Jump aboard the school bus and rediscover the nostalgia and whimsy of your first school trip, the Paolina Russo way
Outside, Copenhagen may have been chilly, but inside the city’s French embassy, the atmosphere was charged as Paris-based brand (and former Visionary Award winner) Paolina Russo unveiled its autumn/winter '26 collection. “The collection is really inspired by a school trip – specifically the first trip you ever take abroad or outside of your town,” explains Russo, the eponymous Canadian designer. “We wanted to capture that feeling of leaving your hometown for the first time to see the world. Everything feels new, full of possibility – like the world is your oyster.”
The resulting collection, which Russo and her French design partner Lucile Guilmard sent down the runway, is steeped in the familiar codes of a school uniform. Silhouettes leaned preppy and nostalgic: skirts were predominantly long and pleated; tops bore rugby-esque stripes and collegiate crests; and badges – recalling scouts’ insignia or head girl pins – were pinned across garments (each embedded with NFC-enabled chips linking directly to the label’s website).
“It is our interpretation of a uniform,” adds Guilmard. Crucially, it is not about conformity. “It isn’t about fitting in, but about defining individuality – through customisation, through clashes of colour and texture.” Those colours span a rainbow of pastels alongside brown and fuchsia pink, punctuated by sharp pops of neon, colliding across nostalgic stripes, checkerboard motifs and Fair Isle knits.
“We were very inspired by Rory from Gilmore Girls when she goes to university – all the silhouettes she wears,” says Guilmard, an influence clearly visible in the brand’s ‘Warrior’ knits. “It’s armour for the soft warrior princess – and that is the Paolina woman for us.”
“A lot of this season is made in mono-fibres,” adds Russo. “100 per cent wools, 100 per cent cottons. We want to show how natural fibres can be exciting, and still feel fresh, young and cool.” That ethos carries through to the runway’s denim and corduroy, where playful graphics are laser-etched directly into the fabric. “Little hearts and flowers,” Russo notes. “Like the doodles you’d make in your school agenda.”
Those whimsical visuals extend into the brand’s more technically complex illusion knits. “They have a lenticular effect, meaning the graphic moves with the wearer,” explains Russo. As the body shifts, patterns bend and warp, creating a dynamic, almost magical transformation — clothes that feel alive, in motion, and charged with youthful possibility.
See the full Paolina Russo AW26 collection below.
