David Koma. Fall 2026 - lookbook

(Images: David Koma 2026)

Is hedonism the continuation of a counter culture?  Or a tandem part of counterculture?  And did we really hold back centralist neoliberalism with this well into the 1980s, thanks to the glorious 1970s?  Then Gen X (and Y) blew sexuality up in the 1990s to date, from collapsed social networks replaced by staring at mobile phones, all within their collective anxiety.  The sociological idea inserted here, is that we maybe indeed emulating a variant of the 1970s as I write this, sans the libreational overflow from the 1960s.  In other words we are in a state of social, political, environmental decline without a counterculture buffer, that very well may stop all of us from falling into the annihilating abyss.  And can we, deep in our psyches conjure it back?

David Koma doesn't try to answer these questions, nor offer a condescending take on what could actually will set us free, and yet, it might be re-owning sexuality again, wrangling it from the clutches of commodified expectations, via the digital world, where the watcher has become the watched, or as the late J.G Ballard once said, "The most prudent and effective method of control is not through surveillance, but through the internalization of the rules."   We're all kinda trapped by own expectations, which all but an digital illusion.  And hedonism  though expression, could break this trap, to which Koma revealed when asked about his Fall 2026 collection, "I wanted to find that real sense of tension between fragility and discipline"

And Koma has upped the ante once again, with hedonic end-of-the world fucking, as the ultimate protest and disconnection from our self censoring and desire shaping via the digital realm.   With 36 pieces in total, orchestrated around a follow on from his "Supergirl" pre-Fall 2026 lookbook, which despite its hyperreal lenings, actually ended up reworking superhero fetishes to controlling the projection, that we are mostly antiheroes.   The Fall 2026 collection takes a step further by mixing in white swan symbolism, within brutalism architecture, very 1970s esque symbolism, of what a dystopian stark future maybe, or in reverse, might be liberating.  Depending on your perspective of the 1970s and 1980s counterculture ethos, in compared to our steel and glass, prefabricated, current proto-Fascist world, which is not offering change, but stability with oppression, which is, in all of its irony, in a constant state of collapse.  

Black and white contrast, blended duality, bird feathers, silk and sexual energy, within the sleek, stark, and monolith styled backdrop.  Hedonic, sexy and epicurean, redefining desire, without being chained from it.   Sexual power, is not about dominating, it's sharing the chaos, while killing the ego.   Lets bring in the revolution, because the revolution will not be digital. 

Stunning collection from David Koma.

___

(A.Glass 2026)