After seasons of runway spectacle, Avavav is stripping things back. For spring/summer '27, designer Beate Skonare Karlsson lets exaggerated pleats, cartoonish proportions and familiar forms take centre stage
For a brand that has made falling models, flying rubbish and general runway mayhem something of an art form, Avavav's latest trick might be its most unexpected yet: behaving itself.
For spring/summer '27, creative director Beate Skonare Karlsson is turning down the volume. There is no elaborate new universe to enter, nor a stunt demanding to be clipped, posted and dissected before the final look has left the runway. Instead, Karlsson has returned her attention to something rather quaint in fashion's content-hungry age: the clothes. More specifically, their shape.
Rather than treating SS27 as a clean slate, Karlsson considers Avavav an ever-expanding family of forms – figurines that can reappear, mutate, and find new functions from one collection to the next. It's an appealing rejection of fashion's chronic biannual amnesia. "I think of it almost as building a family," the designer explains. "I'm not interested in erasing everything and starting over every six months. I want to find forms that feel like they belong to us, then let them evolve and introduce new ones around them." Why throw a good idea out with last season's bathwater when you can stretch it, shrink it, or, in Avavav's case, turn it into a skirt?