In the grand ballroom of the Chancery Rosewood Hotel transformed into a landscape of voids and planes Roksanda Ilincic marked her twentieth anniversary with a collection that blurred the boundaries between fashion and modernist art. For Spring/Summer 2026, she engaged in a dialogue with the work of Barbara Hepworth, the British sculptor whose organic forms and meditations on mass, space, and emptiness became the collection’s guiding spirit.

The result was a series of garments that felt like wearable installations. A silk-wool trench, its collar removable and its back fanned with fluid panels, embodied transformation and movement. A cocoon coat in bias-cut zibeline enveloped the body with sculptural authority. Tailoring was reimagined as modular architecture: jackets with detachable sleeves, dresses that layered or separated, and pieces designed to invite interaction rather than simply adorn. Materials added to the sensory experience—bonded velvet, raw raffia, and fil coupée—each surface echoing Hepworth’s punctured stone forms in its tactility and play of absence against presence.

Prints extended the conversation with landscapes. Inspired by the riverbanks and reeds surrounding the Hepworth Wakefield, painterly strokes coursed across organza dresses and sculptural skirts supported by crinoline. Color, always central to Roksanda’s vision, carried an emotional weight: cassis with sky blue and cinnamon with Venetian red – unexpected pairings that injected both drama and renewal.

Marking the milestone, Roksanda reintroduced some of her defining silhouettes, the Margot of 2012, the Anya of 2016, and the Catalina of 2022, revived in painterly prints. These re-editions did not read as nostalgia but as evolution: reminders of her enduring codes, now reframed with fresh intent.

There was tension, however, between artistic ambition and wearability. Certain sculptural volumes veered into the realm of installation, at times threatening to overwhelm the body. Yet her modular tailoring and reimagined classics achieved a balance between intellectual rigor and everyday function in garments that carried both weight and movement, both drama and grace.

As an anniversary statement, Spring/Summer 2026 reaffirmed Roksanda’s singular place in fashion. This was a collection of convictionally demanding, intellectually demanding, and emotionally resonant works sculpted with purpose. A reminder that her work is not only about clothing the body but also about shaping the way we see form, space, and beauty itself.