Article by Kitty Noofah
At the HAUS of McLees show, produced by Fashion Scout, Creative Director McLees Mantegazza unveiled RENATUS — a deeply personal collection exploring vulnerability, spirituality, death and the transformative possibility of beginning again.
There are fashion shows designed simply to present clothes, and there are those that invite an audience into an entire world. HAUS of McLees firmly entered the latter territory with RENATUS, a collection by Creative Director McLees Mantegazza that transforms the runway into a meditation on identity, surrender and rebirth.
Taking its name from the Latin for “reborn”, RENATUS explores what happens when identity is stripped back to its most vulnerable state — and what might emerge afterwards. Darkness, surrender and eventual illumination form the emotional arc of a collection concerned not only with clothing, but with the recurring human experience of losing and rediscovering oneself.
The project originated in a book Mantegazza created during her master’s degree, developing into a collection that considers rebirth as something more complicated than a pristine new beginning. Here, transformation requires confrontation. Before something new can emerge, an older version of the self must first be allowed to disappear.
That tension is reflected in a deliberately restrained palette of black, white, silver and gold. Exposed silhouettes and sculptural forms turn vulnerability into a visual language, while intricate hand-beading and meticulous craftsmanship bring an almost ceremonial quality to the pieces.
Rather than treating darkness and light as opposites, RENATUS places the two in constant conversation. Decay and beauty, fragility and strength, death and renewal are allowed to coexist. The result is a collection in which becoming is not presented as a neat or comfortable process, but as something intimate, unsettling and ultimately transformative.
Spirituality runs throughout the work. Drawing inspiration from Mantegazza’s Native American heritage and a belief that death does not necessarily signify an absolute ending, the collection approaches rebirth as an unravelling of the former self before the soul can emerge anew.
Symbols of reincarnation, religion, angelic imagery and Mother Nature appear alongside the recurring spiral — a motif representing continuity, rebirth and perpetual evolution. These references leave space for interpretation, inviting the viewer to consider their own relationship with life, death, identity and faith rather than prescribing a single meaning.
There is also something compellingly physical about the philosophy behind RENATUS. Its ideas are translated through handcraft rather than remaining purely conceptual. Every sculptural detail, exposed form and carefully placed bead reinforces the sense that transformation is painstaking: something constructed slowly, deliberately and by hand.
Created in the HAUS of McLees Notting Hill design atelier, the collection was led by Creative Director McLees Mantegazza, alongside Brent Heighton, Coffec Lum, Ariel Chow and Bella Conner. Additional jewellery pieces featured within the collection were designed by Taylor Papadakis and her brand, Lady Pill Art.
The HAUS of McLees show was produced by Fashion Scout, with Martyn Roberts as Show Producer. Hair was credited to AOFMPro, with make-up by Unite / Sally Beauty, photography by Tom Marshak, videography by Ronn Vinluan, and PR by I.DEA PR.
Ultimately, RENATUS leaves its audience with a striking proposition: rebirth demands a degree of surrender. Its central message is perhaps best captured by the words accompanying the collection: “to bloom again, something within us must first be willing to die.”
For HAUS of McLees, that death is not simply an ending. It becomes the space from which another version of ourselves can emerge — making RENATUS as much an exploration of the human experience as it is a fashion collection.
Kitty Noofah, Beauty Editor, attended the HAUS of McLees show on behalf of FABUK Magazine, experiencing the RENATUS collection and its exploration of transformation, craftsmanship and rebirth first-hand. Special thanks to I.DEA PR for inviting FABUK Magazine to attend and experience the presentation.
Photographer : Paul Winstone