This October, just in time for Halloween, a new kind of fashion week is taking over Manchester, proving fashion doesn’t have to follow the rules.
Alternative Fashion Week Manchester (AFW) will transform some of the city’s most recognisable spaces, including Affleck’s Palace, HOME and Islington Mill into runways, markets, performance and art spaces and meeting places for people who exist outside the traditional fashion system.
From gothic glamour and punk to rockabilly, underground street culture, experimental design and everything in between, AFW will showcase a diverse collection of emerging and established designers from across the north. These include Romy Betty from Sheffield, Pretty Disturbia from Manchester and Callie Holden from Liverpool.
Running from 20–25 October 2026, AFW has one simple belief at its heart: subculture deserves a runway.
Rather than focussing on one conventional catwalk show, a number of AFW events will take place across the city centre, making alternative fashion “visible, accessible and impossible to ignore”.
Major runway shows are scheduled throughout the week including events on Friday 23 October at SITU (The Alan Hotel basement), Saturday 24 October at Gullivers, with live music and DJs, and Sunday 25 October back at SITU.
The Black Veil Ball, a dark, theatrical evening of alternative fashion, performance and nightlife, including an independent makers’ night market, is at HOME on Saturday 24 October. Whilst an alternative clothes swap, celebrating circular fashion and creative collaboration, will take place at Islington Mill on Tuesday 20 October.
Other events include live mannequins at Affleck’s Palace (Tue 20 October and Thursday 22 October), “pin up” life drawing and a student fashion showcase at Affleck’s Palace on Wednesday 21 October.
Beyond the main events, AFW’s Dead Dolls Trail will take alternative fashion beyond traditional event spaces and onto the streets, as an interactive trail of specially created dolls appears in independent shops, cafés and bars across the city centre.
Tickets for all events can be bought from Eventbrite, with entry costing from £5-£27.
“Sustainability, individuality and self-expression” are at the core of AFW, said the event’s founder Leesa Betram O’Neill, a veteran of Manchester’s fashion scene, who launched alternative fashion house Pretty Disturbia in 2008.
The Manchester Metropolitan University fashion graduate said she is launching AFW as a “community-led alternative, platforming the designers, artists, models and other creatives who have historically existed outside the mainstream fashion industry.”
“This isn’t fashion looking for permission,” she said. “It is fashion made by people who have never needed permission.
“At its heart, AFW is about who gets to be seen,” she said. “Traditional fashion weeks can feel distant, exclusive and inaccessible. AFW has been created from the opposite perspective: bringing the audience, designers and creative community together.”
Leesa said she has designed the event to be “less like a traditional fashion week and more like Manchester’s alternative creative world taking over the city for six days in a unique, creative way.”
“Manchester has always been a city where subcultures create their own spaces, sounds and identities,” she said. “From punk and post-punk to Northern Soul, rave culture, indie, goth and countless underground creative movements, Manchester has a long history of turning outsiders into cultural leaders”
“AFW is built from that same spirit.”
Alternative Fashion Week Manchester takes place 20–25 October 2026 across multiple Manchester venues https://www.alternativefashionweekmcr.com/