BEAUTY: Clothing--Maison Martin Margiela

I know it is poetry month, and I usually dedicate the month to the written word, but I can't wait until May to post a video of this incredible collection Glenn Martens just showed for Maison Martin Margiela (Martens, previously here, was at Y/Project and Diesel but just took over Margiela from John Galliano). Fashion journalist Luke Leitch of Vogue was at this runway show presented in a shipping container yard in Shanghai and describes what he saw perfectly:

"As deeply conceived as it was exquisitely surfaced, this Maison Margiela show under the hand of Glenn Martens was close to being a masterpiece. And I only say ‘close to’ because; a) to insist that a collection built on upending the notion of perfection is near-perfect must be wrong, and b) Martens and the Margiela studio seem to be just getting into their stride: much more is to come.

Tonight, we were in a Shanghai container yard. Like every ‘destination’ show, this first-ever Maison Margiela runway outside of Paris was driven by expansion, in this case to preface a four-city tour of four exhibitions dedicated to decoding some core lore—including the much-misunderstood masks—in China. Unusually, though, tonight the destination’s dislocation served the collection. We were surrounded by towers of containers, red, blue, and green, stamped with the names of their operating companies and clients: I saw a lot of Temu. This critical artery of trade for the planet’s greatest exporter beat sweetly against the thrifted provenance of much of the collection: free market to flea market.

Martens and the studio started this collection, which included ready-to-wear and the Artisnal offering, by returning to the process often observed by Martin Margiela: creative upcycling. The first Margiela exhibition, which opens here tomorrow, includes 58 archival looks variously fashioned from wigs, combs, playing cards, and much more thrifted ephemera. Fall 2026’s thrifting started with a group of 19th century porcelain dolls. As well as sparking the straightforward China association, these translated into an incredible 90 kilo dress fashioned from a shattered mosaic of porcelain; its hem splintered and shrieked as it was worn across the rough cement floor. They further inspired the first three odd-numbered looks in which eight layers or so of glassy organza were printed and painted and layered and draped and molded over skirts to create eye-defyingly immersive visual surfaces. These were worn under masks shrouded just enough to reveal the printed, vacant moue of dollface makeup beneath.

Once the porcelain had cracked out of view we saw a series of evening looks presented as skin-like surfaces, with jersey stretched and bonded over the guts of tailored garments so tightly that you saw the outline of the suiting architecture beneath. This was later returned to in a series of leather looks, jackets, pants, and dresses, in which the constructed edges of the garment were left unfinished like rawhide. Martens and the studio then applied the Margelian Bianchetto treatment to garments including an inwardly draped silk gown, tailcoats and pants, and an argyle overprinted mohair skirt suit. The bodice and arms of a quite amazing Edwardian-referencing school ma’am gown were molded in latex-blended white paint, so that the Bianchetto surface of the garment was also its substance: this demanded that its model keep her arms crossed in prim admonishment at all times. Another puckered-surface paint-dress was surfaced with gold leaf to create a garment that was both rich and ravaged.

A few dresses from the 1870s that the studio found in its tour of Paris’s flea markets were drenched in beeswax as if trapped in amber, before being hung and left to drip as they hardened. Not unlike the porcelain dress, these were stressed by the wearing they received on the runway, and left trails of cracked wax behind them. Some more 19th century dresses, long preserved but rendered desperately delicate by time, were mounted on fabric and then removed to leave their imprints on ‘new’ dresses: tattered into matter. Upcycled metal wires, vintage velvets, fringed blankets, furniture jacquards, and brittle tapestries were all refashioned into furniture for the human form.

The draping, very Martens-ian, was wonderful. Complexly whipped and whorled, it surged around the body in turmoils like visible emotional weather events: these were charted in reams of taffeta in matte cream or shiny lavender, as well as the metal wires. Less intricate but still impactful were the tailored looks overlayered with silk and lace that created a sleek collision of gender categorizations, and the gowns in faded florals into which were sliced creamy scars of pleating.

The masks might look unsettling; the original point of them was to divert attention away from the person towards the garments being worn, but today many observers seem to find that this Margelian withholding of identity is somehow offensive by proxy. On the ground, however, the most challenging aspect of this collection was when heelless shoe and floor length hem sometimes disagreed with that rough cement floor. No wobble, however, ever quite led to collapse. In an era of globalization and standardization in which identity is commodified as data, this Maison Margiela was fiercely resistant, spiritually elusive, and beautifully imperfect."

https://www.maisonmargiela.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Issey Miyake

On this eve before the start of National Poetry Month, here is clothing as poetry. Issey Miyake FW '26-'27 women's collection. Exquisite.

https://www.isseymiyake.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Rick Owens

Regular readers know that when I share haute couture, I generally post coverage of men's clothing during Fashion Weeks, and only houses that are on-calendar, with a few exceptions. But this ethereal FW '26-'27 womenswear collection my beloved Rick Owens just showed is amazing. And I need to share it.

