Because of an internal reset at her brand, Sacai’s Chitose Abe sat out a Paris fashion week show this season. Come June, she’ll be back on the menswear calendar, and she’ll resume her four-shows-a-year schedule. Her absence leaves a gap in the usual lineup, but she’s not out of the picture completely. The Sacai showroom has been bustling as usual with buyers, and Abe herself was in town to shoot this fall 2026 lookbook.
Her breakthrough idea this season was to add a kind of double-breasted dickey jacket to everything from cardigans to button-downs, and even other jackets. Worn buttoned it gives the illusion of layers without the bulk; unbuttoned, with the ends tossed over the shoulders, it’s an exuberant scarf. “It’s a statement about having the freedom to do what you want to do,” Abe said via her interpreter, and it plays into a theme that began developing at Prada in Milan and was picked up by the young Marie Adam-Leenaerdt here in Paris. Designers are building DIY versatility into their clothes. “Putting the I back into fashion,” is how we’ve started thinking of it at Vogue.
Abe has made a signature of her hybridized garments since she began showing on the runway a decade-and-a-half ago. Here, she married a parka and man’s blazer, or a cardigan and a blazer, wrapping them tightly around the waist to create a more feminine silhouette. Curvaceous bell sleeves on other jackets added to the picture, as did the leopard spots, including an oversize version in tufted faux fur on an army jacket.
Abe’s artist collaboration this season was with the estate of Robert Mapplethorpe. His iconic Calla Lilly photograph was printed on the back of a black leather bomber. On the inside, she added a quote attributed to him: “I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before.” It might as well be the Sacai motto.