Weekend Max Mara SS26 - A Weekend with an Artist

How WEEKEND MAX MARA Brings Contemporary Artists Into The Language Of The Trench Coat

written LE MILE

For Spring/Summer 2026, WEEKEND MAX MARA expands its ongoing “Signature” capsule initiative with A Weekend with an Artist, a project that places contemporary artists at the center of the design process. The collection focuses on a single garment — the trench coat — and invites five internationally recognized artists to reinterpret the house’s Canasta trench as an individual artwork. The artists involved are Victoria Kosheleva, Paola Pivi, Tschabalala Self, Tai Shani, and Shafei Xia.

Their contributions form a small series of artist-designed pieces presented within the WEEKEND MAX MARA collection. The project was curated by art critic and curator Francesco Bonami, whose career includes directing the Venice Biennale, curating the Whitney Biennial, and serving as artistic director of BYArtmatters in Hangzhou. The collaboration reflects a long-standing relationship between fashion and contemporary art, one that has repeatedly reshaped the cultural position of clothing. Since the late twentieth century, fashion houses have increasingly invited artists into their design processes. The reasons vary, visual experimentation, cultural relevance, and the possibility of placing garments within a wider artistic conversation. Projects of this type also blur the boundaries between exhibition culture and fashion production. Garments circulate in retail spaces and on bodies, while simultaneously operating as artworks or limited objects shaped by artistic authorship.

The Max Mara project builds on this tradition by focusing on a single archetypal garment. The trench coat functions here as both product and canvas. Bonami describes the aim as offering “through an iconic garment, the opportunity for individual and personal expression.” The selection of artists follows curatorial logic. Distinct visual languages, generational diversity, and independence from market trends were central to the choice of participants.

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Tai Shani

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Tai Shani

Each artist approaches the trench through their existing artistic vocabulary. Russian artist Victoria Kosheleva worked directly on a prototype coat, painting motifs that later became the basis for printed reproductions. Her visual language merges contemporary imagery with references to classical painting, a direction she has described as “cyber expressionism.” For the trench project she imagined the garment as a theatrical surface. Checkerboard patterns, swirling lines, flowers, and a stylized eye spread across the coat, producing an image that resembles stage costume design as much as clothing.

Italian artist Paola Pivi, known for installations that reframe everyday objects, introduced a palette influenced by the light and color of Hawaii, where she currently lives. Vertical rainbow stripes run across the coat, narrowing toward the waist and creating an hourglass structure. The pattern references the double rainbows frequently visible in the island’s sky, translating a natural optical phenomenon into a garment surface.

Tschabalala Self approaches the trench through her ongoing exploration of identity and symbolism. Born in Harlem, Self works across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her trench coat appears in lacquered pastel yellow and carries her recurring “Infinity Flower” motif. The flower refers to cyclical growth and transformation. The pattern is applied through a stamping technique inspired by batik dyeing processes, introducing a craft reference into the garment’s production.

British artist Tai Shani brings a different aesthetic register. Her multidisciplinary practice spans film, performance, writing, and installation, often exploring feminist histories and collective structures. For the collection she designed a glossy black vinyl trench decorated with hand-drawn cat illustrations. The imagery references mid-century pin-up iconography while playing with the trench coat’s cultural associations with secrecy and disguise.

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Shafei Xia

The youngest artist in the project, Bologna-based Chinese painter Shafei Xia, contributes a watercolor composition originally painted on sandalwood paper. Her image shows a woman merging with a white tiger, surrounded by floral forms that spread across the coat’s back. Xia’s work often draws on historical East Asian erotic painting traditions while incorporating references to European art figures such as Luigi Ontani. The trench translates this visual narrative into a wearable surface.

The campaign accompanying the project was photographed by Petra Collins, an artist and director whose photographic work helped define the visual language of the 2010s. Collins appears in the images herself, wearing the five trench coats in a studio environment that resembles a storage warehouse filled with artworks. The setting positions the garments within an exhibition-like space, reinforcing their identity as art objects as much as clothing pieces. Artist collaborations of this kind continue a broader pattern within fashion history. Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dresses of 1965 translated modernist painting into couture construction. Louis Vuitton’s partnerships with Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama transformed accessories into mobile artworks. Prada has long worked with artists and architects across installations and runway environments. These examples demonstrate how art collaborations can operate as genuine exchanges when artists maintain their visual language rather than adapting to brand aesthetics.

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Paola Pivi

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Tschabalala Self

WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26 Signature Collection
A Weekend With An Artist, Shafei Xia

Projects like A Weekend with an Artist sit within this lineage, they highlight how garments can function as cultural surfaces where artistic practice and fashion design intersect. In this context, the trench coat becomes more than an outerwear staple. It carries the visual vocabulary of five different artists, each using the same garment to explore form, symbolism, or narrative. A small series of wearable works moves between fashion production, artistic authorship, and collector culture, positioning clothing simultaneously as design object and artistic medium.

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WEEKEND MAX MARA SS26

Christian Louboutin - Colorful Summer 2026 Collection

Christian Louboutin Unveils Colorful Summer 2026 Collection

A review of the Christian Louboutin Summer 2026 womenswear collection

written MALCOLM THOMAS

On Tuesday, Christian Louboutin unveiled its sunny summer 2026 collection. Inspired by Louboutin’s lifelong admiration for the stage—the set reminiscent of the interior of a René Magritte, supported models propped in playful poses in the candy-colored collection. 

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

Debuting a new line of bags, dubbed the Venus after the Greek goddess of love, a range of styles from tote to mini-crossbody, with a focus on timeless luxury and pragmatic functionality, are sure to add a bit of excitement to the everyday.

