By Louise Daniel
For Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Fall/Winter 2026, we are pulled into the endless abyss of a black hole. CDG boys transform into psycho creatures, wearing Hannibal Lecter–esque masks and layered suits that defy the common conventions of tailoring. Limitations are fluid in Rei Kawakubo’s universe. Unrestricted abstraction and introspection, as its defining traits, allow this boundless quality to extend beyond the runway—resisting fixed interpretation. Subversion and highly technical tailoring become Kawakubo’s tools, allowing her ideas to exist freely through clothing.
“My energy comes from freedom,” a Comme quote cast in white on this collection’s most distinctive footwear: black leather oxfords with a detachable upper layer—an expert collaboration with Kids Love Gaïté.
This season, Kawakubo taps into the cosmic depth of a black hole as a resounding metaphor to further subvert menswear tailoring. The collection reads as a masterclass in extreme tailoring, rooted in materiality and poignant ideology. Every Comme show is radically distinct yet a connective thread remains, materiality. Each season, CDG introduces innovation sharpened through technical rigor. Up close, it leaves the viewer questioning and lingering.
Crushed velvet, silver lamé, glossed lace, metallic brocade, and layered tweed created a palpable tension between the collection’s tailored silhouettes and its textured surfaces. An expanded iteration of CDG’s signature ruching appeared in hanging blazers and boyish suit ensembles in Looks 2, 21, and 24. Proportions were once again reconfigured through billowing contours, where traditional menswear silhouettes functioned as structural foundations rather than final forms. Suiting rules were dismantled and reconstructed under Kawakubo’s vision. Deconstructed coats were sliced in half or re-layered with additional panels.
Comme des Garçons Fall/Winter 2026 (Images courtesy of Louise Daniel)
A remix of Michel Polnareff tracks, “Goodbye Marylou” and “Love Me, Please Love Me,” produced by Ugo Nardini (ADC303), infused the show with a haunting intensity. The models, more like characters rather than figures, embraced the somber atmosphere with distressed hair by Takeo Arai and psycho masks by Shin Murayama. As a final gesture, the dark monochrome palette gave way to visions in white—still masked—emerging from the black hole. Suiting here softened through a shift in textile use: silk, light corduroy, and even fur. White proved as essential as black, reinforcing the notion that hope follows darkness.
Kawakubo herself avoids historical reference. Nostalgia is never the point—newness is. A collection without a fixed origin allows the clothes themselves to explore deeper terrain. In this sense, a CDG collection ultimately references only itself. As stated in the show notes, always brief and open to interpretation, let’s get out of this black hole. CDG Homme Plus Fall/Winter 2026 stands as an introspective beacon of hope. In a world enveloped by darkness, hope arrives.
Comme des Garçons Fall/Winter 2026 (Images courtesy of Louise Daniel)