One of fashion’s favourite buzzwords (ironically, to the collective demise of perhaps every brand’s target audience) is “community”. Because how often does a brand that claims as its family, actually have any agency within the brand itself outside of consumerism? Somewhere along the way of a thousand press releases, it seems brands have almost made it their entire purpose to blur the lines of having customers with having a community.
In come Whistles. In celebration of their golden anniversary, as well as re-thinking the brand’s designs, campaigns, visual identity and everything in between, perhaps one of the most interesting parts of its new era is who gets a say in shaping it. Rather than deciding what the next fifty years of Whistles should look like in a stuffy boardroom, the brand took to the streets to cast and invite fifty of its own customers into the conversation. And according to Whistles, those selected customers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Casting 50 customers for the relaunch campaign brought that idea to life, while creating a collective we can continue to collaborate with in the future,” says Julia Monro, Whistles’ Group Chief Brand Officer. “It’s the beginning of a far more open future for the brand.”
The resulting relaunch campaign is a refreshing reminder that for brands wanting to declare they are here to “start conversations”, there’s a difference between talking to your audience on Instagram and actually allowing the people buying your clothes to have some influence over what comes next.
That same thinking carries through to the clothing designs themselves. “The new brand direction captures what makes Whistles and its customers distinctive: curiosity, creativity and open-mindedness,” Monro explains. Rather than offering up one prescriptive idea of what a Whistles customer should look like, the collection has been designed with individuality in mind. The Whistles woman, is in fact, every woman.
For AW26, Whistles is taking the understated, modern pieces it’s long been known for and loved by fashion IT girls such as Alexa Chung, and loosening things up a little, mixing heritage influences with more modern proportions and polished pieces with the everyday.
“Autumn/Winter 2026 will see an evolved collection leaning into a new high-low sentiment, which underpins our Designed For An Open Mind ethos,” said Mo Riach, Design Director at Whistles. “We’re rediscovering the pieces we’re known for with a renewed attention to detail, craftsmanship and modernity. Customers will be able to interpret the collection with their own personal style in mind; that sense of individuality is really important to us.”
Some stand out pieces include a high funnel, double-breasted longline trench in chocolate, a sleek whipstitch tote and an oversized ecru argyle knit with contrast hand-stitching and loose fringing left trailing from the cuffs and hem. The new Whistles is sharper, more considered and more self-assured, but most importantly, it’s proved that letting your community into the room might actually make for a better brand and does deserve a spot in your wardrobe.
A redesigned Whistles website launches alongside the campaign, creating a new digital flagship built around discovery. The new experience brings product, storytelling, and the design process closer together, offering customers a deeper look into the Whistles world.
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