Only Thom Browne would make Paris Fashion Week an otherworldly encounter. For its Spring 2026 collection, the designer instead replaced the typical runway shine for something surreal, blending couture accuracy with movie fantasy: aliens all dressed-up-in-tails, structured coats, and starry accessories strode through a Parisian ballroom straight out of a sci-fi fantasy.
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The show, dubbed a “Close Encounter of the Third Kind,” was raw Browne theatre. Models modeling sculpted shapes with extreme shoulders and angular pleats, piled high in signature gray, navy, and candy stripe fabric. On their ranks floated perfectly dressed alienation figures, their faces converted into pink or silver space masks. It was a work of satire, of art, of wholly Thom Browne — a lighthearted cue that fashion’s imagination knows no bounds.
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Browne’s tale this season was about being other yet dressed to fit in. Through a combination of human tailoring and extraterrestrial fantasy, he resurfaced new frontiers of sophistication and absurdity. As the critics recognized, it was less about space, it was about man, a metaphor of how fashion maintains renewals of itself by curiosity and wit.
It’s a world where some brands keep it safe, Browne’s moment of Paris issued a reminder of why his work is nearly cinematographic: it’s a wearable narrative that’s not afraid of strange, beautiful, otherworldly things.