Just in time for high summer, Christian Louboutin’s new footwear offerings are abundant. Meet Mulazee, a taffeta kitten-heel mule featuring a delicate ton-sur-ton bow that highlights the feminine décolleté. It’s high-heeled cousin Cassia, and its ankle-boot counterpart Pavolva will also be making their debuts in leather and crepe satin, both complementary additions to smart eveningwear. 

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Summer 2026 Collection

Finally, the classic Chambelimoc and Chambelimonk silhouettes return in embossed crocodile-style burgundy calf patina leather, rounding out a collection that promises bright days (and fun nights) ahead.  

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CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN SS26

A$AP Rocky x Ray-Ban - Presenting metal eyewear collection

Why A$AP Rocky expands Ray-Ban into Metal and Optical

A$AP Rocky has presented his debut metal eyewear collection for Ray-Ban, marking one year since he became the brand’s first Creative Director. The release introduces both sunglasses and, for the first time under his direction, optical frames. It arrives with a campaign film co-starring Nas, staged in a late-night New York diner and built around an exchange between two figures from different eras of American rap.

Ray-Ban, founded in 1937, remains one of the few eyewear brands whose silhouettes have consistently crossed military use, Hollywood cinema, and music culture. Styles such as the Aviator and Wayfarer shaped decades of visual identity. Rocky’s appointment formalised a longer-term creative role that moves beyond capsule collaborations. His first full collection therefore carries structural weight: it signals how a musician with established influence in fashion translates an archive into product.

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION
A$AP Rocky

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION

The metal collection draws directly from historic Ray-Ban shapes while adjusting proportion and construction. Soft oval frames sit alongside narrow rectangles, each rendered in classic metallic finishes. Several designs adopt rimless engineering, emphasising lens shape and reducing visible structure. A wraparound silhouette, available exclusively in selected stores, introduces a more futuristic line and extends the range into sport-informed territory. Material focus defines the collection. Metal frames replace acetate as the primary structural element, shifting the visual language toward sharper contours and lighter builds. In the rimless models, thick lenses heighten the geometry of the silhouette, creating a pronounced edge around otherwise minimal hardware. Across the line, the emphasis rests on proportion, lens thickness, and the tension between archival reference and present-day styling.

The campaign situates Rocky and Nas inside a New York diner, visually echoing 1990s iconography without turning the setting into nostalgia. Nas represents a generation that shaped East Coast rap’s visual and lyrical codes; Rocky has consistently revisited that era in his own fashion vocabulary. Placing both figures in dialogue positions the collection within a broader cultural lineage that connects Ray-Ban’s long-standing ties to music with contemporary authorship.

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION
A$AP Rocky + Nas

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION

RAY-BAN / A$AP ROCKY METAL COLLECTION

The inclusion of optical frames expands the scope of Rocky’s direction. Prescription eyewear functions as a daily object, extending beyond seasonal styling into routine wear. Integrating optical designs signals that the collection is embedded in Ray-Ban’s ongoing catalogue rather than framed as a limited collaboration.
After a year in the role, Rocky’s first metal line establishes a clear trajectory. It engages the brand’s archive through material and proportion, anchors itself in music history through casting, and extends into optical territory with practical intent. The result is a collection that operates inside Ray-Ban’s legacy while marking a distinct authorial imprint.

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RAY-BAN SS26

LV Tilted Sneaker - Louis Vuitton’s Spring Summer 2026

This Is the LV Tilted Sneaker Leading Louis Vuitton’s Spring Summer 2026

At Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Spring Summer 2026 show, the silhouette defined the atmosphere from the first look. Jackets carried volume through the shoulder, trousers moved with controlled ease, and the overall line of the collection held a steady, deliberate rhythm. Attention was placed on proportion and stance, on the way fabric settles on the body and how that body advances through space. Within this framework, the LV Tilted Sneaker anchored the season at ground level, shaping the posture of each look and reinforcing the calibrated balance that ran throughout the show.

The LV Tilted entered the season during the Men’s Spring Summer 2026 Pre collection preview before taking its place on the runway as part of the collection’s full silhouette. Its reference to classic skate culture is visible in the padded tongue and overall profile, while the construction reflects the house’s attention to proportion and balance. The sole is widened and engineered so that right and left are dimensionally equal, making the pair initially interchangeable. This calibration shifts the stance of the wearer in motion, as the foot meets the ground evenly and the body settles into a more centered posture. Beneath the elongated tailoring and controlled volume of the Men’s Spring Summer 2026 collection, the LV Tilted subtly reshapes how the look carries itself from the ankle upward, influencing the way fabric falls and how the silhouette reads across the runway.

LV Tilted Sneaker
MEN SS26 Campaign

LV Tilted Sneaker

The LV Tilted carries its identity through a few deliberate gestures. The angled LV on the padded tongue introduces a slight visual shift that breaks the symmetry of the form, while the upper’s defined stitching keeps the construction clean and controlled. Underfoot, the sole carries Monogram and Damier codes in relief, making the house signature visible in motion. The materials feel considered and lightweight, giving the sneaker a composed presence that aligns naturally with the direction of the Men’s Spring Summer 2026 season.

LV Tilted Sneaker
MEN SS26 Show

LV Tilted Sneaker
MEN SS26 Show

LV Tilted Sneaker

LV Tilted Sneaker
MEN SS26 Show

The LV Tilted appears in multiple treatments this season, moving through worn denim, calf suede, woven Damier, plaid canvas and embroidered finishes with ease. Each material brings a different tone to the same silhouette, shifting its mood from understated to expressive while keeping its outline consistent. On the runway, those variations registered almost like subtle edits within the same sentence, small adjustments that altered the feel of the look without disturbing its balance.

