KidSuper has long been defined by risk. Not risk as provocation, but as curiosity. Creative, emotional, strategic. Eachseason, Colm Dillane has presented a Paris Fashion Week show that audiences recognize as spectacle. What has beenless visible is how many of these moments functioned as proof of concept, quietly opening doors to theater, comedy,publishing, sport, and film. Fashion, here, operated as a testing ground.
KidSuper built its following long before its Paris shows reached their current scale. But during the early months of thepandemic, when the industry was forced to rethink how creativity could exist without physical proximity, the shiftbecame impossible to ignore. Dillane responded not by waiting, but by writing. Original short films, conceived, written,and directed by Dillane, became vessels for storytelling when clothes alone were not enough. Intimate, strange, funny,and deeply human.
For FW26, Dillane returned to cinema.
The show opened with an original short film, filmed in Paris, written and directed by Dillane, and starringVincent Cassel.An emblematic figure of French cinema, Cassel’s early work left a lasting impression on a young Dillane. Like Ronaldinhowalking the KidSuper runway seasons ago, the gesture was about continuity. A childhood reference made real.
The film established the emotional architecture of the collection. A world that felt familiar yet unstable. Repetition,glitches, memory, and performance blurred the line between what was staged and what was lived. A character searchedfor meaning inside increasingly automated systems, asking a quiet but unsettling question: if everything feels scripted,where does humanity live?
That tension carried onto the runway.
The collection explored cinematic archetypes. Legends and icons sat beside personal references. Childhood role modelsshared space with modern heroes. Dreamlike has always been central toKidSuper’s language, but this season it wasfiltered through the film’s darker, more introspective tone. Reflection, restraint, and maturity entered with new weight.In a meta gesture, thinking outside the box turned inward. The collection became a self-aware exercise for a brand longassociated with maximal expression, allowing quiet, structure, and intention to shape the clothes. It asked how evolutioncan happen without losing curiosity, and how growth can remain true to its own mythology.
Collaboration continued as narrative. A limited collaboration withJamesondrew on ideas of craft, lineage, and sharedheritage, subtly referencing Dillane’s Irish roots and Jameson’s long tradition of making, and opened a sequence offorthcoming reveals. Appearing on the runway, the pieces functioned as another layer in a collection concerned withmemory, continuity, and cultural exchange. The show also teased an upcoming collaboration withHavaianas, a quiet nodto Dillane’s time in Brazil as a young soccer player and the cultural exchanges that shaped him.
Further reinforcing this idea of continuity,Jeff Hamiltonwalked therunway wearing an exclusive jacket he designed incollaboration with KidSuper for the upcoming Super Bowl, following their initial jacket collaboration last season.
In the final gesture, film and show folded back into one another. What was real. What was performed. What we inherit.What we choose. If fashion has always been a stage for KidSuper, this season asked what happens when the curtain liftsand the story keepsgoing.
