July 9, 2025 |
Becoming was an apt title for Robert Wun’s autumn/winter 2026 couture collection. For the past few seasons, the Hong Kong-born, London-based designer has been steadily carving out his own space within the sartorial landscape by creating garments that burst with creativity. His imagination has been proven to run so wild that he’s, at times, had brushes with virality. For SS24, for example, Wun sent a bright red gown down the runway, sporting a faceless figure that perched behind the model’s shoulder, seemingly sewing her into the garment’s bodice. Clips of the look whizzed around the fash-o-sphere like a balloon post-pop. Whilst Wun explained that Becoming aimed to “translate the ritual of dressing into a storyline,” in his show notes, for onlookers, it could be interpreted as more than that. The pieces, like Wun described, traced “the profound role fashion plays in life’s most significant moments,” but also marked one of Wun’s most ambitious and exquisite offerings yet. This season felt like a “becoming” of its own for Wun, one that showed him as one of the most exciting couturiers on the schedule.
Silhouettes riffed on the concept of being “half-dressed”, with one look severing a flowing white skirt from its bodice, trading its standard drop from the waist for a flow that descended from one hip. Look 7, one of the sexier looks in the collection, included a skirt with a slit down its centre, the fabric unfurling off to the side as if being unzipped. Suit jackets and shirts were carried like bags, their forms stiff, like they were stuffed with invisible bodies.
As past collections have suggested, Wun is a fan of gothic, sometimes quite spooky, aesthetics. This remained a prominent feature in this collection, as fake arms warped around and protruded from shoulders to hold up structured dresses and wispy veils that slid behind models as they walked. Wun hinted at the gruesome, but in the elevated way only he knows how, with blood-red handprints and spore-shaped growths built from crystals spattering a number of the looks. While continuing to lean on the codes central to his craft, Wun’s AW26 outing proved his world-building collections can still both surprise and delight.
Photography courtesy of Robert Wun.