Titled "Tower," it is the companion show to his menswear show of the same name (each season he titles his men's and women's collections the same). Feminine, yet savage--a pleasing combo. But I mean, come on...just look at the structure and volume.
Structure. And. Volume.

https://www.rickowens.eu/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Simone Rocha

Simone Rocha's FW '26-'27 co-ed collection at London Fashion Week featured her regular vocabulary of details: lace, ruffles, bows, pleats, cockades, and the rhinestones of costume jewelry. But it was tempered with a trio of of inspiration sources.

To start, there is a story from Irish mythology where a boy falls in love with a woman and they go to live in Tír na nÓg, the land of eternal youth. Second is the Yeats family. For her color palette, Rocha looked to the painting In Tír na nÓg by Jack B. Yeats. She also took inspiration from his sisters Elizabeth and Lily, who ran the Cuala Press, a women-only arts enterprise producing handcrafted books, cards and prints from 1908 to 1940. And finally, she liked the rough-and-tumble secondhand clothing worn by Irish kids in Pony Kids, a renowned photography book by Perry Ogden documenting the vibrant, marginalized horse culture among Dublin's working-class youth in the 1990s.

I personally love the mix of high and low...bomber jackets with oversized suiting, skirts with workwear, and a trade jumpsuit but in black lace. Shearling lined jackets and stoles are a great touch. And please take a moment to zoom in on those amazing tooled leather shoes.

In Tír na nÓg by Jack B. Yeats | sold through Sotheby's 9/25

https://simonerocha.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--London College of Fashion

As part of London Fashion Week which started Thursday, the LCF Fashion Design Technology MA students’ final collections were a delight to see. As I just noted in a post about the Central Saint Martins MA fashion program, there is an exuberance to what fashion and design students from any institution create while still in a safe space. There is a willingness to go out on a limb with a concept or idea, no matter how unfeasible or unsellable it seems. I recall when I was in an interior design program many, many years ago that the most fun I had was creating interiors for completely made-up clients... I was able to do whatever my imagination could dream up. Of course this is not so in the real world: I now have clients with their own needs and preferences. And designers too, must please investors or shareholders and produce things that will sell, not just fantastical works of art. So while still in school, these students get to create fantastical works of art and I am thankful for that.

Just take a look at Jiyuan Fan's amazing carved wood skeleton torsos worn on the outside of suiting or poking through overcoats. But there are others who created garments which do seem sellable to my eye... lovely diaphanous pieces like those from Qian Tan, sharp suiting (literally) from Zeting Xu, or futuristic silhouettes from Kechen Yu. These FW '26-'27 pieces are interesting and sellable.

Qian Tan

Qian Tan

Jiyuan Fan

Zeting Xu

Kechen Yu

Kechen Yu

https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-fashion
https://www.instagram.com/qian.tann/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Central Saint Martins MA

The MA fashion program at Central Saint Martins has produced a truly staggering amount of talent, and as Sarah Mower at Vogue says, the college's "MA graduates are the backbone of London fashion, and have been for years": Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Riccardo Tisci, Sarah Burton, Kim Jones, Grace Wales Bonner, Simone Rocha, Hussein Chalayan, Craig Green, Mark Fast, Paolo Carzana, and Harris Reed. That is quite a (partial) list and it's growing as we speak.

So for London Fashion Week currently underway, the MA program's graduate collections were a delight to see. There is an exuberance to what fashion and design students create while still in a safe space. There is a willingness to go out on a limb with a concept or idea, no matter how unfeasible or unsellable it seems. I recall when I was in an interior design program many, many years ago that the most fun I had was creating interiors for completely made-up clients... I was able to do whatever my imagination could dream up. Of course this is not so in the real world: I now have clients with their own needs and preferences. And designers too, must please investors or shareholders and produce things that will sell, not just fantastical works of art. So while still in school, these students get to create fantastical works of art and I am thankful for that.

