Between Mourning & Bloom

With just her second whole runway show, Pauline Dujancourt stakes a claim this season: that knitwear, memory, and grief are not opposing forces but threads that can be braided into garments of astonishing beauty. SS26 is a tender meditation on love and loss, on what remains when pain becomes part of the story, and how we dress ourselves in response to it.

Dujancourt's voice has always carried two poles: memory (especially her grandmother, who taught her to knit) and transformation. In SS26, she leans into the liminal space: inspired by her mother's wedding dress and the traditional garb of mourning, rooted in theatrical influences (notably Nina from Chekhov's The Seagull). She frames grief not as an endpoint but as one color on a broader palette.

The show staging reinforces this emotional architecture. Guests walk into a dark, cavernous basement with dried crop stalks gathering around the space; knitted bird brooches are handed out as tokens of welcome and remembrance. From black or white, moving into saturated blues, the garments map a narrative arc from purity to shadow to visceral color, from loss toward blooming.

One of Dujancourt's greatest strengths is technical nuance. The garments are painstaking: feather-light knits, strips of lace and tulle, delicate crochet details, and lace hosiery. She plays with volume and exposure—some look floaty, others cling; some are opaque, while others are revealed in knit, sheer layers.

Feathers recur as a motif, not just for their dramatic effect, but also for their associations: lightness, flight, and fragility. Even the heavy knit tropes she once resisted (argyles, granny squares) are here— but reworked, made airy. She shows fearlessness in re-appropriation and transformation.

The craftsmanship extends to emotional detail. A tribute to a friend who passed becomes embedded in the show: the brooches, the poems, the tonal shifts-all of which anchor the collection beyond decoration.

Colour moves with intention. The early looks are in white and black-symbols, perhaps of wedding and mourning. Then, deeper blues emerge: navy first, followed by a bold royal blue that saturates handbags, skirts, and the famed sculptural gowns. These shifts aren't merely decorative-they chart internal movement: from absence to presence, from void to expression.

The interplay of these tones with textures (sheer knit, lace, feather, floaty tulle) creates a mood of spectral resonance. There's haunting, there's grace, there's sorrow turned into something luminous. Perhaps the most compelling thing is how sensuality is evoked without being overt; Dujancourt is interested in the tactile, the intimate, the whispered, not the shouted.

Dujancourt does grief and love with honesty; the collection doesn't exploit sadness but honors it. It brings it into light rather than hiding it quietly. Knit, crochet, lace-all materials that can blur easily into careless softness-are here handled with precision, layering, structure, and restraint. From staging to color transition to detail motifs (feathers, birds, and homage brooches), the story is felt as much as it is seen. The collection carries its concept through every element.

Some of the more dramatic gowns or sculptural forms may work best in editorial or high event contexts; real-world usage is more limited for particular looks. Collections so steeped in grief run the risk of tipping into melancholy that feels heavy; making sure luminous moments fully land is key. Dujancourt shows she can do this, but the contrast is pleasing. The handcrafted elements—such as crochet, feathers, and brooches—are beautiful but labor-intensive. As her brand grows, maintaining that level of fine craft in production or for clients may be difficult. But perhaps that is part of her appeal.

Pauline Dujancourt's Spring/Summer 2026 collection is a marker of maturity, confidence, and an emerging designer moving from hand-tied dreams into an articulated voice. After being shortlisted for the LVMH Prize, with stockists like Dover Street Market carrying her work, she is increasingly not just a lyrical knitter but a storyteller with skill and resonance.

In a season where many are chasing novelty or spectacle, Dujancourt's insistence on introspection feels brave. She reminds us that fashion can be a place for remembrance, for ritual, and for internal emotional work, rather than display. And that the materials of memory (lace, knit, feather, color) can be as compelling as new prints or bold structure.

Pauline Dujancourt SS26 is a quiet gale of feeling. It holds sadness and light, tradition and reinvention, intimacy and scale. In Between Mourning & Bloom, she shows what emerges when one dresses not for glamour alone but for remembrance: how knit becomes prayer, how lace becomes song, how feathers become wings. It's a collection that lingers-not just on the runway, but in what it means to carry grief softly forward, blooming toward possibility.