This season, it has been impossible to avoid the anticipation surrounding designers making their debuts at new houses. Alongside that excitement has come a persistent reminder of the lack of women occupying those top positions. Against this backdrop, for Spring/Summer 2026, co-creative directors Laura and Deanna Fanning, who lead Kiko Kostadinov’s womenswear, presented a collection that felt like an honest and refreshing depiction of what women truly want to wear.
A fusion of architectural shapes, playful fabrics and classic Kiko tones, the sister duo placed the notion of women defining femininity on their own terms at the heart of their vision. The silhouettes played with distortion and balance: bodices that contorted around the torso were paired with hand-dyed, softly draped skirts, while large multifunctional collars snapped up into hoods, casting angular shadows over scarf-hem skirts. Plaid dresses and ikat argyles brought tactility, and a cotton-denim suit impersonating fleece added an unexpected sense of casual allure.
For the Fanning sisters, the process is just as important as the product. Determined to infuse joy and integrity from the outset, they placed mindful craftsmanship at the forefront. Working with mills across Europe, their signature knits reappeared for SS26, this time rendered thinner, layered and lighter, embodying the season’s spirit of renewal.
A key influence came from Christina Ramberg, a central figure of the Chicago Imagists. Ramberg’s paintings of fragmented female forms—heads, hands, torsos—are defined by her meticulous attention to structure and surface. Her exploration of containment and constraint found resonance in the Fannings’ sculptural silhouettes, while inky, hand-drawn prints translated her visual language into textile. Produced in Italian mills, these prints carried a quiet intricacy that grounded the collection’s architectural shapes.
Another reference point was Italian cinema, particularly Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimi, which informed the palette and textures: black leather, roasted browns, muted sky blues and washed lilacs. The result was a collection that moved between toughness and tenderness, a study in how modern femininity can be both self-assured and radical.
With SS26, Laura and Deanna Fanning continue to prove that their approach to womenswear isn’t about spectacle, but about nuance, depth and the continual redefinition of what it means to dress, and design, as women.
