By Filza Marri
Marie-Adam Leenaerdt’s new collection, Before Sunset, staged in an airport-like limbo, was less about arrival or departure and more about what happens in between the thresholds, motion, and the waiting. This is what happens when minimalism grows a spine. It is sharp, sensual, and just a little bit smug. Like that Parisian woman who boards her flight without saying goodbye. The kind of collection that makes you want to say, mon dieu, she really did that.
This season, Adam-Leenaerdt boarded her own flight. Trench coats, skirts, slip dresses, those tired emblems of “wardrobe essentials” were reimagined as modular, transformative forms. A trench splits at the waist to become a skirt; twin slips are sewn back-to-back, inseparable. It is intelligent deconstruction at its most deliberate. A floral dress came paired with a structured clutch that opened like a travel wallet. Tailored trousers were re-cut into asymmetrical panels that revealed a single leg mid-stride. There were layers... endless layers. Shirts tucked under dresses, skirts over trousers, jackets over layers. The kind of layering that felt both accidental and intentional, like she was dressing for a flight with a one-bag policy and determined to outsmart luggage limits.
The collection’s mood lived in its title: that fleeting hour before sunset — avant le crépuscule. Neutral palettes of beige, navy, and shadow black were illuminated by the soft shimmer of sequins and the liquidity of mesh. These contrasts embodied her thesis: that clothes, like time, resist containment. She paired velvet with nylon, structure with transparency, because why not mix a little drama with your departure gate? Then came the hits: a sculptural red column dress with a side slit and glittered tea pink tote in hand; a half-black, half-yellow power split ensemble that looked like business class meeting turbulence. Dresses cinched with clothes-pegs, exaggerated totes pulling down sleek silhouettes, very playful. She is reconstructing the wardrobe for women who have somewhere to be.
Before Sunset may be her most coherent statement yet: a meditation on transition, on how we move, dress, and exist between places. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is not trying to reinvent the woman who wears her clothes, she is making her more aware of herself in motion.
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt Spring/Summer 2026: Looks 5, 8, 15, 26, 27, 30, 39, 47 (Images courtesy of Marie Adam-Leenaerdt)
