Style Edit: Anteprima gets inspired by artist Takahiro Iwasaki for spring/summer 2026

In its boldest forms, fashion can be seen as a celebration of the transient – and with its spring/summer 2026 collection, the Japan-inspired, Milan-born fashion house Anteprima leans into fashion’s ephemeral nature. It does so in a transcendent way, giving weight to the idea of impermanence and finding endurance in fragility. The season’s looks see beauty in the commonplace and the fleeting.

If all that sounds more like an artist’s statement than notes from the catwalk, it’s because the entire collection is inspired by the world of 50-year-old Japanese artist Takahiro Iwasaki. His work explores the themes of transience and memory, often using materials that are not normally considered artistic media because they are so ordinary or insubstantial: dust, cotton wool, towelling, brooms, brushes. Iwasaki fashions these into the heraldic symbols of Japan’s industrial past – pylons, cranes – in an eloquent statement of impermanence.

The artist – who draws deeply for inspiration from his birthplace Hiroshima and its history of destruction and renewal – is known for a breathtaking series of sculptural works that show some of Japan’s religious buildings as though reflected in water, posing philosophical questions on the seeming solidity of the built environment and the shimmering, floating world of the transient.

“Iwasaki’s art taught me to see elegance in imperfection and grace in the overlooked,” says Anteprima’s creative director Izumi Ogino. “His ability to build entire worlds from humble materials reminded me that creativity often begins in silence, in stillness, in the spaces we forget to notice.”

Ogino adds that Iwasaki’s spirit of reflection and reinvention “shaped every piece in this collection”, which adopts inverted forms, architectural lines, unusual and upcycled materials, and translucent layers to create an overall feeling of delicacy, lightness and movement.