KARINA BOND AUTUMN/WINTER 2026: CONCEALED CREATIONS
THE YOUNG DESIGNER CHOOSES TO ARCHIVE HER LATEST COLLECTION OF 3D-CRAFTED DESIGNS AFTER THEY ARE WORN ONLY ONCE, SEALING THEM AWAY, NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. MARY WENTHUR TELLS ALL.
Written by Mary Wenthur
Images Courtesy of Karina Bond London
In an industry built on exposure and turnovers, Karina Bond is choosing to conceal her latest collection. ‘Vivarium,’ Bond’s AW26 line, comprises eight looks, and each is to be worn by only one person in the world. The garments will never be sold or replicated and will be carefully archived after their moment in the spotlight.
This past week, the designer unveiled these creations at Chateau Denmark’s Thirteen, a cocktail bar and event space. Guests were confined to a gothic bedroom, home to the eight avant-garde designs that seemed to come alive in the dim light. Recreating her own vivarium, Bond said, “You're one with the creatures for a split moment, and then they kind of disappear. You might get to see a maximum of eight people ever wear these out.”
Bond already has a list of people chosen to wear each look, though the identities remain a secret within the whimsical world her designs create. In her narrative, the clothing chooses a “host,” and “to wear one was to enter a contract,” she described. “You would be the first and the last.”
She uses a 3D printing pen, taking over 100 hours to hand-draw each design.“I feel like a lot of the time I'm literally putting bits of my soul into my work,” Bond said. It is a zero-waste substance made from a rubber-polymer mixture that allows the models to bend and twist into new poses, with a second-skin-like texture that breathes as muscles flex.
Sculpted directly onto the body, the eight designs feature woven dresses interconnected with ribbon, tulle and hand-painted feathers. Elements of nature appear distorted through Bond’s extraterrestrial lens: a high-neck collar is intricately drawn in a dimensional pattern, like coral growing from a reef. Corsets in liquorice-braided plastic intertwine in warped formations, bending the boundaries of reality. As Bond puts it, the effect is “something that we see in AI fashion, but this is real.”
As an avid film and video game lover, I draw inspiration from stories like The Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic video game set in a world overrun by parasitic fungi. Where mushroom-like layers grow from bodies much like Bond’s 3D printing tactics.
Each model resembles their own character. She places small 3D-printed red horns between webs of clear, pen-drawn lines that scale down the bodices of one dress, completely moulded to movement. “I make kind of artwork for the body, and not just clothes to put on a person,” said Bond.
The delicate art made Bond question the merchant side of the industry, expressing her feelings towards the system of rapid output, “A lot of the time pieces get loaned out to stylists and transported everywhere, and they end up becoming disposable,” she said.
This new collection also celebrates the launch of Bond’s bioplastic 3D-printed mini bags. As part of Bond’s storyline, these mini bags resemble small horned creatures and are offered in an array of colours, including baby pink, pearl, cobalt blue, black, and blood red. The three different spiky designs: stone, petal and stella, bring an element of her vivarium to the outside world.
These priceless designs will later be kept safe by Bond herself, concealed from the outside world as time goes by. This is a completely new concept for her brand, but Bond is currently creating her ready-to-wear for next season. Always focused on creating “something you don’t see in everyday life,” she adds, “that’s what I like to prove.”