Rabanne Resort 2027

Reported by Vogue.

Julien Dossena is tired of the spectacle. Thirteen years into his tenure as creative director at Rabanne, he could keep pushing the house's legacy of chainmail and rhodoid into ever-more-elaborate territory — and no one would complain. Instead, for what he's calling "women's wear, party '26 and spring" rather than a conventional pre-collection, he pulled back. "Yes, fashion can be cinematic, it can be an escape," he said, according to Vogue, "but I have the impression that it's always Hunger Games, with more beautiful women in more beautiful dresses whereas the world outside is more than questionable." His answer wasn't a manifesto. It was a wardrobe.

The foundation is deliberately unglamorous: a pair of perfectly cut black wool trousers. From there, Dossena built outward — pairing them with a chiné wool coat and fringed scarf, a copper mesh tee with stone-encrusted cape sleeves, or a draped olive green halter dress with crystal trim. The rest of the collection was shaped by real conversations with actual women: the friend who wants a '70s perfecto, not the tired aughts rocker jacket; the one asking for a "demi-boyfriend" jean in an unexpected color; another who needs a blouson that reads just masculine enough, or an ivory trench with puffed sleeves she can push up and forget about. Call it pragmatic glamour — a philosophy grounded, in his words, in "pragmatism, reality, and effortlessness."

Tension as Design Strategy

Where the collection gets genuinely interesting is in its contradictions. A chocolate knit dress with a plunging neckline has a dropped waist skirt embroidered with scattered rhodoid slivers that seem to dissolve toward the hem — structured up top, barely-there below. A khaki knit dress layered over a silver fringed skirt plays the same game: polished and then, suddenly, not. "Working with the quality of tension is what interests me as a designer," Dossena said. He also found an unlikely Rabanne analog in Liberty print, reading its florals as a kind of "impressionistic chainmail" — a reframe that paired cleanly with a sage pantsuit or an ivory shift.

The party still showed up, because this is Rabanne — shimmying mesh, silver fringe, faux fur, and disco-adjacent accessories that earn their place without hijacking the whole look. The real trick Dossena is attempting is harder than it sounds: taking a house that built its cool-girl reputation after dark and making it work in daylight. A khaki jacket over an ivory button-down and carpenter pants gets there. So does a "futuristic skater" shorts version of the same idea. "It's about observing the women around us and finding what resonates with their lives," he said.

After more than a decade of reinventing Rabanne's signatures, Dossena may have finally found his most radical move yet — making the house feel utterly, quietly useful.

Read the original at Vogue.