Some designers at Paris Fashion Week choose subtle storytelling, stately venues to create an enchanting, calm atmosphere. Some take a thoughtful look into a House’s archives. And some focus on the simplicity of the designs rather than any crazy props. But not Thom Browne. No. He literally slaps his storytelling into your face with a loud, defiant scream and a metallic, oval-shaped score paddle banging against your head. Looking at the Women’s and Men’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, it takes you not even a single second to realise this has something to do with aliens.
That’s at least what the audience on Monday at Karl Lagerfeld’s former residence, the Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo, must have thought once the first model stepped out on the runway: dressed in a grey suit with a total of six sleeves and six legs, short black leather gloves, and a huge glittery green alien mask with its distinctive black eyes. Suddenly, the hôtel particulier, built in 1706, transformed into the stage of a futuristic, surreal story that stretches from early 18th-century Parisian neoclassicism to the year 3000. A story that might be the nightmare of many conspiracy theorists — a story about space invaders using human hospitality and inhabiting earthlings’ homes, trying to adapt, analyse, and judge. Even though the model’s raised, revealed hand appears humble, whispering in a language unknown to the human ear: “We’re coming in peace.”
Through this, Browne’s designs become a uniform for every being – both alien and human – asking what’s real, what’s surreal? What belongs to whom? It’s that edge between the ordinary and the outer limits, and a reflection of the past that paves the way to a new future. It’s the perfect concept to do what the US-American fashion designer is best at: questioning traditional proportions, high-quality craftsmanship, precise tailoring, and theatrical runway shows, all while sticking to his roots: suits. A product he started selling in 2001 in a small New York-based ‘by appointment’ shop.
So basically, what he did this time was deconstruct these suits to create paranormal, exaggerated shapes, reconstructing humanoid bodies and ways of dressing. Letting lines and seams shift ever so slightly so that classic ideas become something new, never seen before. Letting them morph and evolve with embroidered, layered, and multiplied fabrics that stretched the designer’s classic techniques of the past two decades to their limits.
Seersucker, for example: a crepe fabric characterised by its three-dimensional, crinkled surface texture and a name that comes from the Persian ‘shir o shakkar,’ which means ‘milk and sugar.’ There is selvedge patchwork, woven repp stripes, yellow satin ribbon tweed found in skirts and full suit ensembles, colour-blocked platform boots that combine nubuck and suede, sterling silver grommets, or sheer, almost invisible tulle tops embellished with red, white, blue, or black crystals and micro sequins, forming something that looks like the painting of a human muscular naked torso.
There are low drop-waists that curve in, pleats, ties repurposed as belts, hems with a structured flare, a surreal number of additional arms where no arms should be, and sport coats with assertive silhouettes revealing shoulders that are twisted forward, resembling raglans. There are huge cardigans tied around the model’s upper back, white shirts with surreally high collars, and endless layers of blazers, vests, and coats. There’s the Hector bag, a cute leather dachshund and small companion that naively follows the visitors around. Boots that look like socks and stilettos. And, if you look closely, you can also find one of Browne’s signature pieces: the cricket sweater, just this time, shrunken and cropped so that it makes you wonder which size the aliens really do have. Are they actually giants, too tall for human clothes? Or tiny and therefore too small? How would an earthling wear it?
And while this runway journey of exaggerated shapes continued and the audience was asking itself all these questions, everything was tied together through these glittery green alien masks that we know from reports of 1950s-era UFO sightings, pop culture, and comics. As well as through those metallic, oval-shaped score paddles that feature a small digital illuminating number, as if the aliens were secretly (or not so secretly) rating human behaviour.
Overall, Browne’s designs look as if the space invaders were trying to dress like humans but messed it up a bit. You know, layering too many coats on top of each other, placing the ties in the wrong place, wearing enormous bubble skirts in daily life. As I said, messing it up a bit, but also, to be honest, being more stylish than humans actually are. Because here, the aliens don’t listen to gender norms constructed by earthlings. Male models wear skirts. Female models wear these torso embroideries that seem to depict a men’s upper body. So, in the end, at the finale of the show in Paris, the audience might have also been wondering who’s actually judging whom? The aliens us? Or are we secretly judging the aliens? A question that, if pursued further, could even be a metaphor for other minorities (on earth, not in space). And here’s a last fun fact for you: these green alien heads developed from an originally grey image. So just thinking, Browne could’ve done the masks in his signature colour as well.
