Form Follows Function, and Feeling: Inside Niccolò Pasqualetti’s Modular Modernism in Paris

Backstage in Paris before the Niccolo Pasqualetti SS26 show in Paris. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM. 

Niccolò Pasqualetti’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection in Paris consolidated his reputation as one of the most intelligent new voices in contemporary design. Merging fine tailoring with an experimental approach to form, the Tuscan-born designer explored modularity, material innovation, and sustainability with quiet authority. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Jay Zoo

Shoulder pads became sculptural

accessories in the new collection. 

AT Paris Fashion Week, Niccolò Pasqualetti presented a new collection that combined conceptual rigor with functional adaptability. 

Shown in the stripped-down concrete halls of the Palais de Tokyo, the collection examined how precision tailoring and modular construction can serve as tools for contemporary living rather than symbols of status or gender. It was a collection that spoke less about identity and more about adaptability, the ability of clothing to move, shift, and respond to the person who wears it.

Pasqualetti has developed a design language that sits between sculpture and pragmatism. This season, structured forms softened into rounded edges, while convertible silhouettes blurred distinctions between categories. 

The Italian designer presented work built on transformation, garments that reconfigure, adapt, and endure. The focus on structure, craft, and clarity felt strikingly modern, proving that evolution in fashion can be as much about construction as concept.

"The collection is a mix of my different inspirations, as I always like to work with lots of contrasting aspects in the process," Niccolo Pasqualetti explained backstage to DAM before the Paris show. "Also, I worked with simple geometric shapes to create new constructions and asymmetries. These ideas were mixed together with the Italian wardrobe that is always there: you will find trenchcoats, suits, jackets and white shirts, but everything is twisted a bit, like there is an element of wrongness."

"The collection is a mix of different inspirations; I always like to work with contrasting aspects and I used simple geometric shapes to create new constructions and asymmetries"

A leather bomber jacket

has removable sleeves. 

A leather bomber with removable sleeves, tunics made from geometric cotton panels, and shoulder pads that could be detached or repositioned illustrated the designer’s ongoing pursuit of flexibility in construction. The use of recycled lyocell furthered this sense of intelligent functionality, aligning craft with sustainability rather than treating it as an external concern. 

"My sculpted shapes are inspired from Richard Serra’s works which are very big but kind of bent," Pasqualetti comments. "My work has sculptural elements like the shoulder pads that are normally internal elements of garments, but I use them as external details, like accessories. Some have sequins or are elastic and others become objects on their own."

A neutral palette of whites, creams, and blacks reinforced the clarity of the forms. Sequined sarong-style skirts layered over asymmetric swimsuits introduced texture without excess. Oversized safety pins, a recurring motif, acted as both fastening and ornament, suggesting that the smallest detail could redefine structure. These gestures reflected a designer intent on reducing fashion to its most elemental components and then rebuilding it on his own terms.

"My sculpted shapes are inspired from Richard Serra’s work with sculptures that are very big but kind of bent"

The sequined shoulder and geometric 

shapes are highlights of Pasqualetti's 

designs this season in Paris. 

"There are some garments that look like objects, like squares or big triangles and there is this idea of combining lots of textiles with beading and leather," the designer describes. "There are a lot of details that are not apparent at first glance but are in all of the garments."

Pasqualetti’s approach stands out precisely because it resists grand gestures. His work is not theatrical but investigative, exploring how garments behave when simplified, deconstructed, and reassembled. In an era when modularity is often treated as a novelty, Pasqualetti’s insistence on adaptability feels genuinely relevant. His clothes are designed to evolve, not through seasonal reinvention but through structural intelligence.

Born near Florence in 1994, Pasqualetti trained at IUAV in Venice and later at Central Saint Martins in London, where he was awarded the Stella McCartney scholarship. Before launching his own brand in 2021, he worked for The Row in New York and Loewe in Paris, experiences that sharpened his sense of proportion and fabrication. 

His trajectory since has been steady and strategic: recipient of the Franca Sozzani Award in 2021, winner of the Camera Moda Fashion Trust in 2023 and 2024, and a finalist for the LVMH Prize last year.That recognition is not accidental. Pasqualetti represents a strand of Italian design that fuses craftsmanship with conceptual clarity — where tailoring is not merely a heritage code but a structural discipline. His work embodies a shift from spectacle toward thoughtfulness, from seasonal novelty toward sustainable evolution.

For Spring/Summer 2026, Pasqualetti did not attempt to redefine fashion’s future; instead, he offered a precise study in how garments can reflect the complexity of the present. In his hands, construction becomes conversation, between wearer and maker, tradition and change, permanence and fluidity.

Scroll down or tap pictures to see more highlights and backstage at the SS26 collection in Paris.

Backstage in Paris before the Niccolo Pasqualetti SS26 Show at the Palais de Tokyo