In Full Stride: Equestrian Energy Meets Bohemian Rebellion in Shiatzy Chen’s SS26 Paris Collection

Long, swinging hair and natural make-up added to the feeling of a Seventies ethos of liberation in Shiatzy Chen's new collection in Paris. Photograph (above) by Jay Zoo for DAM.  

Shiatzy Chen’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection at Paris Fashion Week, captured the untamed energy of the horse and the free-spirited ethos of 1970s bohemian style. Blending flowing fabrics, intricate embroidery, and equestrian-inspired details, the designs merged Eastern craftsmanship with Western silhouettes. Through a palette that ranged from earthy neutrals to vibrant neons, and playful combinations of structured tailoring and relaxed layering, the Taiwanese designer celebrated movement, individuality, and cultural dialogue, delivering a collection that was at once romantic, bold, and contemporary. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photographs by Jay Zoo 

Leather straps and belts

gave the collection an

equestrian theme. 

CALLED Unstill, Shiatzy Chen's new collection was designed to suggest the energy of a horse in full stride. Drawing on equestrian symbolism to inspire her work, Chen’s vision merged the romantic rebellion of the 1970s with modern tailoring, creating an East-meets-West aesthetic that felt both liberated and finely crafted.

From the first look, the collection exuded movement and freedom. Textiles such as chiffon, lace, and lightweight cotton-linen moved with each step, punctuated by the structured curves of saddle-inspired pockets and tailored flares. 

The designer's signature embroidery appeared throughout, not as ornamentation, but as storytelling, adding a certain vitality to each garment. Multi-directional patterns and ribbon detailing recalled the handcraft of folk art, while maintaining a sophistication suitable for Paris’ discerning fashion audience.

Color played a central role in the collection’s narrative. Tobacco browns and coffee tones suggested the earthy landscape of a sun-drenched horizon, while blues, fuchsias, and cobalt punctuated the neutrals like bursts of bright sunlight on a wild meadow. Black and white served as grounding elements, echoing the elegance and discipline inherent in Chen’s tailoring. Together, the palette reflected the duality of the collection: daydreaming wanderers and nocturnal revelers, pastoral calm and disco vibrancy coexisting in balance.

There was a freedom to mix and match, with unexpected pairings such as crochet tops with suiting or pajamas as outerwear, a playful nod to the era of bohemian experimentation.

Silk scarves and softly

flowing, floral designs

enhanced the 70's style.

Flared pants paired with cropped vests, flowing lace blouses over soft skirts, and layered long-on-long looks created a sense of casual sophistication. 

Menswear-inspired pieces were equally dynamic: cropped jackets, leather trousers, cargo-style curves, and bell-bottoms fused utilitarian strength with poetic grace. The freedom to mix and match was emphasized, allowing for unexpected pairings such as crochet tops with suiting or pajamas as outerwear, a playful nod to the era of bohemian experimentation.

Accessories reinforced the equestrian and hippie motifs. Triangular silk scarves became headbands or neckerchiefs; saddle-shaped bags with dimensional clasps offered a subtle nod to the horse motif; while jewellery repurposed bits and horseshoes into necklaces, brooches, and belts. Footwear included reimagined Mary Janes, platform sandals, and brogues, some with metallic accents, merging functionality with exuberant style.

What set this collection apart was Chen's ability to channel her horse-inspired themes into designs that evoked a sense of liberation. Balancing her feel for ethereal romance and bold physicality, the designer was able to fuse Eastern sensibilities with a Western bohemian spirit. In Unstill, Shiatzy Chen once again demonstrated why she is one of the few designers who can continually reinvent the dialogue between heritage and modernity and East and West, in new and interesting ways.   

Scroll down to see more highlights from the Shiatzy Chen SS26 show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris

Backstage at Shiatzy Chen before the Spring/Summer 2026 show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris

Condé Nast Magazines Ban Fur After Decades of Protest. Is it a Turning Point or Another Fashion Fad?

Is Conde Nast's decision not to use fur in its magazines' editorial campaigns a tipping point or a fashion fad? 

By Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne

For decades, animal rights activists, campaigners and ethical designers have.: fought to strip fur fashion of its glamour and expose the cruelty behind it.

From bold celebrity-led protests to quiet shifts in consumer values, these efforts have slowly reshaped the fashion landscape.

Now, one of the industry’s most influential gatekeepers, Condé Nast – publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour – has announced it will no longer feature “new animal fur in editorial content or advertising” across its titles.

The decision, which includes exceptions for what are outlined as “byproducts of subsistence and Indigenous practices”, marks a symbolic turning point within the fashion media landscape due to Condé Nast’s global reach.

