paris fashion week

Tailoring meets sportswear: Ujoh at SS27 Paris Fashion Week

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Beyond the spectacle: when clothes speak for themselves


Tailoring meets sportswear — that’s the central tension in Ujoh’s Spring-Summer collection, shown at Paris Fashion Week. It was also a recurring trend across the season, from Milan to Paris. For us, though, it isn’t just a trend. It’s a styling classic.

Ujoh’s design codes are unmistakable: clean lines, precise tailoring. Asymmetrical structure and bold cuts. Distinctive layering; form and function in seamless balance. The result is a modern elegance that never needs to shout.

The same restraint defines the brand’s philosophy: no loud logos, just good design and excellent quality. Most pieces don’t change completely every season. Ujoh builds on an established vocabulary, creating continuity, timelessness — a wardrobe that doesn’t expire. That consistency is what keeps their universe culturally relevant.

In a market saturated with novelty, that consistency feels rare. The industry demands new drops, new stories, new noise. Ujoh quietly rejects that logic.

Model on the Ujoh SS27 Paris runway demonstrating the collection's tailoring meets sportswear concept through a powder pink blazer layered over a white shirt and balloon terracotta jeans.
This season, the brand explores what happens when established categories begin to dissolve. 

Tailoring meets sportswear, casualwear and workwear. Garments shift purpose and acquire new identities. A single piece can function as a shirt from the back and a jacket from the front. Denim breaks free from familiar constructions through asymmetry and cut-outs, while generous, balloon-like trousers and jackets that balance heritage with freedom of movement challenge conventional silhouettes.

Ujoh SS27: Tailoring meets sportswear on the Paris runway

The collection also looks to traditional Japanese craftsmanship. As the brand’s press release describes, flowers are hand-painted in Kyoto directly onto long rolls of fabric through a painstaking process that takes nearly a week. Techniques traditionally associated with kimono fabrics find a new expression in a contemporary wardrobe. The past isn’t discarded; it becomes part of something new.

And that’s where it all converges: the formal and the everyday, tradition and experimentation, structure and movement. Nothing needs to be confined to a single category or occasion.

Versatility isn’t a compromise between style and practicality; it’s a design value in its own right. A garment that moves between formal and casual, changes character through layering, or adapts to different occasions offers more than functionality: it invites us to experiment, combine and make it our own. 

For us, this is what makes Ujoh compelling. We believe in garments that are distinctive without being difficult to wear. And in meaningful pieces that can be combined, reinterpreted and adapted to different moments. Clothes that leave room for the wearer to make them their own.

This is the new luxury: identity and values. 

Because the best-designed clothes don’t dictate how we should wear them. They give us more ways to express who we are.

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Antithesis, Ujoh at FW26 Paris Fashion Week

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The Japanese designer duo created a play on contrasts through unexpected combinations


Antithesis is Ujoh’s starting point for Fall/Winter 26 at Paris Fashion Week. In both Japanese and French, the word does not imply a rupture but rather a questioning. With this idea in mind, Ujoh re-examines its own foundations — its shapes, codes, and certainties — in order to rethink them from within.

Founded by the Japanese designer duo Mitsuru Nishizaki and Aco, the brand has long explored the tension between precision and experimentation. The house’s DNA remains intact, yet it asserts itself with renewed clarity. Silhouettes sharpen while volumes loosen, as if the collection were the result of a deliberate stripping bare. Minimalism acquires an insolent edge, infused with grunge energy and a rock spirit drawn from the 1990s. Between élégance and disorder, a new silhouette begins to emerge.

Antithesis by Ujoh at Paris Fashion Week FW26. A model walks the runway wearing a square pinstriped vest over a black lace blouse and trousers.
Ujoh – Paris Fashion Week FW26.27

Ujoh’s FW26 collection: antithesis


This season, the concept of antithesis takes shape through a deliberate tension between opposing forces— both structural and spiritual. Ujoh’s signature elements, such as precise layering and functional tab-tie details, remain present. But subtly reconfigured, as though charged with a new energy. The collection continues the brand’s long-standing dialogue with tailoring, a discipline rooted in Nishizaki’s early experience as a pattern maker. Structure remains central, yet here it is deliberately destabilised through unexpected layering and fluid volumes.

Volumes become looser, while A-line silhouettes are sharpened by asymmetric, cape-like panels. One particularly inventive gesture appears in the tailoring: Bermuda shorts in striped or solid menswear cloth are pleated along the side seams and layered directly over matching full-length trousers. The result is a hybrid garment — simultaneously tailored and relaxed — that perfectly embodies the collection’s dialogue between structure and ease.

This conceptual rigour drives from in an almost artisanal approach to material. True to its philosophy, the house continues its deep textile research, this season highlighting fabrics produced on a 1960s Schöherr loom in Japan. Operating five times slower than modern machinery, the loom produces textiles with a distinctive tactile surface. A deliberate slowing down that stands in quiet opposition to the logic of speed and overproduction that defines much of the industry today. In one striking example, a diaphanous silver nylon ribbon is woven into black wool, creating a semi-transparent check. Elsewhere, coats and skirts in deep black and aubergine are finished with hand-snipped fringing, introducing a deliberately undone quality.

