Fall 2026, in Designers’ Own Words

We’ve published 500 women’s and men’s fall 2026 shows so far, and the season’s not over yet, with Shanghai ramping up over the weekend. Here at Vogue Runway, we not only watch the collections, to borrow a phrase from Frasier Crane, “we’re listening” as well. Below you will find a selection of quotes culled from reviews in which designers across the globe discourse on the state of fashion and the world. Some translated their desire to be more in contact with “reality” into separates dressing, others embraced the perfectly imperfect as a way to make things feel human made. Another takeaway was the solace and joy to be found in plying your craft. Here they are: fashion’s top designers, in their own words.

Keeping it Real

“I was interested in the idea of building a dream, a work in progress. That’s what Chanel is for me, this quiet revolution, but boom.” —Matthieu Blazy, Chanel

“It’s about the freedom to be inspired, to bring different things together that feel contemporary to us, but it’s not necessarily very narratively inspired—not like the story is this and this and this.” —Raf Simons, Prada

“We have a very pragmatic approach to clothes; it’s very much about the daily dimension—something utilitarian and functional. But at the same time, we also love art, poetry and moods.” —Christophe Lemaire, Lemaire

“This season we’ve focused more on capturing emotions and feelings, and the beautiful moments to be found in the everyday.” —Kiichiro Asakawa, Ssstein

“I wanted to make it feel very personal. Each woman is her own person, each silhouette is her own character.” —Sarah Burton, Givenchy

“It’s just really clothes for real people, not for an image. That’s what I told my team. Not to ‘impress.’ To reduce, reduce. No bags, no jewelry. Only beauty and clothes and a naked shoe. Because that’s what Azzedine was.” —Pieter Mulier, Alaïa

“Classics is one thing, but we like bite. A jacket’s a jacket, but it’s figuring out the character. I don’t like the idea of something that covers up what people are going through.” —Michael Rider, Celine

“Everything is postured for the wearer to have an ease. But rather than it being James Bond having a martini, it’s more, if the city has expectations of elegance you can still be you, and protect yourself against them.” —Luke Derrick, Derrick

“It was all about informal formalities.” —Neil Grotzinger, Nihl

“I wanted this mythicism cut through with reality. It’s something I’ve thought about for a really long time and seen for a long time in my head. I think it’s giving an interesting feeling.” —Simone Rocha

“I was thinking, can something superfluous be considered essential?” —Simone Bellotti, Jil Sander

Just Do It

“If I don’t do [this], I get bored, you know? We have to—we, not [just] me—always be creating, and we need this passion.” —Yohji Yamamoto

“For us, it was really about the joy of making.” —Jack McCollough, Loewe

“Practice is not preparation. It is the work itself: repetition, passion, and the constant refining of craft.” —Cecilie Bahnsen

“To be honest with you, making is my meditation. So even if I am exhausted, the action of making, doing things with my hands is very meditative. So I’m always doing something, and it helps me.” —Daniel del Valle, Thevxlley

“It’s always about stripping down the functionality of cloth first. And then through exploration, you add other meanings to it. It’s starting from reality, and then the whole process in between is very abstract and very—you don’t care about human, you don’t care about torso—it’s just all about pure exploration, lines and shapes, and then later comes the practical part. I think it’s a really interesting transformation.” —Zane Li, Lii

“It’s about the romance I feel for clothing. I jumped into the fashion world not for the power or money or authority, but because of the romance.” —Shinpei Yamagishi, Bed j.w. Ford

Hot and Bothered

“It’s that idea of waking up and maybe having no clear idea of where you are. You have to get dressed and run off in the morning from that scenario, that kinky night. Everything is messed up: you obviously don’t have time to look at yourself in the mirror. But when you’re on the street you look as hot as fuck because you own it. You’ve had a really good night, and everything is fantastic, so you just shine from the inside.” —Glenn Martens, Diesel

“It’s not a walk of shame, exactly, but there’s so much in those still-tipsy early morning hours, with the perfect light, the breeze, the music still in your head.” —Burc Akyol

“I’m really into the idea of pushing more opportunities for exposing the body and not shying away from the body’s functions. At the moment, I’m noticing such a rise in covering and hiding the body that I want to push in the opposite direction as much as I can.” —Zoe Whalen, Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen

“This collection explores the idea of coming back after you’ve been in hibernation for a while, like defrosting.” —Karoline Vitto

“I like the idea of being in contradiction between something very conventional and something very sensual.” —Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent Men

“I want to make people ‘feel Gucci’ tomorrow. My cousin, who is 16 and spends her life on Roblox—when she heard that I was going to Gucci, she asked me, ‘do you know what Gucci is? It’s not just a brand,’ she said. ‘It’s a word we use to describe a certain state of mind. If you feel Gucci, it means you want to do stuff and be crazy and meet people and be, like, out there.’” —Demna, Gucci

“Recently I just wanted to have a good time, basically. So, this collection, it really has this end of the week feeling; the anticipation of going out. I wouldn’t say it is exactly T.G.I.F. . . . but yeah, it is.” —Sia Arnika

Of the Moment

“I was thinking about rising to the occasion; I was thinking that how you respond to threat defines character.” —Rick Owens

“Finding the light in the darkness, which is also metaphorical (of) the moment we all are living, unluckily.” —Pierpaolo Piccioli, Balenciaga