Within Men’s Spring Summer 2026, the sneaker sits comfortably inside the collection’s language of controlled proportion and steady line. It feels resolved, considered, fully absorbed into the way the season presents itself on foot, giving the show a quiet coherence that holds from the first exit to the final walk.

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LOUIS VUITTON SS26

CELINE Charms Collection - Personal Jewelry

CELINE Charms Collection
Sets a New Code for Personal Jewelry

The CELINE Charms collection sits within the current vocabulary of the house, but it moves with its own logic. Seen on the runway in unapologetically dense clusters, the charms shift the attention toward how people build identity through small objects.

There is no single instruction for wearing them, only the suggestion that jewellery can function as a set of personal signals rather than a fixed decorative layer. The pieces carry a deliberate sense of weight. Some reference the Triomphe, the long-running CELINE code that has travelled across bags, buckles, and hardware. Others push into new shapes that feel more like found symbols than seasonal designs. Together they form an assortment that lends itself to mixing rather than categorising. CELINE frames them as collectibles in the press notes, and the idea fits. They work best when assembled gradually, when the accumulation starts to say something about the hands that put them together.

The collection stretches across gold and silver finishes, sometimes polished, sometimes softened. The tension between the metals gives the charms a lived-in presence, not in a nostalgic way but in a straightforward acknowledgment that jewellery gains meaning through constant use. It is easy to move them from a bracelet to a necklace or to pin them to a jacket, which turns the collection into something closer to a modular system. The wearers decide the scale, the noise, the density, CELINE keeps the structure open on purpose.

As new motifs enter the collection each season, the line grows in a way that feels continuous. Designs shift, earlier symbols reappear, and the combinations evolve with the same casual logic people use when they pick up small objects over time. Some charms stay, others move from one piece of jewellery to another, and a few drift out of circulation entirely. The collection supports that slow accumulation, treating personal editing as an essential part of how the pieces function. It builds an aesthetic that comes together through repetition and daily use.

Placed within CELINE’s larger universe, the charms become a quiet extension of the house without slipping into the language usually tied to jewellery campaigns. Their scale keeps them close to the body in a practical way, allowing them to shift between bracelets, necklaces, and safety pins with no hierarchy in how they should be worn. That flexibility creates a more grounded form of expression. The pieces align with how people handle accessories they reach for constantly, moving them around until the arrangement feels right. In that sense, the relevance of the collection comes from its openness. The line continues without finality. New pieces enter, older ones remain in circulation, and the set adjusts through use. This movement keeps the collection active and connected to the person who builds it.

watch
campaign film

all visuals
CELINE 2025

Polène Paris - Numéro Neuf East-West

Holiday Edit
Polène’s Numéro Neuf East-West

written AMANDA MORTENSON

Polène entered the industry in 2016 with an unusual clarity of purpose. The three founding siblings, Elsa, Mathieu, and Antoine Mothay, built the brand around a conviction that design, craftsmanship, and material should form a single conversation.

They wanted a house that felt contemporary in its rhythm yet grounded in the discipline of artisanship. Within a few years, that direction resonated globally. Polène opened spaces in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, London, Copenhagen, and Hamburg, each reflecting their attitude toward calm precision and intuitive form. The growth felt fast, but inside the brand the focus stayed steady: refine, edit, and let the work speak. What shaped Polène’s rise is their close connection with Ubrique, the leather-making region in southern Spain. More than 2,200 craftspeople bring the designs to life, giving the brand a direct link to a long-standing tradition. The Paris design studio develops the visual language; the artisans translate it into structure, weight, and tactility. This exchange has defined Polène’s identity—clean silhouettes, sculpted leather, organic lines shaped by hand. Their collections show a consistency that comes from respect for the material and for the people who work it.

Polène also thinks in systems. Circularity became part of their process early on. They introduced the Plèi collection, where leftover leather from bag production becomes macramé surfaces, bead work, objects, and collaborative pieces with guest artisans. The intention is simple: use material fully and treat every offcut as something with potential. In 2023, the brand expanded into jewelry, produced by Italian specialists and plated with 24-carat gold. The pieces follow the same design instincts—shaping, folding, and texturing the metal with the same attention given to leather.

Among all lines, the Numéro Neuf collection has become a signature. First introduced in 2020, it reflects the house’s interest in structure softened by movement. Full-grain calfskin is molded, draped, stitched, and shaped until it carries volume and gentleness. It is one of the clearest expressions of Polène’s vision and a marker of how the brand approaches form.

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Camel

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Ebony

This season, the Numéro Neuf East-West marks a new chapter. The design extends the original silhouette into a long, horizontal format and introduces a shoulder-bag version for the first time. It reads as confident and composed, with a contemporary zip closure and an elongated profile that gives the piece a distinct attitude. Available in Black, Camel, Taupe, Chalk, Ebony, Black Cherry, and Sand, the model is crafted in Ubrique using the same meticulous process as the rest of the collection. Every detail shows intention, from the shaping of the leather to the precise seams that hold the draping in place.

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Taupe

Polène Paris
www.polene-paris.com

based in Paris, France and creating handcrafted leather goods produced by skilled artisans in Ubrique, Spain

Polène Paris Numéro Neuf East-West price: 440 €

LE MILE selected the Numéro Neuf East-West for this year’s holiday season recommendations because it represents exactly what we look for: a design with clarity, a strong sense of identity, and craftsmanship that feels immediate when you hold the piece. It aligns with Polène’s broader story of thoughtful growth and with our interest in objects that carry aesthetic strength and quiet emotional presence. As the season approaches, this bag stands as one of the most grounded and assured releases of the year—an example of how contemporary leather goods can be relevant, refined, and deeply considered.

