MM6 Maison Margiela Spring/Summer 2026

MM6 Maison Margiela has always been interested in making ordinary clothes behave strangely, and Spring/Summer 2027 takes that idea quite literally. The collection plays with the distinction between tops and bottoms, shrinking and enlarging familiar garments, and shifting pieces around the body until their original purpose becomes difficult to identify. Shirts become skirts, V-neck tops become bottoms and skirts are pulled upwards into dresses, creating a wardrobe that feels less like a fixed system of clothes than a set of instructions that can be rewritten.

The doll-clothing reference gives the collection its most coherent visual language. Shrunken proportions, simplified fastenings and folded panels make some of the garments look as though they have been designed for a miniature wardrobe and then enlarged for the human body. The idea is strongest when it affects proportion rather than simply turning one garment into another. A military-inspired top duplicated around the hips, creating small pannier-like volumes, is an example of the concept working through construction. By contrast, wearing a shirt as a dress or moving a collar onto the shoulder can feel more like a styling exercise than a meaningful reconsideration of the garment.

Menswear follows the same logic, with shifted collars and button plackets disrupting otherwise familiar tailoring, biker jackets and everyday pieces. The more conventional clothes are often among the most convincing: crisp cotton pantsuits, suede and leather car coats, fabric peacoats and low-crotch jeans pushed up over the calves. The latter provide an especially useful contrast to the more conceptual pieces, allowing the Havaianas collaboration to become part of the silhouette rather than simply a novelty. Even the number six is treated as a design mechanism, appearing across thermals, rugby shirts and the footwear through split-toe constructions and stacked soles.

That obsession with six is very MM6 — playful, slightly ridiculous and completely committed to its own internal logic. The reference to Martin Margiela’s original numbering system gives the collection a historical anchor, while the presentation at Palazzo Mezzanotte, beneath the enormous marble middle finger outside the Italian stock exchange, provided an appropriately irreverent backdrop. Yet SS27 is most successful when the clothes themselves carry the joke. The collection does not need every garment to prove that fashion rules can be broken; the strongest pieces already demonstrate that familiar clothes can become more interesting simply by changing where, how and why they are worn.