LEMAIRE’S WINTER GRAMMAR

 

    image and video courtesy ©Lemaire

Paris in January, a city breathing mist from its stone lungs, provided the frame for Lemaire’s Fall/Winter 2025/2026. What unfolded was not a spectacle, but a grammar of quiet elegance, garments cut to move with the body and to be lived in, rather than merely displayed. Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham hovered invisibly in the wings, not in costume but in gesture. These were clothes conceived for living movement, not static tableaux. 

The collection opened in restraint: stone, taupe, coffee, grey, navy, and black tones formed its architecture. These earthbound shades were interrupted by sharp accents of scarlet, cobalt, indigo, pale yellow, lavender, and vermilion. The contrasts did not overwhelm but punctuated, like sudden notes in an otherwise measured score, awakening the eye within the calm. 

Fabrics revealed themselves as a dialogue between density and lightness. There were rich wools, alpaca and yak blends, elongated knit collars that rose almost to the face, their weight counterposed with silk sets that seemed to glide, satin surfaces catching and releasing light, twill carrying its structure quietly, and leather rendered with sculptural precision. Coated and lacquered finishes lent sheen, as though surfaces were designed to hold light as much as shadow. 

Silhouettes oscillated between discipline and looseness. Shoulders were clear and assertive; waists gently cinched. Outerwear in leather and wool imposed a structured look, while dresses were twisted and folded, skirts billowed into rounded volumes, and trousers were tied at the ankle with a dancer’s pragmatism. Asymmetry and bias cuts suggested garments that moved even when at rest. Layering appeared deliberate yet unforced, coats over fine tops, suspenders glimpsed beneath, arrangements that felt lived, not staged. 

Accessories extended the language of clothing into objects and talismans. From the workshop of Carl Auböck came pendants fashioned as magnifying glasses, shells, or small tools, objects that blurred utility and ornament, carried less as decoration than as companions. Bags appeared in familiar Lemaire forms, the Croissant and the Gear, sculptural and tactile, soft architecture to accompany the garments. 

What lingered was not the impression of costume but of intimacy. These clothes did not belong to the theatre of the runway; they belonged to the theatre of the everyday, market streets at dawn, offices, evenings, apartments, lives. They asked not to astonish, but to accompany, to let fabric, cut, and colour participate quietly in the rhythm of being. In Fall/Winter 2025/2026, Lemaire continued to pursue the paradox at the heart of its philosophy: to achieve presence through discretion, to whisper so precisely that the whisper becomes undeniable.