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Chalke

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Chalke

Polène Paris
Numéro Neuf East West bag Taupe

GOT BAG Moon Bag Ruffle

GOATS GOT BAG Campaign
*A Herd Becomes a Headline

written AMANDA MORTENSON

Some campaigns arrive through strategy decks. But others fall from the sky. GOT BAG’s latest story started with a shepherd in Albania who typed four letters into Google. G-O-A-T B-A-G. A delivery went out, a herd received its new gear, and soon an email returned with photos of goats on the beach. Each animal carried a GOT BAG as if this was the natural order of things. The team packed cameras and went to see it firsthand. Their result is the brands new campaign called “GOATS GOT BAG.”

watch Film

The images feel like postcards from an unexpected runway. A black goat under the coastal sun wears a pale Moon Bag with complete ease. A taupe bag appears against limestone and tumbling lemons. A shepherd named Sherif, dressed in wool and holding a staff, lifts a hot coral Ruffle like an official badge of style. The herd moves together along a stone wall and Mediterranean light is washing the scene. The film that accompanies the visuals carries the same energy. Sherif speaks about his herd, the way he names them after his children, the way he sees them as family. He smiles, and the herd steps into fashion history.

GOT BAG’s identity has always circled around material, impact, and design. Since 2018, the label has worked under the line “From Trash to Treasure.” Their process starts with discarded matter such as ocean plastic, fishing nets, industrial scraps. Through recycling and refinement, this matter becomes yarn, then fabric, then a surface with style. From that surface, shapes arrive. Backpacks for commuters, shoppers for markets, rolltops for travel, crossbodies for urban rhythm, puffer bags for play. Each design carries a signature of clean lines, strong details, a feel for volume and curve.

GOT BAG Wavy Puffer Moon Bag in oyster

GOT BAG Cloud Moon Bag in soft shell

The campaign shows this spectrum in action. On the goats you spot the Puffer Moon Bag in black, oyster, scallop. You see the Moon Bag Ruffle in hot coral, cobalt, soft shell. You recognize the way GOT BAG expands a family of products into a larger landscape. They form a catalogue that grows season by season, always linked to the same ethos of reuse and redesign.

What stands out is the tone, because “GOATS GOT BAG” is playful, clever, and confident. The visuals have humor, the mockumentary leans into irony, and the whole story carries a wink. At the same time, it signals reach. Fashion audiences see it, lifestyle audiences see it, and global followers share it. The herd becomes a symbol of how far a label can travel when it mixes creativity with a clear core.

Sherif appears in the campaign as a central figure, he lives with his herd by the Albanian coast, cares for them with devotion, and shares their daily rhythm. His story unfolds in the visuals and the film, where shepherd and herd move together through landscape and frame. His goats wear the bags, he tells his story, and the brand steps into new territory. The shepherd and the label stand side by side, each adding weight to the other.

Behind the campaign sits a company that has grown with purpose. GOT BAG operates as a B Corp™, meeting global standards for social and ecological responsibility. Their foundation in Indonesia collects plastic waste from rivers and coastal areas, builds waste systems with local communities, and channels material into new cycles. The impact is measurable, at the same time, the brand designs products that people want to carry. A backpack on a bike lane in Berlin, a crossbody on a weekend flight, and a Moon Bag carried by a goat along the coast.

Sherif wears GOT BAG Cloud Shoulder Bag in hot coral

“GOATS GOT BAG” frames all of this with lightness. The images travel easily and the story sticks. A herd with bags moves across a landscape and suddenly a global audience pays attention. GOT BAG steps into 2025 with a narrative that feels surreal and direct. A shepherd, a herd, and a set of bags that embody design with responsibility. GOT BAG has always spoken through product and this new campaign speaks through image. Together they shape a brand that holds its line, carries its mission, and expands its world. From beaches in Albania to sidewalks in Tokyo, the bags move. They hold objects, they hold meaning, and now they hold a place in one of the most original campaigns of the year.

GOATS GOT BAG Campaign

GOATS GOT BAG Campaign

discover the brand www.got-bag.com

DANIEL w. FLETCHER SS26

.new campaign
The Thistle’s Whisper
*Spring’s Reckoning with Daniel w. Fletcher

written ALBAN E. SMAJLI

There’s a certain wetness to the Scottish Highlands that announces itself only when trousers surrender completely to the elements, the kind that hovers between rain and fog, an atmosphere born from nature’s own reluctance to hurry, pausing in the air, pressing against skin, gliding over shoulders, a presence Daniel w. Fletcher welcomes wholeheartedly for SS26—a collection conceived far from city grids and studio walls, placed deep in a landscape where thistles claim the horizon and sheep pay attention only to the subtle shift in grass and sky, unmoved by the artificial logic of seasons or palettes.

Hand-painted thistles bloom in reckless, botanical abandon, with each flower growing out from shirt sleeves and collars, each garment transforming into a half-wild meadow, an unmanageable flora arranged for the kind of person who ventures into the landscape and becomes indistinguishable from its restless green. Heather finds its way from hillside to fabric, moving across bodies, seeping into skin, with Fletcher’s colours bleeding mauves and mosses and that elusive purple-grey reserved for Sunday afternoons when the air feels heavy with promise and the sky rehearses for the next storm.

Tailoring enters, never content with restraint or ordinary smoothness—long-line jackets shape the silhouette, Edwardian waists emerge for the gentry and the bold, with military details carving sharp intervals in the softness, toggles and buttons murmuring stories of distant uniforms, each element inventing a wardrobe for escapists in waiting. Double-breasted and single-breasted jackets offer endless invitations, in a territory where rules drift across sheep tracks and lichen. Trousers billow, scarves wrap and spiral, silk chasing wind, lambswool berets balancing on heads, each one poised with the quiet confidence of a secret shared in a hushed room.

