IndiaAIFounders — Selkie’s Latest Fantasy Is a Pirate Circus at the End of the World

While most designers are showing their Spring 2027 collections during New York Fashion Week in September, Selkie, the 8-year-old womenswear brand from Kimberley Gordon, stuck with its runway-to-retail method again this season. Titled “The Ghost Ship,” the Fall 2026 collection is available to shop now and displays a “darker, more surreal evolution of the romantic fantasy,” per show notes.

The show presented a traveling pirate circus with “warrior girls” living off the grid (complete with retro music devices) in the aftermath of an imagined apocalypse, per show notes. They’re haunted by the past and unsure of what lies ahead. Rebellious circus performers turn to creativity and joy as acts of survival. (Plus, an impressively flexible performer opened and closed the show.)

The collection brings maritime folklore, historical fantasy and circus imagery into Selkie’s hyperfeminine world. Pirate and harlequin motifs appear alongside armor, corsetry, romantic dresses and theatrical silhouettes. Chainmail, religious jewelry, seashells and oversized accessories give the brand’s usual fantasy a darker edge.

Selkie Fall 2026. Photo: The Moment Dep

Gordon was inspired by Cheryl Strayed’s “The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us,” a 2011 Dear Sugar advice column later collected in her book, “Tiny Beautiful Things.”

“It’s about choice in the end. It’s about not regretting anything that you’ve chosen in your life,” Gordon told Fashionista after the show on Monday. “[In the essay, Strayed] talks about how we will never know of the life that we don’t choose. It’s sort of like two ships passing and there’s nothing you can do but wave to it from the shore.”

Gordon pointed to decisions she’s made in the past and the online response to them. “I’ve made some controversial ones and I’ve regretted some of them,” she said. “And when you’re on social media, you get a lot of things, like being called a clown, that it’s all a circus, like ‘what a clown show.’ And I thought, ‘why not put on the ultimate clown show then and embrace the fool?'”

She wanted the show to have an “apocalyptic feeling” because “of the zeitgeist right now.” “There’s a lot of discussion about the world ending and a lot of people live in terror of this and I don’t live in terror of that,” Gordon added. The designer also pulled inspiration from the Emily St. John Mandel novel, “Station Eleven” (and subsequent TV series), which follows performers continuing to be creative at the end of the world.

“Even in an apocalypse, even at the end of the world, creativity and love survive and they are the foundations of all things that are important,” Gordon said. “And we have so much fear, but we don’t need to be afraid when we have creativity. [For] these performers, it’s an act of service to put out art and to perform.”

“All life’s a stage and to be performative — what does that even mean?” the designer continued. “Because we are all performing on a constant basis. And so I thought, ‘what about a show about performing?'”

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Ahead, see all the looks from Selkie’s Fall 2026 collection.

Selkie Fall 2026

Selkie Fall 2026. Photo: The Moment Dep

Selkie Fall 2026. Photo: The Moment Dept

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