Wanderlust: We’ve all experienced it, some of us have acted upon it, and then there are others, like Sydney designer Christopher Esber, who have been inspired by it. Before his show in the Australian Embassy in Paris today, the finale of a fashion week like no other in living memory, Esber was talking through the narrative which led him to spring 2026, an ode to the call of the… well, if not exactly the wild, then whatever place takes you far, far away. “I was thinking about someone dreaming of being on vacation while they’re at their desk,” Esber said. “So a lot of the collection is deconstructing office wear and bringing an element of raw, disheveled beauty to it. And I was also looking at this idea of how women dress on the beach; the way they might wrap a towel around a swimsuit, or wear a T-shirt with a bikini.”
From that everyday reality of beach life experienced by just about all of us, Esber leant into this dialog between a more considered formality and loosening it up—or vice versa. He opened with a navy suit with a trailing pareo fluttering from the back of the pants—this whole notion of trousers with some sarong-esque action going on started in New York and has since, if you’ll excuse the godawful pun, turned out to have legs—before showing the likes of a gray shirt and navy pants embellished with (yes, really) salmon skin dyed white, either as a breast pocket or as a strip which encircled the waistband, then a black lean coat with a ripped hem rising upwards as if you’d finally had enough of what you were wearing to work and couldn’t shed it fast enough as you rent it asunder.
Before long though, Esber started to really lean into the more vacation-y side of things. He played with the idea of scales, and it worked far better than it does as I write that word down: A terrific pair of glistening marine blue paillette-encrusted trousers (worn with an easy, oversized yellow jersey shirt), or a white strapless dress which fell into wrapped, towel-like folds which moved in gentle undulations as the model walked, or as a new knit technique he’d developed. That was just one of the innovations here, including embroidering onto the reverse side of lace, or the embellishment of a gazillion tiny metal discs with a weathered quality to them as if they’d washed onto the shore and been used with the utmost reverence by being sewn onto fishnet. That was certainly on Esber’s mind; the notion of celebrating the imperfect as another kind of perfection.
Amidst all this newness for him was what Esber has made his name (and by all accounts his growing business) with; dresses, of the intelligently sexy variety. Maybe one or two could have done with a little simplifying in their approach, but when Esber got them right—like a long gray silk dress slipping and sliding around the body, or one shimmering to the knees in a coppery tan brown swishing with fringe—they’ll end up as treasured as the memories of the holiday where you finally let yourself leave everything behind.
