Alexandra Golovanoff marks its tenth anniversary with a Fall Winter 2026 campaign featuring Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu and Sahteene Sednaoui, the first personalities outside the designer’s own family to front the House. Photographed by Jody Rogac, with art direction and styling by Marie-Amélie Sauvé, the campaign opens an anniversary year that also brings Alexandra Golovanoff onto the official Paris Fashion Week calendar for the first time.
INTERVIEWS
Since founding the House in 2016, Golovanoff has developed the label from its original focus on cashmere into a complete wardrobe that now includes knitwear, denim, tailoring, leather and coats. For Fall Winter 2026, the anniversary program also revisits ten colors from the brand’s first decade, introduces its first cashmere coat, and continues the bag collaboration with Pierre Hardy.
In an interview with DSCENE editor Jana Kostic, Alexandra Golovanoff reflects on the ideas that shaped the House from the beginning, the role of color and personal style in her work, and the decision to bring Leroy-Beaulieu and Sednaoui together for the anniversary campaign. In conversation, she also discusses what joining the Paris Fashion Week calendar means for the House and how she sees its next chapter taking shape.
When you launched Alexandra Golovanoff ten years ago, what was the original vision for the House?
I had spent fifteen years looking at fashion, interviewing designers, going backstage, attending shows, trying to understand what makes a piece of clothing truly desirable. And when I finally created my own brand, I started with something incredibly simple: the cashmere sweater I wanted to wear and couldn’t find.
It had to have the perfect shape, extraordinary color and beautiful quality, but also a certain ease. Something you could wear in Paris in the morning, on a plane, to a meeting, to dinner, and still feel completely yourself.
I never imagined a huge collection. I imagined a wardrobe. Ten years later, that wardrobe has expanded from cashmere into tailoring, leather, denim, coats and accessories, but the original idea remains exactly the same: clothes that give you allure without ever looking like you tried too hard.
I don’t believe style has an age.
What do you think has become the strongest signature of Alexandra Golovanoff?
Color was our first language. I have always been fascinated by what the right color does to a woman: how it changes her skin, her eyes, her mood, her presence. Our very first idea was “le tricot qui rend beau” – the knit that makes you look beautiful. It was playful, but I really meant it.
Today, I think the signature goes beyond color. It is an attitude. Something very Parisian, perhaps: masculine with feminine, sophisticated with effortless, luxurious without being precious. I love clothes that people notice without quite knowing why they noticed them.
How much of the brand comes directly from your own way of dressing and living?
Almost everything begins there. I live a very Parisian life. I cycle across the city, even in the rain. I am always moving between the office, the stores, appointments, dinners, travel. I almost never wear heels, I wear very little make-up, and yet I am obsessed with clothes, materials, proportions and color.
For me, luxury has to live. A beautiful cashmere sweater should be worn constantly. A perfectly cut jacket should work with jeans. Clothes should travel, move, be mixed and worn again and again.
So yes, the wardrobe is very personal. But the greatest pleasure is seeing another woman take one of my pieces and make it completely her own. That is when fashion becomes style.
How and why did you choose Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu and Sahteene Sednaoui for the anniversary campaign?
For ten years, the women around the brand were almost literally my family: my mother, my sister, my daughter, myself. For the anniversary, I wanted to enlarge that family.
Philippine and Sahteene felt instinctively right. Philippine has something I find deeply Parisian: she is incredibly feminine and sophisticated, but also strong, intelligent, witty and free. There is nothing passive about her elegance. Sahteene belongs to another generation and brings a different energy, something instinctive, fresh and very contemporary.
Putting them together was important to me. Not because I wanted to talk about age, but precisely because I don’t believe style has an age. A beautiful jacket, a cashmere sweater, a great pair of trousers can belong to a mother, a daughter, a woman of twenty or sixty. That transmission between women has always been part of Alexandra Golovanoff.
I don’t dream of making everything. I dream of making the right things.
What does entering the official Paris Fashion Week calendar represent for you and for the House?
There is something quite emotional about it. For fifteen years, Paris Fashion Week was part of my life as a journalist. I was sitting in the audience, going backstage, interviewing designers and trying to tell the story of fashion. I never imagined that one day my own name would appear on the official calendar.
And it happens exactly ten years after launching the brand, at a moment when Alexandra Golovanoff has become much more than the cashmere sweater we began with.
So of course it is recognition. But more importantly, it feels like a door opening. Paris is where the brand was born and where its attitude comes from. Being part of the official calendar gives us the opportunity to bring that Parisian wardrobe to a much wider world.
What do you want the next ten years of Alexandra Golovanoff to look like?
I want them to be ambitious, but still intimate. I want Alexandra Golovanoff to become a truly international Parisian House, without losing what made people fall in love with it in the first place: beautiful color, extraordinary materials, French savoir-faire, small quantities, and clothes you keep rather than consume.
There are so many territories I still want to explore. The wardrobe is growing, accessories are becoming important, and I love the idea that someone might first discover us through a bag, a jacket or a pair of trousers and then enter the whole universe.
But I don’t dream of making everything. I dream of making the right things.
Ten years ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to wear. Today, I know much more clearly what Alexandra Golovanoff stands for. The next ten years are about taking that very Parisian idea of style much further into the world.
