An exposed bra. Clothes wrinkled as if fresh from a midday tryst. A cheeky peek of derriere.
Like the ripe aroma of sweat left over in a disheveled hotel bedroom, the undeniable whiff of sex wafted over the spring 2027 ready-to-wear collections. Of course, as observers of the fashion industry frequently note, the spring collections are almost always about sex, in some form or another. You can’t deny nature, after all, when rising temperatures inevitably coax a person to peel off their layers and reveal a titillating glimpse of flesh beneath. But this season made it definitively clear that sex is heavily on designers’ minds. What’s most interesting, however, is not the subject itself, but the distinct ways each city on the global fashion week circuit interpreted the erotic promise of carnal delights.
No culture is a monolith, and it goes without saying that one person’s kink can easily be another’s turnoff. Still, across the far-flung capitals of Europe and America, certain fascinating trends coalesced, reflecting local cultural attitudes toward the body, intimacy, and exposure.
New York fashion week was mostly all polish and sleek sportswear, but some younger, more independent designers shrewdly approached the subject of sex through a different prism. To them, the theme carried a gritty, funky, and even irreverent attitude—embodying that ineffable element of youthful downtown cool. Take Eckhaus Latta, a brand long known for its bleary knitwear and unwieldy denim, which presented a surprisingly self-assured and distinctly sexy collection this season.
Consider the offhanded ease of a T-shirt with rolled sleeves paired with a diaphanous, translucent skirt floating behind; airy shifts made of filmy see-through layers; all those shoulder-baring sleeveless tops; and the oddball cool of golden netting cut into pants or a sleeveless minidress. It was sexy, sure, but rendered with an insouciant shrug and a disaffected sigh that felt entirely authentic to its New York roots.
Emily Dawn Long, meanwhile, took a more direct and playful approach by cutting her dresses so low in the back that they exposed the upper regions of the lower back—or, to put it plainly, the top of the crack. She also showcased keyhole jeans that pulled off a similar stunt, charmingly referring to this anatomical reveal as "southern cleavage." To offset the stark exposure, however, she edged the revealing peekaboo in dainty little frills, resulting in a look that was simultaneously provocative and a little arch. In a preview of her collection, she articulated a sentiment that felt deeply American: that being sexy shouldn’t negate a sense of humor. If you really want to know where Dawn Long’s mind is at, one need only consider her popular screen-printed T-shirts, one of which bluntly reads, "Take Off Your Clothes."
Crossing the Atlantic to Milan, the approach shifted dramatically. The Milanese fashion community tends to treat sex almost as an intellectual pursuit, bringing to mind Prada’s esoteric and erotic mystique. While Miuccia Prada and her creative partner Raf Simons settled on one of the most provocative garments in a woman’s wardrobe—the skirt, with its tantalizing promise to reveal a little or a lot of leg—they found a dizzying array of ways to present it. They paired skirts with tough-girl leather jackets, with reserved librarian sweaters, with tomboy plaid shirts left unbuttoned, and, of course, with skimpy bras.
In other words, the collection served as a meditation not just on the skirt as a garment, but on the innumerable ways a woman can exist in the world. In doing so, it presented a rich panoply of sexiness—nerdy, brazen, demure, and sophisticated—that reflected the many moods and contours of female desire.
Milan also played host to Simone Bellotti’s work at Jil Sander, where a careful study of minimalist imperfection—creased dresses, askew coats, and slightly misaligned jackets—gently hinted at a postcoital rush. The garments evoked the sensation of hurriedly leaving some clandestine liaison, haphazardly buttoning a jacket with no time to smooth away the sordid wrinkles. That aesthetic brought to mind an unsavory tension that recalled the classic, moody cinematic works of Michelangelo Antonioni or Federico Fellini.
If sex is primarily a condition of the mind in Milan, it becomes very much a condition of the body in Paris. There, audiences received the frank, from-the-hip approach best expressed in Haider Ackermann’s simmering collection for Tom Ford. It was a deadly serious, seductive romp that fell entirely in line with France’s confrontationally blasé approach to le sexe.
To put it plainly, the collection was horny. It featured all that slick, pettable leather; men in sweaters and underwear that, as they walked the runway, revealed their fully exposed buttocks; and women in gowns or maillots that were slashed to reveal deep valleys of torso or miles of leg leading upward. It was absurd, it was lewd, it was defiantly gratuitous, and it was, above all, 100% Gallic.
No matter how one feels about sex—and chances are most people harbor some distinct opinion on the matter—the spring 2027 collections ensure that there will be a tailored way to indulge when the warm weather finally returns.
