If we learnt anything from The Devil Wears Prada, it’s that A) Nate is the true villain, and B) florals for spring are anything but groundbreaking. Far less common are florals for autumn, but we saw them in abundance during the AW26 fashion shows. Since January, the runways, presentations, re-sees and lookbooks have been relentless, but thankfully, there was one common theme that calmed some of the chaos: nature. Of course, this is no new thing – the natural world has always provided inspiration for designers. However, we can’t ignore the sheer volume of greenery, woodland creatures and feathered friends present in recent collections.
It showed up most obviously in the sets. At Miu Miu’s AW26 womenswear show in Paris earlier this week, guests arrived at the Palais d’Iéna to discover a room that was half palazzo, half overgrown forest. In our review of the show, we described it as a scene from Where the Wild Things Are, the floor completely covered by a blanket of green moss. In Milan, at a show by sister brand Prada, socks were embroidered with small, delicate daisies, and flowers climbed up the models’ legs as if the earth was slowly consuming them.
For Nicolas Ghesquière’s AW26 Louis Vuitton show, we saw a moss-covered landscape once again, this time designed by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, meanwhile, at Dior, Jonathan Anderson has been touching grass for a while now. Prior to the AW26 season, his SS26 couture debut in January transformed the Musée Rodin into The Secret Garden, covering the ceiling in foliage. Then, for his AW26 womenswear show, the Irish designer went mad for water lilies, filling a corner of the Tuileries with fake flowers, adding them to shoes and bags, and even designing dresses that looked like lilies.
While the clothes became the flowers at Dior, several other designers opted for fauna over flora this season. Chopova Lowena presented their AW26 collection with wooden mannequins holding their hands to their chests like little paws. The collection included hoods with ears knitted into them – one made to look like a black cat, the other like a little dog begging for its supper. Elsewhere, at Moschino, rabbit ears stood to attention, while at Noir Kei Ninomiya, rodents ruled the runway – with models carrying rats, squirrels and chipmunks in their hair, created by Shinji Konishi.
In some cases, fashion’s obsession with nature has gone as far as metamorphosis. At the less cute end of the spectrum to woodland creatures, we noticed that werewolves are so hot right now, with models at Gabe Gordon sprouting fur and growing claws. Things were getting hairy at Matières Fécales and Rick Owens too. Arguably, both brands were already known for their supernatural designs, but their most recent collections took (faux) fur and feathers to surreal new heights. At Erdem, the feet were covered entirely by black feathers, giving the appearance of some very hairy toes, and at Central Saint Martins’ MA show, graduate Finnerty Mackay made trousers from expired condoms, which from afar, looked like Mr. Tumnus-style faun legs.
Mackay’s classmate, fellow CSM grad Macy Grimshaw, manipulated leather to look like parakeet feathers – not only has fashion been slowly metamorphosing into wolves, rabbits and fauns, but there’s been a lot of birds too. Schiaparelli has been merging humans with animals since the days of Elsa, but Daniel Roseberry’s recent SS26 couture and AW26 collections took this a step further. The January couture show transformed models into birds of paradise, complete with dramatic wings and talons pointing from the breasts. This week’s AW26 ready-to-wear show continued the theme – titled Sphynx, it took kitten heels literally, adorning them with cats’ heads. At Egonlab’s AW26 menswear show, one model had almost reached full transformation, his head and torso concealed by bright blue feathers.
Then there’s Chanel. At couture, Matthieu Blazy turned the Grand Palais into a fairytale mushroom patch, with gowns inspired by birds such as woodpeckers, peacocks, owls and swans. The Belgian designer addressed metamorphosis directly in his most recent AW26 ready-to-wear show, which referenced an interview that Coco Chanel gave during the 1950s. “Be a caterpillar by day, and a butterfly by night,” she said, with Blazy leaning into the trend metaphorically, rather than physically.
Is this fashion’s way of pushing back against AI? Is an escape to the countryside more tempting given the current state of global politics? When the world gets worse, designers tend to go one of two ways: they confront it, or transport us somewhere else entirely. Some balance both with subtlety. Or maybe it’s simply that fashion has had enough screen time – are designers collectively pining for the great outdoors? Some want to take us for a stroll in the woods, others want to transform into an eagle and fly far away. Whatever the message, we could all do with touching some grass.
