Paris Fashion Week: Yohji Yamamoto's Poetry of Form for Spring/Summer 2026

Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto brought finesse and poetry to the runway in Paris. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM. 

At a moment when Paris Fashion Week seems obsessed with reinvention, Yohji Yamamoto offered something more profound, continuity. His Spring/Summer 2026 collection, unfolded as a reflection on time, memory, and artistic endurance. Through a restrained palette of black, white, and red, the designer reaffirmed his lifelong dialogue between strength and fragility. Yet beneath the serenity of the silhouettes lay an emotional undercurrent: a quiet, personal tribute to the late Giorgio Armani, transforming the runway into a space of remembrance and respect between two masters of subtlety. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Jay Zoo

The soaring, gilded ceilings of Paris' storied city hall

was the backdrop to Yamamoto's evocative collection.

ON a dark Parisian evening, inside the city's historic Hôtel de Ville, Yohji Yamamoto delivered a masterclass in restraint. While many designers raced ahead with spectacle and showmanship during Paris Fashion Week, the 81-year-old Japanese couturier slowed everything down. 

“Be present,” his show notes urged. “See with your eyes, not through your screens.” It was an invitation, and a warning, that what followed would be an experience to feel, not to consume.

What unfolded was a poetic meditation on form and memory, rendered through 47 looks that distilled Yamamoto’s vocabulary to its essence. Models moved through dim pools of light in near silence against an evocative soundscape, their unhurried pace amplifying the emotional weight of the collection. From the first steps, it was clear this was not a show about the frantic hunt for the new, but a reflection on the past, present and future.

"Be present and experience the presentation with your eyes rather than your screen. Let the moment, the movement and the clothing speak to you - they are meant to be felt with your senses, not merely digitally recorded"

As a tribute to Giorgio Armani,

the Japanese designer printed a

 copy of the Italian's invitation

 to his 50th anniversary show. 

The opening looks, austere black dresses brushed with

streaks of white, resembled moving ink drawings, each one as though lifted from an unfinished sketchbook. The garments were stripped back, yet far from simple.

 Yamamoto’s mastery of cut and composition turned loose threads and irregular folds into deliberate architecture. Pleating and knotting became sculptural gestures, each one transforming fabric into motion. At moments, the clothes appeared to breathe, as though the air itself was part of their design 

Midway through, tartan disrupted the monochrome, shredded, reassembled, and draped across the body in a kind of textile rebellion. Wisps of fringe followed, giving way to ghostly white ensembles that seemed to dissolve as they moved. 

Then came the inevitable transformation: a final sequence of deep reds, from cloaks that fell like curtains to a sweeping reinterpretation of Yamamoto’s iconic Eighties black coats, this time opening onto a bustle, a cascade of crimson fabric. It was theatrical, but never loud, a flourish of emotion emerging from near-monastic control.

Yet beneath the beauty was something more personal. Just weeks after the loss of Giorgio Armani, Yamamoto quietly wove a tribute into the show. Two black tunics stood apart from the rest, one adorned with hand-painted calligraphy, the other bearing a print of Shalom Harlow from a 1998 Armani campaign, alongside the invitation to Armani’s 50th anniversary show, handwritten and signed by Armani himself and an image of Kristen McMenamy wearing a 1997 tuxedo. 

Yet beneath the beauty was something more personal, Yamamoto quietly wove a tribute into the show to Giorgio Armani, a rare gesture between designers who shared a deep respect for craft and discipline

Yohji Yamamoto takes his bow

at the finale of an emotional show. 

It was a rare and intimate gesture between two designers who, despite different aesthetics, shared a profound respect for craft, discipline, and the human form. The connection ran deeper than homage. 

Armani built elegance through precision; Yamamoto dismantled it to find truth in imperfection. Both resisted fashion’s noise in favor of quiet conviction. Here, in a vast, dimly lit Paris salon, one designer saluted another, not only with words, but with cloth.

As the final model paused in a halo of red light, the audience remained hushed. Yamamoto appeared briefly at the end, bowing low, to the crowd, to his craft, and, unmistakably, to Armani, before waving with two hands and disappearing backstage. In a week defined by debut collections by new artistic directors at big fashion houses, his show felt like something rarer: a reminder of longevity, of consistency, and of the kind of artistry that needs no amplification

Scroll to see more highlights from Yohji Yamamoto's Spring/Summer 2026 collection in Paris