Kiko Kostadinov FW25 / Fall Winter 2025 – 2026 at Paris Men’s Fashion Week
“I cling to nothing, but everything clings to me.” – Damnation, 1988. The Fall Winter 2025 – 2026 / FW25 collection marks Kiko Kostadinov’s departure from the clean, clinical minimalism of the previous season. Silhouettes are looser, more textured and rugged. Defined by a feeling of rawness and organic assemblage.
A core influence is the work of director Béla Tarr (Hungarian, b. 1955) whose films depict individuals with complex relationships to the extreme and isolated environments that their lives unfold within. Tarr’s characters exist in worlds where the surroundings – the weather, objects, spaces – are constantly seeping in, accumulating, installing themselves within an individual’s very being and the fabric of their clothes.
Key materials and constructions reappear over successive garments rather than isolated in single looks or moments; shown paired into loose couplets that emphasise resonances in cuts, fabrications and colours across the season.
A series of material distortions take their cue from the paintings of Kon Trubkovich (Russian, b. 1979), whose obscured and dislocated imagery informs tonal and textural variation, along with the insertion of intense fall orange, yellow and cerulean that disrupts the legibility of the body.
Throughout, traditional craft and military garments from Hungary and Bulgaria inform construction and fabrication. There is the sense of what was once surplus to requirement being repurposed in unexpected ways. Things that are used because they are useful, or simply there. Put on a body over, and over, and over again. Gradually transforming and transmuting over time.
Motifs from coins and trinkets become embroidery. Checks from traditional wrap skirts, blankets and tablecloths are translated into heavy cotton jacquard. Echoes of formal uniform appear in elegant great coats in shaggy wool and the exaggerated pointing of parade dress, while thermal ware knit jersey and compressed fleece inform blazers, trousers and elongated balaclava hoods.
Bulgarian camouflage turned black-on-black tonal flocked wool erodes to reveal a shimmering surface underneath. The recurrence of composite garments furthers a sense of assemblage, creating the illusion of layering through strong material juxtapositions. Triple-construction coats and blousons shift between ribbed wool knit, puckered striped cotton and embroidered jacquard; or raised velvet, broken check wool and heavy herringbone. Shirts with button fastenings at the seams open to reveal striped jersey.
Chunky leather belts and crossbody bags in dyed pony hair further bisect and subvert silhouettes. Sturdy squared toed Hungarian army boots in black and brown leather with embroidered lace guards are seen alongside raw edged canvas lace-up shoes and imitation sandal slip-ons. A new Asics collaboration, referencing the tabi marathon shoes first developed by the Japanese sports label in the 1950s, appears in low top fabric runners and in high top boots with wraparound strap.
Underpinning the collection is a characteristically precise approach to construction. A clear asymmetric language carries across jackets, tops and trousers, as do curved, wing-like yokes on the backs of blousons and coats.
K-darts feature in different scales, reinforcing an ongoing project of branding through construction. Many of the shapes and cuts are only truly revealed when a garment is seen from the rear or side; a nod to Tarr’s tendency to show characters constantly in motion or from behind.
All images Kiko Kostadinov FW25 / Fall Winter 2025 – 2026 by Kiko Kostadinov. Credit to: Production EXPERIENTIAL / H, Casting Henry Thomas at Bryant Artists, Hair Michaël Delmas, Make-up Kanako Yoshida at LGA Management, Press A.I., PR / Gia Kuan Consulting / MATT., Music Direction Bill Kouligas, Movement Direction Ryan Chappell, Text Eliot Haworth.