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

And the formality orchestrates its own quiet spectacle. Ballroom-wear emerges, tuxedos primed for a ceilidh high above the heather, crystal buttonholes glimmer through the mist, organza shirts breathe, drifting with their own internal weather. An urge arises to waltz, or simply to move with intention, carrying each garment across moorland and parquet, each piece calling for nerve, imagination, a willingness to lead it toward uncharted places.

DANIEL w. FLETCHER fills the scene with winks and sidelong gestures—stripes swell with volume, stepping boldly into the foreground, shorts carve themselves close to the edge, displaying knees as new protagonists. Corsets lace up, commanding presence and precision, every tie mapping out new lines for the body’s story. Faux fur overcoats settle across shoulders, weighty and resolute, built for winters that extend as long as one pleases. Each element declares its own prominence, every piece carrying the romance of tradition while responding to the pulse and rhythm of the world outside nostalgia’s reach.

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

Fabien Kruszelnicki’s photography seals the collection in filmic mist, Ruben McDowall flickers between silhouette and apparition, the Highlands rising as protagonist, the model inhabiting the landscape and the lambswool, styling shifting toward the realm of myth. Drama floods the images, comedy bubbles beneath—berets propose riddles, organza murmurs replies, thistles linger with prickly patience, always first to greet a visitor.

The collection drifts toward unsettled ground, finding comfort along the periphery, taffeta trousers sweeping up the grass, faux fur surrendering itself to the force of the wind. Resilience glimmers alongside lightness, each look blends the regal with the ridiculous, composing a wardrobe for those who flirt with romance and savor irony, an assembly of garments that welcomes the world, offers its hand, and releases a trace of heather and irreverence into the air. Art direction by James West, grooming by Sophie Jane Anderson, yet the narrative unfolds with greatest clarity out in the weather, cast across skin, carried forward on bodies in motion.

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

Daniel w. Fletcher
SPRING SUMMER 26 Campaign

Berlin Fashion Week SS26 *Highlights

BERLIN, BABY!
*13 Berlin SS26 Moments That Rewired Fashion’s DNA (and Our Nervous Systems)

written SARAH ARENDTS
documented NICOLAI SAUER

Berlin throws itself headfirst, limbs flailing, into the spring/summer 2026 abyss and claws its way back with glitter-streaked cheekbones, melted mesh, and stories to tell from behind veils of sweat and synthetic nostalgia. Restraint stays buried under cobblestones.

Thirteen houses, collectives, renegades, and reverents surfaced from the city’s creative swamps to orchestrate one long slow gasp of textile rebellion, post-dystopian tenderness, and neurotic elegance. This week held no boundaries, it performed itself as an exorcism in daylight.

CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON
SS26

CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON
SS26

Tulle trailed like it had somewhere better to be, catching on the carpet rolled out in front of the Volksbühne, which stood there massive and unbothered, probably thinking about its next revolution or cigarette, while CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON turned the whole street into a makeshift ward where care wasn’t whispered, it was strutted, dragged, flung over shoulders like it weighed nothing and everything at once.

Hospital beds leaned into Pilates machines like an inside joke about wellness, uniforms cut from memory walked alongside jackets that looked like they’d been trained in restraint. Sequins clung where tenderness had been. It all moved like aftermath, like someone tried to tidy up a feeling and gave up halfway through. And when the short wedding dress showed up with a real scoliosis brace tucked underneath, no one gasped because everyone already knew, this was what happens when you hold it in for too long and decide to let it wear you instead.

Gender-melt rituals expanding in neoprene priesthoods, metallics slick with sweat theology, garments summoned from the intersection of sacred longing and queer futurism. IMITATION OF LIFE, GMBH’s SS26 collection, unfolded as an autobiographical opera, where every silhouette became a protest and a prayer, shaped by bodies negotiating desire, diaspora, or devotion. Layered mesh and synthetic gloss coated skin like ex-votos, while deep-cut tailoring paid homage to faith communities, the kind that cradle and the kind that exile. There was no clean line between theology and sensuality, no clear boundary between mourning and joy—only garments vibrating with ancestral heat, with techno as liturgy and muscle memory as myth.

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

LAURA GERTE’s SS26 collection, LOOPED & BOUND, moved like a spiral collapsing into itself without conclusion, without hierarchy, just perpetual orbit. The designer’s vision crawled through movement and memory, with upcycled silks twisted into unstable elegance, techno-lingerie suspended in friction and delay, each element vibrating beneath the distorted pulse of a soundscape by RIFTS. Fashion slipped sideways, became gesture, became echo, became the choreography of mesh folding into another gesture, and then another, endlessly. Gerte designed with repetition as ritual, layering rhythm over rhythm until the silhouettes moved with the logic of instinct, tracing patterns in the air like choreography inherited from future bodies.

A whisper steeped in starch, pressed into precision and then unraveled by a quiet kind of defiance that trades volume for voltage. IDEN’s language unfolds in shell-like layers, protective yet porous, where embellishment slips from memory and off-white ferments into something less polite, more possessed. Drapery loops like an invocation conjured to summon breath across space, pulling tension through pleats and folds that gather meaning without anchoring themselves in touch. Garments hover within a field of elsewhere, calibrated to radiate beyond gesture, atmosphere thick with the trace of bodies they neither await nor dismiss.

