For spring, EgonLab’s Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix explored liminal spaces, particularly the endless, pastel and slightly uncanny kind of the early 2000s, made mainstream famous by the 2026 movie “Backrooms.”
Backstage, this year’s ANDAM Awards finalists said they’d zeroed in on this concept while thinking of “peace in the chaos” in a world that seems like it’s getting darker by the minute. What such expanses call for is clothing that serves at once as shield and signal.
In the lineup, that translated into a lighter take on the brand’s tailoring DNA. Blazers were pared back, linings stripped out to make jackets sit close to the body like second skins, then systematically tucked into trousers and shorts to create a high-waisted silhouette.
Bulk was eliminated, with playful deceptions like ties turning into the striped placket on the front of a button-down, poplin collars folded into denim jackets or phantom T-shirts into casual blousons. Thrown into the mix was a collaboration with Eastpak that yielded capacious totes and belt bags.
The season also saw the creative pair lean further into handwork, with lavish use of embroidery, sequins and pearls stitched onto translucent textiles. Craft-intensive pleating in a wave-like pattern was an oblique reference to René Magritte’s “Les Amants” painting.
Nompeix called this more decorative, almost romantic approach “coquette-core,” joking that it was important to remember that “the EgonLab man is a woman like any other.”
Both directions were solid in their own right, but their intersection in EgonLab’s spring lineup opened a territory that felt rich with development potential for the seven-year-old label.