It is especially significant given Vogue’s legacy in glamorising fur and its historically unwavering support under former editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, one of fur’s most powerful advocates in fashion media and a long-time target of the anti-fur movement.

Wintour remains involved at Condé Nast in the role of chief content officer, and as Vogue’s global editorial director.

Anti-fur campaigns

The announcement by Condé Nast follows a nine-month campaign led by the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade. This activist group staged more than a hundred protests targeting Condé Nast executives, editors and affiliated businesses.

Demonstrations ranged from picketing outside the homes of Vogue editors to disruptive actions inside stores linked to Condé Nast through board affiliations.

Demonstrators protesting against Vogue’s use of fur earlier this year. Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade/Alastair Mckimm

While this campaign undoubtedly influenced the publisher’s decision, it was likely the culmination of anti-fur advocacy dating back to the early 20th century.

The long tail of the movement

Animal rights activism in fashion can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the feather trade decimated bird populations and led to the extinction of species prized for their plumage.

Anti-fur activism followed. It gained momentum in the 1970s, and with the founding of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980.

Through high-profile campaigns exposing the cruelty of fur farms, PETA enlisted celebrities and models to pose nude in its iconic “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” ads.

These efforts led to tangible change. Calvin Klein dropped fur in 1994, citing animal advocacy. Since then, fur-free policies have become a relatively easy win for brands navigating the increasingly complex ethics of animal materials.

TV personality Khloe Kardashian unveils her PETA ‘Fur? I’d Rather Go Naked’ billboard on December 10 2008, in Los Angeles. Charley Gallay/Getty Images

A new standard for luxury fashion

Several US states have banned fur sales, and fur farming is now outlawed in countries including the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Norway.

Condé Nast’s new position places it alongside other media and fashion leaders. Elle magazine went fur-free in 2021. Major luxury brands such as Max Mara, Burberry, Chanel, Prada, Valentino and Versace have adopted similar policies, as have retailers including David Jones (Australia), Macy’s (US), Nordstrom (US), Saks Fifth Avenue (US) and Hudson’s Bay (Canada).

In 2022, French luxury conglomerate Kering also committed to a fur-free policy across its brand portfolio.

The largest remaining holdout is LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE) – the parent company of Dior and Fendi – which faces mounting pressure to follow suit.

The fur paradox

Despite these shifts, fur remains a fascination within fashion, and periodic revivals are still celebrated in the press.

TikTok’s 2024 “mob wives” aesthetic, featuring oversized fur coats and animal prints, sparked a return of fur on winter runways. Singer Sabrina Carpenter even wore a special edition Louis Vuitton fox fur coat on the day of the Met Gala.

This paradox reflects fashion’s cyclical and often contradictory nature. Faux fur and faux shearling are increasingly used to replicate the luxury aesthetic without the ethical baggage. Yet debates about the environmental impact of synthetic fur complicate this narrative.

What’s next?

Condé Nast’s fur-free stance comes at a time when many fashion brands are rethinking or rolling back their sustainability commitments.

Some industry observers worry climate goals are being deprioritised. Ralph Lauren, for instance, has dropped its net-zero emissions target. Also, the Vestiaire Collective, a platform for pre-loved luxury item resale, has started monetising its activities by selling carbon credits, demonstrating the difficulty of navigating current market conditions.

Still, there are signs of progress. Stella McCartney’s Summer 2025 Paris Fashion Week show featured feather alternatives made of plant-based materials.

This year also marked the first Australian Fashion Week in which fur, feathers and exotic leathers were banned from catwalks.

Animal rights advocates, such as Collective Fashion Justice founder Emma Hakansson, continue to push for the industry to reduce its use of leather, wool and other animal-derived material.

This space is dynamic and evolving. Whether Condé Nast’s decision is a tipping point, or another fashion fad, remains to be seen.

Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Enterprise, Torrens University Australia

From Sonata to Sensation: How 19th-Century Virtuoso Franz Liszt Invented Pop Stardom

A portrait of the highly expressive composer Franz Liszt, who drove his audiences into delirium when he performed, painted by Henri Lehmann at the height of Lisztomania in 1839. 

By Timothy McKenry

In 1844, Berlin was struck by a cultural fever critics labelled Lisztomania. The German poet Heinrich Heine coined the term after witnessing the almost delirious reception that greeted Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt in concert halls across Europe.

One widely circulated drawing from the 1840s crystallises the image. Women swoon or faint, others hurl flowers toward the stage. Men also appear to be struck by the pianist’s magnetic presence (or perhaps by the women’s reaction to it).These caricatured depictions, when paired with antagonistic reviews from contemporary critics, may still shape our cultural memory of Liszt.

He is often depicted not simply as a musician but as the first modern celebrity to unleash mass hysteria.

