Dagger presented the Fall Winter 2026 collection titled Play Hard during Intervention at Berlin Fashion Week. The collection takes shape as a personal reflection on growing up in Portrush, a working-class seaside town on the northern edge of Ireland. Boarded-up arcades, severe coastal weather, and limited opportunity define the setting that informed the designer’s early years. Within that environment, skateboarding offered an outlet, a shared culture, and a way to form identity.
FALL WINTER 2026.27 MENSWEAR
Play Hard frames skateboarding as more than a pastime. It functioned as an escape and a structure for belonging during winter nights at home. The collection draws from scenes of empty arcades, distant sounds, fog, and flashing lights, shaping an atmosphere that feels beautiful and quietly unsettling. These references anchor the collection in memory and sensation.
Each garment reflects resilience, freedom, and creativity shaped through scarcity. Rough edges and fragility define collection’s visual language, paired with a focus on the strength that emerges from shared experience. Community plays a key role throughout Play Hard, informing both concept and execution. The clothes operate as records of youth shaped by limitation and invention.
Footwear and accessories extend this narrative through personal association. Vans appears throughout the collection, with Authentic and Slip-On styles worn by every model. Hand-customised versions of these shoes reference pairs worn during designer’s formative years, reinforcing the connection between clothing and memory. Their repetition across the presentation underscores their role as a constant within the designer’s life, both past and present.
Eastpak enters the collection through the Pack’r backpack, reworked as a deeply personal object. The original bag carried everything the designer owned and bore drawings and patches sewn on by his grandmother. The recreated version functions as a symbol of youth, survival, and belonging, translating private history into a shared visual language.
Play Hard celebrates vulnerability and the resilience that grows through collective support. The collection treats clothing as a carrier of memory and identity, shaped by place, climate, and circumstance. Presented in Berlin, Dagger’s Fall Winter 2026 collection offers a focused reflection on growing up with limited means and finding strength through culture, creativity, and community.