LAURA GERTE
SS26

LAURA GERTE
SS26

IDEN
SS26

JULIAN ZIGERLI slid into SS26 like a kid who just discovered the soft side of chaos and decided to wrap himself in it head to toe. Raver therapy disguised as suiting, cuddlewear torn into layers that giggle and sting in equal measure. Airbrushed tuxedos floated through rooms like serotonin hallucinations, plush renderings of memories misfiled under joy and juvenile revolt.

A palette that threw tantrums and love letters with the same gesture, textures with emotional volatility dialed up to maximum volume. Zigerli designed as if vulnerability wore platform sneakers and glittered under club lights at noon, as if print therapy were a real treatment plan and Berlin the only qualified practitioner.

If denim could sweat under pressure, this is where it would happen—spiraling through DAGGER’s SS26 collection. DAGGER cut silhouettes like hostile contracts, threading control through denim and cotton with surgical spite. Berlin’s dark romance with dominance gathered new momentum stitched in chrome, bias seams, and unease. Tailoring glared rather than soothed, and each look stepped like it remembered every rule just long enough to devour it from within. Dinner dresses itself in fear beside this—entering the mouth like a dare, tearing at the gums, staining the teeth, turning digestion into performance and etiquette into exquisite disarray.

JULIAN ZIGERLI
SS26

JULIAN ZIGERLI
SS26

DAGGER

SS26

SIA ARNIKA
SS26

Stretch limos humming under dead fluorescents, sour teenage lust smeared across collarbones and knees, Summer Time Sadness gliding through stale heat in garments warped by longing and daylight regret—SIA ARNIKA’s SS26 collection, titled IMITATION OF LIFE, wrapped itself around the moment before the ache forms. See-through lingerie clung like memory carved into skin, each look trembling with aftermath already present in the air, the silence before touch, the heat before collapse.

SIA ARNIKA constructed silhouettes from longing, textures from hesitation, garments from the unsaid. Every piece whispered like a friend too close to forget, too distant to reach. Nostalgia performed as method and ritual as blueprint. Her runway worked like a scent trail back to something almost remembered, every hemline folding memory into silhouette, every seam threading tension into poise. The ache circled the perimeter before the first step hit the floor, claiming the atmosphere as part of the garment’s architecture.

SIA ARNIKA
SS26

Each look in BUZIGAHILL’s SS26 collection, RETURN TO SENDER 11, arrived like a message in a bottle from somewhere capitalism refused to archive. Designer Bobby Kolade disassembled second-hand shame and rethreaded it into protest-glam hybrids, casting cassava bustiers in the role of resistance, multiverse denim as memoir, refugee embroidery as ancestral inscription. BUZIGAHILL offered a borderless archive of silhouette and sentiment, screaming memory back into fashion’s circuitry, with devotion styled in revolution’s own fabric.

Tailoring exhaled with the heavy breath of memory dragging itself back into form, melancholia crystallised along seams that refused to settle into silence and garments flushed with the sheen of unsaid things leaking through breathless corridors of fabric. Silhouettes swayed in suspended monologue, cassette confessions unraveling in soft warble. KILIAN KERNER cast SS26 in reverberation, the COLLECTIVEFOUR trilogy blooming like sequinned regret scribbled across steam-fogged mirrors, a stage of devotion rendered in textile syntax, the runway pulsing with the intimacy of unfinished sentences dressed in longing’s favourite colours.

BUZIGAHILL
SS26

KILIAN KERNER
SS26

KILIAN KERNER
SS26

Raw hems extended like emotional fractures reframed in yarn, sculptural knits pulled across bodies like shifting tectonic plates of memory, each thread stretched to a threshold where clothing blurred into dermal residue, folding and refolding itself around the possibility of a future identity written in texture alone. MARIA LUEDER’s SS26 emerged less as a collection than as a living rehearsal of shapeshift, a choreography of cloth trained on the tension between form and potential, silhouettes built from the question of how much resistance can soften before it becomes architecture. Tailoring dissolved under the pressure of generative rhythm, folds moving like sap through bark, bloom emerging not from seams but from a kind of textile metabolism that refused inheritance, a cellular rhythm expanding past blueprint and structure, creating silhouettes that no longer asked permission to hold form, simply arriving already in motion.

MARIA LUEDER
SS26

MARIA LUEDER
SS26

They burned their own silhouettes and showed us what survived. Threads extended like live wires dragged through the ash of their own origin, seams unraveling not from weakness but from an intentional logic of undoing, OTTOLINGER’s SS26 refusing structure in favour of combustion performed as elegance, collapse choreographed with precision, fabrics shredded in midair before reassembling themselves into silhouettes that glowed with the aftermath of friction. A love letter not written but scorched into the margins of utility, garments performing the precise moment when tension releases, when structure breaks, when what remains continues to hold the shape of motion.

OTTOLINGER
SS26

OTTOLINGER
SS26

OTTOLINGER
SS26

Unicorn tapestries stretching like echoes across the room, their faded grandeur mirrored in brocades and deadstock silks gathered by DANNY REINKE as if excavated from a cathedral of memory, each fold steeped in liturgical sorrow and stitched devotion. The Hunt unraveled like a ritual caught mid-incantation, spiraling slowly, breath suspended between velvet and vision, garments thick with the weight of fable, corsetry drawn from the pulse of medieval mysticism filtered through a contemporary yearning to embody the sacred without sanctimony. This wasn’t capture, neither was it reverence—it was myth metabolised, desire embroidered into form, forgiveness draped as silhouette, repentance whispered through lace, silk breathing in the rhythm of belief.

