YUHAN AO’s AW26 collection does not seek redemption, nor does it attempt to offer anything grand to the world. It speaks instead to those who have never been welcomed, yet continue to meet the world in quiet, persistent ways, through work, through ritual, through the steady rhythm of their hands.
“What the Hands Remember” reflects on a posture that is disappearing:
the ability to hold dignity within scarcity,
to make beauty from what little is available.
The collection draws from two distant worlds: the solitude and exile in Rimbaud’s writing, and the life of the designer’s grandmother, who spun hemp thread in rural China with almost nothing at hand, weaving patience and time into something warm, useful, and discreetly graceful. Both share the same belief:
that labor can become ritual, and ritual can become a way of remaining human.
Yuhan Ao
This season is not concerned with perfection. It seeks an elegance shaped by restraint and resilience. Garments are built through wrapping, folding, and soft suspension, techniques that allow fabric to sit close to the body in layered, almost architectural forms. Hand-stitched seams remain visible, tracing the pace of making, where labor turns into ritual, and ritual settles into memory. Classic tailoring is taken apart and reassembled into new anatomies, suggesting a body that recalls both work and tenderness.
Linen stands at the heart of the material narrative. developed in the designer’s hometown, the hemp fibres carry a dry softness, a texture that feels touched by hand rather than produced by machine. Structured tailoring meets the irregularity of handcraft, giving the garments both a frame and a quiet, human irregularity.
The presentation begins outside, with models walking slowly from the street into the gallery, not as a grand entrance, but as a return from weather, as if stepping back into a private interior world. Inside, an installation by Tony Hornecker anchors the space: a broken, time-worn dinner table that still holds traces of ceremony, a reminder that rituals deserve to continue even when no one is waiting.
The collection’s sense of “solitary grace” is not tied to any character, but to a way of moving through the world an elegance found in the smallest gestures.
A folded collar,
a thread that refuses to break,
a small warmth held against desolation.
AW26 is for those who let their hands remember.
For those who carry poetry through labor,
and stitch dignity into the seams of everyday life.
