Last season, Tibi’s Amy Smilovic and Traci Bui-Amar, her SVP of design, traveled to Antwerp looking for inspiration after their originally planned trip to Berlin hadn’t yielded what they were looking for. But it seems the second time was the charm for the city, which provided the inspiration for Tibi’s spring 2026 collection.
“Traci and I were having conversations about how functional the architecture is there—the Brutalist movement, Bauhaus—and just how interesting it is that they can take such severe shapes and it’s still really beautiful at the same time,” she said backstage after her show. “I think that played into what we were feeling for; a bit of grit and a bit of elegance, which is a word we don’t normally say.” It was one of Smilovic’s most subdued collections, not in the least because her usually bold color palette was reduced to a shocking bolt of chartreuse, a bit of blue, green, and an even tinier amount of pink. Because she was thinking about architecture, she leaned into bold shapes instead—beginning with the shoulder which was strong, but gently sloped rather than square. They felt the most fresh on a white poplin button down shirt worn with easy powder blue wash jeans.
Another successful experiment with shapes were her geometric peplum belts, especially a clear version worn over a simple white long sleeve tee and matching pleated cotton skirt. “It’s not about using a belt to cinch your waist, but about using your belt to create an interesting shape,” Smilovic said. The inspiration behind the peplum—and the hoop hems on a variety of other tanks, skirts, and dresses—came from the artist Ursula Sax who constructed a series of geometric costumes in homage to Oskar Schlemmer. “The idea was to create very strong shapes, and see how your body can still move in them without having them take you over,” she said. The hoops were slightly less successful but they still had their moments. The three-hooped dress was perhaps too faithful to the inspiration to be as practical in the real world as fits Smilovic’s MO, but there was something charming about the hoop/peplum on the midi-length skirts.
