ELIE SAAB Spring/Summer 2027: Undone, on Purpose
There is something particularly interesting happening at ELIE SAAB right now. The glamour is still there, of course. It would be almost unthinkable for it not to be. But for Spring/Summer 2027, perfection is allowed to loosen its grip. Things slip, trail, reveal and come slightly undone. The result feels less concerned with dressing for an entrance and more interested in the intimacy of getting dressed at all.
Titled À Fleur de Peau, the collection takes inspiration from Jean Harlow’s effortless allure and the timeless glamour that has long been central to the ELIE SAAB vocabulary. But this is not an exercise in recreating Old Hollywood. Instead, the house takes that instinctive sensuality and brings it into the present, imagining a woman who “wears her heart on her sleeve” and experiences beauty almost physically, close to the skin.
That closeness becomes the collection’s most convincing idea. Liquid gowns skim rather than sculpt the body. Lace trims escape from beneath layers. Linings trail behind dresses and asymmetric hems interrupt otherwise polished silhouettes. The boudoir moves out of the bedroom entirely, with bralettes, slips, corsets and sheer layers treated as clothes in their own right. There is a deliberate tension between being dressed and undressed, revealing and concealing, finished and unfinished.
And yet, none of it actually feels accidental. That is the trick. A bolero appears to slide from a shoulder, a spaghetti strap seems almost too delicate to hold its place, ribbons fall loosely and ruffles move around the body. Every gesture suggests spontaneity while being meticulously controlled. ELIE SAAB has always understood polish. Here, the more interesting proposition is what happens when that polish is allowed to unravel just enough.
The palette makes the fantasy even more seductive. Sage green, powder blue and blush give the collection its softness, interrupted by black lace and flashes of shimmer. Embroidered roses wind their way across lingerie-inspired gowns, while tiny blooms appear on corsets as though they have simply landed there. Flowers are not merely decoration in this collection. They seem to grow across the clothes, sometimes tracing the body and sometimes almost obscuring it.
There is also something refreshingly unapologetic about how feminine it all is. Fashion can become very good at explaining why clothes matter, sometimes to the point of forgetting that desire matters too. ELIE SAAB has never had that problem. These are clothes that understand the pleasure of wanting to look beautiful. Lace can simply be beautiful. A corseted waist can be desirable. A dress can move wonderfully when a woman walks and that can be reason enough to want it.
Perhaps that is also why ELIE SAAB collections translate so naturally beyond the runway. The dresses inevitably leave the show and begin another life on Instagram, saved into folders, reposted across feeds and sent between friends. They inspire the most straightforward kind of fashion reaction: I want that. In an industry constantly trying to manufacture virality, there is something powerful about a house that generates it through desire. The audience does not need to be convinced that these clothes are worth dreaming about. They already are.
The final details complete the world rather than compete with it. Sleek heels accompany the clothes, tiny flowers and dewdrop-like embellishments appear across faces, and gold-plated monogrammed butterfly frames introduce a playful new expression of the house’s eyewear. Even the runway, surrounded by an abundance of flowers, feels like an extension of the clothes themselves.
Spring/Summer 2027 ultimately succeeds because ELIE SAAB knows exactly what women come to the house for without simply handing them the same fantasy again. Romance, sensuality, embellishment and glamour remain intact, but their expression feels lighter, more intimate and less composed. The glamour has not disappeared. It has simply loosened a strap, let down its hair and stopped worrying about looking perfect.
For a house so fluent in perfection, that might be the most seductive proposition of all.
