Kim Shui used her Spring Summer 2026 collection to question how fashion negotiates exposure. Presenting 40 looks at One World Observatory, she constructed a sequence of garments that shifted between privacy and revelation, asking the audience to consider who controls what remains seen.
The collection took shape from Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of Inclination. Centuries ago, censors altered the painting, and only recently has it returned to view in its original form. Shui treated this cycle of erasure and recovery as a creative spark, transforming the idea of concealment into fabric, cut, and movement.
Approaching the tenth year of her label, the designer revisited her Roman upbringing. Tailoring traditions and craft informed her language, yet she redirected those references with her own urgency. Color unfolded in stages: pale greens, soft blues, and light yellows gave way to browns punctuated with metallic flashes. Fabrics shifted in real time as models advanced – sheer surfaces sliding over denser ones, gloss cutting into matte, and layers altering with every stride.
Construction carried the same rhythm. Wrap silhouettes opened deliberately at the shoulder or hip, tailored pieces fractured with slits and cut-outs, while dresses alternated between body-clinging and free-flowing. Each look revealed and withheld in equal measure, refusing stasis and instead insisting on constant redefinition.
Shui positioned the collection as reclamation. Just as Gentileschi’s canvas reemerged, these garments proposed that identity can be redrawn and restored. Clothing became an active tool to resist erasure and to reinforce authorship, turning each design into an act of recovery.
The KS woman stepped forward this season as the author of her unveiling. Shui described her as someone who writes her own reveal, chooses visibility on her terms, and controls the pace of her exposure.
