At Paris Fashion Week, Walter Van Beirendonck doesn’t simply present a collection — he opens a chapter. For Fall/Winter 2026, titled SCARE the CROW / SCARECROW, the Belgian visionary frames the runway as a site of deliberate disruption, where fashion resists spectacle for spectacle’s sake and instead asserts meaning, urgency, and soul.
This season also marks the next chapter of Walter Van Beirendonck x Eastpak, reaffirming a partnership rooted in function, rebellion, and identity. Integrated bags, smocks, and protective silhouettes become extensions of the body — tools rather than accessories.
Art Brut, Outsiders, and Raw Expression
Drawing deeply from Art Brut and Outsider Art, Van Beirendonck finds particular resonance in the work of André Robillard, whose handmade guns assembled from found materials inspire both the visual language and conceptual backbone of the collection. There is an untamed honesty here — instinctive, unfiltered, and radically human.
“I really love the spirit and the untamed way of working,” Van Beirendonck has said of Art Brut. That ethos runs through every look, creating a productive tension between tailoring and sportswear, where neither dominates and both ultimately win.
Youth, Protection, and Contradiction
The show opens with urgency: a motorbike cuts through the space 🛵 — functional, everyday, and immediate. What follows feels like a moving crowd of modern scarecrows 🌾, assembled from whatever is at hand. Clothes become covers — garments designed not to decorate, but to protect 🧥.
Throughout the collection, symbols of childhood, play, and defense recur. Toy water guns, plush weaponry, fluorescent trims, and exaggerated forms operate as critique and reflection. Youth is not treated as nostalgia, but as raw energy, chaos, and unfiltered truth.
Baggy plastic trousers meet impeccably tailored British wool. Mystic monster bags coexist with 3D artillery motifs and blooming graphics. Fine fabrics clash with plastic markers. It is a deliberate vocabulary of contradiction, where softness and aggression, humor and threat, innocence and armor collide.
Color With Purpose
While still unmistakably bold, the color palette is more controlled than in previous seasons. Neon pinks, oranges, and greens glow against darker, grounded tones, favoring tonal continuity over pure clash. Early looks feature T-shirts trimmed with fluorescent bands, emblazoned with the words “For Real Youth” — a manifesto rather than a slogan.
The Scarecrows of 2026
In a world where subcultures have dissolved and fashion is increasingly dominated by overproduced spectacles, celebrity-driven moments, or underfunded brands with no clear vision, Walter Van Beirendonck remains steadfastly old school — and radically relevant.
The Scarecrows of 2026 stand tall, colorful, and real. Assembled from fragments, they struggle to “look human” in a system that pushes toward quiet conformity. These garments hide and reveal simultaneously, like protective sheets draped over sculptures we are desperate to preserve.
Before the youth of today are lost unnamed, Van Beirendonck captures them as they are: fragmented, expressive, defiant, and hopeful. Puk Puk is back. The outsiders have arrived.
This was one of the undeniable highlights of Paris Menswear Week — a reminder of why we come, and why fashion still matters. High-octane, joyful, political, and deeply human, Walter Van Beirendonck Fall/Winter 2026 is a signal flare from fashion’s ultimate outsider — raw energy and pure hope, stitched into armor.
Some wigs are so good, so that means that I can wear one.