Ann Demeulemeester FW26: Dear Night Thoughts – Paris Fashion Week

The Couvent des Cordeliers has history etched into its stone walls. It was Ann Demeulemeester’s chosen venue for years before she stepped away in 2013. Staging the Fall/Winter 2026 show there was itself a statement – one that creative director Stefano Gallici did not need to explain. The space did the speaking. Out of the pitch black, indie duo Beguiling Junior – Oli Burslem and Okay Kaya – opened with a moody live performance that set the nocturnal tone before a single model appeared on the runway. What followed was the most complete realization of Gallici’s vision for the house to date.

“Dear Night Thoughts”: A Collection Named for a Personal Ritual

The collection’s title comes directly from Gallici’s adolescence in Teor, a small town in northeastern Italy, where he kept a journal and began every entry with the words “Dear Night Thoughts.” He played in a band. He drew on his jeans. He read Arthur Rimbaud. Those formative years – the music, the literature, the sense of rebellion felt in a provincial town – are the exact coordinates from which he has been building Ann Demeulemeester season after season.

For FW26, those influences arrived more sharply resolved than ever. Gallici described the collection as “worlds in collision,” and it showed: Victorian-era dress met collegiate стиль, regimental tailoring collided with music festival grit, and romantic ruffles held their ground against biker boots and high-tops.

What the Collection Actually Looked Like

The Silhouettes

The silhouettes drew on 19th-century shapes and the house’s signature tailoring, carried forward into contemporary territory with Gallici’s characteristic refusal to let anything look too precious. Cropped Napoleon jackets – a regimental accent Gallici was among the first to revive – appeared alongside capes and coats with a lived-in authority. Biker jackets and a zippered blouson mixing shearling and studded leather added a sharper edge.

The Preppy Thread

The preppy thread was the season’s freshest evolution. Ripped school uniforms with raw hems and exposed linings, crushed velvet blazers emblazoned with crests, and denim detailed with shredded gold braiding down the sides redefined collegiate dressing entirely. Varsity sweaters had been meticulously tattered into dresses. Uniform pants were cut into shorts, with the pleated linings deliberately left exposed.

The Romantic Counterbalance

The romantic counterbalance came through poetic ruffled blouses, embroidered velvet and tulle collars, bias-cut chiffon dresses, and lace underskirts worn as outerwear with high-tops or biker boots. Extra-long laces – a long-standing Demeulemeester signature – underscored the intentional undoneness that has always defined the house. Distressed V-neck mohair sweaters and velvet frocks amplified the beauty of imperfection.

Surface and Detail

Leathers were treated to look rusted. Denim panels bore prints of personal handwritten notes, turning pants into wearable sketchbooks. The palette leaned into black, punctuated by rusty brown, deep burgundy, and a constellation of gold details – shredded, worn, and earned.

The Front Row Was a Conversation Across Generations

The guest list at an Ann Demeulemeester show now reads as its own cultural dispatch. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin attended alongside his partner Scarlett Sabet – his second appearance at the brand’s Paris shows, having also attended the Autumn/Winter 2024 presentation. Lourdes Leon, Lava La Rue, Eva Yelmani, and Tokischa occupied front-row seats, representing the younger, indie-leaning community Gallici has deliberately cultivated around the label.

Billy Idol walked the runway itself, wearing a fringed leather cape, rendering the generational crossover literal. A punk icon striding past a rock legend in the front row, inside a venue steeped in Belgian fashion mythology – Gallici did not manufacture that moment so much as create the conditions for it to be inevitable.

The show’s romanticism exists alongside hard numbers that validate Gallici’s direction. In 2025, Ann Demeulemeester recorded revenues of 15 million euros – a 40 percent increase over the prior year. Owner Claudio Antonioli, co-founder of New Guards Group, has set a target of surpassing 30 million euros by 2027, backed by a strategy that includes the introduction of precollections and new retail locations.

The brand’s first store outside Antwerp opened on Milan’s Via Montenapoleone last month. Antonioli has also noted that Ann Demeulemeester herself called to personally compliment the team on the Spring/Summer 2026 campaign, shot by Nikolai Von Bismarck – a rare gesture that effectively signals the founder’s approval of the direction the house is traveling.

Antonioli acquired the label in 2020 from Anne Chapelle’s BVBA 32, following a period when the brand’s Rimbaud-and-Patti-Smith sensibility had drifted out of step with the market. The road back involved a creative direction by committee, then a brief tenure by Ludovic de Saint-Sernin, before Gallici, who came up through the brand’s menswear team, was elevated to the role.

Gallici has made it clear he has no interest in leaning heavily on the archive. That approach drew criticism early, particularly from longtime devotees of Ann Demeulemeester’s original punk-poet severity. The FW26 show does not argue with those critics so much as render the argument beside the point.

What Gallici has built is something distinct from what came before: wilder, more romantic, more explicitly youthful, and oriented toward a generation discovering the brand for the first time rather than one mourning the version they grew up with. “For young generations getting into this brand, I want to create for them a sense of belonging,” he said before the show.

The Réfectoire des Cordeliers, full of guests who showed up wearing Ann Demeulemeester head-to-toe, suggested that sense of belonging is already taking hold.

Collection Details

Collection: Ann Demeulemeester Fall/Winter 2026 Ready-to-Wear
Show Title: Dear Night Thoughts
Venue: Réfectoire des Cordeliers, Paris
Дата: March 7, 2026
Creative Director: Stefano Gallici
Show Opener (live performance): Beguiling Junior – Oli Burslem and Okay Kaya
Runway Talent: Billy Idol
Front Row: Jimmy Page, Scarlett Sabet, Lourdes Leon, Tokischa, Lava La Rue, Eva Yelmani