MARC JACOBS’ SPRING 2026 HASN’T FORGOTTEN
words by FRANCESCO PIZZUTI
As he just unveiled his Spring 2026 collection in New York, Marc Jacobs turned towards the past. However, he didn’t surrender to nostalgia; instead, he engaged with memories as a source of purpose and will. The show wasn’t about a low-effort longing for what once was; it was rigorous sartorial engagement with memory. While nostalgia has saturated the internet over the past several years, Jacobs approached the past with unusual precision, taking distance from the endless purposeless referentialism.
all images courtesy of MARC JACOBS
Titled Memory. Loss, the collection treats memories as something to be sourced, nourished, and treated with respect. Jacobs, very relevantly, chose to explicitly credit the past works, collections, and moments that informed his visual language. In the era of mood-board nostalgia, TikTok niches, and all-over-the-place references, he made his as explicit as it gets with a dedicated “Credits and Receipts” page.
Through the collection, clothes became vessels of awareness, aiming to preserve and present memories. As Jacobs writes in his press notes: “Memories, both bittersweet and beautiful, are a faculty of purpose influencing current and future actions - who we are, what we create, what we leave behind and what we carry forward”.
Visually, the collection is defined by restraint. Squared, stiff silhouettes with sharp angles and rigid lines, dominated the runway. There aren’t really any soft curves, no indulgent volume. Exaggeration and playfulness are still present, but they appear more controlled: straight and flat coats and dresses, precise tailoring, silhouettes pushed to their limit through seriousness rather than excess, rendering them almost unflattering.
Jacobs reworked the mundane while reinforcing a sense of constraint with elements like the reversed coat, a familiar garment turned front to back. Moreover, big, stiff collars recurred throughout the collection, further restricting movement and posture, as if the body itself must negotiate with memory.
Many of the inspirations featured in the “Credits and Receipts” section appear to be from the 1990s. An era that clearly bleeds into this collection with Prada’s Spring/Summer 1996 being echoed through the V-neck knit sweaters and tube skirts, and Helmut Lang-adjacent leather shorts. The memory of the iconic 1994 X-Girl show emerges through the colourful miniskirts, now in a less loose rendition. This reference resonated even more deeply for those of us who loved the documentary Marc by Sofia, making this backward glance feel more intimate rather than archival.
Beauty also forwarded the collection’s storytelling as the models wore wigs resembling their own hair. It was an almost invisible gesture that quietly furthered this play on likeness, memory, resemblance, and identity that evolved through the collection.
Through this collection, in acknowledging the bittersweetness of loss, Jacobs offered clothes that do not romanticize the past but stand firmly in the present, shaped by everything that came before, and determined to progress forward.
