Images courtesy of Lauren Cremer
AW26: JEAN LOUIE CASTILLO’S
WORLD OF HIS OWN
SOME DESIGNERS CREATE GARMENTS; OTHERS CONSTRUCT ENTIRE UNIVERSES AROUND THEM. JEAN LOUIE CASTILLO BELONGS FIRMLY TO THE LATTER, BY CONJURING GOTHIC MYTHOLOGIES THROUGH CLOTHES THAT FEEL LIKE RELICS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ENTIRELY. TORI PALONE DESCRIBES THE NIGHT.
Written by Tori Palone
The brands’ autumn-winter 2026 collection, SILVERCITY, was unveiled last night at the Mandrake Hotel; a venue which, with its sorcerer eye decorum and graffitied bathroom walls, seemed to bleed seamlessly into Castillo’s shadowy realm. Candles threw flame onto an otherwise dark room and a curtain of fog backgrounded the models’ ascent onto center stage, creating an otherworldly feel which mirrored the collection’s haunted elegance.
In some ways, the collection felt more like a theatrical production than a typical runway affair. The models were not simply models—they walked, heaved, sleuthed, and strode down the catwalk, clearly cogs in a bigger, Jean Louie Castillo imagined system.
At the start of the show, resident instagram monster MONSTERS kINC stalked the floor on digitigrade legs, her movements animatronic and wild. A black crinkle-cut shroud obscured her face, while laced-up vinyl boots—slouched at the toes like claws—punctuated her passage through the crowd. Immediately, the model ushered in a sense of benign curiosity from onlookers who were desperate for clues of her mysterious origin. In other words, what the hell was going on?
Castillo is transfixed with spinning the ordinary into the sublime. He has an uncanny ability to make denim look liquid, and a tendency towards bending everyday materials to convey a deliberate sense of anti-purpose. PVC, for example, was coerced into high-shouldered jackets and dresses, manipulated to resemble sheets of crumbled aluminium foil which rose from the body like a tide. Castillo’s own sculptural ingenuity was contrasted against sharp tailoring, strewn open jackets and elongated gowns that contoured the body ceremoniously.
The show proceeded mostly as a play between black and silver, braving a world where darkness and glamour didn’t simply collide, but rather pressed forward in constant chatter. Silver accents appeared throughout the lineup, catching in the metallic flash of the models’ lipstick or in the shape of a ray gun, enlarged and held at the hip. Models’ bodies were treated as extensions of the clothes, their alternate personas amplified through makeup and body paint—iridescent silver or white with black veining patterns.
Though self-contained, SILVERCITY mirrors earthly hierarchies, revealing societal cracks through discontent and disillusionment. According to Castillo, “The world is about seeing a divide between the upper city and lower city,” a delineation which is visually apparent across his collection.
Castillo’s fabricated lore imagines a city ruled by the Echelites—an aesthetically superior faction who govern with a silver fist. They saunter down the runway with a regal gait, swaddled in fur throws, wielding pistols or cigarette holder-like gadgets in their hands.
Cavers, on the other hand, move along in disarray, their fractured movements zombie-like. Barred in silver cascading chains (akin to a straitjacket), they prowl the runway with a dilapidated effort, their bodies dirtied and bruised looking. Still, there is a sense of camaraderie among the factions—repeating materials, silhouettes and silver paint made it slightly harder to differentiate which characters belonged to the High City and which simply aspired to.
Castillo’s tale of two cities acts as a microscopic lens on earthly concerns. Cast under dystopian light, he magnifies the tensions and anxieties of our own reality. He explains, “I wanted to find a place for all my work. I didn’t feel that it really fit in anywhere.” In creating SILVERCITY, Castillo has at last found a domain for his imagination to unfold free from earthly constraints.