Rugged elegance & unexpected combinations


The garments that result are studies in rugged elegance. Unexpected fabric combinations abound. Delicate lace juxtaposed with the utilitarian character of an aviator jacket in faux suede and fur. Heavy metal zippers carve graphic lines across coats and tops, functioning not merely as closures but as sculptural elements that shape the silhouette.

Antithesis by Ujoh at Paris Fashion Week FW26.
Ujoh – Paris Fashion Week FW26.27

The palette remains restrained: chocolate, rosewood, fern green, and fig. Punctuated by flashes of optic white and beige borrowed from sharkskin suiting. Recurring check patterns evoke a subtle grunge sensibility. Yet the reference to the 1990s is less about nostalgia than attitude, expressed through layering, texture, and a studied nonchalance rendered with unmistakable Japanese precision.

At the core of the season, a collaboration with the Japanese duo DREAMS COME TRUE extends the collection beyond the runway. Designing stage costumes for their tour, Ujoh translates its tailoring language into performance, with select pieces in the collection emerging as direct continuations of this exchange between clothing and movement.

Final thoughts


The theme of antithesis in FW26 Ujoh’s collection extended even to the show’s format. Rejecting a fixed sequence, the looks appeared in a seemingly personal order, as if drawn from a lived-in wardrobe to be explored rather than a story to be followed. This liberated presentation encouraged the audience to consider each piece individually. An object of desire in its own right. While still belonging to a cohesive, beautifully unresolved whole.

In this sense, antithesis becomes less a stylistic device than a way of thinking. An ongoing negotiation between discipline and disruption, precision and instinct.

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Jean Paul Gaultier by Duran Lantink: when experiment fails to deliver the magic

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Deconstructing the hype: how Gaultier codes got lost in translation at FW26 Paris Fashion Week


At Fall/Winter 2026 Paris Fashion Week, Jean Paul Gaultier by Duran Lantink provoked mixed reactions. Some welcomed its playful spirit, while others raised harsher criticisms about its wearability.

The collection felt more like a pure exploration of creativity and technical possibilities. It reiterated several of Gaultier’s iconic concepts — masculine and feminine codes (what we now call genderless fashion), underwear as outerwear, sporty chic, and tattoo imagery. Yet, despite these nods, Lantink’s interpretation marked a clear departure from the brand’s traditional aesthetic.

To be fair, this FW26 collection appeared more resolved than Lantink’s first attempt. Still, the clothes didn’t feel like Gaultier. Instead of channelling the brand’s distinctive magic, the designer seemed to prioritise his own chaotic vision.

But what happens when the experiment fails to deliver the magic?

An experiment without the magic: Jean Paul Gaultier by Duran Lantink


Lantink proposed heavily exaggerated and distorted silhouettes: raised shoulders floating far away from the body, abstract S-shaped figures with jutting breasts and derrières. The result was sculptural, almost architectural — but also highly restrictive. (Watch the show here).

While some praised the collection as art or celebrated its playfulness, most pieces felt futuristic to the point of impracticality. They were statements, rather than garments meant to be worn.

And this is where the comparison with Gaultier becomes unavoidable.

Jean Paul Gaultier is the designer who taught us so much about fashion. Many of the concepts that are now widely celebrated — gender fluidity, the transformation of underwear into outerwear, the playful mixing of cultural references — were introduced by him forty years ago.

We remember it well. When we were young, we bought his clothes. Men’s or women’s, it didn’t matter to us. And we still have them in our wardrobe; they are perfect and even fashion-forward now. (Which raises another point: the most sustainable clothing is that which you never throw away — yet designers who focus solely on sustainability rarely achieve this kind of durability or appeal.) Later, we also curated Gaultier pieces for our boutique. His designs carried a particular energy — beauty, humour, and a certain magic. Yes, Gaultier could be strange. But even in its strangeness, his fashion remained wearable.

It’s impossible to say the same about Lantink’s pieces.

Which raises a broader question: this constant urge to reinvent, to shock, to create something radically new— where does it lead?

Final reflections


Ultimately, Jean Paul Gaultier by Duran Lantink felt more like an exploration of boundaries than a fashion collection. But when experimentation fails to deliver the magic, what remains? A display of creativity from which nothing survives beyond the runway. 

So we are left wondering: is Paris Fashion Week becoming a stage for unwearable clothes?

Of course, some brands have built their identity on that very idea — fashion as pure spectacle. But Gaultier was never one of them. His magic lived in the tension between fantasy and wearability.

Which leads to a more uncomfortable question: what’s the point of it in a world where nobody wants to buy well-made garments anymore?
A theatre piece with no purpose?

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A point on sexiness: Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford, FW26 Paris Fashion Week 

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Gucci vs Tom Ford:  from mere provocation to seduction – what marks the difference


We recently explored the theme of identity at Milano Fashion Week, where Demna made a point about sexiness at Gucci.

