Our Legacy SS26 B-Sides steps into its twentieth year without a hint of nostalgia. The Swedish label, known for its unfiltered approach to construction and design, releases a collection not a retrospective of greatest hits, but a reworking of overlooked moments, past experiments, and inside references that helped define the brand’s voice.
The collection doesn’t reference old looks for sentiment. It mines discarded prototypes, staff conversations, in-jokes, and even fan and critic responses to locate threads worth pulling. This process led to pieces that feel new, but originate from years of shared work within the internal team. It’s a design language shaped through repetition, trial, and mutual understanding, rather than grand declarations.
Creative director Cristopher Nying uses this opportunity to make Our Legacy’s internal logic visible. Every look reads as part of a private grammar, assembled from sharp tailoring, technical edits, and gestures that strip familiar garments of their assumed meaning. Masculine shapes soften with lace trims and frilled edges, while casual forms take on new proportions and function through material subversion. A jacket that suggests rain protection comes in sheer wool voile. Silken knits carry an earthy tone that contradicts their fluid texture.
Women’s silhouettes move between assertive and experimental. A hook-fastened waistcoat in black with eyelet accents pushes forward a sharper expression of femininity. In contrast, the reworked tuxedo bomber receives a softer redraw, with curved seams that shift its structure. A poplin shirt extends into a fluid dress, styled with a pleated skirt that peeks beneath it.
Material choices and textile shifts structure the entire collection. Silk satin appears worn down, sanded until the surface goes matte. Knitwear feels weightless, but its muted palette tethers it back to something grounded.
Prints function as direct links to the conversations behind the clothes. Archive images translate into shirting patterns, including a paisley with a skeleton motif. The ‘Archangel’ print from Our Legacy’s very first collection returns, transformed and reprinted on a gauzy tee-dress. Even pieces of angry fan mail surface, stretched across knits and jerseys, holding space for the tension between critique and identity.
“Our Legacy turns 20 this year, but we didn’t want the collection to focus on specific pieces from the past,” Nying says. “We wanted to reflect on the way we’ve worked together. The conversations, side notes, and even coffee chats over the years – those are the things we looked at again, and rethought in new ways.”
That reflection carries into the lookbook itself, styled in-house to reflect the same internal logic. Shapes and fabrics sit next to each other not by contrast, but by their place within a larger story, one that values process, memory, and experimentation over a polished narrative.
