A Heliocentric Vision
Review of Courrèges Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Protective Seduction & Surveillance Chic
There’s something particularly modern about the kind of quiet futurism Nicolas Di Felice is cultivating at Courrèges. His Spring 2026 collection felt familiar on the surface — a continuation of the sleek codes he’s spent the past few seasons refining — but beneath that polish lay a deeper reflection on the body, exposure, and the subtler forms of protection we seek. The silhouettes were often sparse, but the messaging was layered. Face-shielding veils, sculpted visors, and oblong bibs didn’t just serve as formal intrigue; they hinted at our broader cultural anxieties around visibility, safety, and even sun exposure.
Backstage, Di Felice revealed that the shield-like dresses were modeled after the reflective sun visors tucked behind car windshields — a poetic nod to shielding oneself from both heat and scrutiny. The sheer hoods and netted face coverings echoed that instinct. If wellness is the new luxury, Di Felice seems to be exploring its psychological edge: the performance of care, the aesthetics of prevention, and the new shapes intimacy takes when mediated by screen and veil. He’s the kind of designer who can lift inspiration from the mundane — a car visor, a moment of exposure — and translate it into something hauntingly elegant. It works. And it deserves to be celebrated.
At the heart of the house right now, Courrèges under Di Felice is no longer just space-age; it’s surveillance-age too. The house speaks to women navigating constant observation — digital, cultural, physical — and gives them tools to mediate visibility on their own terms. The body is framed, cloaked, exposed, protected — often all at once. There’s confidence in that ambiguity. Where other designers are offering loud identity signals, Di Felice proposes visual codes meant to shield, to stylize, to hold back. This isn’t about spectacle — it’s about control.
The story this season was one of duality: the clean modernist rigor of a house rooted in futurism contrasted with a kind of sensual opacity — veils, sculpted masks, second-skin sheers, and garments that partially conceal the body while tracing its every contour. There’s a psychological tension here that feels timely: veils that block the face yet expose the legs; garments that slip off the body without falling apart.
What’s being offered is a kind of self-protection wrapped in the language of seduction — or perhaps the inverse: seduction cloaked as defense. It’s this ambiguity that gives the collection its quiet charge. The deeper question it poses is this: how do we dress for visibility in a world that sees too much?
THE DIRECTION
Reviewer – IF you wish to expand on anything from above, please do so here. Otherwise, deleted this section.
THE QUOTE
This time it was that sensation of too much light, too much information — overwhelming but also inspiring,” Nicolas Di Felice told The Impression. “I thought about comfort, protection, warmth, and how to translate those ideas into clothes.
THE WRAP UP
Spring 2026 didn’t hinge on surprise; instead, it marked a deepening of Nicolas Di Felice’s design language — one that’s now unmistakably Courrèges. It’s an aesthetic rooted in restraint, protection, and sensual intelligence. The silhouettes were taut but thoughtful, clean yet psychologically charged, offering garments that balanced sculptural polish with a human pulse. There was an intimacy to this collection, not in the traditionally sensual sense, but in its awareness of the body as something to shield, to style, to care for.
Where many designers flirt with wellness as lifestyle — spas, collaborations, hospitality ventures — Di Felice placed the idea at the center of his clothes. Not as a gimmick, but as a guiding sensibility. Shield dresses inspired by sun visors, veils that obscure without concealing, garments that protect as they expose — these were subtle gestures, but they spoke volumes. In a season awash with natural references, Courrèges turned to something more urgent: how we guard our bodies in an overexposed world.
The collection offered wearable, sculptural garments that felt legible in real life but alive on the runway, walking the line between conceptual provocation and commercial success. There’s something bright — no pun intended — in using sun protection as a starting point for elegance. Di Felice didn’t just evolve the house codes this season; he suggested that care, in all its modern forms, might be the most seductive concept of all.