Paris Men´s A/W 2026

Paris brings menswear month to its crescendo. Over six dense days, the city offers not a summary but a statement: this is where the A/W 2026 season is tested, refined, and ultimately defined. The schedule balances heritage and provocation, spectacle and restraint. From the grand houses shaping global taste to independent designers pushing form and meaning, Paris once again proves itself as menswear’s most exacting stage.

“This season in Paris, menswear moved beyond surface statements. Designers looked inward, revisiting craft, identity and purpose, and asked what it means to dress with intention in an unsettled world. The result was a week defined not by excess, but by clarity, conviction, and quiet confidence.” - Charles Daniel McDonald

Blockbuster shows from Dior, Louis Vuitton and Hermès sit alongside some of the most challenging work in contemporary fashion. There is a sense this season of reassessment: of legacy, masculinity, craft, and what it means to dress with intention in an uncertain world. Across runways, salons, museums and unexpected spaces, designers explored warmth, identity, freedom, and contradiction. What follows are the collections that most clearly captured the mood and momentum of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2026.

HERMÈS

Véronique Nichanian’s final menswear collection for Hermès unfolded with quiet authority at the Palais Brongniart. After nearly four decades at the house, her departure was marked not by nostalgia or spectacle, but by the same clarity and restraint that have defined her tenure.

The collection reaffirmed her belief in longevity over trend, with garments designed to endure both materially and aesthetically. Familiar menswear forms were revisited with microscopic precision: duffel coats, rain jackets, tuxedo elements and tailored separates refined through subtle shifts in proportion, texture and tone. Nichanian has long spoken about the sensual intelligence of fabric, and here that philosophy remained central. Innovation revealed itself through touch and movement rather than visual excess. It was a measured, dignified farewell that reinforced her lasting influence on modern menswear.

WILLY CHAVARRIA

Willy Chavarria staged one of the week’s most emotionally charged presentations, transforming a judo dojo on the outskirts of Paris into a theatrical setting for a fashion narrative shaped by music, performance and raw feeling. The show unfolded like a cinematic production, complete with live performances and a cast that blurred the boundaries between fashion, culture and celebrity.

Chavarria’s clothing carried his familiar signatures: oversized tailoring, reworked uniforms and references to working-class dress. This season, however, those elements were softened by a romantic undercurrent, with silhouettes recalling mid-century elegance and moments of tenderness. The designer described the collection as an exploration of connection, echoing everyday encounters and shared vulnerability. It was a reminder that menswear can be political, poetic and profoundly human.

AURALEE

Opening the week, Auralee set a contemplative tone with a collection rooted in comfort, warmth and emotional resonance. Designer Ryota Iwai posed a simple question: what makes winter feel joyful? His answer came through a nuanced interplay of texture, colour and familiarity.

Presented at the Musée de l’Homme, the collection featured coats with plush linings, translucent shirts of remarkable lightness, and supple leather that caught the light softly. Many pieces carried a sense of intimacy, evoking garments worn, lived in and cherished. Colour played a crucial role, with muted neutrals offset by unexpected bursts of yellow, red and deep violet. Rather than offering escapism, the collection suggested quiet optimism, finding beauty in warmth, tactility and restraint.

RICK OWENS

Rick Owens once again transformed the Palais de Tokyo into a space of confrontation and spectacle, this time presenting a collection titled Tower. Shown indoors amid heavy fog and industrial lighting, the atmosphere felt enclosed and urgent.

The garments drew from militaristic and authoritative archetypes, distorted through Owens’ signature lens. Heavy boots, protective bodysuits and rigid outerwear were constructed from technical materials such as kevlar and waxed leather, creating silhouettes that appeared both armoured and vulnerable. In his characteristically stark show notes, Owens framed the collection as a response to global instability, using exaggeration and parody as tools for reflection. Despite its severity, the collection carried a thread of hope, positioning fashion as an act of resistance and care.

ACNE STUDIOS

At its Paris headquarters, Acne Studios presented a collection that reflected on legacy without becoming retrospective. Founder Jonny Johansson looked back on the brand’s origins in denim while questioning how younger generations engage with clothing today.

