For SS26, Munthe challenged fashion’s AI obsession with a handmade floral print – foraged, pressed and steamed in her very own back garden
Munthe’s spring/summer '26 collection began with a question: how do you make fashion feel human when everything around it is being automated? “I get the feeling that more and more people are struggling to figure out what’s real,” said creative director Naja Munthe ahead of the show. “Is this a person? Did you write it yourself, or did you ask AI?”
Her answer? Procedural, rather than conceptual. She took up gardening. Munthe and her namesake brand's team collected leaves and flowers from her back garden and steamed them into fabric using an old botanical dyeing method. “You don’t know what it will look like until you unroll it,” she explains. “One leaf might come out green, another blue. We didn’t change anything afterwards. It’s as real as it gets.”
The collection may be rooted in handcraft and inter-human resonance, but don’t mistake it for a floaty floral fantasy. There was a certain grit here too: workwear-inspired fatigue pants and updated denim silhouettes made a strong case for wearability. The silhouettes stayed consistent: wearable and often with an unexpected fabrication or design tweak. Take the quilted leather stitched into floral outlines using a punching method more common in upholstery than fashion or the sparkly of layered sequins for example.
Most notably, there was deliberate repetition. Five or six core outfit formulas reappeared in various iterations (layered skirts and shirts, sculptural jackets, and tonal ensembles) creating a rhythm and recognisability often missing from recent runway maximalism. “I’m not a minimalist,” Munthe laughs, “but having some structure in the lineup was grounding.”
The accessories played an essential role, guiding the show's visual narrative. A flower-printed bag bridged a denim section to the floral one; colour-matched sandals mirrored embroidery on dresses. The brand's most popular models return in smaller versions, alongside keychains and handle variations, rounding out a brand universe increasingly defined by its details – such as the eye-catching ankle chains that chimed down the runway.
Denim, now core to the Munthe DNA, continued to evolve. “10 years ago, we didn’t have a single pair,” said Munthe, “and now it’s our biggest category.” A standout piece saw jeans appliquéd with flower shapes cut from vintage denim and accented with pearls – a reverently romantic way to reimagine the most utilitarian of garments.
In a fashion landscape obsessed with immediacy, spectacle, and AI-generated everything, Munthe wants to offer an antidote. “I want people to leave [the show] knowing what the idea was. They don’t have to love it, but I hope they understand it.” For her show-goers to reflect on those handmade details that resist reproduction. After all, not everything needs to be reinvented. Sometimes the point is to prove it was made by hand in the first place.
See all the looks from Munthe's SS26 collection below.
