Kiko Kostadinov. Fall/Winter 2026/2027 - Paris Fashion Week.

 

(Images:  Kiko Kostadinov 2026)

Deanna and Laura Fanning offer once again, their tailored avant-garde array akin to their mix and match stylizations, since designing for Kiko Kostadinov's women's collections in 2018, as a unique take on the eccentricity of piecing an ad hoc outfit together, with ease.  Yet, their Fall 2026 collection poses a more serious direction for the sisters, that being a less eclectic posture, while aligning with an outdoor, and militaristic styling.  And there is no doubt that Kostadinov, who designs the men's collections, is associated with the more futuristic, avant-garde more than not.  Akin to costume design, which doesn't necessary mean outlandish, but rather, themed around science fiction and postmodern aspects, that some of the more risque designers of the 1980s up until the 2000s experimented with, and since have petered  out, and been replaced by the current modernist looks we see on the runway roday.  And the Fannings, who,  as mentioned, design the women's collections, offer to a degree,  a lot more functionality, rather than experimental impression.  Which shows in their latest collection. 

And be it the Fanning's have sleeked up the collection, while adding their version of those distinctly capricious Kiko Kostadinov styles, with a lot more of an edgy and rugged look than previous collections.   Themed around the camouflaged bird watchers, and drawing from the late Michel Foucault's, "Panopticism", of the "watcher and the watched ", particularly relevant to the surveillance culture that has entrapped us all, and willingly or unwillingly we have subscribed to its reflection of expose and control, albeit through the 24 hour digital relays.  But, do animals know they are being watched?  More so birds?  And can humans,  in a ethologically sense, deceive itself, that they control the watched?  While holding exclusive power within this digital realm?  As deluded as that seems, it is the most seductive allure, that we are the ones with visual control.  Not the other way around.   What if we are all being watched, and don't realize it? 

Yet, with philosophical cues inside and possible paranoia, the Fannings have definitely offered a more direct, and intense collection, collaborating with Oakley, with goggle, wrap around like protective sunglasses, and their now tailored fusion of the avant-garde, into a homage to the layering of birds feathers, symmetrically flowing pleats, tough looking camouflage, and what appears to be gun flaps on some of the cropped jackets.  Highlighting, in a not so subtle way the aggressive overture of the styles on show, despite the birdsong as a soundtrack for the runway show, the Fanning's past of colorful quirkiness of previous collections, has been overshadowed (although it has appeared to be lurking in the background) with something darker.

A sign of our times?

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(A. Glass 2026)