Pauline Dujancourt SS26

Anton Chekhov said “When you want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.” Pauline Dujancourt did just that by presenting a collection which would impress upon the viewers a feeling similar to that of introspection emerging from their grief, their sadness. The atmosphere was heavy as we the readers had our emotions pushing through to the surface; sadness and sorrow that stems from loving and losing manifested into the clothes in front of us.

Chekhov’s Nina fluttered back to life on the runway as Pauline channelled her sorrow into sculptural garments. Inspired by Nina’s final line —“life doesn’t hurt so much anymore”— and by the sudden loss of a close friend, Dujancourt folded grief into fabric. Black mourning dresses, dense in hand-knits and tulle, draped like veils of memory; the Mother’s dress, in pearlescent silk scallops, unfurled as a gentle promise. Each silhouette became a living elegy, every seam a whispered confession. 

Pauline reimagined Argyle sweaters and crochet granny squares as feather-light hybrid knits. Yarns wove through tulle in vapourous layers, conjuring bird wings at rest. The Bird Dress emerged as the collection’s apex: a silhouette that breathed with hollow volumes and sensual curves, marrying technical innovation with poetic gesture.

The finale transformed mourning into communal release. We, the audience, fastened one of 450 crocheted bird brooches to our lapels and, at cue, watched them drift free. As J.S. Foer’s words rang out — “I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages”— those hand-crafted creatures soared like liberated memories through the hushed amphitheatre.

In Dujancourt’s Seagullwear, fashion becomes a language of loss, love and hope, its vocabulary written in drape and knit rather than in speech. Here clothes do more than adorn; they carry the weight of remembrance and the lightness of letting go.