There were many students and many collections, but what caught my eye was the mix of pattern and age in the work of Benaissa Majeri...her pieces looked like a post-apocalyptic Dries Van Noten. And Kai Ghattaura's fascinating collection entitled "Seminomadic" was filled with reworked and upcycled pieces featuring South Asian prints and colors. And Finnerty Mackay (who took home the L’Oréal Professionnel Creative Award at the annual Central Saint Martins MA Fashion press show) unexpectedly combined an historical sense in wool tailoring (I love the cut away jackets, especially the one with the pleated skirt) with rubber and latex shirts, socks, and shorts! Mackay said his collection was inspired by addiction: "I was interested in looking at it as a queer man," he said. "Substances are everywhere, especially in London. It’s such a part of the community and so many people’s lives. I wanted to look at it as a social problem, instead of a political problem."

Benaissa Majeri

Benaissa Majeri

Kai Ghattaura

Kai Ghattaura

Finnerty Mackay

Finnerty Mackay

https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins
https://www.instagram.com/flirty.lollypop33
https://www.instagram.com/kaighattaura
https://www.instagram.com/finnertymackay

BEAUTY: Clothing--Willy Chavarria

Paris Fashion Week wrapped yesterday and before I move on, I want to share a...it can't be called a fashion show, a runway show...it is performance art colliding with the art of costume. Willy Chavarria topped his beautifully heartfelt show last January, seen here, with this incredible concert / Broadway show / runway happening / film presentation for his Fall Winter '26-'27 collection. The showspace is enormous, the music fitting, and the clothes are on extras wandering around this city scene while a relationship plays out to a tragic conclusion. This is the power of art.

https://willychavarria.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Wooyoungmi

Madame Woo's eponymous brand has been officially showing at Paris Fashion Week since 2003 and was the first Korean brand to do so. No small feat. Yet she has always eschewed designs that touch on her culture. She usually sends out collections that feature impeccable suit tailoring, sweeping silhouettes, and Romantic and elegant touches.

But for this Fall Winter '26-'27 collection at Paris Fashion Week, she took inspiration from the golden age of railway travel in the winter. She thought specifically of the Gyeongin Railway Line which opened in 1899, connecting Seoul and Incheon. And these magnificent garments reflect the time period... and even a bit before. The regimental sense of some pieces made me flash on many decades earlier; several models look like they stepped off the set of a film adaptation of "Anna Karenina" (something about it all feels Russian, with long fur coats and exaggerated Cossack hats of fur and knit). There was a definite Dandy spirit at work as well, referencing the second Dandy era of Oscar Wilde, which she delivered in a collection from 2017, seen here.

Regular readers know that I love a sense of historical dress in a designer's collection, and this is truly lovely. I will take any of these pieces, particularly the suits with that very high stance, but I especially love the red 3/4 length coat in Look #12.

https://www.wooyoungmi.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Juun J.

It has been quite a while since I have posted anything from Jung Wook-jun's label Juun J. I am not sure why, other than the simple reason that past collections did not move me to posting. But this Fall Winter '26-'27 collection caught my attention.

Like so many other houses and brands this season, both here in Paris as well as Milan, Juun J. gave a strong showing for men's suiting...but of course not traditional suiting. We don't live in a Brooks Brothers world anymore (if any of us ever did). The suit of 2026 is skewed, exaggerated, titled, asymmetrical, embellished with sartorial details from other traditions or eras or grafted onto other garments all together. And Juun J. showed a collection that brought all of that to the runway.

The designer has always been interested in deconstructing classic menswear but this outing shows an almost opposite approach in a literal sense: constructing classic menswear, specifically the tuxedo, in a way that builds it up, inflating it, with larger and larger shapes until these looks feel as though they might be forged from metal or fiberglass. Shiny materials and leather help that illusion. In fact, it reminds me of Bowie's legendary appearance on Saturday Night Live where Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi carried him to his microphone because he could not move in the enormous, PVC-molded suit he wore.

Juun J. explores more options though, showing stiff suits and ruffled shirts in denim as well! And then about three-quarters through, the collection sends up some pattern and color (look at the wild floral tux and matching shirt in Look #17!), concluding with pieces made in collaboration with Alpinestars Reserve (RSRV), a company that produces motorcycle and motocross leathers!

http://www.juunj.com/
https://www.alpinestars.com/pages/rsrv

BEAUTY: Clothing--Bed j.w. Ford

Bed j.w. Ford's founder Shinpei Yamagishi has always created clothing with a sense of elegance, even when they are casual. He is dedicated to the gesture of dressing and has said, "Today’s fashion is based on what celebrities wear. There is no beauty in that lifestyle, and no elegance."

The industry has pivoted hard this January toward men's suiting and tailoring, but taking that classic sense and doing something artful with it. Yamagishi's FW '26-'27 collection shown at Paris Fashion Week certainly had an elevated elegance, not into preciousness but into a realm of peculiar detail and individual style.

