LUEDER SS26
World-building and myth-making have always come second nature to Marie Lueder. For Spring/Summer 2026, the German designer presented not just a runway, but a fashion play, complete with a medieval cast of dragons, knights and princesses. Ribbed knitwear was reimagined as armour, distressed fabrics gave the impression of battle, and protective hoods cloaked villagers mid-journey.
Titled “SL∀Y”, the production was set against the backdrop of an inflatable teething flower, taking notes on camp from Baz Luhrmann’s iconic 1996 reproduction of Romeo and Juliet. Inspired by the fable of Saint George and the Dragon, the play’s cast included not just models, but German actors Ruby Commey and Lusia Gaffron, as well as artist Roman Ole, donning hooded travellers dresses.
Looks were textured, skin-bearing and worn, with raw seams and summery mesh prints that showed the heat of resistance. Contrasting those were a set of cool-tone greens and greys, with structured panelling that mimicked armour. Accompanying the models’ journeys was footwear made in collaboration with UGG, ranging in eccentricity from the brand’s already-popular winter boot to full-blown pointy medieval poulaines.
However, unlike the middle-aged narrative the collection was based upon, Lueder’s was not a black-and-white retelling of good versus evil. Instead, she imagined the myth into a story of everyday resistance and protection, where the hero was not a knight, but an ordinary person; and the dragon not a physical beast, but metaphorical, antagonistic forces that face us all.
“[The dragon] is something closer to home,” the designer explained. “A shifting metaphor for structural power, digital delusion, and emotional inheritance. [It] might be the voice inside your phone, or the one inside your head.” The collection’s final look was a dark coloured bikini, whose patterned triangles resembled the beast’s evil eye. Rather than a climactic final battle, the question the designer sought to pose was not who wins, but what are we fighting against?
Foregrounding sensitivity, Lueder instead asked what haunts us, what protects us, and what must we shed to step into the next version of ourselves? Throughout the runway show, models interacted with the ballooning teeth-like sculpture behind them, taking turns lying beneath, fighting against, being trapped by, and even embracing it. For Lueder, the process of battle was ambivalent, varying, exhausting and extended.
“The Hero might be a single mother navigating the metropolis,” Lueder described. “The Princess might be a satire of masculinity.” The roles of the myth, and the audience’s place in it, were something that were, and are, constantly changing.
So how might one emerge victorious? “The battle is not one of dominance, but of metamorphosis,” Lueder explained. Instead of brute strength, the hero is one who listens with sensitivity, confronts themselves, and responds to change. “[They] no longer arrive with a sword, but in gestures of softness, protection and vulnerability,” the designer concluded.
For Spring/Summer 2026, their fight was not on the frontlines. Rather, it was a more nuanced one: how to remain radical in an exclusive and elite cultural space, whose existence and success are so dependent on the capital of the ruling class?
Huseby and Işik have found their answer in the creation of beautiful clothing that not only remains rooted in but also reminds us of reality. Their acts of small social disruption, of forcing silence, and of naming genocide are radical in the conservative and often politically apathetic face of high fashion.
“If you didn’t name the genocide by its true name a year ago, naming it now is meaningless to the dead,” declared their diary. “May their ghosts forever haunt you.”
Words by SHARYN BUDIARTO
