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The Spring/Summer 2026 season is one of debuts. You’ve read it all already: how many of them (15), who is behind them (16 designers in total) and what the stakes are (we’ve outlined them here, here and here). Now that the collections are underway, it’s getting easier to write about the season because we can stop, for the most part, imagining what this fashion vibe shift will look like solely based on celebrity placements and nebulous social media show teasers. Ah, yes, the soft launches.
About those: since the slate of debuting names was finalised, designers and brands have had the impossible mission of making people excited about their collections by cutting through the noise. This is a hard-to-crack attention economy, and everyone wants their moment in the sun. It’s why, you may have noticed, labels have moved on from dressing celebrities as previews to teasing their actual shows. Simone Bellotti of Jil Sander, whose show was yesterday in Milan, released a music video; Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Loewe posted an array of content on Instagram earlier this week, outlining their vibe for the house, and Bottega Veneta (because it still doesn’t have social media) emailed an abstract show teaser yesterday, too.
You have thoughts, and so do we, so we’ve decided to bring our office water cooler talks and endless Slacks to you here.
Maliha Shoaib: Fashion’s adoption of teaser tactics feels in line with what we’ve seen in other creative industries, like film and music. Think about a Marvel or a Disney movie — when they drop a teaser, fans go wild dissecting every frame and pulling out easter eggs. Of course, people say it spoils the movie, but the anticipation becomes part of the experience. Same with music: artists tease a 15-second clip on TikTok with the hopes that it will go viral. When the full track drops, either it becomes even bigger, or it doesn’t quite live up to expectations.
José Criales-Unzueta: I agree, but the challenge here is that you can’t tease a fashion show with a 30-second trailer like you do a movie or a music video, because, unlike film, the show hasn’t happened yet. And if you do reveal something — a look, the set, a model — you’ve just spoiled a large part of the fun.
Hilary Milnes: That’s why we’re getting such a mix of detail in these teasers. You have Gucci, whose teaser is a full-collection drop, complete with a star-studded 33-minute film — the faster Demna’s clothes get to stores, the better. Dior also flexed its celebrity stable by releasing a batch of campaign images starring cool girls Mia Goth, Mikey Madison and Greta Lee (a Jonathan Anderson devotee). Then you have Bottega, whose teaser was a splash of green liquid.
MS: It definitely brings up the question of how much you should tease. If you lean into abstraction, it could be intriguing — and at least you’re not risking major spoilers — but it could also leave some audiences unsure of what to take away. And that’s the tension, right? Teasers can either heighten anticipation or dilute impact, depending on how they’re executed. In film or music, the build-up is part of the fan culture — people want to speculate — but fashion is a little tricker because we’ve historically had less public input than in music, film or even sport. There’s been this air of mystique. But that’s changed a lot with social media: the public now have a front-row view, and the immediacy is heightened because you don’t have to wait until the collections drop in print.
JCU: That’s the most fascinating part about Bottega Veneta sending out a teaser to me. Sure, Louise Trotter, the new designer, posted it on her Instagram stories, but where else does it live other than in editors’ inboxes? Unlike, say, the new Loewe teasers, which do serve a super clear purpose and were well-received online, what’s to gain here is less clear. Maybe that’s also why it was less so of a true teaser and more of a ‘Hey, reminder this is happening this weekend’.
HM: It’s essentially an attempt to cut through the noise, or rather, start to build the noise before the 15-minute runway show. I almost wonder what it says about the runway’s impact itself: does that moment — originally an industry vehicle, now exposed to the masses — actually mean much to the average consumer? Or does Versace dressing Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried in the same outfit back to back on the Venice red carpet make a bigger impact? Or to go back to Dior and its crew of celebrity ambassadors — that star power can start working its magic before the runway show, so why shouldn’t it?
JCU: But the thing about soft launching and offering too many teasers is that you open yourself up to discourse. Sure, you have everyone’s attention, but you also invite everyone’s opinions. Think of the Dior dresses at the Venice Film Festival and how eager the internet was to talk about them, or consider Dario Vitale’s Versace pre-campaign, in which he asked a group of creatives, from Collier Schorr to Steven Meisel, to interpret the brand. Folks had lots to say about that, too.
Lucy Maguire: I do wonder if that’s the point. Perhaps the surge in teasers is because designers want to soften the impact of a debut show, gauge some industry feedback in advance and take the pressure off slightly? We’ve become so obsessed with the debut moment and while we know it takes a few seasons for a designer to bed in, I’m sure they can’t help but feel intense pressure. David Koma soft-launched Blumarine with pre-fall showroom appointments before his first show, and I remember him saying he would then feed back to his team what to tweak about the vision, based on the response.
MS: The biggest takeaway for me is that teasers are really fun if executed well — but with so many brands using this approach, it takes something different to really cut through. That’s why Jonathan Anderson’s decision to share snippets of his Dior mood board via a Close Friends story felt exciting, because it was a fresh take on the format. Part of the challenge is that there are just so many debuts happening at once, so it’s harder to stand out across the board.
JCU: Which brings me to Chanel — unlike pretty much every other brand, they’ve remained completely silent. I find it incredibly elegant and a big power move. Sure, they dressed Ayo Edebiri in Venice and some other celebs here and there, but none of those looks were a first look — one of them, actually, was an archival re-issue. There’s still power in asking people to wait.
MS: Ironically, not teasing at all might be the ultimate tease.
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