"It’s about the romance I feel for clothing. I jumped into the fashion world not for the power or money or authority, but because of the romance," Yamagishi said of this collection. "That’s what I wanted to convey."

Loose cut suits (some based on a smoking jacket) drape down while blanket wraps rakishly flow off to the side, even on less formal looks that included jeans and an orange worker's jumpsuit. A very slim tie with gold chain fringe showed up at the neck  but also pinned to lapels. It all feels like following the rules while doing whatever you want...do click on the images to get a better, up-close look at some of these details.

https://bedjudewillford.com/

BEAUTY: John Alexander Skelton

While not part of Paris Fashion Week, British designer John Alexander Skelton showed his Fall Winter '26-'27 collection through a lookbook (which was shot on effigies inspired by scarecrows by the moors around a bonfire) but also at an event in London that sounds amazing. Fashion journalist Liam Hess for Vogue was there and described the scene:

On a cold, dark, drizzly night in London (what other kind of night is there in January?), a steady stream of nattily dressed fashion and art types could be followed heading down the industrial Old Kent Road in the southeast of the city. Turning off down a lamplit cobbled pavement and past an imposing wrought-iron fence, we soon found ourselves inside the Asylum Chapel, the heart of a complex of 19th-century almshouses. It couldn’t have been a better setting for a John Alexander Skelton show, given his distinctive vision of disheveled, lightly Dickensian glamour, working with the most accomplished makers from across the British Isles.

That feeling of having stepped through a portal to a past world was enhanced by the dilapidated interior, complete with peeling plasterwork and cobwebs, and hot cider being served from a tureen, underneath a ceiling patched up with corrugated iron where the chapel was bombed during World War II. Antique chairs had been arranged in concentric circles around a central rostrum, where a spotlight was fixed on one of a dozen or so mannequins that had been placed at the outer ring. Well, not mannequins exactly, as, after peering through the gloom, they turned out to be scarecrows (or crucified figures?) their heads crafted from papier-mâché-like effigies or totems left over from some ancient pagan ritual, some with little peaked black caps sat atop their heads. “I've always been fascinated by scarecrows,” Skelton said after the show, citing his obsession with a ’90s photography book by Colin Garratt. “Some of them are really beautiful and elegant with great coats, and some have this sinister feel. There’s a weird duality where they can feel kitsch and then also quite evil, as if they could spring to life all of a sudden.”

To wit, a masked figure soon wandered out and climbed up to helm the swiveling spotlight, before a second figure—whose voice was recognizable as Ryan Skelton, the designer’s younger brother and regular collaborator on his short films and runway shows—skipped his way to the center banging a drum to begin the show. “Decimate my humanity, hither and thither,” Skelton Jr. chanted with glee, prancing around the space and leering in guests’ faces as he recited a poem he’d written in response to the collection that invited us to travel into another realm. After each burst of activity, he strutted up to a mannequin and ripped off the cloth that covered it, as the spotlight swung to illuminate each one in turn.

Revealed underneath were a series of Skelton’s exquisitely earthy designs: heavy, textural tweed waistcoats in tonal checks; crumpled linen night-shirts and tunics decorated with talismanic jewelry; jackets with their edges frayed into loose tangles of thread; and shirts decorated with higgledy-piggledy block prints and eerie motifs inspired by Celtic deities. (Skelton noted that the Celts have long fascinated him for their tangled history across the entire European continent, and their skills as craftspeople and traders.)

Folding theater into a fashion show runs the risk of going a little am-dram, but in Skelton’s hands, it always feels like the right way to flesh out his world. That charge of something spiritual, or at least something outside of time and place, could also be felt in the film directed by Skelton’s regular collaborator William Waterworth that was projected on the walls throughout. It featured the masked figures cavorting around a crackling bonfire on the top of a moor, as the winds whipped around them: a kind of orgiastic, The Wicker Man–esque ritual set against a backdrop that could be straight out of a Brontë novel. (Come to think of it, someone needs to get Jacob Elordi in a John Alexander Skelton look for the Wuthering Heights press tour.)

As always with Skelton, what grounded everything was the rugged beauty of the clothes, whether the highly desirable printed shirts with those freaky mask-like faces printed on shirts, or the playful proportions of the layered coats and jackets, or the richer color scheme of lilacs and indigos inspired by the Celtic practice of dying clothes with berries. “I didn’t want to recreate this kind of archaic Celtic costume—it was more based on my emotional reaction to it, how I felt about it,” Skelton added. The theatrics of the evening weren’t just about putting on a show, but allowing everyone else to feel the intensity of that emotional response. Even if that did mean we found ourselves a little spooked walking back to the bus stop afterwards.

https://www.johnalexanderskelton.com/