In her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Sandy Liang presents a vision of fashion suspended between intimate memories and unfettered imagination. Her designs feel like a love letter to childhood stitched together from keepsakes, trinkets, and overlooked details that, in her hands, become the very core of style. By deliberately pulling from the everyday, Liang gives ordinary objects new meaning: these pieces are not just clothes, but stories woven from fragments of identity we often leave tucked away.
The SS26 collection revolves around the idea of shaping oneself through memory. Toys, tiny treasures, handwritten notes objects that typically sit forgotten in drawers are reimagined on the runway. Liang proves that fashion can function as a living archive of personal experience. In her world, nostalgia is not a retreat into the past but a force that fuels self definition. Each garment evokes emotions tied to youth while simultaneously speaking the language of contemporary fashion, one that embraces both fantasy and authenticity.
Liang draws inspiration from Huguette Clark’s miniature dollhouses, Studio Ghibli’s Arrietty, and the life simulation aesthetics of games like The Sims. Within this blend of whimsy and sharp observation emerges her distinctive narrative. Familiar, mundane items buttons, pouches, slippers undergo a couture transformation. Standout pieces include reimagined Tabi shoes adorned with dancing rabbits and butter yellow skirts with built in PVC pockets designed to display childhood keepsakes. What we usually hide, Liang elevates into the focal point of style, asking us to reconsider the emotional power of the everyday.
At the center of the collection lies an ethos Liang describes as the “grandma from Chinatown.” It’s a philosophy of dressing that places less importance on labels or silhouettes and more on how clothing is worn and the story it tells. Her reinventions include ballet flats transformed into pink-and-black handbags and princess style dresses marked with subtle princess seams. Through these choices, girlhood emerges as something fluid, playful, and redefinable. Liang celebrates unconventional pairings and deeply personal accents that give fashion its individuality.
Among the collection’s most striking details are the oversized care labels, resembling personal planners more than maintenance instructions. Handwritten mantras “Be present” and “Always speak kindly to yourself” turn into design elements that double as intimate affirmations. These inscriptions reflect the gap between how the world perceives us and how we perceive ourselves, encouraging wearers to play within that in between space. It’s fashion as a conversation, an invitation to rewrite identity through gentle reminders stitched into the fabric.
SS26 balances whimsical exaggeration oversized, misplaced buttons, or transparent slippers covered in stickers with a thoughtful meditation on the role of objects in shaping identity. Liang’s clothes function both as joyful play and quiet manifesto: garments that act as time machines, summoning memories while also building bridges to a future where self expression carries ultimate value.
The Spring/Summer 2026 collection is more than an aesthetic experiment; it is a poetic attempt to capture how keepsakes and seemingly trivial objects can profoundly influence our lives. Through her work, Liang demonstrates that fashion can be a diary intimate, emotional, and written in one’s own language.
Photos courtesy of Filippo Fior
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