Fashion

All Is Full Of Love. Dior SS26 Couture

| Design & Culture by Ed

This haute couture season isn’t legendary only because of two debut collections at two major maisons. It will be remembered as the fashion week when couture finally leaped into a new era. It is relevant again.

Jonathan Anderson’s Dior collection had been in the making for over six months, and it shows in every single detail. Everything is imbued with passionate love for craft, art, and… FASHION. John Galliano not only blessed the project, but in a way initiated its birth with a cyclamen bouquet he gifted Anderson at the very beginning of his tenure at the house. The fragile purple flowers – symbols of lasting feelings, sincere affection, and tender love – were not only present in the show’s scenography, but were eternalized by Jean-Pierre Ollier’s atelier, which created thousands of handmade, hand-painted silk flowers. These blooms adorned the collection’s hero accessories: oversized brooches, bomb-shaped earrings, and more.

Above all, this was a couture show that exercised surrealism in the most extraordinary way, turning to the beauty of Mother Nature for inspiration. Dresses were airy like dandelions; skirts could easily be mistaken for hydrangea bushes; 18th-century-inspired portrait brooches were framed with orchids. One silk skirt in a subtle chinoiserie print appeared to explode with tiny green cones. The opening look’s bag referenced a couture hanger, yet it was entirely covered in hand-dyed, extra-long grass.

In the hands of another designer with the same haute couture possibilities, such effects might have veered into saccharine sweetness, or worse, princess-y costume. In Anderson’s, however, the collection struck with delightful eccentricity – and, above all, modernity. This was conveyed effortlessly through cool pink bangs (Sandy Hullett’s work), cocoon-like coats, and astonishing knitted dresses that quite literally flowed down the body. Jonathan Anderson has insisted that, for him, haute couture is something you collect. This enchanting, breathtaking collection could easily stand as the sole subject of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition. Yet it also feels confident enough for a beautiful, bold life beyond the museum walls.

Yes – this is exactly what haute couture should be in 2026.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Debonair Cool. Magda Butrym Pre-Fall 2026

| Design & Culture by Ed

Introducing Magda Butrym’s pre-fall 2026 lookbook: an updated wardrobe imbued with a modern sense of urgency.

In this latest pre-collection, Magda reflects on the meaning of elegance – something fragile and subtle, expressed as much through attitude as through form. For the Warsaw-based designer, elegance is refined yet spontaneous, sophisticated but never complicated. It is about impeccably constructed garments in which a woman can move and feel at ease, never constrained. They carry an unmistakable, debonair cool. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.

Credits:

Creative Director: Magda Butrym
Photographer: Robin Galiegue
Video: Tatiana + Karol
Stylist: Jacob Kjeldgaard
Talents: Karyna Maziar, Athiec Geng, Kris Krystal
Styling Assistant: Ioana Ivan
Make-Up: Lucy J. Bridge
Hair: Damien Boissinot
Nails: Marzena Kanclerska
Set Design: Anna Szczęsny
Art Coordinator: Edward Kanarecki
Casting: Piergiorgio at DM Casting

ED’s SELECTION:


Magda Butrym Crocheted Cotton Hat



Magda Butrym Embroidered Cotton-blend Jacket



Magda Butrym Ruched Floral-print Stretch-silk Mock-neck Top



Magda Butrym Studded Snake-effect Leather Wedge Mules



Magda Butrym Brigitte Embellished Suede Tote



Magda Butrym Crocheted Cotton Mini Skirt

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Defiance. Yohji Yamamoto AW26

| Design & Culture by Ed

Yohji Yamamoto, a designer so often – and so productively – faithful to black, detonated expectations this season. Guests entering the show space were met by two suspended speed bags, hovering between the ceiling and the runway. When the models emerged, some punched the bags, others barely brushed them; one kissed one, while a few simply stared. It was a telling prelude to a collection about confrontation and restraint, aggression and dignity – about how clothing can act as a kind of moral armor.

On the runway, that armor took tangible form. Yamamoto delivered one of his most colorful collections in years, though “colorful” here still meant disciplined, weighted, serious. The opening looks carried militaristic undertones: camouflage patterns coated double-breasted jackets and padded boilersuits, establishing a mood of readiness. Voluminous overcoats were paired with trousers cut from meaty corduroy and utilitarian jumpsuits in thick cotton, many printed with paint-like marks that looked less decorative than combative.

Elsewhere, padded coats arrived in stony beige; hair was teased into frizzy, defiant bouffants; and crushed beer cans were reassembled into a waistcoat and headgear – wry, César Baldaccini–inspired gestures that felt like survivalist poetry. In a fashion system obsessed with novelty and noise, Yamamoto continues to propose something rarer: clothes as stance, as shield, as a way of moving through the world with controlled defiance. It is precisely this posture – sharp, slightly arrogant, unyielding – that makes him not just relevant, but essential, one of the last designers of his generation for whom dressing remains an ethical act.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Long Game. Hermès AW26

| Design & Culture by Ed

Hermès’s Véronique Nichanian has always insisted that luxury is not a spectacle but a system, and in her final season, that conviction crystallized into a collection that elegantly distills her 37 years at the maison. This was Nichanian’s long game, and she won. Her celebrated détails égoïstes – those “selfish” refinements that reward only the wearer – were everywhere: the interior of a jacket as considered as its exterior, a zip as impeccably functional as it is beautiful, off-center bellows pockets, étrivière stitching, double lambskin lapels. These are clothes that recognize one another instantly, like old friends reunited, hand and eye aligned through private signals of craft.

A crocodile-leather coat in the inkiest shade of black, a reversible cashmere-and-wool travel jacket, a double-breasted suit in pinstriped leather: each piece stands on its own yet remains quietly mobile, designed for lives in motion rather than moments of display. Nothing feels “too much”. Instead, the collection moves with assurance through a season conceived to endure far beyond itself. Nichanian’s departure – serene,but grand – opens space for the impending arrival of Grace Wales Bonner, whose debut remains a year away. Yet this collection resists the tone of farewell. It plays more like a manifesto: a reminder that at Hermès, innovation has always emerged from renewing the bond between body, garment, and time. Clothes for now, and – stubbornly – for forever.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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