Genaro Rivas Finds a Haunting Beauty in Death at LFW

"With his SS26 collection “A Golden Shroud,” the Peruvian designer used a funeral-afterparty atmosphere to explore themes of pain, power, and renewal."

For his fifth London Fashion Week appearance, Genaro Rivas transformed an intimate living room setting into a stage for “A Golden Shroud,” a collection whose mood was set by the friction between its decadent interiors and a pounding electronic soundtrack. The atmosphere suggested both a funeral and an afterparty, a space where the subject of death was not avoided, but confronted directly.

Drawing from Andean Baroque, Rivas stripped the styling back to a severe restraint. Hair was sleeked and tied with lace into a singular, floor-length braid. Against this control, bold prints of infernal imagery and winged creatures echoed the murals that inspired the collection. Spiked collars and bracelets added a sense of menace, somewhere between danger and protection, while a recurring cloak silhouette channelled the Grim Reaper himself, most memorably in a hooded piece paired with a skeletal prop.

The colour palette was built from fire and gold, dominated by reds, oranges, and blacks. It was the opening look, however, that best articulated the collection’s thesis: a golden embellishment erupting from the chest of an oversized shirt, a wound transfigured into ornament. “A Golden Shroud” posed a question through its garments: can pain, or even death, be rendered as beauty? The collection offered no straightforward answers, but its eerie coherence left a mark that was both unsettling and unforgettable.