Marie Adam-Leenaerdt show: fashion in the mirror

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt plays with duality and illusion for Season 5. A collection in which each piece reveals a hidden facet, an unexpected second passage that defies the codes of clothing.

For her Autumn-Winter 2025-2026 show, Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt chose the Galerie Paradis, an intimate underground space, to unveil her new collection. The concept? Each silhouette is presented in two passages, like two sides of the same coin. This approach explores the subtle transformation of clothes, playing on the ambivalence between exterior and interior, appearance and essence.

Sculptural, architectural fashion

The show opens with a first series of monolithic silhouettes. Coats, suits and dresses feature clean, unadorned lines, with marked structure at the shoulders and hips. Dense felt, the designer’s material of choice, lends these pieces a statuesque, almost frozen allure. Each garment becomes an object in itself, an architecture that dresses the body.

One of this season’s signatures is the inspiration of the garment cover, usually used to protect pieces. Sometimes literal, white and clinical, sometimes integrated into the garment itself, with zipped openings, it evokes the workshop, the creative process, a tribute to the designer’s Belgian roots.

A second passage that transforms perception

Just when the audience thinks the show is over, the first silhouette returns in a new guise. The same coat, this time worn inside out, reveals an unsuspected lining. The reverse side takes over, exposing leopard prints, flowers and trompe-l’œil details. Cuts respond to each other, skirts protrude, prints float, like an echo of the minimalist aesthetic of the first passage.

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