Peruvian designer Genaro Rivas returned to London Fashion Week with A Golden Shroud, marking his fifth consecutive presentation at the event – a historic milestone as the first Peruvian designer to do so.
Following acclaimed collections Alchemy of Ashes and A Feast for Crows, Rivas’s latest show offered a runway experience steeped in ritual, craftsmanship, and signature poetic storytelling.
This season’s collection draws its inspiration from two early 19th-century Andean Baroque murals by Tadeo Escalante in the church of San Juan Bautista de Huaro, near Cuzco. After a 19-hour pilgrimage to the site, guided by historian Brendan McMahon and the Jesuit-led Andean Baroque Route, Rivas channeled the murals’ intricate patterns and symbolic depth into garments that resonate with both spirituality and modernity. Even the showtime, 19:19, reflects the symbolic number that shaped the project’s rhythm and vision.
A Golden Shroud reimagines death not as finality but as transformation. Clerical robes and sacred iconography inform tailored silhouettes that balance dualities – urban and elegant, delicate and powerful, sacred and everyday. The titular golden shroud becomes a metaphor for resilience and renewal, with each piece reflecting a process of reinvention.
The muse of the collection embodies modern duality – a worldly English woman who is simultaneously strong and gentle, grounded and ethereal. She inhabits these layered narrative garments with ease, bringing the sacred motifs into everyday life, translating tradition into contemporary expression.
Red flowing robes embroidered with sacred figures, shawls etched with Latin scripture, and breastplates sculpted into gilded wings set the tone for the collection. Cut-out dresses appear frayed yet resolute, their fragile seams holding together in deliberate tension, a harmony born from rupture. Each garment becomes a relic of devotion and defiance – garments as modern altarpieces, balancing reverence with rebellion.
Craftsmanship is at the heart of the collection. Upcycled denim, zero-waste cutting, and eco-conscious washing techniques sit alongside reworked silhouettes, like men’s trousers refashioned into dresses. Hand-applied zippers, resin details, 3D-printed accessories, and laser-cut acrylic accents elevate the designs, while 95 percent of production is executed by women collaborators, reinforcing Rivas’s commitment to purpose-driven fashion.
With A Golden Shroud, Genaro Rivas fuses history, symbolism, and sustainability into a collection that is at once reverent and radical – a celebration of transformation, craft, and the enduring power of reinvention.
