In partnership with Louis Vuitton

Super Nature first debuted in Paris beneath the vast façades of the Louvre, against a set designed from almost impossibly green moss, pastoral forms and futuristic intervention. Months later, RUSSH revisited Louis Vuitton's Fall-Winter 2026 collection with Louis Vuitton and an intimate gathering of our creative minds community.

The evening marked the arrival of the first pieces from the collection in Australia, bringing together friends of RUSSH for a private preview and conversation between Editor-in-Chief Jess Blanch and Maison Stylist Manhou Ip.

Blanch had been in Paris for the collection’s February debut, where production designer Jeremy Hindle – perhaps best known for creating the immaculate, uncanny world of Severance – transformed the Cour Carrée of the Louvre into an abstracted natural landscape. The moss-covered pyramidal forms drew from original pastoral artworks by Ukrainian artist Nazar Nazarko, whose imagery helped establish the palette and narrative tone of the collection. His works – populated by lambs and steeped in ideas of folklore, pastoralism, migration and travel – appeared first on the show invitations before finding their way into the collection itself.

In Sydney, footage from the show flickered behind the models as they appeared in a considered edit of looks from the collection.

There was much to talk about.

Super Nature is Nicolas Ghesquière’s particular vision of the outdoors: less bucolic fantasy, more folklore beamed in from somewhere in the future. “Nature is the best designer,” Ghesquière said of the collection, and here the natural world becomes a way of reconsidering silhouette itself. Shepherd capes appear in vegetal fur; heels take on the shape of antlers; leather mimics wood. Elsewhere, the designer’s familiar architectural language remains – precise tailoring, strong shoulders and silhouettes with a certain aerodynamic quality – only this season, things feel more tactile, rustic and wonderfully strange.

For a designer so associated with architectural precision, there is something noticeably softer and more pagan at work here. Even the collection’s boldest leather and denim pieces possess a pronounced tactility. The effect is lush but geometric, intrepid and nomadic, with Ghesquière’s familiar nod towards science fiction never far away. The Maison describes it as “a new folklore, for the future”; nature not imitated, but reimagined through technology and Louis Vuitton’s enduring savoir-faire.

That folklore becomes particularly compelling in the collection’s approach to clothing as protection. Voluminous capes take inspiration from the Kepenek, a traditional Turkish shepherd’s garment designed to withstand extreme weather and substantial enough to double as field shelter or bedding. Ghesquière reimagines the form through vegetal fur – next-generation, plant-based alternatives to animal fur and plastic-based faux fur – while oversized sheepskin hats, cowbells and horn-like heels lend the survivalist proposition a characteristic wit.

It is a vision of people dressing in direct response to their environment: clothing that shelters, protects and, crucially, allows its wearer to keep moving. In a season where formidable outerwear emerged as one of fashion’s clearest propositions, Ghesquière pushes the idea further, towards something approaching futuristic survivalism.

As each look appeared, the conversation moved between these stories and the question that inevitably follows any runway: how do you wear it now? Unpacking the styling language of the show – the evening explored the unexpected proportions and combinations, the gestures that could be borrowed, and the way Ghesquière’s more formidable silhouettes shift once they’re actually on the body. Up close, details that might disappear within the scale of the Louvre came into focus: the ease of a trouser, the precision of a jacket, the tactility of a surface, or the studied nonchalance of a bag carried low against the body.

Leather goods offered their own chapter. Louis Vuitton’s history is, after all, one of movement, and the collection returned to this idea in forms that ranged from the practical to the wonderfully unexpected. The Bundle trunks appeared against the intense greens of the runway landscape, while the Petite Malle – first introduced by Ghesquière in his debut collection for the Maison – evolved once more for the season. In the collection notes, bags become objects for exploration and wanderlust, carrying Louis Vuitton’s history as malletier into Ghesquière’s imagined future.

But observing the clothes was only half the pleasure. As the presentation drew to a close, guests – including Phoebe Wolfe, Billie-Jean Hamlet, Diana Avel, Nyaluak Leth and Roxie Mohebi – were invited beyond the runway and into the dressing rooms, where the evening became a little more spontaneous. Pieces were pulled from racks, silhouettes reconsidered and accessories passed between friends as everyone found their own way into the collection. Inevitably, the dressing rooms gave way to an impromptu fashion show of our own – proof, perhaps, that the best way to understand a collection is simply to put it on.