Tyler McGillivary spins 200 years of deep-sea storytelling into a cohesive Spring/Summer collection, with references from Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid to the 2006 film Aquamarine.
The first time I watched Aquamarine, all I remember thinking was that I needed to find a pair of starfish earrings. If you haven’t seen the movie, or need a refresher, it stars Sara Paxton as the titular role, a mermaid determined to prove to her father that true love exists. Throughout her friendship with two teenage girls, played by Emma Roberts and JoJo, she comes to find her wish came true, in a form she didn’t expect: through sisterhood. She ends up gifting the girls her “earrings,” tiny starfish that whisper compliments in their ears. “Starfish are notorious suck-ups,” Paxton’s Aquamarine tells the girls. “They love to give compliments.”
“This is my lucky charm,” Tyler McGillivary echoed about her own jewelry, a necklace with a shell pendant, when we caught up backstage. “I bought this a few weeks ago and I was like, ‘I have to wear it at the show, I have to have it with me.’ And thank god I did, because it went well.”
To say that the show went well was an understatement. Presented on the historic Wavertree Ship, the designer’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Mermaiden, told the story of mermaids past and present, weaving together historical references with the influences of our own childhoods.
Diving headfirst into a sea of old fairy tales, shell shops (shout out to Carol at the Shell Shop in Provincetown, Massachusetts), and personal memories, McGillivary spun nearly 200 years worth of folklore into a cohesive collection that felt at once nostalgic and entirely new. Through colour, texture, and shape, she explored all the different interpretations of sea sirens and mermaids, from their depictions as dangerous temptresses and alluring sisters to their associations with childhood imagination and fantastical play. She leaned into classic costuming with shell bras and long hair, then switched things up with subtler references, such as wavy ruffles and ripped fabrics that looked as though they emerged from a shipwreck. Mermaid hems, netting fabrications, and sailor styles were abundant, and even a blow fish made its way onto the boat.
For print design, a Tyler McGillivary staple, the designer looked back in time to early interpretations of the motif — exploring the public domain’s archive of illustrations, most notably from Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, and reworking the images into striking prints. “As a designer, I’m always trying to find the new interesting thing to me,” she explained. “In our prints, I’m so interested in focusing on aspects of the world, history, and our folklore that are shared and that are beautiful. So with this, I was like, ‘what if we dug more into our past and this huge wealth of painting and illustration and all the stories and storybooks around that?’”
The closing look, a standout sheer gown that draped across the body in ruffles and gathers, shimmering like sea glass, trailed down to the floor like a mermaid’s tail. And as if the look wasn’t perfect enough, it was worn by the one and only Sara Paxton, Miss Aquamarine herself. It is difficult to describe the volume of gasps heard around the venue, or how much the casting meant to McGillivary. “To me, mermaid is Aquamarine,” McGillivary gushed. “It’s watching movies with your friends at the beach when you’re in like fifth grade and you’re braiding each other’s hair and you pretend that you’re going to go do something more interesting, but you’re just gonna be doing that. It’s the power of female friendship.”
For the rest of the casting, which the team did in house, McGillivary looked to capture that spirit of female friendship, putting together a dream team of inspiring women. “It’s so important to have a diversity of women that all have really strong looks and personalities,” she told us when discussing the process of finding models. “I feel like they all kind of went together at the end of the day because of how unique they are. For us, it’s about finding people who are strong, interesting, fun, playful, and fabulous.”
The front row, which included Ella Emhoff, Veronica Slowikowska, and Ramisha Sattar, mirrored this sentiment. “I think it’s sort of weirdly self-selecting. It’s like the clothes are fun and colorful and the people that wear those clothes are fun and colorful, you know? It’s comedians and musicians and artists, and they all kind of have the same energy of like, ‘we’re lucky to do this and we’re here because we want to.’ I feel lucky to have that community that’s cropped up around the brand.”
Parting ways, I knew exactly what I was going to do when I got home later that evening. Aquamarine, if you were wondering, is on both Disney+ and Amazon Prime.
Words by Sophie Wang
Photography by Cat Merchenko