Straight-leg jeans reappeared as a foundation, reworked through distressing, taping and surface interventions that suggested both rebellion and continuity. Alongside denim, the collection featured sharp tailoring and elegant wool outerwear, reaffirming the brand’s ability to balance youth culture with refinement. Rather than fixating on the past, Johansson framed heritage as something fluid: shaped by wear, experience and reinvention. The result was a collection that felt confident, relevant and quietly self-aware.

SACAI

Chitose Abe approached A/W 2026 through the lens of destruction as a creative act. The show environment itself reflected this idea, with fractured architectural elements suggesting force and rupture. Inspiration came from Muhammad Ali, whose image symbolised freedom through resistance and reinvention.

The garments embodied this tension. Tailoring appeared deliberately undone, with loosened ties and disrupted structures, while Sacai’s hallmark hybrid silhouettes combined contrasting materials and functions. Shearling was spliced, surfaces were punctured with hardware, and garments seemed caught mid-transformation. The soundtrack reinforced the theme of liberation, underscoring Abe’s belief that dismantling convention is essential to creative progress.

DRIES VAN NOTEN

Julian Klausner’s latest menswear collection for Dries Van Noten explored transition and inheritance. Described as a quiet coming-of-age, the collection imagined a character leaving home with garments imbued with memory: heirlooms, childhood knits and pieces shaped by time.

This narrative translated into richly layered looks that combined archival motifs with bold patterning. Stripes, chevrons and fairisles were often merged within a single garment, creating visual complexity without chaos. Strong tailoring and sculptural outerwear grounded the collection, while accessories introduced playful proportion shifts. The overall effect was expressive yet composed, celebrating renewal without severing ties to the past.

KIKO KOSTADINOV

Kiko Kostadinov’s presentation signalled a deliberate return to fundamentals. Shown in a light-filled space in Paris’ 5th arrondissement, the collection focused on construction, material and form as primary drivers of design.

Early looks conveyed near-uniform precision, with tailored pieces marked by strict lines and controlled volumes. As the collection progressed, colour and movement entered more fully, with knitwear and nylon garments designed to shift and adapt on the body. Sculptural installations in the space echoed the collection’s architectural clarity. Kostadinov described the work as intentionally challenging, driven by a commitment to pushing wardrobes forward rather than refining what already exists.

WOOYOUNGMI

Madame Woo drew on personal memory for Wooyoungmi’s A/W 2026 collection, reflecting on winters in South Korea and beyond. The show space was transformed with a faux-fur runway resembling fresh snow, immediately grounding the collection in seasonal reality.

Historic references, including Edwardian tailoring, appeared alongside contemporary cold-weather staples. Faux-fur trims, padded outerwear and elongated silhouettes created a dialogue between tradition and modernity. Accessories added moments of levity, from oversized hats to exaggerated gloves, while clashing knit patterns injected colour and humour. The collection balanced seriousness with play, demonstrating Woo’s ongoing ability to reinterpret menswear through a deeply personal lens.

SOLID HOMME

Staged at the Maison des Métallos, Solid Homme’s latest collection examined the layered identities of contemporary life. Designer Madame Woo presented characters who shift roles daily, moving between professions, passions and responsibilities.

This multiplicity was reflected in styling that combined formal and casual elements with apparent spontaneity. Bright primary colours, pastels and deep neutrals appeared across relaxed tailoring and utilitarian pieces, creating a wardrobe designed to adapt rather than define. The collection positioned menswear as a flexible tool for modern living, shaped by lived experience rather than fixed archetypes.

DIOR

For his second menswear outing at Dior, Jonathan Anderson proposed a cast of privileged young characters, dressing them in a wardrobe that toyed with lineage, wealth and performance in his characteristically off-centre manner. Rather than offering a straightforward revival of house codes, he treated tradition as something to be remixed, placing historical references beside contemporary irreverence.

The starting point was the world of Paul Poiret, and the spirit of his extravagant costume soirées. That influence surfaced in fluid, lightly decadent pieces such as sequinned silk waistcoats, contrasted with deliberately disrupted takes on the Bar jacket rendered in denim. Styling sharpened the sense of theatricality, not least through flashes of surreal colour like luminous yellow wigs. Opulence was amplified through exaggerated furry cuffs and cape-like silhouettes that moved with dramatic sweep, creating a collection that folded past and present together with ease, and with a wink.

Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2026 revealed a season shaped less by uniform trends than by thoughtful divergence. Across the week, designers grappled with questions of identity, continuity and responsibility, often favouring substance over spectacle. Whether through quiet craftsmanship, emotional storytelling or deliberate disruption, the strongest collections shared a commitment to meaning.

As menswear continues to evolve, Paris remains its most rigorous testing ground. This season affirmed that innovation does not always arrive loudly, but often through nuance, conviction and a willingness to engage deeply with the world as it is.

This British Heritage Brand Just Dropped A Collaboration With Kate Middleton

Yesterday afternoon, the Prince and Princess of Wales were dispatched to Stirling, Scotland, beginning with a visit to the National Curling Academy to meet Team GB ahead of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan, and ending with a pint (when in Rome, etc) at The Gothenburg pub in the former mining village of Fallin. The highlight of the engagement, though – at least for readers of this magazine – will have been the royal couple’s stop at Radical Weavers, a volunteer-run textile studio, founded in 2019 with the aim of building social cohesion through traditional tartan-weaving workshops, with finished pieces donated to food banks, as well as homeless and refugee shelters.

The Waleses – who, as one volunteer joked, already have more than enough tartans to their name – were invited to create a new pattern on a traditional loom, with William immediately reaching for yarns of blue, teal, red, green and hot pink. “It’s going to be interesting to see how they all mix,” he said, to which Catherine politely demurred, “That’s quite punchy.” Take heed: the Princess has form here, having arrived in Scotland wearing a longline, double-breasted Chris Kerr coat – styled with Gianvito Rossi boots and a Le Kilt skirt – made from a Johnstons of Elgin wool in a Caledonian-inspired palette of navy and ice-blue plaid that she helped design. (It is perhaps the first time she has publicly been credited as a collaborator.)

While Catherine is known for taking a hands-on approach to curating her wardrobe – often working closely with a handful of trusted British designers on bespoke pieces intended for repeat wear, such as her many (many) custom Catherine Walker coat dresses – that level of involvement appears only to have grown since her personal assistant-turned-stylist, Natasha Archer, was reported to have stepped down in 2025. Long an ambassador for made in Britain, it is not beyond imagining that Kate might follow the Duchy Originals model – established by King Charles to champion sustainable, organic British farming – and apply it instead to clothes.

Valentino Garavani, Couturier To The Stars, Has Died At 93

Valentino Garavani, the Roman couturier who launched his label in 1960 and found worldwide fame dressing European royals, American first ladies, and stars of the day, has died at his home in Rome. He was 93.

With his exacting pattern-making, signature hue of poppy red, and eye for feminine details like bows, ruffles, lace and embroideries, Valentino was one of the key architects of late 20th century glamour. Val’s Gals, as his coterie was often called, included Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren. Jackie Kennedy wore a white gown of Valentino’s creation for her wedding to Aristotle Onassis, and decades later the designer interpreted a mint green gown he had made for the former first lady in 1967 for Jennifer Lopez’s appearance at the 2003 Oscars. In 2001 Julia Roberts accepted her Best Actress award for Erin Brokovich in a vintage black and white Valentino gown.

In 2009, the designer was the subject of the Matt Tyrnauer-directed documentary, Valentino: The Last Emperor, which followed the designer, his career-long business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, and his entourage in the two years leading up to his retirement. In the film, Valentino tells a reporter: “I know what women want, they want to be beautiful,” a 10-word summation of the aesthetic that had turned him into a multimillionaire.

In the years after his retirement in 2008, which was feted with a three-day extravaganza in Rome, Valentino hardly faded from public view. He could be found many seasons sitting in the front row of Paris’s Hotel de Rothschild, taking in the latest collection from creative directors Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, the latter of whom decamped for Christian Dior in 2016. Valentino was so moved by Piccioli’s haute couture collection for autumn/winter 2018 that he stood for an ovation, tears rolling down his tanned cheeks.

When he wasn’t cheering on the designers who inherited his label, Garavani could often be seen on Instagram, hosting glamorous parties at his French estate Wideville or on his yacht TM Blue One, rarely without his brood of pugs in tow.

Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani was born in Voghera, Italy, on 11 May, 1932. He decided on design as his métier early on and enrolled at the Accademia dell’Arte in Milan where he studied fashion and French. Pursuing his ambition, at 17 Garavani moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux Arts and the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Post-studies, he assisted Jean Dessés, a Greek designer known for his pleated evening dresses, and Guy Laroche, a Frenchman with a sportier aesthetic.

After a year spent working alongside the noted beauty Princess Irene Galitzine, who popularised elegant evening pyjamas, Garavani set out on his own with the backing of his father and a family friend, establishing his maison, circa 1959, on Rome’s Via Condotti. “It was une maison de couture,” explained Giammetti – who met Garavani soon after – in an interview with Vanity Fair. “I say it in French because it was very much on the line of what he had seen in Paris… Everything was very grand already. Models flew from Paris for his first show. Italian fashion was very limited at the time. There were a few good designers, but just a few.”

With Giammetti at his side, Valentino became one of the very best, despite the fact that within a year he was facing bankruptcy. He blamed his “champagne tastes,” and the pair soon vacated Via Condotti and moved to a smaller space in a 16th-century palazzo on the Via Gregoriana.

The press, initially interested in Valentino as a budding talent and handsome new face, soon had more incentive to pay attention to this young designer: his celebrity pull. In 1961, the violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor, in town to shoot Cleopatra, chose a white haute couture column by Valentino to wear to the premiere of Spartacus.

The designer’s All White couture collection of 1968 is the one that set him solidly in the firmature of Italian design. Vogue declared it “the talk of Europe,” and waxed lyrical about “the cleanliness and distinction of his crisp whites, his lacy whites, his soft and creamy whites, all shown together white on white. And all triumphs for the thirty-five-year-old designer who, pouring out all this beauty, romance, and perfection, has become the idol of the young, a new symbol of modern luxury.” Some of these marvels were photographed by the magazine in Cy Twombly’s Roman apartment on Marisa Berenson, who, as a granddaughter of Elsa Schiaparelli, qualified as fashion royalty.

Despite the white collection’s historical importance, the designer will forever be associated with the colour red, and not just any shade, but a sparkling crisp Valentino red that speaks of Italy, passion, religion, lust and love.

“Everything,” he once said, “is made to attract, seduce, entrance.” As alluring a woman wearing Valentino might be, however, she was above all and unmistakably a lady.

There is a certain polish and formality to Valentino’s work that speaks to an earlier age of glamour and the beginnings of the jet set, which is now a thing of the past. The dream of the good life never gets old, however, and the lure of the brand was, in part, its link to the lives of “the rich and famous,” an A-list crowd of which Valentino was a member. It should be noted that formality is not synonymous with modesty; evening dresses with lingerie touches were a part of Garavani’s repertoire, and he appreciated a lovely decolletage. Also abs: dresses with tastefully placed cut-outs were another specialty that appealed to the fit and fabulous.

Casual was always a relative term in Valentino’s world – the designer even looked put-together in that famous paparazzi pic taken in Capri in 1970 with a barefoot Jackie O. His signature look was a perfect coif, a rich tan and a suit. Pierpaolo Piccioli, who joined the house in 2008 (and who dared to wear flip-flops to the office) remembers that the air conditioning was on full blast in the offices all summer so that the staff could wear suits. “I was happy that I arrived there when I was all grown up,” Piccioli told Vogue in 2019. “Valentino was formal – very, very formal. There was a ritual, and I liked that.”

Although Valentino was producing ready-to-wear from the category’s earliest days in the 1960s it was elevated rather than laid-back. “If anyone can approximate haute couture detailing in ready-to-wear, it is he, Vogue critic Sarah Mower noted decades on.

Though Garavani has expressed his dislike for 1980s fashions, Vogue wrote that the business soared at the time; reporting that “in 1986, Valentino was Italy’s top fashion exporter, shipping some $385 million that year.” If the Valentino aesthetic was the polar opposite of grunge that dominated so much of the ’90s, it was extremely relevant to the celebrity culture that started to take off in that decade. This shift benefited “Va-Va” greatly, and he racked up major red-carpet credits.

