In the Audience at FS 2026: Duality

As love filled the windy streets of St Andrews on the evening of Valentine’s Day, the more stylish crowd of our town donned their most fabulous outfits - not for an intimate candlelit dinner, but for FS 2026, the most anticipated fashion event of the term. Even students from outside our bubble made the journey; my sister and two of our friends took a break from the books to join me in a quintessentially St Andrews weekend. Their verdict on St Andrews? That the men here were far better looking than in Oxford, the girls far more polished, and that everyone here possessed “impeccable” style. While I might not entirely agree with the first point, the latter most definitely rang true. The audience at FS 2026 felt like the perfect reflection of the chic, slightly elusive je ne sais quoi style that St Andrews has come to cultivate.

The first major trend I noticed in the audience was sequins, beads, and embellishments. It seems that St Andrews loves to sparkle, as most outfits had some element of shine to them. I wore a simple black mini dress with an extravagantly beaded cape I bought from a small souk back home in Dubai, with silver heels to match the beading. Though the beaded fringe definitely got in the way of dancing my heart out at the afterparty, I loved how the pieces I chose worked together. However, how differently people styled beading also caught my attention. For some, like myself, the embellishment was the outfit: a fully beaded cape, slip dress, or a top so covered in sequins it caught the runway lights from every angle.  In these cases, the sparkle was the focal point of the outfit, and I enjoyed seeing the simple, almost subtle way that they were styled. Bare legs, neutral accessories, and sleek heels made each outfit look effortless and thrown together in a way that made you think the wearer must have just been born with style. For others, beading was used like punctuation. An asymmetrical chiffon skirt with crystals sewn into the hem, a green mini dress trimmed with sequins around the chest, or a leather clutch just sparkly enough to catch the light as people cheered for the models strutting down the runway were notably some of my favourites from the night. Whether subtle or overt, the contrast between the two approaches was both striking and synonymous. Although people were expressing themselves originally, the crowd just worked together in a positively fabulous way. 

Perhaps my favourite trend of the night was using one’s body as an accessory - stay with me on this one! If you weren’t wearing sequins, you were most likely in either mesh or lace, adding a soft edge to the crowd. Personally, I’ve always loved styling lace myself, so it was especially fun to see the many ways it appeared throughout the audience. St Andrews has done away with modesty - gone were the slips that might have once appeared under a mesh dress, now replaced with simple pasties and a cute thong. Maybe that’s part of the fun of wearing lace - taking something very quintessentially feminine and fussy, and adding an edge by the whisper of nudity underneath. Undergarments turned into an entirely new category of accessory, creating an interesting balance between confidence and delicacy. Sheer dresses were paired with cute, ornate bras, and I saw a surprising amount of men ditch the traditional tux for a shirt unbuttoned most of the way down the chest, layering necklaces in the open space. Depending on how it was styled, mesh went from something soft and romantic to having a daring edge, which I thought perfectly matched FS’s theme of Duality this year. The best dressed, in my opinion, has to go to the girl wearing a backless high neck black lace handkerchief top with a low waisted black silk skirt; I adored the way the lace looked with the rippling silk. 

The way each look was styled also had a ripple effect of representing St Andrew’s style - I noticed a considerable lack of slickbacks, with most people opting for a bombshell blowout or natural curls instead. I’m absolutely a fan of this - I’m always pro ‘hair-blowing-in-the-breeze’, and it’s a wonderful omen of better weather ahead as spring comes back to Scotland - no longer must we do a preemptive slickback to stop our hair getting ruined by the rain! It looks as if the reign of the ‘clean girl’ might be over, as I also appreciated the amount of smoky eyes, sparkle, and eyeliner I saw among the crowd. It might be time for me to break out the eyeshadow palettes collecting dust in my wardrobe, and try to get with the times. Judging from the flawless airwrap curls sponsored by Dyson the models repped, as well as the bronzed makeup, the audience truly appeared like an extension of the runway. It’s a testament to St Andrews and the style that people cultivate here - even trends that have been around for a while were styled in a new, refreshing way. That is a hallmark of St Andrews style to me - the art of looking polished without trying, and looking glamorous without seeming laborious. St Andrews’ style is almost contradictory in how it’s both breezy and easygoing, while being supremely chic and polished in a paradoxical way that seems so effortless it's almost impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, FS 2026 did not disappoint in its display of the current fashion of our tiny town, both on and off the runway.