2025 has been quite a year for Zomer, which landed among the finalists for both the Andam and the LVMH Prize. That’s a win by virtually every measure. Backstage this morning, Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha allowed that while there had been nerve-wracking moments, the experience helped them grow. “For spring we were really just trying to think about ‘How can we make this collection better? How can we mature?” the duo offered.
The answer, they decided, was to focus on wearability while not taking themselves too seriously. “I mean, with everything that’s happening in the world, do we really need another gray collection on the runway?” Aitouganov quipped. “We’re living in a time when it’s a lot about reducing, but we wanted to blow up and expand in a way.”
Such musings produced a few silly, monumental showpieces—a pink hair claw as a top, that diamond solitaire from their LVMH Prize season as a shoulder accessory, and colorful belts in outsized proportions. They also sparked the idea for a first piece of runway performance art, thanks to a collaboration with Make Up Forever: a larger-than-life makeup palette transformed the catwalk into a canvas, as models wearing Zomer’s Mary Jane/sneaker hybrid—a collaboration with the Finnish brand Karhu—stepped on squares of liquid color and then made tracks down the runway.
Artsy antics aside, the Zomer boys said they wanted to bring “a little of salt and pepper and spice” to their lineup. Breezy dresses were inspired by collapsed umbrellas—contrasting godets and uneven hems seem to be trending next season, so there’s a logic to it all—and most looks featured some sort of fanciful pairing, for example florals with camouflage or croc-printed leather, styled on the runway like a babydoll dress. As always with Zomer, a little parsing yielded some very wearable clothes, such as sharply tailored trousers (paired here with a black coat with a leather binding and detachable sleeves), bombers, cheery striped separates, among them a miniskirt made of a coated ironed-and-melted weave that swung jauntily as the model walked.
The final look, typically their most couture-level piece, seemed to nod to the Jazz Age, coinciding neatly with all the 100th-anniversary celebrations of the Art Deco movement that will light up Paris this season. That cocktail dress, a shrunk-and-pleated number done entirely in camouflage-printed sequins, had a plunging back and black velvet shoulder straps. It looked like a party on all its own.
