Hed Mayner’s Poetry in Motion
Thu 15 Jan
At Florence’s Palazzina Reale di Santa Maria Novella, a marble threshold beside the city’s central train station, Hed Mayner unveiled his Fall/Winter 2026 collection as part of Pitti Uomo 109. The choice of location felt deliberate and poetic: a space defined by movement, waiting, and perpetual transition. Against the choreography of arrivals and departures, Mayner proposed a vision of menswear designed not to stand still but to exist in motion, emotionally as much as physically.
This season marked a subtle yet potent shift in Mayner’s emotional register. Long known for his sculptural interrogation of proportion, FW26 felt more outward-facing, more exposed. There was a quiet tension between formality and ease, between material and silhouette. Plush crushed velvet, sequins, faux fur, and dense wool collided with denim, knitwear, and track-inspired elements, collapsing hierarchies of value and use. Jackets thrust forward with exaggerated shoulders; sleeves bent away from the body as if resisting gravity. Each piece occupied space with authority, yet carried the softness of something worn and lived in.
Ultimately, FW26 read as a meditation on presence, on how clothing carries memory and momentum. By placing his work in a space defined by passage rather than permanence, Mayner reframed tailoring as a living language, one that embraces contradiction instead of resisting it. These were garments for a world in flux: expressive without performance, monumental without excess. Tailoring, once again, became a question rather than an answer.