Author @feldmez
Haute couture in the Spring 2026 season unfolded between extremes. On one end, an almost ethereal lightness featherweight Chanel silhouettes, chiffon touches that seemed to weigh no more than a breath. On the other, monumentality and the gravity of meaning. At the very center of this latter axis stood Robert Wun, a designer who once again proved that fashion can be not only clothing, but also shield, manifesto, and weapon all at once.
His show felt like an entry into another worlda post catastrophe realm, a vision of the future where beauty and danger coexist within a single body. At the Lido cabaret, the runway was encircled by a wall of monitors on which storm clouds churned endlessly, illuminated by flashes of lightning. The set was not a backdrop; it was a warning. A prelude to the emotional and visual tension that was about to unfold.
Wun has long operated at the intersection of fashion and sculpture, but in this collection his language became distinctly radical. The silhouettes appeared not so much made by human hands as conjured by an imagination steeped in science fiction and dystopian visions of the future. Face engulfing collars, crystal masks, exaggeratedly anatomical breastplates, sharp shoulders, and aerodynamic hats formed figures that could be witches, warriors, nomads from the future, or heroes of a forgotten fantasy saga.
The designer played with form with near-obsessive precision. Long skirts flared downward like fishtails, ribbons trailed behind the models like traces of battle, and in one look a sword appeared literally piercing the heart. This was not provocation for provocation’s sake. It was a symbol. A fight. A wound. Survival.
The surfaces of the garments felt unreal. Some looked like molten metal, others like objects produced on a 3D printer. It is no wonder that, looking at the images, one might assume artificial intelligence had played a role in the creative process. And yet, this was couture handwork pushed to its absolute limits most strikingly embodied in a monumental white bridal gown embroidered with millions of glass beads and weighing as much as a small human being. Literal weight and symbolic weight converged in a single object.
Among the accessories were elements teetering on the edge of surrealism: bracelets with additional hands, forms that seemed to mutate, as if the body itself were merely a starting point for further evolution. Wun consistently detonates the notion of the classical silhouette, creating fashion that does not embellish, but transforms.
Ahead of the show, the Hong Kong born designer revealed that he had mentally returned to his 2012 graduate collection, created during his studies at London College of Fashion a time when imagination was wilder, research less constrained, and the creative process slower and more intuitive. This return was not sentimental. It was honest. And painful.
Because this collection is not only an aesthetic vision, but also a commentary on the condition of contemporary creatives: on the tension between art and business, on the pressure of creating in a world of perpetual crisis, on the necessity of being at once an artist, a strategist, and a warrior.
“Every contemporary creative is a warrior,” Wun seems to say through his designs a warrior fighting both internal and external battles, struggling to preserve their own voice. Haute couture, in his interpretation, becomes a space of freedom the one place where a designer can be fully themselves, without compromise.
For haute couture the most refined, the most uncompromising expression of fashion has never been for everyone. It is for the brave. And Robert Wun undoubtedly belongs among those who are unafraid to go the furthest.
Photos courtesy of Robert Wun
