POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF) FW26 Drifts Into the Future
Revealing a new set of On footwear collabs on the runway.
Summary
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POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF)’s FW26 collection titled “Drifter,” explores the concept of constant transition and a rootless existence, framing movement as a liberated creative state rather than a lack of direction.
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Dongjoon Lim navigates the tension between beauty and boredom by pairing technical, anatomical garments with a classical music soundtrack, subverting the rigid discipline of his childhood piano lessons
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The runway debuted the latest evolution of the On collaboration in three new colorways alongside PAF’s own footwear, which utilizes advanced laser-cutting techniques to create skeletal, “New Classic” silhouettes
Dongjoon Lim unveiled POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF)‘s Fall/Winter 2026collection titled “Drifter,” which served as a poetic exploration of transition, framing the act of “drifting” not as a lack of direction, but as a liberated state of existence. Lim navigates the space between the forgotten past and an unforeseeable future, embracing a life without rigid roots to allow for total creative fluidity.
The collection is underpinned by Lim’s “student mindset” and a desire to challenge the rigid structures of his youth. Recalling the discipline of childhood piano lessons, Lim incorporates classical music into the runway experience—a genre he once found stifling, but now utilizes for its ability to spark a tension between beauty and boredom. This friction mirrors the clothes themselves — complex, technical, and purposefully “unfitting.”
Lim’s ultimate objective with “Drifter” is the creation of a “New Classic.” He posits that the history of fashion is simply the evolution of sportswear into formal archetypes. Central to this evolution are the footwear reveals that ground the “Drifter” narrative. The runway saw the continued expansion of the On collaboration, debuting three new colorways that blend high-performance engineering with PAF’s avant-garde aesthetic. These were presented alongside the brand’s own footwear silhouettes, which showcase intricate laser-cutting techniques to create anatomical, skeletal structures.
By dismantling the practical and elevating it through the PAF lens, the collection offers a vision of modern survival gear that will eventually become its own archive. The silhouettes move with the wearer through an “unforeseeable current,” featuring the brand’s signature anatomical panelling and technical layering. As the archive drifts through time, PAF continues to evolve, proving that true innovation occurs only when one is willing to drift a little further into the unknown.