Like the celebrities he dressed, Garavani was himself a star. As Piccioli once put it: “Valentino was the brand himself.” And the designer lived the life he designed for. Long after his retirement, Garavani remained an arbiter of taste and decorum and a paradigm of success. He lived his life in pursuit of beauty. “I loved working with him,” Piccioli told Vogue. “I loved to hear him talking about his dreams of a dress drawn with one line.” Long may his dreams live.

Dario Vitale To Exit Versace

Prada Group officially acquired Versace on Tuesday in a $1.25 billion deal. It’s a new beginning for Versace, but curtains for creative director Dario Vitale, who made a powerful and much talked-about debut show in September – his first and last for the house. He will exit the brand on 12 December.

“We would like to sincerely thank Dario for his outstanding contribution to the development of the brand’s creative strategy during this transition period, and we wish him all the very best in his future endeavours,” the brand said in a statement.

There’s been much speculation around Vitale’s potential departure. Vitale was hired in March shortly before the Prada Group sale was announced in April, replacing Donatella Versace as the first non-family member to helm the brand. The Neapolitan designer, formerly design director at Prada Group-owned Miu Miu, left the brand after more than 14 years to take the Versace posting, placing a question mark over the designer’s future under Prada Group ownership. Even without this context, it’s commonplace for new owners to prompt a creative reshuffle at luxury brands.

Then there’s Donatella Versace, who was crucial to Versace’s sustained cultural gravitas, even as sales faltered over recent years, and remains a global ambassador for the house. When the Prada sale was announced in April, she celebrated with a post on Instagram and pledged her support. “I am honoured to have the brand in the hands of such a trusted Italian family business and I am ready to support this new era for the brand in any way that I can,” she wrote. Donatella didn’t attend Vitale’s spring/summer 2026 show, which was a late addition to the calendar.

Despite the above, many will be surprised by Prada Group’s move. Vitale’s first outing was one of the most celebrated debut shows of the SS26 season, perhaps only overshadowed on the final day of Paris Fashion Week by Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel.

The next designer to take the role will now steer the brand’s turnaround. Versace’s previous owner, Capri Holdings, had aligned the label with premium players, diluting its luxury positioning. Under Vitale’s vision, Versace was re-positioned firmly in the luxury category, which analysts had advised was the way forward for the label, with pieces ranging from €900 for belts to over €26,000 for special gowns, based on early insights from a Moda Operandi trunk show. While one collection can’t save a brand, there was momentum behind Vitale’s vision and elevated positioning.
With new ownership, new executive leadership and a yet-to-be-announced new creative director, Versace is undergoing its most significant transformation since the death of founder Gianni Versace in 1997. Versace said in its statement that the next creative director will be announced “in due course”, with the creative team operating under CEO Emmanuel Gintzburger.

Stella McCartney Just Teased Her New H&M Collaboration At The Fashion Awards

If, for whatever reason, you were hoping to visit the V&A East Storehouse to inspect a certain blue silk jumpsuit from Stella McCartney’s 2005 collaboration with H&M, you’d find it’s been reserved for an undisclosed amount of time by an undisclosed enthusiast. And if, for whatever reason, you also happened to be following the red-carpet arrivals at tonight’s Fashion Awards, the reason behind its unavailability might begin to make sense: Stella McCartney and H&M are working on a second co-designed collection, built on the British designer’s prodigious archive, and set to arrive in spring.

Though specific details remain locked behind the kind of NDA only a multi-billion-firm can commission, a glimpse of what’s to come was truffled out on the likes of Emily Ratajkowski, Bel Priestley, Amelia Gray and Anitta in the grand concord of the Royal Albert Hall. Talk about a reveal: I’m only disappointed there was no musical-chairs segment, as there was when H&M unveiled its original collection with McCartney at St Olave’s School in south London, which precipitated a rare Gwyneth Paltrow gush. “I really liked the whole collection,” she told British Vogue. “You must write that. I want Stella to read it.”

As for what can actually be revealed? “Prints, sparkles, lace,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M’s head of womenswear. “The red-carpet looks are a teaser and within them are various little archive details that fashion fans will for sure spot.” Such as: the lace-trimmed camisoles of her autumn/winter 1999 collection for Chloé, vest straps interlinked with the chains of her 2009 Falabella It-bag, the sequined party numbers of her spring/summer 2005 collection, and the python prints of her Resort 2014 proposal. “We wanted to make sure we captured the Stella attitude,” Johansson continues. “The feminine strength, the insouciance. From her pioneering work at Chloé in the ’90s, when she brought a cool London energy to Paris, to her rule-breaking designs under her own label in the ’00s.”

