What Lies Beneath
Review of Rabanne Spring 2026 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Twee Meets Tension, Surf’s Up, Sinister and Sweet, Saccharine Sorbets
Swimming in the deep end had Julien Dossena dreaming of summer days spent living by the sea, where he spent his childhood. Having unearthed a set of vintage swimming costumes from the 1950s, so began his journey back to a time when leisure was a pleasure pursuit. And clothes that performed were not reserved for sports, but engineered for the everyday too.
These were not clothes for Stepford Wives though, instead on the designers mind – in amongst the frills – was a tension, speaking backstage he referenced cutting 1950s ideas up with inspiration from the 1960’s, specifically mentioning the psychological thriller ‘Rosemarys Baby’, whose costume designer was Anthea Sylbert. Empire line babydoll dresses, floral shifts and twee nightgowns were conveying an innocence that was in sharp contrast to the evil that was lurking within, “Playing with those shady landscapes, where there is a storm coming” as Dossena put it, meant combining the two sourced findings and reworking those silhouettes.
For spring the designer wanted to, like many of his peers, have fun with femininity, but as he told The Impression backstage “[I wanted to really] explode it, to radicalise it a little bit and make it a little bit trippy. Dossena took classic tropes from the 50s and 60s and stomped out the twee by giving them with raw-edges, ripping seams, and ‘exploding’ metal and leather 3D flowers out from under hems. Dresses were ripped open to reveal the swimwear hiding just beneath the surface, and leather moulded corset bras and the sculpted busts on embellished bodices added a twisted edge for the girl-next-door gone off-the-rails. The circular cut-outs, of which would typically be of a demure size to reveal a sliver of collarbone, were also exploded and opened a world onto the forbidden – well, what would have been considered forbidden at the time. Large, oversized circles put on display halter-neck bandeau swim tops or the underside of a geometric bra. The dark Hawaiian prints on both formal shift dresses and neoprene wet suits gave the previous saccharine sorbet palette a sophisticated twist with prints that the fashion world has missing, and as with all things cyclical, is due once again for a revival.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
I really wanted to have fun with the notion of femininity, by really exploding it and radicalising, and making it a little bit trippy”
Julien Dossena, Creative Director, Rabanna
THE WRAP UP
Dossena’s spring 2026 collection for Rabanne was less a nostalgic swim in femininity from the mid-century, and was more a radical peek beneath the surface, exposing what lurks beneath, à la Rosemary’s Baby. What began with sweet Stepford silhouettes and vintage swimwear quickly unraveled into something darker, stranger, and defiantly subversive: ripped seams revealing hidden bikinis, corseted busts moulded from leather, and oversized cut-outs baring the (once) forbidden.
By combining saccharine 50s silhouettes with the eeriness of 60s cinema, Dossena dismantled the innocence of polite society and pushed femininity out of its comfort zone and into a trippy new iteration of beauty now.
