Vautrait SS26
There is something disarmingly intimate about walking into a Vautrait show. For Spring/Summer 2026, the brand blended reverie and realism in a presentation that felt less like a fashion presentation and more like a private gathering, a salon of stories told in fabric and gesture. The quintessential French It girl, Vautrait’s eternal muse, wandered amongst us. She wasn’t performing, she was simply being.
The It girl is at the heart of the Vautrait design codes. She can pull any of these pieces, a barely structured jacket, a slip trimmed in lace, an unbuttoned silk blouse, and look instantly put together without effort. These non-fussy silhouettes boldly announce their arrival without ever asking for attention. To stand in the audience was to watch the feminine archetype move through her world with that soft defiance only the French seem to possess. As I walked among the installation, I found myself caught between voyeur and participant. What kind of leisurely, sensual, entertaining lives do these women lead, or imagine leading?
Vautrait’s creative language this season unfolded like a meditation on memory and material afterlife. The collection, inspired by fragments of found garments and antique textiles collected over the years, felt as though it had been whispered into existence. “I collect as one might gather stamps, yet without the comfort of sequence or theme,” the house notes read. “Objects arrive as if summoned from different centuries: a sleeve once folded in a grandmother’s wardrobe, a fragment of silk that once brushed another life.” Each piece carried the ghost of another story, a pleated tulle skirt recalling past dances, a corseted bodice built from reclaimed lining silk. Within these gestures lived the idea that beginnings often arrive disguised as remnants. To assemble was not to redesign but to listen, to let dormant fabrics speak again. This slow theatre of return defined the essence of Vautrait SS26. What was old became light agai,; what was forgotten found breath. The notion of novelty dissolved in favor of presence; fashion not as chase, but as communion.
As always with Vautrait, the collection offered not merely aesthetics but a way of seeing and feeling, an Ethics of Dressing. It called us to reimagine our relationship with wardrobe, material, and meaning. The presentation unfolded like a living gallery of women existing between past and potential, each embodying a balance of poise, instinct, and silent rebellion. In the crowd, beneath the soft glow of the lights, I found myself absorbing not just a vision of style, but of time; how it folds, lingers, and wears us differently each day. Vautrait does not design for seasons, it curates constellations of emotion, clothing that bridges memory and modernity.
To love such clothing, perhaps, is to live with eyes open. To dress as an act of awareness. I watched them, these creatures of poise, and perhaps, just for a moment, felt like an It girl myself.
