Paris fashion week AW26 had its debuts, its finales, and its Indie designers. Some shows are so neutral they could put you to sleep. Others are full of character, a welcome shock in a press-release-heavy, back-to-the-roots schedule. Enter Hodakova, Zomer, and Anrealage, doing enough weird and wonderful to make you grin like someone who gets way too excited about patterns. If fashion week ever feels like a questionable movie, these are the three friends who arrive early with the good snacks, keeping you energized for the whole thing.
Hodakova
Everything started off pretty normal, which immediately made me sweat. Is Ellen Hodakova Larsson really doing simplicity this season? Around the fifth look I realized the pants were actually hanging, not worn. I exhaled. Not long after, the same thing happened to skirts, tops, and vests. I exhaled again. Then I locked eyes with what turned out to be horsehair violin strings, turned into a high, wavy, slightly hairy collar. Somewhere between chairs as tops, carpets as skirts, and mirrors as props, I finally unclenched. Nature was healing, Hodakova still had her weird. Larsson approached the collection through the idea of home and the many versions of ourselves, the social one, the inner one, the real one. A building houses a person, clothes house the body, and the body houses the self. Easy theory, slightly stranger once the furniture gets involved. Brilliant, and that’s coming from a certified homebody.
Zomer
How does one start the brainstorming process for a Paris fashion week collection, you ask? Zomer’s duo Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha, at least, had every single one of their employees bring their favorite clothing pieces to the studio. They might have asked what everyone did last weekend too, considering the show took place in Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet. Models walked down the stage and straight into the theatre’s aisles, draped in AI-developed motifs, plucked from vintage silk scarves, including some gems from Aitouganov’s mom’s stash of Russian prints. Jackets became skirts, watches held tops together (thanks to a Casio collab), vivid patterns clashed, and accessories peeked from places they shouldn’t have, but in the end, it all clicked.
Anrealage
Anrealage’s Kunihiko Morinaga took notes from Mamoru Oshii’s cult anime Ghost in the Shell, where invisibility isn’t about hiding, but about blending so well you practically vanish. There’s that cyberpunk vibe, a hint of robot-chic, and techy detailing, all mixed with just enough human-friendly references to make you wonder if the model is going to snipe someone seated front row or invite them into their garden. For anyone wondering how that translates into fashion, easy. All it takes is 10,000 individually controllable LEDs, reading the room and mirroring the world around them, volumes of a long-lost century, a hint of 70s tension, and florals that almost cross into ugly territory. I’d accept tea in their garden.
