Walking Toward Weightlessness: grounds Explores Repetition and Release in Fall/Winter 2026–27
By PAGE Editor
In fashion, the most radical ideas often begin with the most ordinary gestures. For Fall/Winter 2026–27, grounds turns its attention to the quiet erosion created by repetition—the subtle way daily routines soften our edges, recalibrate our expectations, and reshape how we move through the world.
Fashion’s most compelling narratives emerge when design intersects with psychology and culture. In this collection, the brand proposes that what might appear as decline—the gradual dulling of intensity—is in fact a survival mechanism. It is a deliberate reduction, a shedding of excess until what remains feels almost weightless.
At the center of the collection lies a deceptively simple gesture: walking. Reduced to its most elemental form, the step becomes a metaphor for transformation. Shift the sensation of a single step and the body tilts; tilt the body and the trajectory of the future subtly changes. For a label known for building its design philosophy from the ground up—quite literally—the idea reinforces its long-standing fascination with the relationship between human movement and the terrain beneath it.
Hair, surprisingly, becomes one of the collection’s most disorienting design elements. Sculpted into exaggerated structures, it obscures the models’ faces entirely, collapsing traditional markers of identity. Orientation dissolves—front becomes back, back becomes front—creating silhouettes that feel ambiguous and destabilized. The effect is intentionally uncanny, inviting viewers to question how easily recognition and certainty can be disrupted.
The collection’s conceptual centerpiece arrives through a shoe called the Manus Sole, where the traditional footprint is replaced with the imprint of a hand. The sculpted sole cradles the foot like a palm supporting the body from below, suggesting both vulnerability and protection at once. The symbolism is unmistakable: a divine or human gesture lifting the wearer forward, even as gravity anchors them to the ground.
Founded under the creative direction of Mikio Sakabe—a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp—grounds has built its reputation on footwear that blurs the boundaries between fashion, sculpture, and technological experimentation. Its signature gravity-defying outsoles merge organic forms with mechanical precision, drawing equally from avant-garde design traditions and the visual language of Japanese subcultures.
What makes this Fall/Winter offering particularly resonant is its quiet philosophical undertone. Instead of dramatizing transformation, the collection suggests that change often happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, through repetition. Each step, each routine movement, becomes a subtle negotiation between control and surrender.
In that sense, the collection’s starting point—resignation—doesn’t feel bleak. It feels liberating. By stripping away intensity, grounds arrives somewhere unexpected: a place where movement is lighter, identity is fluid, and the simple act of walking becomes a form of recalibration for the future.
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For Fall/Winter 2026–27, grounds reimagines the act of walking as a philosophical gesture, using sculptural footwear and obscured silhouettes to explore how repetition reshapes the body, perception, and ultimately the future.