Boo! Anne Sofie Madsen’s autumn/winter '26 collection is a ghostly affair, reflecting the haunted feeling designers Madsen and Caroline Clante can’t seem to shake
Guests of today’s Anne Sofie Madsen autumn/winter '26 show might have felt a certain presence. Indeed the show space, a historic building owned for a century by a society of male Freemasons, has a palpably spooky energy (worth mentioning – it was ravaged by a fire in the 1990s). “I believe that it’s haunted,” says Anne Sofie Madsen. “Today it feels a bit abandoned,” adds co-designer Caroline Clante. “No one is working there or meeting there – it’s mostly being used for big trashy parties.”
Madsen and Clante feel haunted, too. Not by a spirit, necessarily (Clante feels that there is “someone around her”, but that’s neither here nor there), but by the general state of things “The present is really haunting us,” says Madsen. “And our present is something we inherited from generations before us.”
The feeling – which Madsen likens to mourning – was so overwhelming, it made the notion of designing a collection feel a bit futile. In fact, the designers didn’t muster the desire to begin on AW26 until early December. It was then that Sofie Madsen and Clante agreed if they were going to send a collection down the runway this season, it would have to directly confront their feelings. “Having both been in fashion for many years, it is sort of escapism,” says Madsen. “But this time, we talked from the beginning about really wanting to be honest.” They wanted to express a certain sadness – a heaviness – whilst also confronting the realities of balancing a fashion brand with separate full-time jobs and families in an uncertain and unrelenting industry. The live band that backtracked the show conveyed that frantic immediacy — a need to get a feeling out.
It sounds serious, but Madsen and Clante certainly haven’t lost their sense of humour. And so, Ann Sofie Madsen’s AW26 show is a ghost story. At moments, the tale is told quite literally, with decadent vintage blankets – cut two holes for eyes and there you have it – reworked into strong-shouldered draped dresses. “But blankets also have a feeling of shelter,” says Madsen, noting that as a blanket is passed on, it becomes somewhat haunted by those who came before.
That notion of haunted garments is reflected in more abstract ways. A duffel coat, for instance, a garment haunted by the various cultures who have adopted it over the decade, is reworked into a covetable cropped jacket with an oversized hood (it’s a through line from last season, in which leather Perfecto jackets were reworked into fresh silhouettes). On the model’s feet, Uggs – a boot made heavy with meaning – also get recontextualised.
The skirt suit, meanwhile, another expression haunted by its own history (forced femininity and, more recently, girl-bossing) is imbued with punk-ish energy (by that duffel skirt suit, especially). “It’s a matchy-matchy collection,” notes Madsen. “But you can break it up and it becomes something completely different,” adds Clante.
Another haunting idea: shapewear. But in Madsen’s hands, it becomes something else entirely – a means by which to enhance a fun-house-like silhouette. “It both reveals and exposes the body,” says Madsen. “It’s this uncanniness – it sort of resembles the body but it’s super artificial at the same time.” As last season, shoulders are occasionally enhanced to linebacker-esque proportions whilst transparent silks float around the body, transforming the models into ghostly spirits. It’s the sort of collection that really stays with you. A friendly ghost.
See the full Anne Sofie Madsen AW26 collection below.
