Nicholas Daley FW26: Rebel Riot

4 November 2026

For Fall/Winter 2026, Nicholas Daley returns to Wallace Mercantile with Rebel Riot—a collection shaped by punk, reggae, cultural crossover and the freedom to resist easy categorization.

The London-based designer has built his practice around the intersection of clothing, music and identity. Drawing upon his Jamaican and Scottish heritage, Daley brings personal history into conversation with broader Black British and diasporic culture. Tailoring, workwear, military garments and sportswear become vehicles for storytelling, brought together through bespoke textiles, artisanal techniques and carefully chosen collaborators.

Daley’s collections extend beyond clothing. Live performances, sound-system culture and creative communities are fundamental to the way his work is presented and understood. Music does not simply accompany the clothes; it provides their rhythm.

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Community, Craft and Culture

Nicholas Daley graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2013 and has since developed a distinct approach to contemporary menswear. Community, craftsmanship and culture remain at the centre of his work.

The designer frequently collaborates with musicians, textile makers and specialist manufacturers, allowing different creative practices to inform one another. British wool, Japanese cloth, hand-knitting, quilting and traditional tailoring sit alongside references to reggae, jazz, punk and dub.

This exchange gives the clothes their layered character. Familiar garments carry multiple histories at once: a piece of workwear can also speak to sound-system culture; a tailored silhouette may borrow the attitude of a stage uniform; a traditional textile can be altered through proportion, patchwork or unexpected colour.

The result is not nostalgia. Daley treats heritage as something active—material that can be questioned, reworked and carried into the present.

Community, Craft and Culture

The result is not nostalgia. Daley treats heritage as something active—material that can be questioned, reworked and carried into the present.

Rebel Riot: The Spirit of Bad Brains

Rebel Riot takes the influential Washington, D.C. band Bad Brains as its central inspiration.

Formed during the late 1970s, Bad Brains emerged from the city’s developing hardcore scene but refused to remain within a single musical category. Their work moved between punk, reggae, dub, jazz-fusion, funk and rock, creating a sound defined as much by its openness as by its intensity.

The band’s philosophy was equally important. Its members championed PMA—Positive Mental Attitude—as an alternative to the nihilism associated with parts of punk culture. Rebellion did not have to mean destruction; it could also mean discipline, creative independence and the confidence to define oneself beyond expectations.

Daley finds a natural connection in that refusal to be categorized. His own work moves between cultures, musical traditions and forms of dress without treating them as contradictions. For FW26, the energy of Bad Brains becomes a framework for examining nonconformity, cultural exchange and the creative possibilities found between genres.

Punk Meets Reggae

The collection brings together the visual languages of punk and reggae, allowing each to complicate the other.

DIY patches, worn surfaces and irregular constructions evoke the resourcefulness of punk, while red, green and gold accents reference Rastafarian culture. Workwear, Ivy style, military clothing and sportswear are combined with deliberately altered proportions and tactile handmade details.

This meeting of influences is central to the collection. Punk’s raw immediacy appears alongside the warmth and rhythm of reggae. Traditional menswear is loosened through volume, texture and unexpected fabric combinations. Familiar shapes feel slightly disrupted, as though adapted over time by the people wearing them.

Daley’s Jamaican and Scottish heritage also continues to shape the visual language. Floral motifs bring the Jamaican hibiscus together with the Scottish thistle, transforming two national symbols into a shared pattern. Sporting references, textured wool and checks sit alongside reggae graphics and subcultural details, creating connections across geography and generations.

Texture, Age and Slow Craft

Fabric gives Rebel Riot much of its depth. The FW26 collection emphasizes materials that carry texture, reveal their construction and become more individual through wear.

Japanese cottons include softened plaids, raised stripes, irregular woven surfaces and distorted checks. Portuguese merino wool introduces warmth and dimension, while corduroy, canvas and dense cotton ground the collection in workwear and everyday utility.

Deadstock military blankets contribute a raw, repurposed quality and continue Daley’s interest in lower-waste approaches to material. Hand-finished elements and small-scale craft provide contrast to the collection’s more robust fabrics, showing how delicacy and durability can exist within the same wardrobe.

The palette moves through black, white and muted earth tones, interrupted by deep red, green and gold. These flashes of colour carry cultural meaning while bringing energy to the collection’s darker, weathered surfaces.

Clothing with Rhythm

Silhouette is treated with the same sense of movement found in the music behind the collection.

Outer layers are generous and protective, while trousers favour broad, utilitarian shapes. Shirting draws upon workwear, Americana and the visual culture of the 1980s punk scene. Knitwear offers weight and softness, and jersey pieces connect the collection to performance, sports and the informal clothing surrounding music communities.

Nothing feels confined to a single category. Tailoring becomes relaxed, sportswear gains structure and workwear carries decorative, personal details. The clothes are designed to be layered and interpreted, giving the wearer space to create connections of their own.

This flexibility reflects the central idea of Rebel Riot: identity does not need to be reduced to a single influence. Style can be built through combination—through the records, places, histories and communities that shape a person over time.

An Evolving Personal Narrative

Nicholas Daley’s work has always treated clothing as a meeting place. Family history, music, textiles and collaboration come together in garments that feel both personal and collective.

For FW26, Bad Brains provides more than a visual reference. The band’s independence, genre-crossing sound and Positive Mental Attitude reinforce a philosophy already present within Daley’s practice: tradition can be respected without becoming restrictive, and rebellion can be a constructive form of self-definition.

Rebel Riot brings fresh energy to the designer’s established language. It is tactile, layered and culturally expansive—a collection that finds freedom not by rejecting its influences, but by bringing them together on its own terms.

Discover Nicholas Daley FW26 at Wallace Mercantile.