Days after Julian Klausner’s Dries Van Noten men’s show in June, sarongs were trending in the Vogue offices. It was summer, yes. Still, we were miles from a beach or the idea of a vacation, and there they were: with pants underneath, or without, lifted straight off the runway and into the real lives of the young people who populate One World Trade Center. They are a smaller-than-small subsection, but all trends start anecdotally, and—wouldn’t you know?—we saw a lot of sarongs on the spring 2026 women’s runways earlier this month in New York.
The women’s collection Klausner showed today will continue the momentum. The idea, he said, was to conjure something “that feels joyful, that feels easy, that feels optimistic.” He landed on surfing. Not a regular pastime of his, but a hobby he wouldn’t mind cultivating: “being around surfers is always a good time,” he said.
Like a wave gathering strength before it curls into the sand, the show built from a beginning in white and cloudy gray (sometimes with matching monochrome beads) to a crescendo of graphic, pulsating color: lime green and hot pink, tomato red and coral. The shapes were lifted from scuba gear and beach caftans, second-skin or breezy. To me, a striped knit robe and contrasting stripe wetsuit shortie somehow evoked Fast Times at Ridgemont High’s Jeff Spicoli and his ubiquitous baja hoodie, but when I mentioned the movie, Klausner drew a blank. That’s hardly a wonder, it’s a good 10 years older than he is.
Klausner isn’t a moodboard kind of designer anyway. He spent six years working alongside Dries Van Noten; the aesthetic is under his skin, and it’s moving to his beat now: the brights are a little brighter, the prints more pronounced, and the shapes are shorter or sheerer. Younger, you could call it. But the old guard could leave content today, too. A bullion-embroidered cropped black blazer and a red hibiscus beaded pencil skirt would strike a very happy medium with the addition of a tank or a little T-shirt.
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