When a Fashion House Calls: Richard Stone and the JOSEPH AW26 Collection

As a sculptor, I spend a good amount of time thinking about form and material. So, when Mario Arena, Creative Director of JOSEPH, got in touch to say he was building a collection around those ideas and inspiration found specifically throughout my sculpture, I was certainly surprised, but equally thrilled for my work to be reinterpreted in new ways.  

The AW26 collection, shown at Tate Modern during London Fashion Week, took as its starting point what Arena described as my approach to "finding form where form does not exist". The crocheted leather, the poured-gold hardware, the sculptural silhouettes. You could see the thinking that connects soft marble curves to a draped garment, or the sense of capturing stillness and movement at the same time, which is my intention, as it often is when luxury designers think about beautiful garments.  

Sitting front row at Tate Modern watching a collection, the inspiration of which emanated from my studio was a genuinely strange but wonderful experience. The work travels somewhere you couldn't have predicted and comes back changed - interpreted through entirely different hands, different materials, different intentions, and yet somehow is still recognisable. Being cited in British Vogue and Le Monde in the same week also felt like a sculptural practice reaching beyond its usual world in a way I hadn't anticipated.  

The partnership will continue with an in-store presentation of sculptures during autumn, 2026 at the flagship Joseph store at 77 Fulham Road, London   

JOSEPH at Tate Modern during London Fashion Week  

Sculpture as inspiration