Paris Haute Couture: The Sounds of Silence Yuima Nakazato’s Meditation on Ancient Landscapes, Time and the Body

Japanese couturier Yuima Nakazato spent 1500 hours crafting thousands of ceramic pieces to create his designs for his new haute couture collection in Paris. Photograph (above) and cover by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.  

For Spring/Summer 2026, Yuima Nakazato stepped outside of haute couture and into something far more elemental. Presented in Paris yet shaped by an ancient Japanese landscape, the collection fused craft, philosophy, and geology into a meditation on time, touch, and the human urge to become one with nature, writes Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Andrea Heinsohn

The atmospheric Paris runway show

offered an intellectually and emotionally 

resonant experience of haute couture. 

SCULPTED from thousands of ceramic fragments and animated by sound rather than music, Yuima Nakazato’s latest work, titled Silent, asked the audience not simply to look but to listen, to slow down, and to experience couture as a living ecosystem rather than a fleeting spectacle,

Set amid the lofty 19th century Gothic arches of the American Cathedral in Paris, the haute couture presentation felt less like a runway show and more like an otherworldly rite. 

This Spring/Summer 2026 collection unfolded in near silence, the vaulted space amplifying every movement, every breath, every fragile sound produced by the garments themselves. The designer sat cross-legged below the altar clinking porcelain rings together that added to the atonal soundscape.

By choosing restraint, Nakazato delivered one of the most intellectually and emotionally resonant couture moments in Paris. He redefined what a couture show can be: stripped of spectacle yet rich in meaning, his show drew on the Japanese countryside and hand-made ceramics to create a collection that felt less designed than unearthed. It posits Nakazato not just as a couturier, but as one of fashion’s most rigorous thinkers working today.

"In a landscape devoid of anything man-made, under the moonlight, I touched the streamlined stones carved by river currents and the tree rings of driftwood"

Nakazato's experience in ancient landscapes

inspired him to create pieces that recalled the 

growth, erosion and sedimentation of terrain.

Nakazato has long positioned himself at the intersection of cutting-edge technology, artisanship, and philosophy, but this collection marked a deeper turn inward. Rooted in an almost archaeological exploration of clothing’s origins, the show traced humanity’s enduring impulse to mirror nature.  

“Throughout history, across all cultures, humans have drawn inspiration from nature, plants and animals alike, because we have always perceived a primal beauty in nature, desiring not only to wear it but to become a part of it,” he explains. That desire to merge with rather than dominate the natural world was the collection’s quiet but insistent thesis.

The conceptual genesis lay far from Paris, on Yakushima, a remote island in Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, home to ancient Yakusugi cedar trees that have endured for thousands of years. Nakazato’s pilgrimage there was a way of reconnection with Nature. He describes touching “the streamlined stones carved by river currents and the tree rings of driftwood” under moonlight, confronting “the immense span of time that transcends human intellect.” That confrontation with deep time, geological rather than seasonal, became the emotional backbone of the collection.

"The sensation of body and clay becoming one as forms, felt very close to the experience I had on Yakushima, immersed in the vast flow of time and existing as part of an ecosystem"

Some of the designs resembled

fossilized bark and river stones.

Visually, the garments echoed erosion, sedimentation, and organic growth. The ceramic elements, painstakingly handcrafted, formed sculptural surfaces that wrapped the body like living terrain. Some pieces resembled fossilized bark or river-smoothed stone; others suggested exoskeletons mid-transformation. 

The silhouettes were neither nostalgic nor futuristic, but strangely timeless, existing outside fashion’s usual coordinates. Couture here was not about opulence, but about process, patience, and devotion.

The labour behind the collection was formidable. Over a six-month period, Nakazato spent more than 1,500 hours working directly with clay, making the thousands of ceramic components by hand. “As I crafted thousands of ceramic pieces,” he says, “my fingers gradually learned the movement of the earth, and streamlined shapes began to emerge naturally from my hands.” This physical dialogue between body and material, designer and earth, translated to the runway, where garments appeared less constructed than grown.

"I chose not to add music to this show, only the resonance produced when garments made of ceramic sway, the sound of the earth itself"

The designs were neither nostalgic nor 

 futuristic, seemingly existing beyond

fashion's normal coordinates. 

Perhaps the most radical gesture, however, was sonic. Nakazato chose not to add music, allowing the faint resonance of ceramic against ceramic to define the atmosphere. 

The sounds are like a light, distant tinkle. “It might be described as the sound of the earth itself,” he says, “as if awakening memories from the time when soil first came into being on this planet.” In a cathedral space accustomed to grand choirs and organ notes, this hushed percussion felt subversive.

We are living in an age saturated with digital noise, so Nakazato’s insistence on slowness and attention felt quietly defiant. “That is why, during the fifteen minutes of this fashion show,” he exhorted the show's guests: “I ask you to direct your attention to the unstable, subtle sounds created by the garments before you, and to the breath of the bodies wearing them.” 

Yuima Nakazato’s Silent haute couture collection did not chase fashion trends or court headlines. Instead, it offered something rarer: a moment of stillness, an encounter with material and memory, and a reminder that couture, at its most powerful, can reconnect us to forces far older, and far more enduring, than fashion itself.

Scroll down to see more highlights from the Spring/Summer 2026 Haute Couture collection in Paris