The female body has long been fashion’s biggest concern: designs created for the body, inspired by the body, in response to the body. For her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Clara Colette Miramon zoomed out a little further to look at the societal forces that shape the female body.

Titled “Care,” Miramon examined the gendered demands of caregiving in everyday life. For the Berlin-based designer, care is a force that physically and metaphorically shapes the female form, its pressures being something that materially impacts the lives and personhood of everyday women.

On the roadside runway, Miramon delivered her dramaturgical collection to the backdrop of Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre. Alternating hospital beds and pilates reformers lined the street as models emerged from an ambulance, her clothing being delivered in something of a three-act structure.

The first set of looks drew from ‘60s hospital-inspired designs, complete with starched white miniskirts and nurses’ caps. As the models mimed treating their patients on the hospital beds, Miramon paid homage to employed caregivers, a female-dominated profession that continues to be overworked and underacknowledged.

Fitted tops and biker shorts soon followed, as sportswear-clad models hopped on the pilates beds and performed a mid-runway workout. In one way, pilates as a form of self-care marked an alternative, maybe even a progression, from the silent labour undertaken by so many women for the benefit of others. However equally, her invocation of the cult of pilates and its bodily scrutiny also questioned the way in which care’s arduous demands might have simply migrated from others to the self.

The visual parallelism between both sets of hospital and pilates beds suggested that, whilst different in nature, both forms of care were still taxing. Whilst the gendered demands of carework shape the capacities and therefore livelihoods of women, workout culture’s idolised muscular-lean figure represents the literal, physical attempt to do the same.

Miramon’s finales were her strongest: a floor-length sheer tunic made up entirely of corset criss-crossing, a maid-inspired mini-dress, and a playfully ruched balloon gown, dangerously short and constrained by a literal spine brace. Her designs drew deliberate attention to the spine, representative of both fragility and strength, with tie-up lacing mimicking vertebrae on tees, dresses, pants and skirts. The final look in particular served as a reminder that care comes not without cost to the giver.

Spotlighting the idea of gendered care was a much-needed recognition of the vitality and underappreciation of labour, both in and outside caregiving industries. For Mirmaon, SS26 brought a collision of femininities: where nurse uniforms met corsets, gym bunnies and maids. It suggested a solidarity in the complicated nature of female care and servitude, both towards others and towards oneself.