DANNY REINKE
SS26

Emerging queer alchemy in full orchestral pomp. Bows the size of grief unfurled across ballroom echoes, latex sleeves gleaming like archival secrets resurfaced beneath moonlit marble, silhouettes thick with sighs that began long before the runway existed and continued somewhere deep inside the fabric’s pulse; ANDREJ GRONAU, with his SS26 symphony of queer monumentality, scored every garment like a scoreless opera, collapsing baroque nostalgia into sculptural provocation, each movement stitched with the audacity of soft futures made flamboyant and serious in equal measure, parading down stone corridors like myth reborn in tulle, confession dressed in gloss, contradiction elevated to sacred discipline.

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

Fashion arrived in Berlin already whispering in tongues, unraveling with precision across industrial concrete like a hymn half-recalled, mascara trailing down cheekbones carved from afterparties and prophecy, silk folding into smoke with the choreography of ritual fatigue, breath looping into structure just long enough to shimmer before spilling into exhaustion’s embrace. Spring/Summer 2026 consumed the script in full mouthfuls of shredded satin and handed it back with glossed fingernails and eyes glazed from knowing too much too early, the language spoken entirely in gesture, movement, shadow, thread.

Nicolai Sauer caught it all, the residue and the rave, the gestures caught mid-morph, that split-second where fabric becomes echo and sweat becomes syntax. This was a week of a fever dreaming in public, a series of silhouettes mutating into biography with every step. What Berlin offered was contagion—sensation stitched into choreography, archive bleeding into immediacy, garments rising from dust like sentences never finished. The runway was never meant to end; it only flickers, folds, spills outward. Somewhere between the flash and the fold, between the hemline and the held breath, SS26 continues to ripple.

credit all images
(c) Nicolai Sauer

Fashion Week SS26 *Highlights

Fashion’s Latest Side Quest
*In Fashion, the Outlandish and the Quotidian

written Chidozie Obasi

From Antwerp to Milan, designers are toying with convention and flamboyance. LE MILE rounds up key moments from the season.

Fashion’s fearless pursuit of the next trend continues apace, as the season — now in Paris — keeps gaining momentum, redefining classic silhouettes with a breezier, and softer approach. Volumes are getting looser and shapes are higher: menswear is all about functionality and soft practicality for next Spring.

PAUL SMITH
SS26

PAUL SMITH
SS26

Paul Smith charts a course through Paul’s own personal history of travel, with colours, prints and textures conjuring memories from his many voyagesIn an intimate salon-style show at the company’s Milan headquarters, Paul Smith presented a louche, sophisticated vision for the SS26 season through a series of 30 looks. A palette of warm, nostalgic tones like lime green, fuchsia, and coral evoked a fondly remembered summer voyage, but also brought to mind the practice of hand-dyeing which gives fabrics an exceptional depth of colour.

Above all, the palette elicited an impression of heat, with the bright standout colours complemented by an array of sun-bleached earth tones, inspired by a book of Cairo street photography which caught Paul’s attention during the early design phases. The collages incorporated fragments of photographs taken by Paul, his keen eye seeking out those things that others miss. This collage theme was echoed in a double-breasted jacket with applique birds, and a leather blouson with applique flora rendered in suede, offering a textural counterpoint.

“Clothing that holds a modern flair and heritage.”

Herbert Hofmann, Vice President of Creative and Buying at Highsnobility

SIMON CRACKER
SS26

SIMON CRACKER
SS26

SIMON CRACKER
SS26

For Simon Cracker, we live in a world where incompetence reigns supreme, and where the only way forward is to dig deeper. The result is a cleaner, more focused collection from the brand this season.

The colours are exclusively shades of white, rope, ecru and shades of grey and black, obtained by dyeing, painting and bleaching. There are no flashy fabrics, aside from the first Simon Cracker all-over pattern. The basic uniform consists of a square T-shirt and shorts inspired by men's tailoring. Each outfit highlights a single garment and its unique features. Crocs' iconic models complete the uniform, in the same palette but ’crackerised’ one by one with graffiti, patches and customized charms.

“We are bringing the focus back to the clothes, with few distractions,” the said. “The collection revives some of our iconic garments (the Siamese T- shirt, the earthworm jacket, the posture shirt...), with the clear objective of creating unique, upcycled pieces that can be reproduced: the same but always different.”

A different, flamboyant throughline that takes centre stage in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp show, which presented the collections of its new guard of creatives that were straddling between craft, poise and optimism. This year’s show had a newfound ease to it, coupled with the eclecticism of the collections that brimmed with technical know-how and tons of playfulness. This year, designers seemed to be navigating two competing urges: experimenting with new shapes while delivering a “meaningful” look. Or, as Highsnobiety’s Vice President of Creative and Buying, Herbert Hofmann, puts it: “Clothing that holds a modern flair and heritage.”

As a member of this year’s jury, Hofmann’s role lies in weighing creativity against commercial viability — seeing whether students have the urge, or the ability, to turn great design into something today’s customer will actually wear.

dunhill
SS26

dunhill
SS26

“I’m keen on what’s new, what’s innovative, and how a designer addresses today’s challenges: sustainability, sourcing, marketing, and creative identity,” he says. “It’s interesting because sometimes you see someone who has the whole package but is quieter than others. We think about how we can push those talents — give them the tools to survive in this crazy market.” In Antwerp, Hofmann sees a balance of modernity and heritage passed down from Simons, Van Noten, and Van Beirendonck protégés.

“You look at the kids on the street and they’re wearing the most amazing outfits. There’s a lot of vintage, and it’s meticulously handpicked and layered. There’s a cosy speciality in the air,” he says. “I always associate Denmark or Sweden with furniture, interiors, and architecture — but here, it’s about fashion. Compared to other major fashion cities, you realize Milan, Paris, and others tend to follow overarching commercial trends. But here, creativity pushes past convention.”

