Maticevski Fall 2026

A decade is a long time to be away. The last time Toni Maticevski presented at Australian Fashion Week was 2016 – a fact that lent this return, for the 30th anniversary edition of AFW, a certain ceremonial weight. Maticevski Fall 2026 was shown at The Collider in Haymarket, the former Australian Gaslight Company showroom: an industrial shell for a designer who has always treated fabric as something to be engineered rather than merely draped.

The collection’s central preoccupation – nature against architecture, the organic against the constructed – announced itself early and never quite let go. Tailored pieces carried folds and gathers that appeared to buckle naturally under the weight of their own fabric, giving even the most structured silhouettes an element of flow. The frills, meanwhile, refused to behave as frills typically should: built from rigid, layered fabric rather than something lightweight such as organza, they held their shape with a discipline that was quietly unsettling. Softness, in this collection, was never allowed to be entirely soft; structure was likewise not allowed to completely carry itself.

That duality ran throughout: the two closing looks showed the models encased in feathered structures behind cage-like forms – like trapped birds, nature restrained, the metaphor neither subtle nor intended to be. Elsewhere, fresh flowers appeared on several pieces, and their presence was curious: against the severity of the surrounding looks, they read less as decoration and more as a deliberate interruption: a breath of fresh air in the middle of a collection of contradictions.

Among the more compelling propositions was Look 14, whose bodice was constructed as an inverted triangle, its two upper points extending to the shoulders and finished with metallic detailing that made the geometry unmistakable. It’s the kind of idea that, in lesser hands, might have tipped into something regrettably futuristic. Here, it held – sharp, considered, and grounded enough to avoid the costume department entirely.

This return to Australian Fashion Week was worth the wait; see the Maticevski Fall 2026 runway show and setting below.

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Collection

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Setting & Details

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