Dear Shaded Viewers,
For nearly half a century, Jean Claude Jitrois has been the renegade couturier who dares to sculpt desire and insubordination from the seductive material of leather. Hailing from the sunlit coast of Nice, his journey to Paris, punctuated by the wild spirit of Saint-Tropez, reads like a cinematic odyssey—a psychomotor therapist transformed into a master of the body’s language. Jitrois revolutionized the fashion landscape by pioneering stretch leather, a sensual second skin that challenged the boundaries between garment and flesh, comfort and provocation. Each chapter of Jitrois’s story is marked by reinvention: choosing the forbidden, celebrating the thrill of escape, and redefining the contours of elegance with every passing decade.
From day one, the Jitrois brand rejected predictable itineraries. The designer’s own road trip—through shadows, through light—is echoed in the collections, which always embrace risk, desire, and reinvention. At every crossroad, Jitrois faces the unknown and chooses excess, seduction, and emblazoned liberty. The label’s DNA is stitched with cinematic references—a heritage of rebellion and glamour that continues to seduce and shock the fashion world.
“Freedom has no destination. Only the road,” reads the SS26 manifesto, encapsulating not just the collection, but the very ethos of Jitrois. The Spring Summer 2026 collection is an existential road trip, nourished by filmic visions—the liberating spirit of Thelma & Louise, the dangerous energy of The Doom Generation, and the decadent, hypnotic allure of La Dolce Vita. Each reference pulsates through the collection, imbuing the silhouettes with cinematic electricity and hedonistic shadow.
This season’s woman is magnetic and relentless. Sculpted curves and assertive lines create dresses like armor—incendiary and untamed. Sharp biker jackets slice the air in graphic black and white. Sheer fabrics dissolve boundaries and ignite forbidden desire. Every look is an explosion, a fierce spark on the open highway of personal emancipation.
Jitrois’s technical mastery animates each piece: signature stretch leather wraps the body in supple freedom, while plong lambskin delivers unparalleled brilliance and tactile pleasure. Embroidery is laced into the collection like tattoos—flickering, ephemeral, provocative. The spirit of the house is found in razor-edged tailoring, a declaration of elegant rebellion.
The palette follows the trajectory of a journey—absolute black for sleepless nights, dazzling white for fresh beginnings, and bursts of fuchsia, scarlet, electric blue for an adrenaline rush through imagined landscapes. Mineral hues draw the eye and memory back to the primal nakedness of skin itself, reminding us that every destination begins as an origin story.
With SS26, Jean Claude Jitrois writes a new chapter: one where fashion is a bold, sensual road trip, always on the brink of vertigo and revelation. Freedom here is perpetual motion—challenging, erotic, and dazzlingly alive. These creations are not just garments; they are declarations of radical, magnetic selfhood.
Later,
Diane