“I kept thinking, ‘What’s the reason for doing a collection again?’ It’s all about the people, and the joy I get from working with them. There’s so much happening in the world right now, what with the war in Sudan, Palestine . . . . I thought that if I do a collection, I’m going to make it about togetherness.” —Kenneth Ize

“I wanted to address the psychological conflict that I think is happening right now in the sense that we’re always on, always curating. There’s this idea of paranoia and perfection.” —Seán McGirr, McQueen

“I always felt like there was this separation, like there was this glass between you and this woman that you’d see, and she was impeccable. She was super-perfect. And that idea of perfection is a little bit scary for me.” —Rachel Scott, Proenza Schouler

“It’s always about somehow working with some element of classicism, and then having some kind of disruption within that. —Grace Wales Bonner, Wales Bonner

“Looking at different ways to put things together that maybe don’t belong together sets me free creatively. Because I can imagine things that I’ve never seen.” —Saul Nash

“I think there’s a very interesting relationship between how we look and how we feel and the perception we have of ourselves. What do we want to achieve when projecting an image of ourselves?” —Patricio Campillo, Campillo

“I really love Warhol’s thinking. It’s quite funny and it’s true. We live in a very public time, where everything is visible. So I wanted to explore how your clothes can shield the real you.” —Julie Kegels

“The uncertainty of the world has created a longing in our generation for what once was. At the same time, we’re ready to be more expressive again, not just clinging to safety, but trying to break away from it.” Rosa Marga Dahl, SF10G

“I really wanted to do things the most simple way possible. Not something so complicated, because everything is already so complicated in the world.” —Marie Adam-Leenaerdt

“There’s no point denying it: chaos is everywhere, and we needed this work to exist within a context that was precise, ordered.” —Luca Magliano, Magliano

“I wanted to evoke the feeling you get when you look at clothing from a bird’s eye view. I think we live in an age where people tend to prefer things that are clear-cut or have a definite answer, but I think one of the roles of creation is to expand that vague, gray area, and to find new value there.” —Ryota Murakami, Pillings

“I like my work to have a freshness, where even I don’t understand it at first,” the designer said. —Giovanna Flores

“It’s really that feeling of the thrill and discomfort of almost conquering something and what could have come of it. I surf and skate, and I wipe out. I just wanted to put that energy in the collection.” —Doni Nahmias

“Less doom and gloom, and celebrate what winning looks like.” —Hung La, Lu’u Dan

“I think we are in a quite interesting space where we still need a dream…but reality is quite sad.” —Roksanda Ilincic, Roksanda

“It’s like we’re kind of living in this neo-Rococo world today, with a monetary elite, and where social media is like paste-tinted hedonism. It resembles the era just before the French revolution, and that’s where the collection’s references have come from.” —Mario Keine, Marke

“Glamour is a word that used to mean magic. When a woman used the way she looked for power, they said ‘witch!’ ‘Magic!’ And that’s how glamour came to mean mastery over the way you look.”—Nicholas Aburn, Area

“We’re living in an age where it’s more difficult to find hope in fantasy, and I think that’s partly because it’s easier to create fantasy than it was in the past. It’s made it harder to be moved. But it means that feeling—the ‘oh!’ you feel when something is real—is stronger than before.” —Akiko Aoki, Akikaoki

“Many things are falling apart. We’re also entering the age of AI, and many things are changing right now, so we’re all on our own kind of voyage into the unknown.” —Taro Horiuchi, Kolor

“I’m really interested in making things that feel touched, they just have that kind of inexplicable quality of human interaction.” —Edward Cuming

“I always say I don’t want to be nostalgic in my approach, because I think it’s a scary weapon, especially inside a brand like this. It’s more like a sort of projection.” —Stefano Gallici, Ann Demeulmeester

“Diana Vreeland once said ‘I loathe nostalgia,’ and I feel the same way. I don’t need to go back into my past to create my future.” —Kirk Pickersgill, Greta Constantine

“I am always standing with two feet in two different places. You must hold on, you must let go.” —Alessandro Michele, Valentino

“Letting go is an art, and one that we Westerners are not particularly well trained to practice.” —Ludovico Bruno, Mordecai

“Black is a non-color that represents subtraction, but also a neutral space on which to write new beginnings.” —Alessandro Dell’Acqua, No. 21

“In the end, there is black. Ultimately Black. I have come to realize that, after all, black is the color for me. It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the color that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: The Universe and the Black Hole.” —Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garçons

New Perspectives

“I think we need to analyze what luxury is. It should be about precision, not perception: a definitive articulation of quality over necessity. —Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton Men

“I believe in reformative luxury,” [in recognizing that] “just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, people aspire to different things.” —Tolu Coker

“Fashion should be enjoyable for everyone, but the brands that reign at the top of Paris Fashion Week dictate what’s right. I don’t want to participate in that game.” —Shinpei Goto, Masu

“At the moment Afrotech is the fastest-growing music in the world. My aim is not to be more readable to Western European cultures. I don’t want to blend in and be lost in translation; I’m traveling roads in reverse.” —Laduma Ngxokolo, Maxhosa Africa

“I have always felt like an outsider in this industry. I’m not complaining. It’s a place from which you can look at things differently.” —Walter Van Beirendonck