Dear Shaded Viewers,
A tulip doesn’t just bloom in Cem Cinar’s world—it digs its way down to the bone. This Fall/Winter 2026 collection is a descent into the roots: into family, heritage, and the hushed ateliers where craft survives in the hands of devoted artisans.
In this season, the tulip becomes a compass for identity, tracing a line from Turkey to the Netherlands and on to Paris, mirroring the designer’s own trajectory. The flower’s journey is translated into garments that feel at once protective and porous, like a sanctuary you can wear—tailoring that shelters the body, silks that move like a quiet exhale.
Tailoring is the first language spoken: elongated coats, precise jackets, and trousers cut with a measured hand that knows exactly when to loosen its grip. At times, garments turn themselves inside out, revealing removable linings that slip off and become independent pieces—layers that shift, molt, and evolve as if the wearer were shedding skins. Seams follow root-like trajectories, panels stretch along the body like stems, and elongated cuts carve vertical lines that tether each look back to the tulip’s anatomy.
Color oscillates between shadow and flare. Black is the constant—an anchor that grounds the collection—while flashes of color erupt through prints and fabric interventions, echoing the suspended drama of Dutch Golden Age still lifes. Light and shadow become materials in themselves, composing silhouettes as if each look were a painting hovering between dusk and candlelight.
The floral prints, developed with Amsterdam-based artist Anita Jolles, vibrate between botany and gesture. Her expressive, painterly compositions capture the organic movement of plants mid-breath, preserving that split second before a petal falls or a stem bends. On the body, these prints feel less like decoration and more like living organisms clinging to the surface of the fabric.
Fabric choices intensify the dialogue between shelter and fluidity. Corduroys, trench cottons, and vegan leathers form a kind of armor—weighty, grounded, almost architectural. Against them, soft printed silks pool and drift, breaking the severity with movement. Tri-material constructions—stretch ribs fused with black velvet, for instance—create tactile friction within a single garment, inviting the hand to read the clothes like Braille. Subtle nods to Ottoman craftsmanship surface in the richness of textures and meticulous detailing, suggesting a heritage embedded rather than announced.
Accessories extend the root system beyond the garments themselves. Ceramic jewelry, created in collaboration with Berlin–Paris-based artist Phuong Anh Lê, takes on sculptural, root-like forms, as if fragments of underground networks had been unearthed and glazed. The ongoing partnership with Italian glove maker SQUILLACE1923 pushes gloves into the realm of garment: one-piece designs wrap and elongate the silhouette, turning a gesture—a hand extended, a sleeve lifted—into a moment of theatre that reveres traditional glove-making craft.
Geography is not just a backdrop but a fabric sewn into the collection: pieces are crafted between Paris, the Netherlands, and Turkey, mapping a triangle of influence and intimacy. Each look feels like a meeting point between these places and the people who inhabit them, an archive of their exchanges translated into seams, prints, and cuts. FW26 ultimately reads as a study in tension: dark and bright, structured and fluid, protective yet open, always returning to the question of what keeps us rooted even as we move.
Behind this exploration stands Cem Cinar himself, a designer of Turkish origin raised in the Netherlands and now based in Paris, whose biography is already inscribed in the clothes. After a foundation in Visual Arts and Design at ARTEZ in Arnhem, he relocated to Paris to study New Couture at ESMOD, sharpening an eye trained on construction and experiment. Internships at Rick Owens and five years at Y/PROJECT immersed him in an evolving vocabulary of unconventional elegance, a language he has since made his own. Since 2020, he has served as Creative Director of LARUICCI, where he introduced and defined the ready-to-wear collections before re-launching his eponymous label. His work now weaves historical dress codes and multicultural heritage into garments that blur the boundary between experimental couture and luxury ready-to-wear, precise yet always grounded in narrative.
Later,
Diane
