Craig Green. Spring 2026 - Paris Fashion Week

(Images: Craig Green 2025)

I believe in ghosts, well at least as a metaphorical concept of the past that should be put to rest and then released.  In necromantic studies, it is akin on assisting a trapped spirits, embedded into the structural remains, onto to its eternal travel, as light, photons, to be disbursed into the Universe.  Beyond any conscious entity, to which we as material beings, have attached to them our memories, and therefore we also become trapped within its past suffering.  They do not want to be here, and we must let them go.

Craig Green the U.K. designer, who has also experimented with a version of his own unique esoterica for his collections, centered around the sea, as an encompassing and mysterious abyss.  Which as human beings, spirituality is extremely important for our well being, and it can come in all manifestations.  As spirituality moves well beyond the oppressive theocratic, and the rigidity of humanism, to be part of creative, and by that we are very much influenced by the structuralism all around us.   And Green's Spring 2026 collection offers more insight into his spiritual realm.

Ironically, Green's latest esoterically and spiritually tinged collection was held at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris, the once epicenter of French Humanism and the benchmark of the Enlightenment period, where physicist Léon Foucault proved in 1850 that the Earth spins around on its own axel from West to East, with his famous "Foucault Pendulum" experiment.  But, what a supercharged chamber of past resonation that venue would be, with over 230 years of history which has passed through its walls.  Yet, Green's contemporary elements are on show here, more so the 20th Century rock and roll icons "The Beatles", who merged out of the late 1950s, and encapsulated, by the 1960s and 1970s, the epitome of counterculture, at least with the group later experimenting with Eastern Spirituality, obviously inspired by the counterculture of the time, by use the of psychedelic experiences, that being LSD.   And for the inspiration of the The Beatles for Green's Spring 2026 collection, he commented on how the famed British pop group rise to fame was "otherworldly", and they nearly were, when the late Carl Sagan, wanted to put a Beatles song, "Here Comes The Sun" on the Voyager golden records (EMI declined), which would have certainly made them immortal, well at least the music, as Voyager will travel onward for the next million plus years.

Green's postmodern, psychedelic trip for his latest array works a charm, from 'flower power' 1960s esque flows, through to his seafaring  doomsday cult, who worship the oceans, which may indeed end up engulfing the Earth one day due to climate change.  And in a rather disconcerting, yet captivating way, the models had small LED lights positioned over their eyes, illuminating, maybe symbolically, their life force, which can always be seen within the eyes, glowing bright, as the walk the runway.  Also noted is Green's tribal imprints, seen in some of the pattern work, tassels and stylized shawl jackets.  The various colored handkerchiefs hanging from the model's mouths, are supposed to represent Green's interest in early necromantic practices of channeling a ghost through a living medium, thus the spiritual ectoplasm was emitted from their mouths.

___

(A.Glass 2025)