Craig Green SS26 Explores a Familiar Yet Uncanny Aesthetic
Transforming utilitarian codes into garments shaped by memory and emotion.
Summary
- Craig Green’s SS26 collection explores transformation and familiarity
- 1960s prints, deconstructed tailoring and dreamlike layers evoke both nostalgia and reinvention
- The collection blends poetic symbolism with a déjà vu effect, reflecting personal evolution
For Craig Green’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, the designer brings a touch of his British roots to Paris Fashion Week, casting his signature utilitarian codes against the romance of the City of Light. The collection explores the delicate tension between transformation and familiarity, blending the intimate with the uncanny. With silhouettes that reflect Green’s signature sensibilities, garments appear both recognizable and subtly estranged — like “a lover’s favorite record played backwards.” Viewers are invited to “see anew,” tracing fresh contours in forms that feel at once grounded and dreamlike.
From the opening look, a friction between repetition and renewal pulses throughout.
Uniform codes dissolve into fluid layering; sharp tailoring morphs into slouchier, improvisational structures. Prints draw cues from the 1960s, blending various nautical-inspired stripes with a rich medley of floral motifs — evoking a sartorial spirit akin to The Beatles. Deconstructed design details further enhance its archaic spirit, manifested through loose-hanging strips of fabric, dangling drawcords of varying lengths, artfully destroyed knits and unruly plackets scattered across military-inspired tunics and jackets.
This visual rhythm creates the effect of déjà vu — everything the same, everything changed. The collection is rich in poetic symbolism and emotional texture. Structured collars act as subtle metaphors for connection, hinting at the push and pull between being “collared to something, collared to someone.” Many of the looks seem to carry memory within their seams. From dusty palettes, worn finishes and garments that gather like “sand in pockets and hems,” evoking both nostalgia and continuity. Sound, referenced abstractly in the show notes, plays a conceptual role in the collection’s aura— it “colors everything,” suggesting the synesthetic layering of experience, identity, and movement through time.
This visual rhythm deliberately creates an effect of déjà vu — “everything the same, everything changed.” The collection is rich in poetic symbolism and profound emotional texture. Structured collars, for instance, act as subtle metaphors for connection, hinting at the inherent push and pull of being “collared to something, collared to someone.” Each look seems to carry memory in its threads, with dusty palettes and softened finishes that recall garments shaped by time, like “sand gathered in pockets and hems.”
Sound, referenced obliquely in the show notes, is treated conceptually here — it “colours everything,” embodying the layering of experience and identity as temporal echo. Craig Green’s SS26 collection reads as both excavation and celebration — it’s an exploration of personal evolution that doesn’t require erasure of the past.
