Paris fashion week is a strange place. For Loewe’s Fall 2026 show, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough dragged us to Château de Vincennes, once a royal playground for plotting and sword-swinging, now a gothic playground for tourist selfies and Tim Burton poses. For a collection built on playfulness and experimentation, those medieval walls couldn’t have been more misleading. Successful mismatch, if there ever was one.
“As we began conceptualizing our second collection for Loewe, we were struck by a simple truth: for us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process driven pursuit charged with playfulness. The path taken matters as much as the end result… Humor, levity, and a bright, inclusive spirit – qualities we recognize as intrinsic to Loewe’s Spanish heritage – led us to the work of Cosima von Bonin, an artist we have long admired and with whom were fortunate to spend time recently,” the brand’s notes insisted, in all their pressy glory. Which, to be honest, explains a lot.
For starters, the set. Walk in and you’re greeted by a glossy yellow floor so banana-bright it hurts your eyes, and instantly, the thought of slipping and landing face-first becomes even more toe-curling. Though if you were one of the lucky ones the PR team favored, your seat came with a three-foot fuzzy dog, a lobster, maybe even a clam, Bonin’s creatures ensuring the softest seat neighbor of your life.
And if the environment wasn’t doing it for you, the palette, textures, and shapes made sure you were in on the fun. Latex, pretending to be lace after a bit of moulding, strutted out first to announce the show had officially begun. Next up, a gradient fur with matching mittens that, from afar, looked like paws, and suddenly, all I could think of was a bear. I quickly snapped out of it and locked eyes with inflatable-looking parkas and scarves, just in case you needed to take off mid-show, looped leather bouclé coats, plaid sweaters knitted from impossibly thin leather yarn, and those very familiar Loewe-meets-Polly-Pocket pieces, now in zip-up dresses, for when your inner kid insists on attending. The guests were thrilled, the dolphin was hard to read.
