The AW26 fashion campaigns roundup is, collectively, a study in location as language: countryside meadows, fluorescent car parks, Baroque showrooms and mountain forest plains all pressed into service as backdrops for clothes with something to say. From Chloé’s sun-drenched fields to Burberry’s rush-hour commute, the season’s imagery ranges across moods and geographies in a way that suggests the studio has, for now, lost its appeal.
Chloé and the Art of the Open Field
The Chloé AW26 campaign, unveiled on 23 July according to Interview Magazine, is the season’s most immediately joyful piece of image-making. Lensed by Inez and Vinoodh, it places models Raquel Zimmermann, Jacqui Louise, Thalita Ferreira and Sarah Isaksen across sprawling fields of yellow flowers, lavender and long grass, all frothy gowns and embroidered blouses catching the light. Creative director Chemena Kamali was precise about her intentions: ‘I wanted to express devotion through women, the vastness of open landscapes and craftsmanship. Nature brings us back to instinct, freedom and connection. In that openness, femininity unfolds with untamed strength and togetherness.’
The campaign’s production credits, published by Chloé Official, include stylist Elodie David Touboul and hair artist Anthony Turner, two names whose instincts for texture and movement are well-suited to the pastoral register Kamali was reaching for. The result sits somewhere between a memory and a manifesto for the house.
The AW26 Fashion Campaigns Roundup: House by House
Dior takes its cues from the same pastoral spirit, with David Sims shooting Sunday Rose, Ziqi Zhao, Dru Campbell and Laura Kaiser tumbling through meadow grass, dandelion seeds spiralling around them. Feathered skirts, lily pad-adorned accessories and a frog-shaped clutch ground the dreamlike imagery in the kind of crafted whimsy that Jonathan Anderson, a year into his tenure as creative director, is quietly making his signature at the house.
Prada, by contrast, stays indoors. Director Barry Jenkins takes the reins for Simple Stories, a campaign in still and moving images that finds something worth pressing pause on in a private gesture or a quiet room. Chen Haoyu, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Hunter Schafer and Troye Sivan carry Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s vision of cinema that is, in their own words, ‘simple, honest and human.’ The clothes become characters rather than costumes here, which is precisely the point.
Fendi’s campaign, shot by Jo Ann Callis, marks Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first for the house and draws on the choreographic legacy of German dancer Pina Bausch. Pairs are caught in suspended moments of intimacy and distance, bodies hovering close but never quite meeting against Rome’s grand interiors and weathered architecture. It is a campaign that feels deliberately unresolved: rich in atmosphere, reluctant to give everything away.
Miu Miu takes the season’s most unexpected location: a vacant car park at midnight, its fluorescent glow and yellow lines standing in for any conventional set. Zoë Ghertner shoots Hailey Bieber and Xiao Wen Ju against that liminal stillness with a subtly confident register. Reborn bubble shoes and the Arcadie Bag are present; Miuccia Prada’s eye for the unlikely is, as ever, the throughline.
Jimmy Choo stages its campaign inside Milan’s Palazzo Gallarati Scotti, restaged as a fantasy version of creative director Sandra Choi’s design studio. Model Africa Garcia moves through the collection with unhurried ease, and boots are the season’s clear obsession: the Caly OTK 85, the reworked archival Biker KB. ‘Boots are the focus for this collection,’ Choi says. ‘I love the youthful, confident energy they give to women. It’s an assertive take on glamour, inspired by our heritage.’ The house marks its 30th year by setting youth squarely against experience.
McQueen, shot by Glen Luchford, makes cinema of tension: the gap between outward appearance and inner feeling, told across a cast that bridges past and present. Karen Elson, who walked the house’s seminal SS01 show Voss, anchors the archive era; Paloma Elsesser, Jacqui Hooper and Xiao Wen Ju bring it into the now. Sharp tailoring sits against soft fabrics, ornate lace and trompe l’oeil feather embroidery. Drama and storytelling, the volume turned up.
Vivienne Westwood’s campaign, shot by Juergen Teller in the showroom of Belloni, cabinet and furniture makers in Barlassina, is an Italo-Anglo collision that creative director Andreas Kronthaler describes as ‘the epitome of Italianness in all the best ways.’ Checkered pieces, fine felted tailoring and Oxford shirting share the frame with gilded, Baroque settings.
Burberry heads underground, taking its AW26 campaign onto the London commute with narration by Matthew Streeton, the voice behind the announcements on the London Underground. Rosemary Ferguson, Cherif Douamba and Haojie Qi carry the Foxfield trench and Leadenham jacket through a multimedia rollout that treats transitional dressing as a daily, almost meditative discipline.
Louis Vuitton places Nicolas Ghesquière’s sculptural outerwear and animalier-woven denim against the leafy plains of the Jura mountains, where the house’s founder grew up, shot by Jamie Hawkesworth and styled by Marie-Amélie Sauvé. Dolce & Gabbana, meanwhile, returns to the grand house of portraiture via Steven Meisel, who has been shaping the brand’s image since 1989: sumptuous black lace, structured silhouettes, and a stylised portrait of masculinity that has lost none of its charge across the decades.
Across the AW26 fashion campaigns roundup, the recurring instinct is to reach beyond the studio and into something more contingent, whether that is a mountain forest, a midnight car park or a Roman palazzo. The clothes, in each case, are the better for the company they keep.