Bally wanted to revisit its sports heritage as it celebrates the release of the new Tennis Collection. Since its inception in 1851, the Swiss brand has always had an affinity with the technical requirements of performance wear, as well as the artisanal expertise to make exercise elegant. In this latest collection, a number of the house’s legendary styles are undergoing a redux, marrying the brand’s history with its evolving visual identity.

The dunhill Spring Summer 2026 season from Creative Director Simon Holloway draws from a distinctly British duality, the rarefied dress codes of English aristocracy and their influence on the louche, cultivated rebellion of British rock icons.

Taking cues from the sartorial expression of the Windsor men - figures that continue to be a central inspiration to the evolving dunhill wardrobe - this formal code is interjected with the effortless attitude of Bryan Ferry and Charlie Watts, the most classically dressed British rock stars, resulting in a collection that transcends the referential. These culturally iconic men inherited societal elegance but wear it with disobedient grace. For Spring Summer 2026 dunhill embodies this tension: the formal undone, the classic made rakish.

In perpetuity, craftsmanship remains central to the practice of design in this storied House. The collection is grounded in a dunhillian legacy of handwork and provenance, with a deep reverence for artisanal fabric mills, traditional craft and only the most excellent materials. The collection moves through the season in chapters: Car coats, driving blazers and motoring trench coats - drawn from the House’s Motorities legacy - are sculpted in butter soft French lambskin, supple suedes, coated Linen or cotton-silk twill in various shades of British drab.

credit all images
(c) Paul Smith, Dunhill, Simon Cracker, Bally SS26

Valentino Fall 25 Campaign

*New Campaign
VALENTINO Fall 2025
Chez Valentino: A Still World

written Alban E. Smajli

A figure pauses inside a diner. Outside, a horse walks past. A bowl of ice cream melts slowly in a hand. Each moment unfolds without hurry. Each frame stays still, long enough for the viewer to feel it.

The Valentino Fall 25 ADV campaign opens with a fixed gaze. Directed by Glen Luchford and shaped by the vision of Alessandro Michele, the campaign introduces a new rhythm. The world is quiet, grounded in repetition and gesture. This rhythm carries through every element—from styling to set design, from casting to soundtrack.

The scenes exist as fragments of a larger fabric. A lavender heel rests on the edge of a step. A parrot perches beside embroidered fabric. Denim falls over worn tile. A varsity sweater with “CHEZ VALENTINO” stitched across the chest becomes part of the space around it. No hierarchy, no accent—only layers.

Jonathan Kaye’s styling anchors this language. Leopard prints, lace gloves, school socks, floral jacquards—each piece chosen to inhabit a mood. The silhouettes carry weight, softness, eccentricity, repetition. Hair by Paul Hanlon and makeup by Yadim Carranza follow the same path: clear, finished, quiet. Faces hold time. Eyes stay in place. Nothing interrupts.

The setting builds this continuity. An American-style diner, faded and sunlit, contains the action. A bar, a sidewalk, a bicycle. Elements repeat. Light falls evenly. Set designer Gideon Ponte constructs a container for gesture.

In his campaign note, Alessandro Michele writes of attention. His words shape the framework: “a policy of attention, an ethics for the gaze.” He draws focus toward gestures, toward morning light, toward a door that opens and closes. The camera remains fixed. The world continues moving inside it.

The talent list includes Amelia Gray, Sophie Thatcher, Kai Schreiber, Lorenzo Zurzolo, and others. Their presence offers texture. Their movement—slow, occasional, internal—forms the pulse of the campaign. Each person belongs to the scene. No character. No pose. Just observation.

Fabric plays its own role. A glittering Mary Jane steps onto concrete. Fringes catch wind. Mesh, velvet, satin, cotton—each fabric marks the body differently, holds the light differently. Each piece expands the world around it. Clothing becomes the pace.

Music by Juliette Armanet supports this tempo. Imaginer l’Amour plays softly, connecting one frame to the next. It opens space and adds tone without direction.

Repetition forms the spine of the campaign. A frame. A gesture. A return. This structure creates clarity. There is no build-up, no conclusion, but only movement held in place. Time stretches. The Valentino Fall 25 campaign offers an aesthetic grounded in the everyday. The material speaks directly. The vision lingers. There is no urgency, no volume, no interruption.

Michele draws from observation, not intervention. The everyday becomes the shape. The rhythm becomes the message. Stillness becomes the container. Each choice—from casting to color, from cut to frame—builds this language. The world appears complete. Within this frame, Valentino opens a new chapter. The campaign steps forward through attention, repetition, and the poetics of gesture. Clothing rests inside the world. Scenes unfold in silence. The result is a steady, crafted introduction, it´s an invitation to remain. Enjoy!

VALENTINO
THE POETICS OF EVERYDAY
FALL 2025 Campaign


photographer + director GLEN LUCHFORD
art director CHRISTOPHER SIMMONDS
stylist JONATHAN KAYE
set designer. GIDEON PONTE
hair PAUL HANLON
make up YADIM CARRANZA
manicure LAUREN MICHELLE PIRES
casting RACHEL CHANDLER

talents
KAI SCHREIBER
SCARLETT WHITE
AMELIA GRAY
SOPHIE THATCHER
MARIE SOPHIE WILSON
LORENZO ZURZOLO
YURI FUKUHARA
SANIQUE
YILAN HUA
AIMEE PATRICIA BYRNE
YAR AGUER
FRANKLIN SMITH
BUKWOP
LUUKAS NISKANEN
SUYONG JUNG
HANK AKERLUND


(c) VALENTINO
video music. Imaginer l’Amour — written + performed by Juliette Armanet
© ℗ 2021, Romance Musique — published by Universal Music Publishing & Armanet Songs