Paris Fashion Week: Cultural Cartography ~ MaXhosa Spring/Summer 2026 Maps the Spirit of Africa onto the Runway

In Paris, at the MaXhosa show backstage, a model wears one of the new designs from the latest collection. Photograph (above) by Brittany Scott. 

Marking a significant chapter in South African fashion, MaXhosa's Spring/Summer 2026 showcase in Paris encapsulated both celebration and continuity. Under the creative direction of Laduma Ngxokolo, the brand used its platform at fashion week to reaffirm a decade and a half of work dedicated to fusing Xhosa heritage with contemporary design. Story by Antonio Visconti. Photographs by Brittany Scott

The new MaXhosa collection

in Paris mixed vivid hues with

intricate patterns and textures. 

LADUMA Ngxokolo’s aim for his new MaXhosa collection was to bridge continents and generations by presenting Izipho Zabadala, “Gifts for the Ancestors,” reaffirming his position as one of Africa’s leading fashion designers. 

Presented as part of the official Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode schedule, the designer paid homage to lineage while charting new creative ground. 

With more than 30 intricately constructed looks, the show combined traditional motifs with modern construction, reflecting Laduma Ngxokolo’s ongoing mission to position African craftsmanship within the vocabulary of international luxury.

"This collection stands as our heartfelt offering of gratitude to the wisdom, creativity, and heritage passed down by our elders," the designer said. "Every garment speaks across time, weaving past, present, and future together, a bridge connecting the living with the ancestral realm." 

The showcase, held at the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, marked the brand’s fourth consecutive season on the official Paris schedule and its 15th anniversary, milestones that underscore its steady rise from a South African knitwear label to a global luxury name.

Ngxokolo’s vision for Spring/Summer 2026 was a meditation on heritage as both inheritance and innovation. Conceived as an offering to his forebears, the collection celebrated the wisdom and artistry passed down through generations of Xhosa craftsmanship. The designer described the garments as vessels for ancestral memory, a dialogue between the spiritual and the contemporary.

The presentation opened with a soulful performance by South African legend Yvonne Chaka Chaka, setting the tone for a show steeped in both rhythm and reverence. Models walked on richly patterned carpets from MaXhosa’s homeware line, wearing garments alive with movement: tiered ruffles, beaded motifs, and geometric knits in vivid harmonies of pink, ochre, turquoise, and black. The intricacy of Xhosa beadwork was translated into cascading textures, while pulled-thread embroidery and modular silhouettes introduced a modern, adaptable sensibility.

The collection mixed traditional motifs with modern construction, reflecting Ngxokolo’s ongoing mission to position African craftsmanship within the vocabulary of international luxury

Elegant rows of ruffles were offset

by the clever mix of patterns. 

 

Ngxokolo’s expertise in knitwear remains central to his approach. His exploration of digital effects and detachable garment components underscored a desire to merge heritage craft with today's design, ideas as much about the future of African luxury as its past. 

"These pieces act as antennas: vessels through which we honour our ancestors, showing them, their gifts endure, carried forward to advance culture," the designer explained.  

The designer sees African culture as a universal language, and he emphasized his commitment to defining a South African aesthetic within the worldwide fashion lexicon.

This season’s collection also functioned as a broader reflection on MaXhosa’s evolution. Once synonymous with knitwear, the label has expanded into a lifestyle brand encompassing homeware and accessories, with flagship stores in Johannesburg and New York. Yet its core philosophy, of clothing as cultural storytelling, remains unchanged.

Paris Fashion Week proved momentous beyond the runway. Ngxokolo was simultaneously honoured in Johannesburg with the Outstanding Contribution to Fashion award at the inaugural South African Fashion Awards.

 In Izipho Zabadala, MaXhosa presented more than a collection; it delivered a cultural offering, one that stitched together memory, identity, and ambition. Through colour, craft, and conviction, Ngxokolo continues to affirm that African heritage is not a reference point from the past, but a living, evolving force shaping fashion’s future.

Scroll down to see highlights from the MaXhosa Spring/Summer 2026 presentation in Paris 

Paris Fashion Week: The Poetry of Continuity - Yohji Yamamoto’s Meditation on Presence and Legacy

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