The spring 2026 Eckhaus Latta show opened with a series of all-black evening ensembles: a delicate sheer double layered tank worn with pleated trousers in a “metallicized Italian suiting” that gave it a slight wrinkled feel; a handsome three-button suit with narrow trousers in the same Italian fabric; a structured bustier worn with sheer chiffon trousers with a mini-skirt overlayer. There was also a short spaghetti strap dress embellished with studs and a banded hem that “gave away” and trailed behind as the model walked, plus a long cap sleeve dress that was revealed to be fully backless as the model walked away. It was a series of continuous gut-punches of stripped-back elegance. The opening section alone reaffirmed why the label was recently nominated for the CFDA Best Menswear Designer of the Year award.
The day before the show, Mike Eckhaus had referred to it as being “constrained” and “restrictive” but he was referring to the creative approach rather than the look of the clothes themselves, which bore his and Latta’s signature ease and fluidity. A pair of white jeans, for example, had originally been sent out to have their pigment washed out so they could be ready to be printed on. “We got them back from the wash house and were like, ‘these are perfect,’” Zoe Latta explained. “So that is also a moment of understanding when something is finished, when the period is at the end of the sentence, so we’re not being excessive.”
As the show progressed the monochromatic palette began opening up, and the silhouettes became more familiar—though how thrilling it was to see a very ’80s-ish cream ribbed sweater with armpit cutouts, and its voluminous sleeves scrunched up to the elbows, paired with tech-y cargos with zip-off leg details! A while ago Eckhaus Latta offered a pair of jeans with a fully-functional zipper that went front-to-back through the crotch (they called it the Goodtime Jean) and this season the fully-functional zipper moved to the outer seams of the pant leg. Unzipped at the hip, even just a quarter of an inch, it revealed a small triangle of skin, but the simple suggestion that the zipper could be so easily undone created a level of sexual tension heretofore unparalleled. It is the kind of frisson that few designers can successfully pull off, yet Eckhaus and Latta do it basically every season.
The washed denim gave way to the collection’s lightest pieces: knit crochet twinsets, T-shirts that exposed the heart (and, OK, the abs) via circular cutouts at the front, and layered chiffon pieces in shades of baby chick yellow, mauves, and powder blues. When the palette couldn’t get any lighter, the designers came out to take their bow, with Latta carrying her newborn baby in her arms, all dressed in matching whites. Putting the period at the end of their own sentence.
