a deconstructed dress from Fındıkoğlu’s FW24 collection for her first appearance following the release of her album Lux.
Fındıkoğlu’s collections are consistently defined by strong narrative elements, often with political undertones (as already seen in AW25: Venus from Chaos). In Cage of Innocence, this principle crystallizes into its titular metaphor: the juxtaposition of innocence and confinement, which constructs a performance of femininity that is both restricted and empowered.
The show began fashionably late at 10 p.m. inside London’s Ironmongers’ Hall, the historic guildhall of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers. A space historically governed by men – a guild devoted to ironwork, to a material synonymous with rigidity, strength, and structure. Here, iron serves as a material metaphor for the cage. At the same time, the neo-Gothic building has sacred features: its architecture is reminiscent of church interiors. Fındıkoğlu had the floor covered in black plastic sheeting and transformed this space: thirty models in total, including Naomi Campbell and Amelia Gray, moving slowly and trance-like through the room, some eating cherries. The show opened with the sound of a cage breaking open. Deafening rock music, punctuated by screams, followed. The setting itself was already somewhere between sacredness and rebellion.
The collection fused punk, gothic, Victorian, and fetish influences, contrasting delicate feminine materials such as fine lace, bows, and translucent fabrics with leather and latex. The dominant colors were black, off-white, and red. Everything was maximalist: buckles, belts, studs, loose lace, safety pins, metal chains, oversized cross pendants, and heavy arm jewelry reaching to the elbows. Fındıkoğlu’s signature high-collared corsets were reworked with open seams and torn edges. Draped layers lay over stiff corsets, as if the fabrics themselves wanted to escape. Here, the central dichotomy of the collection unfolds: the interplay of innocence and bondage, feminine softness and fetishist harshness, sanctity and sensual liberation.
Some looked soft and flowing, others sharp and menacing, yet all clung tightly to the body like fabric cages. Accessories amplified the motif of constraint: chains threaded through hair, across fingers, and over faces – evoking Anatolian bridal ornamentation or blinders, oscillating between cage and armor, threat and protection. Some models carried open handbags from which cigarette packets, feathers, and cherries fell (isn’t that all it takes to romanticize being a woman?). There were tears, whether real or painted on, streaked dirt-smeared faces; bodies were dusted with debris. Hair was teased, braided with jewelry, or tangled with branches and leaves.
On Instagram, Fındıkoğlu shared three leitmotifs of the collection: Strength, Cage, and Romance—a trinity that clearly marks the tensions within the show.
Look 28, worn by Amelia Gray, was titled Storm in My Veins and captures “the chaos that fuels my creations, a woman’s wild pulse turned into power”. The red dress, with its high ruffled collar, latex stockings, corseted tailoring, and exuberant jewelry, channels female creativity and rage. Red, Fındıkoğlu notes, is “the color of passion”.
Look 19, The Girl in a Room, epitomized the Cage theme: a white babydoll dress made of lace and chiffon with puffed sleeves, paired with long black latex gloves and a mouthpiece recalling a horse’s bridle. The wide eyes and tears convey ambivalence: desire or coercion? Submission or control?
Look 24, Bittersweet, embodied Romance – the most discussed piece of the show: a cream, sheer, Victorian corset dress, stained with cherry juice and cherries, both rotting and fresh, as symbols of virginity, sin, and temptation. The white lace, once a sign of purity, here becomes a vehicle for shame and desire.
In this way, Fındıkoğlu stages patriarchal and religiously charged power structures by depicting paralyzed female bodies, but at the same time positioning them between gentleness, anger, and dominance. She deconstructs the idea of innocence, which, as she writes, “rather than protection, has always been a prison.” In her show notes, she states her aim to give a voice to women “who were never allowed to speak their hearts or minds.” The traditional connection between virtue and restraint is torn apart, refashioned to free the female body from its iron cage.
Cage of Innocence thus becomes a precarious balancing act between reproduction and subversion. It reveals how female empowerment and violence, freedom and coercion, sexuality and innocence remain inextricably intertwined. Cage of Innocence makes no attempt to resolve this tension. The result is a collection that feels at once violent and emancipating, romantic and rebellious.
Some viewers were unsettled; the models evoked animals meant to be controlled. Others dismissed the show as a diluted homage to Alexander McQueen or Vivienne Westwood. How radical can liberation continue to be if it is only performed on a particular body type? Despite prominent exceptions, the casting remained largely white and thin. Can ‘Uncaging Femininity’ be more than a metaphor if it remains tethered to the violent beauty standards of the fashion world? And finally: How can femininity be liberated, both on the catwalk and behind the scenes? On Glassdoor, anonymous reviews by former employees of Fındıkoğlu’s report a toxic working environment: verbal abuse, exploitation, humiliation, and lack of respect. “The worst woman you could ever work for,” one review reads.
So the question remains whether the feminist liberation that Fındıkoğlu celebrates on stage also applies in real life, or whether she herself is ultimately part of the cage she claims to be breaking out of.