Joshua Ewusie’s spring 2027 collection began at home: in the front rooms of migrant households, where faux flowers sat atop plastic tablecloths and colorful crochet throws.

“The home is the first place where you start to get an idea of creating an aesthetic, where you realize things have been put somewhere intentionally,” said the London designer, now on his third collection as a British Fashion Council NEWGEN recipient. His own memories returned him to his grandmother’s and Ghanaian family’s homes, whose front rooms were salons and meeting places.

“I thought a lot about women in our cultures who see the home as an opportunity to show everything that is precious to them,” he said.

For the collection, titled In Lieu of Flowers, Ewusie also looked to Michael McMillan’s The Front Room, a study of the domestic interiors of post-war Caribbean migrants in Britain, and began reconsidering the objects sometimes consigned to the category of kitsch or “cheap.” Why, he wondered, should the pattern of a plastic tablecloth be deemed bad taste when its origins lie in handmade lace? The question proved fertile ground for a designer already known for making leather do unexpected and gorgeous things.

That material remains the binding thread of his work, but this season, Ewusie, who is a recent Central Saint Martins MA graduate, and currently Fashion Designer in Residence at The King’s Foundation as part of a partnership with Chanel, pushed further into the interchange between it and everything around it. The lace-like motif of a vinyl tablecloth was translated into intricately laser-cut leather.

Elsewhere, the actual tablecloth material was dyed, cut into cloth, then braided and bound with leather to give PVC pants and a dress, with its sweet pintucked front panel, heft and structure. Dresses based on the domestic adornment were piped in leather, while a gleaming gold dress was laser-cut with the decorative pattern.

Leather was made to feel more delicate, while other humble materials were guided by leather’s permanence and authority.

The concept of home offered those same softer propositions. Nightgowns were another reference and appeared with curved necklines, satin bindings, lace trims, and tiny rosebud embellishments.

“This season feels more feminine,” said Ewusie. Color and texture, the designer explained, stopped it from veering into the twee, gravitating toward “distinctive, odd, sometimes ugly color combinations” that expanded beyond the largely neutral palette associated with his work.

Lime green piping traced an aubergine silk skirt; flashes of acidic color appeared on necklines and linings.

There was continuity in the tailoring. A deconstructed tuxedo jacket developed a silhouette from last season, with a collar shifted sideways until its lapel began to resemble a petal. Housecoat shapes and familiar Ewusie shirting remained in the mix, while oversized laser-cut leather flowers worn at the neck nodded to late-’90s and early-2000s eveningwear, styled in a campaign shot by Erik Cesla. (Another emerging creative Ewusie was keen to work with.)

This season also marked a significant expansion into accessories. After around five prototypes—distributed among friends and family—Ewusie finally settled on his first bag: a braided leather everyday shape whose woven construction was designed to improve with age. More sizes and colorways are already being considered. It was an intuitive extension of his work, another way of showing what leather can become when handled and lived with.

Spring 2027 was shown among an exhibition curated by Ewusie and his collaborator Cynthia Igbokwe of C Studio, surrounded by paintings and sculpture from young artists based largely between London and Paris whose practices similarly consider diaspora and migrant aesthetics. Some were so emerging they took some persuading to actually show: this included French-Guadeloupean artist Jules Carlito Beurrier-Loncan, who made musical instrument sculptures, and Anne-Lise Agossa, whose hand-stitched embroidery pieces were inspired by domestic rituals.

Ewusie wanted their work to sit “in relation and in contact with the collection.” The installation would later turn into an opening, with the artists joining the space for a spread of chocolate-dipped honeycomb, sesame-white chocolate biscuit fingers, and marshmallow cubes—only the best for the houseguests.

In Lieu of Flowers is an ambitious and deft step for a young designer playing with the possibilities of their signature material, expanding without fear on hallmarks they’ve so quickly established. Like the homes of diasporic families around the world, nothing is quite as fixed or as founded as first appears, and that’s how true taste lives.