This 1840s drawing captures

Lisztomania in action with 

a swooning audience of 

women. Theodor Hosemann.

What happened at Liszt’s concerts?

We know a great deal about Liszt’s hundreds of concerts during the 1830s and ‘40s, thanks to reviews, critiques, lithographs and Liszt’s own letters from the time.

His programs combined works by the great composers with his own inventive reworkings of pieces familiar to audiences. Virtuoso showpieces also demonstrated his command of the piano.

Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata or Pathétique Sonata might appear alongside Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, performed in Liszt’s highly expressive style.

Schubert was represented through songs such as Erlkönig and Ave Maria, reworked for piano alone.

Liszt also turned to the most popular operatic works of his time. His Réminiscences de Norma (Bellini) and Réminiscences de Don Juan (Mozart) transformed familiar melodies into large-scale fantasies. These demanded both virtuosity and lyrical sensitivity.

In these works, Liszt created symphonic structures on the piano. He wove multiple themes into coherent musical dramas far more than simple medleys of well-known tunes.

Liszt often closed his concerts with the crowd-pleaser Grand Galop Chromatique. This encore demonstrated his showmanship and awareness of audience expectations.

As critic Paul Scudo wrote in 1850:

He is the sovereign master of his piano; he knows all its resources; he makes it speak, moan, cry, and roar under fingers of steel, which distil nervous fluid like Volta’s battery distils electrical fluid.

His audience’s response, it would seem, regularly spilled beyond the conventions of polite concert etiquette and social decorum.

Another Romantic portrait of Liszt

by Friedrich von Amerling in 1838.

Artist and showman

In a series of 1835 essays titled On the Situation of Artists, Liszt presents musicians such as himself as “tone artists”, condemned to be misunderstood. Nevertheless, they have a profound obligation to “reveal, exalt and deify all the tendencies of human consciousness”.

At the same time, a letter to the novelist George Sand reveals Liszt was acutely aware of the practicalities of concerts and the trappings of celebrity.

He jokes that Sand would be surprised to see his name in capital letters on a Paris concert bill. Liszt admits to the audacity of charging five francs for tickets instead of three, basks in glowing reviews, and notes the presence of aristocrats and high society in his audience.

He even describes his stage draped with flowers, and hints at the female attention following one performance, albeit directed toward his partner in a duet.

This letter shows an artist who is self-aware, sometimes amused, and sometimes ambivalent about the spectacle attached to his art.

Yes, Liszt engaged with his celebrity identity, but clearly also felt a measure of distance from it. He was aware the serious side of his art risked being overshadowed by the gossip-column version.

Much of the music criticism of the time functioned in exactly this way. It was little more than the work of gossip writers, many disgusted by the intensity of audience reactions to Liszt’s performances.

Gossip, poison pens, and the making of Lisztomania

Not everyone shared the enthusiasm of Liszt’s audiences. Some critics attacked both his playing and the adulation it provoked.

In 1842, a writer using the pseudonym Beta described the combined effect of Liszt’s performance and the public’s response, writing that:

the effect of his bizarre, substance-less, idea-less, sensually exciting, contrast-ridden, fragmented playing, and the diseased enthusiasm over it, is a depressing sign of the stupidity, the insensitivity, and the aesthetic emptiness of the public.

Similarly, poet Heinrich Heine suggested Liszt’s performance style was deliberately “stage managed” and designed to provoke audience mania:

For example, when he played a thunderstorm on the fortepiano, we saw the lightning bolts flicker over his face, his limbs shook as if in a gale, and his long tresses seemed to drip, as it were, from the downpour that was represented.

These and other accounts fed the mythology of Lisztomania, portraying women in his audience as irrational and hysterical.

The term mania carried a medicalised, pathologising tone, framing enthusiasm for Liszt as a form of cultural sickness.

Lithographs, caricatures, and anecdotal reports amplified these narratives, showing swooning figures, flowers hurled on stage, and crowds behaving in ways that exceeded polite social convention.

Yet these accounts are not entirely trustworthy; they were shaped by prejudice, moralising assumptions, and a desire to sensationalise.

Liszt’s concerts, therefore, existed at a fascinating intersection: extraordinary artistry and virtuosity, coupled with the theatre of audience reception, all filtered through a lens of gossip, exaggeration and gendered panic.

In this sense, the phenomenon of Lisztomania foreshadows the dynamics of modern celebrity. (It was also the subject of what one critic described as “the most embarrassing historical film ever made”.)

Just as performers like the Beatles, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift provoke intense public devotion while simultaneously facing slander and sensational reporting, Liszt’s fame was inseparable from both admiration and the poison pen of his critics.

Timothy McKenry, Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University