It was the worst version of it.

As the fashion caravan moved to the Fall/Winter 26.27 Paris Fashion Week, we witnessed another interpretation—one that stunned for its precision and beauty. A perfect execution.

Demna’s debut was, undeniably, an ugly spectacle. He replicated the Balenciaga formula of distortion and cynicism, repurposing even the Tom Ford–era archives in a way that felt superficial and cheap. If his intention was to hold a mirror up to a grotesque contemporary aesthetic, he succeeded. But the question lingers: beyond provocation, what was the point?

For a brand in a serious downturn, the shortcut to quick sales has always been the most literal and commercial version of sex. But is provocation all that remains?

At Fall/Winter 26 Paris Fashion Week, Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford delivered a definitive answer.

He offered a completely different point on sexiness — a masterclass in elegance. Every detail felt precise: the cast, the music, the design, the tailoring.

Inside an all-white box, models of all ages wandered through a minimalist setting where tailoring and glamour came alive through a refined sense of style and colour. The show opened with a persistent sound that gradually intensified with the notes of Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 — poignant piano and violin — ushering in an atmosphere of effortless seduction.

Sensuality emerged through androgyny and a play of opposites: razor-sharp masculine suits contrasted with the barest styling — a tiny belt on naked skin — and tapered, feminine evening gowns.

“My language here is that of seduction,” Ackermann stated. “Hard and soft. Sharp and enveloping.”

In fact, all contrasts emerged beautifully. With class. (Watch the show here).

Midway through the show, the words and music of The Beloved took over, underscoring the show’s ethos until the end:

Let’s come together / Right now / Oh yeah / In sweet harmony.

Final thoughts


At FW26 Paris Fashion Week, Haider Ackermann didn’t simply design clothes for Tom Ford; he created a sensual universe.

He proved his ability to evolve the brand while remaining faithful to its core DNA of desire and glamour. It was, without question, one of the most beautiful shows of the season. In doing so, he made a point on sexiness — quietly demonstrating to Mr Gvasalia the difference between sensuality and vulgarity. And he reminded us that sexiness is an art, not a provocation.

In a world increasingly defined by absurdity — where even governments announce war to the soundtrack of the Macarena — Ackermann offered a rare moment of beauty, elegance, and poise.

Let’s come together / Right now / Oh yeah / In sweet harmony.

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Ujoh SS26: Elegance in the Anthropocene

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At Paris Fashion Week, Ujoh showcases a wardrobe for a feverish planet


For its SS26 presentation at Paris Fashion Week, Ujoh reimagined elegance for a world grown warmer.

The Japanese summer has become unforgiving. A climatic reality that now grips cities from Paris to Milan to New York. As the air grows thick and the heat intensifies, the very notion of getting dressed can feel like a burden. Yet Ujoh resists this surrender, proposing instead a summer uniform that is light, ingenious, and elegant. A way to maintain one’s style even as the climate becomes more extreme.

A marine inspiration runs throughout the collection. Sailor collars gain structure, fastenings recall a plastron, and trousers open like sails. The house’s signature layering evolves into a study in breathability, while between skirts and trousers, new hybrid forms emerge from a design process that allows unexpected volumes to blossom.

Ujoh SS26 at Paris Fashion Week


The fabrics embody the essence of summer. Ujoh’s tailoring becomes lighter, realised in airy gabardine, fluid poplin, and cotton and linen blended with rayon to preserve a graceful drape. Mesh and technical textiles are strategically incorporated to create zones of ventilation. Every detail serves daily life. Pieces are easy to care for, practical, and perfectly suited to the pace of urban Japan, without ever yielding to mere informality.

Each piece stands strong on its own by design, yet together they compose the unique harmony that defines Ujoh. A shirt unfolds into a boat neckline; a mesh top is re-conceived as a polo; a scarf-cap reinvents the accessory as a modular object.

The sea returns as a recurring motif. A net-dress reimagines a fishing net as delicate lace, while embroideries sketch the outlines of tropical leaves. Stripes evoke the classic seaside elegance of Italian lidos and retro swimwear. Against the skin, silver jewellery—cuffs, bangles, rings—captures the shimmer of water, echoing the simple, soothing joys of summer.

The collection’s palette remains rooted in the urban landscape: a sober trilogy of black, white, and beige that is radically Japanese and unbroken by the heat. Within this framework, Ujoh inscribes a singular note: a distinctive blue, poised between a lilac-grey and a deep navy, which serves as the signature hue for the collection.

Final thoughts


What emerges from this sober palette and thoughtful construction is nothing less than a blueprint for elegance in the Anthropocene. This collection rejects the false choice between style and practicality. Instead, Ujoh SS26 sketches a summer that is both resilient and joyful, where lightness means not surrender but vitality. Clothing that breathes, adapts, and elevates the everyday. True to its DNA, the house offers a silhouette that is fully dressed, deeply elegant, and universally relevant for the world we now inhabit.

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