Porta Romana x Harris Reed at LFW

Porta Romana is proud to have collaborated with trailblazing British designer Harris Reed on his latest collection GILDED, launched at London Fashion Week 2025. Florence Pugh opened the show at the Tate Britain to create a truly memorable experience.

With a sense of the world in turmoil, Reed was drawn to punk references, finding inspiration in the counterculture of rebellion and individual freedom. This collection is utterly unapologetic, designed to take up space and make noise.

Image credit: Suleika Mueller

Taking inspiration from the distinctive Urchin chandelier, four of which hung in the show space within the Duveen Galleries. The organic armour of the Urchin fronds grow from the garment structures, each frond 3D modelled and printed by Porta Romana in a flexible resin and hand-painted by their skilled artists in Etched Gold or Electric Blue.

A further four looks take inspiration from Porta Romana’s decorative finishes with contours of the body highlighted through layers of hand-painting and gold metal leaf expertly applied by Porta Romana artists. Crinoline cages and corsets are no longer undergarments but stand proudly as the garment itself, showing the world the wearer’s simultaneous vulnerability and protection.

Fabric choices and embroidery placements are contrasting; opaque deadstock tailoring wool creates structure, but is paired with sheer, fluid chiffon and tulle. Archival embroidery samples are applied in glimpses, adding touches of light, colour and texture, or hand embroidered in graphic lines.

The collection in its entirety has been proudly British made, from Porta Romana’s Surrey studio to the London ateliers of Harris Reed, Roker and Vivienne Lake.

Image credit: Suleika Mueller

Harris Reed

Fighting for the beauty of fluidity, half-American, half-British Harris Reed designs to create conversation. Growing up with a strong sense of self, Reed was able to quickly understand the transformative power of clothing and its correlation with identity and liberation. Reed’s design process takes inspiration from the current social and political issues that Reed feels most connected to.

The work Reed creates is built from assessing the responsibility that fashion has to spark conversation in relation to the injustices that are happening within society today, yet all while staying true to the brand’s ethos that strives for a vision of gender fluidity and inclusivity.

The overall DNA of the Harris Reed brand and personal identity is best described as Romanticism Gone Nonbinary. It puts the wearer and their fluidity – in whatever way it manifests front and centre.

Image credit: Porta Romana

Porta Romana

In a world where products are rarely made to last, Porta Romana, the British lighting and furniture company, pride themselves on creating objects to be loved for a lifetime and more. The vision, to create beauty in everything they do, that is why all their products are handcrafted and hand-finished using only the finest craftspeople and production methods to shape every detail.

Inspired by beauty in the natural world, they transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Striving to create a unique design language that pushes boundaries through their use of innovative techniques and materials. Working with exceptional artists and makers from across the British Isles to create distinctive pieces. Every glassblower, ceramicist, metalworker, or sculptor they collaborate with brings their expert knowledge and craft to the fabrication of their designs, imprinting each one with a unique character.

The in-house painting studio is equally central to Porta Romana’s design process. It is here they have spent over thirty-five years building on the craft of hand-painted decorative finishes, developing their own unique library.

Image credit: Porta Romana

The Urchin Chandelier

Porta Romana’s Urchin chandelier was awarded Best in British Product Design 2024 at The Brit List, featured in Grand Designs, and hangs in the Royal Academy of Arts in London, celebrating 250 years of art and history. Inspired by a Turkish hazel seed pod, the chandelier is dramatic in style and scale.

Sculptural fronds of hand-forged steel create a standout, organic form. Each section, hand-painted by Porta Romana’s artists. Inspired by nature, a recurring theme in many of their designs, the original seed pod was carefully recreated as a paper model to inform the production process with one of their trusted local makers.

The individual fronds of the chandelier laser cut, then hammered and hand-formed, using a bespoke tool – the process, repeated three times, each pass adding more texture and creating the distinctive conical shape.

Finally, constructed from thirteen elements, with thirteen separate light bulbs – each individual section has sixteen fronds, creating two hundred and eight distinctive fronds in each chandelier.

Main image credit: Suleika Mueller and Porta Romana