September 26, 2026 |
The heat was the brief at Sportmax this season, and the collection shown in the courtyard of Palazzo Litta made its case by going against the obvious. Rather than strip clothes back for a warming summer, the house layered them – on the condition that you could see through the layers.
Fine enough to be near-transparent, organza was set over cotton slips, layered to build up colour and drawn into trousers that gathered at the ankle, covering the leg without sealing it off. Jackets lost their sleeves. A collarless blazer in a papyrus tone was worn over bare skin above a pair of the sheer trousers, the coverage pared to a minimum. The palette did its share of the work too – écru, blush and washed-out neutrals, pops of colour pitched at the far end of a hot afternoon.
It was a collection designed on contraction. Leather appeared in a collection about staying cool, and kitten-heel sandals came trimmed in fur for high summer. A red blazer over a red hood over the slimmest black capris held together against all that transparency, and chrome belts let garments hang off the body like fabric off a rail. There were scrunched orange drawstring bags so bright the models seemed to be carrying the sun in one hand, and hems that ran short at the front and long at the back.
None of it treated summer as a matter of taking things off. Sportmax held on to its tailoring, its leather and its point of view. It simply built the coolness back in – a considered, elevated way to dress a woman for a warming world.
Photography courtesy of Sportmax.
