Shot on the English coast, the Autumn Winter 2026 campaign turns a bright summer afternoon into a story about youth, memory and the strange feeling of being caught between what has already happened and what is still to come.
Two figures walk through Margate, a seaside town on the coast of Kent in southeast England. For its Autumn Winter 2026 campaign, Ann Demeulemeester places Betsy Gaghan and Ezekiel Conteh against fishermen, old houses, almost empty streets and an expanse of blue sea. Creative director Stefano Gallici builds the story with photographer Nikolai von Bismarck and stylist Elodie David, letting the clothes move through the landscape rather than simply posing within it.
«Two kids enjoying life on a sunny day by the sea, walking elegantly. Striding, actually; like antelopes.
There is something almost unnatural about the way they move through the town of Margate: two young figures against the brightness of the afternoon, passing fishermen, old houses, empty streets and the endless blue of the sea. They seem to belong to the landscape, yet somehow exist outside of it.
Is it a dream?»
That sense of displacement shapes the entire campaign. Summer light falls over black velvet, distressed T shirts, loose shirts, silk scarves and ribbons caught by the wind. The collection belongs to Autumn Winter, while the images seem suspended somewhere between seasons.
Their distant expressions reinforce that ambiguity. The streets around them feel tangible, but the two characters seem absorbed by another time, perhaps remembering a former love or a summer already lived, perhaps imagining one still to come. Margate gradually becomes less a location than a space where memory and anticipation overlap.
A film directed and shot by Jorge Higgins, accompanied by ‘Suns’, written and composed by Oli Burslem, extends that atmosphere through movement. They keep walking through town with no clear destination, carrying the collection into a story that remains deliberately unresolved, somewhere between reality, recollection and dream.
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