What’s the purpose of fashion if not that of projecting onto ourselves the identity we want the world to see, either through disguise or blending in?
In an interesting reflection on clothing as tools of self-expression, the British Guyanese designer Saul Nash got inspired by the tradition of masquerade after attending London’s Notting Hill Carnival over the summer and blended his sportswear codes with traces of tailoring for this trompe l’oeil-rich fall lineup.
“I started looking deeper into what masquerade is; it’s an act of putting on a mask… masquerade is obscuring, like how people see you. It’s an illusion [whereby] you’re questioning what it is [that you’re looking at],” Nash said in a backstage scrum post-show.
The show opened with traces of his spring collection, with an aviator jumpsuit in a parachute-like fabric, worn off the shoulders to reveal a basic T-shirt bearing the print of one of the tops unveiled last June that were left unbuttoned on the bias to reveal a nipple.
As the show progressed, more of those deceptive prints mingled with hybrid numbers, all intended to straddle casual and formal.
Take for example the camp-collared brown jumpsuit imprinted with mismatched shirting stripes, the closing tracksuit echoing a three-piece suit and the pinstriped hooded blazer and fluid pants worn with a shiny bomber jacket. All cut for movement and versatility, they had currency.
“I grew up wearing tracksuits and always feeling like I couldn’t go to the theater because I was not dressed up enough. So this is my way for those men to masquerade and put on these garments,” Nash said.
The collection debuted Nash’s first shoe design – a martial art-inspired, superflat high-top with a mesh upper and Velcro fastening – as well as the spring 2026 installment of the designer’s ongoing collaboration with Lululemon.
“By looking at different ways to put things together that maybe don’t belong together, it sets me free creatively, because I can imagine things that I’ve never seen,” he said.