You can trace the story even further back to McCartney’s apprenticeship with Edward Sexton, the Savile Row tailor who made her father Paul McCartney’s suits. “It was that experience which shaped my eye for cut and precision in design,” says McCartney. “Bringing that heritage into this collaboration is deeply personal. Reworking all these pieces with H&M genuinely feels like returning to my roots. It’s brought back so much energy and joy to revisit it all.” But everything, for McCartney, always comes back to “craft with conscience”. Ie, the belief that desirable fashion can still be kind to the planet. “Even the recycled rhinestones reflect the world I’m fighting for – beautiful, responsible, and forward-thinking.”

H&M is welcoming these conversations. “There are really two key aspects to explain here,” says Johansson. “One relates to the collection, which features certified, responsible materials, many of them recycled. The other, equally important, is the launch of a brand-new Insights Board, which will bring together voices from across fashion to create a space for meaningful discussion.” She explains that this new group has been designed to challenge H&M’s and the industry’s processes – from supply chain practices to material innovation – which are endemic to the industry at large. “Both Stella and all of us at H&M are aligned in the belief that true change can only happen when the industry works collectively.” McCartney hopes the initiative will serve as an inflection point in how the sector approaches sustainability. “This second partnership feels like a chance to reflect on how far we’ve come in sustainability, cruelty-free practices and conscious design – and to stay honest about how far we still have to go. Real change only happens when we push from both the outside and the inside, and I’ve always believed in infiltrating from within to move the industry forward.”

Burberry’s Festive Claridge’s Takeover

He wasn’t the first elaborately costumed star to tear through Claridge’s at an indecent hour – Kate Moss famously spent her The Beautiful And Damned-themed 30th here – but he may have been the most inconspicuous. Picture it: not yet 9am, and into the hotel’s expansive lobby clanks a man in full medeival knight regalia, while a brass band plays carols and a Golden Retriever hoovers errant fries from burger carts during the grand unveiling of this year’s Christmas tree by Burberry’s Daniel Lee.

“Being invited to design the Claridge’s Christmas tree is a huge honour,” says the Bradford-born designer, who could be found overseeing the production well into the early hours the (k)night before. “Claridge’s is my favourite hotel in London, a symbol of elegance and charm.” And charm really is the word: Lee’s 16-foot fir, drenched in 600 purple, flaxen and aquamarine bows made from surplus Burberry fabrics, stuffed with thistles, glass baubles, brass bells, and surrounded by throws, cushions and chess pieces, feels like a happy deviation from the conceptual contortions that have previously taken up space. John Galliano created a porcelain-white menagerie in 2009, Karl Lagerfeld an upside-down spruce in 2017, and Burberry’s Christopher Bailey a triangular structure of metallic umbrellas in 2015. Lee’s vision, by contrast, seems transported from the grand country piles that inspired his autumn/winter 2025 collection, where the retrievers are indeed well-fed and the walls lined with suits of armour.

“The whole idea behind the show came, initially, from London’s ‘weekend escapees’,” Lee said back then, less than an hour before sending Lesley Manville, swathed in velvet brocade, down a Tate Britain runway. “Those who live and work in the capital and escape to the beautiful English countryside to breathe the fresh air, take long walks and disengage.” But it was tonight’s party where that scene came most to life, with a grab bag of national treasures – Jennifer Saunders, Richard E Grant, Karen Elson, Alexa Chung – drifting about the place like eccentric aunts and uncles sprung from the family attic, while some editors turned up in pyjama shorts and slippers, as though they’d just padded down from whichever turret bedroom Lee had allocated them for the night. And then there were the requisite branded touch points: a pop-up shop, doormen, old-school train trolleys groaning with penny sweets, key cards, lifts – and every other available surface – decked in Burberry check.

