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Chitose Abe opened a Paris headquarters for Sacai on the Rue Cassette over the summer. Fashion long-timers will remember it as the site of some of the most electrifying shows of the 2000s, back in Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga days. Abe’s spring 2026 show produced a similar kind of feeling. Not because she referenced Balenciaga-era Ghesquière, though many others did this season, but because the smallness of the space functioned the same way it did in the aughts, bringing you closer to the clothes.

In this season of debuts, spectacle has sometimes trumped substance. If that’s understandable—there’s a lot riding on these brand refreshes, after all—it doesn’t necessarily serve designers’ efforts. Abe has nothing to prove, she’s very much her own woman, but this was a good collection to see in macro.

Experimentation is her way, and she was in top form here: Fashioning capes out of denim or army drill by swooping up the hems of skirts to the shoulders, and adding a georgette train to a silk duchesse T-shirt dress or a Watteau back to a white T-shirt/denim mini mash-up. The historical references we’ve seen elsewhere were also in evidence, from peplums to panniers to bustles, but in her hands they came off less backward-looking, maybe because of the utilitarian fabrics she used, like the spliced-up jeans or sturdy black leather.

Much of her suiting retained its basting stitches. On tailored vests, the armholes were unfinished, exposing the canvas and padding underneath, and the pockets on jackets were a shade darker than the rest of the garments, as if the ghost of the interfacing was materializing. After the show, Abe spoke somewhat cryptically via a translator: “She had the message that if she believes in what she does, there will be something for the future.” That seemed to mean if you have work you love, you can be happy. It was a concept echoed in the Aaliyah song title that appeared on a T-shirt: “At your best, you are love.” This did indeed feel like Abe at her inventive best, and I for one left happy.