YUME YUME stepped into Amsterdam Fashion Week with a debut that turned the garden of the Willet-Holthuysen Museum into a blooming dreamscape. Flora Fantasia unfolded as a head-to-toe Spring/Summer 2026 collection where fashion moved like petals in motion; lush, layered and untamed.
Known for their otherworldly footwear, YUME YUME used its AFW debut to expand its vocabulary into ready-to-wear, eyewear, and accessories. Co-founder and creative director Eva Korsten looked to the praying mantis, a quiet symbol of transformation and growth, as the collection’s muse. From this starting point, the designs translated the act of gardening into a wardrobe of metamorphosis: headpieces blooming like flora, voluminous skirts swaying like petals, oversized gloves, and tailored jackets that carried both sharpness and softness.
In practice, the collection spiralled into a surreal gardening club, where models clipped flowers with shears as bird calls crescendoed into urgent, near-chaotic sound. A padded white jacket with a corset back came bundled with long gloves, while a cracked leather jacket laced up along the sleeves hinted at armour shedding its skin. Leather reappeared as a floor-length coat whose back resembled the cracked texture of an armadillo.
The newest collection felt like a game of push and pull of soft and structure, playfulness and elegance. Bloomer skirts from knee-length to micro-mini, skirts with drop waists that exaggerated voluptuous hips, and a scuba bodysuit with massive shoulders softened by a dainty floral print. Colour punctuated the runway like a garden in full season. A dusty pink patent leather set, a mega slime-green bag paired with a matching mini skirt and a flower-print version of The Ball Boot, even purple and black petal-shaped hats that turned heads into blossoms.
Footwear, always YUME YUME’s root system, was given new dimension: sheep wool Roomy Boots balanced on grey stilettos, sandals perched on heart-shaped heels, every step as much sculpture as shoe.
The Willet-Holthuysen’s manicured parterres de broderie amplified the story, creating a runway from garden paths where fantasy and flora intertwined in full bloom. Music by Mamiko Motto threaded through the air, amplifying the urgency and magic of a debut that planted seeds. Delightfully odd, poetic, and untamed, promising YUME YUME’s future will grow far beyond the soil of shoes.