And, of course, no charmingly dysfunctional Christmas is complete without its, in this case, Negroni-stoked, speeches. Olivia Colman, for one, gathered more than 500 guests in Claridge’s foyer and reading room for an ode to the season. “I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, but would you mind putting your phones down?” she said, launching into a self-authored riff on ‘Twas the Night After Christmas. “Now we’ll feel Christmassy together.” If that sounds at all kitsch, the holidays are a time for fashionably unfashionable quantities of schmaltz.

Costume Art Is the First Exhibition In The Costume Institute’s New Permanent Galleries At The Met

Fashion is coming out of the basement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Announced today, Costume Art, the spring 2026 exhibition at the Costume Institute, will mark the inauguration of the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M Nast Galleries, adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall. “It’s a huge moment for the Costume Institute,” says curator in charge Andrew Bolton. “It will be transformative for our department, but I also think it’s going to be transformative to fashion more generally – the fact that an art museum like The Met is actually giving a central location to fashion.”

To mark the momentous occasion, Bolton has conceived an exhibition that addresses “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,” by pairing paintings, sculptures and other objects spanning the 5,000 years of art represented in The Met, alongside historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute.

“What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body,” Bolton says. “It’s the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: I know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and centre in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked,” he continues. “It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”

The art and fashion divide stubbornly persists despite Costume Institute exhibitions like “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”, which was the most-visited exhibition in The Met’s history with 1.66 million visitors. Bolton figures that the hierarchy endures precisely because of clothing’s connection to the body. “Fashion’s acceptance as an art form has really occurred on art’s terms,” he explains. “It’s premised on the negation, on the renunciation, of the body, and on the [fact that] aesthetics are about disembodied and disinterested contemplation.”

Traditionally, Bolton admits, Costume Institute shows have emphasised clothing’s visual appeal, with the mannequins disappearing behind or underneath garments. His bold idea for Costume Art is to insist on the significance of the body, or “the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.” Fashion, he insists, actually “has an edge on art because it is about one’s lived, embodied experience.”

He’s organised the exhibition around a series of thematic body types loosely divided into three categories. These include bodies omnipresent in art, like the classical body and the nude body; other kinds of bodies that are more often overlooked, like aging bodies and pregnant bodies; and still more that are universal, like the anatomical body. Bolton’s is a much more expansive view of the corporeal than the fashion industry itself often promotes, with its rail-thin models and narrow size ranges. “The idea was to put the body back into discussions about art and fashion, and to embrace the body, not to take it away as a way of elevating fashion to an art form,” he explains.

Indeed, the exhibition has been designed, by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of the Brooklyn firm Peterson Rich Office, to privilege fashion. In the high ceiling room of the Condé M Nast Galleries (there is also a low ceilinged room), clothing will be displayed on mannequins perched on 6-foot pedestals, onto which the artwork will be embedded. “When you walk in, your eye immediately goes up, you look at the fashions first,” Bolton says.

Even more powerfully, the artist Samar Hejazi has been commissioned to create mirrored heads for the show’s mannequins. “I’ve always wanted to try to bridge the gap between the viewer and the mannequin,” Bolton begins. With a “mannequin where the face is a mirror, you’re looking at yourself. Part of that is to reflect on the lived experience of the bodies you’re looking at, and also to reflect your own lived experience – to facilitate empathy and compassion.” Going a step further, the museum will also be casting real bodies to embody the clothes. “As you go through, [the exhibition] will challenge normative conventions and, in turn, offer more diverse displays of beauty.”

Costume Art is the first of Bolton’s exhibitions to be subtitle-less. The simplicity of the show’s name bolsters its objective: that fashion should most certainly be considered on the same plane as art. “I thought very, very carefully about that,” Bolton says. In fact, as recently as two weeks ago, the show did have a colon and a subtitle. “But then we took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” he laughs. “I thought, this is exactly what it should be. It’s bold, it’s strong, it’s a statement of intent.” The goal, he goes on, “is not to create a new hierarchy. It’s just to disband that hierarchy and to focus on equivalency – equivalency of artworks and equivalency of bodies.”

Made possible by Jeff and Lauren Bezos, with other funding from Saint Laurent and Condé Nast, Costume Art will run from 10 May 2026 – 10 January 2027, following the Met Gala on 4 May, 2026, which provides the Costume Institute with its primary source of funding for all activities.