17 October 2026 |
The newly appointed creative director Drew Henry arrived at Courrèges with an unusual challenge. At a time when a change of creative director increasingly comes with the expectation of instant reinvention, what do you do when you inherit a house with such an immediately recognisable contemporary identity?
Under Nicolas Di Felice, the house’s universe had become remarkably precise. Exposed skin, streamlined silhouettes and monochromatic sexiness became some of the defining features of the brand. At its centre was an equally specific woman, navigating the street, work and the night while her appearance remained perfectly resolved. She looked effortless precisely because nothing looked accidental.
Before Henry’s first look even appeared, the guest setting at the SS27 show offered a clue that things might be heading somewhere else. Rows of vintage chairs were deliberately mismatched in colour, size, material and shape. Design classics sat alongside older chairs that could have been picked up at a flea market. After years of Courrèges looking so controlled and precise, this eclectic mix felt significant: different periods, values and aesthetics were allowed to coexist without an obvious hierarchy.
Henry’s collection follows a similar instinct. Rather than beginning by replacing Di Felice’s Courrèges girl with another equally defined character, SS27 seems reluctant to settle on one at all. If Di Felice famously asked himself, “Who is the Courrèges girl? How is she going to move?” Henry’s debut takes those questions in a different direction. Across the collection, no single character seems to dominate, while colour, humour and unexpected styling allow different attitudes to coexist.
For all this apparent change, Henry doesn’t actually run very far from the house’s DNA. If anything, he goes deeper into it. His return to the 1960s archive is unmistakable, but what he finds there extends beyond the pristine white-and-silver image through which the brand is so often remembered.
Beyond the riot of colour, many of the clothes are surprisingly faithful to the archive. Dresses retain the clean geometry of the house’s 1960s vocabulary, while neat shoulders open into trapezoidal coats that leave the legs exposed beneath them. Tall, graphic boots unmistakably descend from Courrèges’ Space Age silhouettes. Colour returns with unusual force too: pink, red, yellow and blue take over otherwise simple shapes, recalling a side of early Courrèges that was considerably more colourful than its futuristic reputation might suggest. Elsewhere, small bows appear on ballerina flats, while sheer long-sleeved tops with a checkerboard pattern bring the house’s fascination with geometry into something lighter and more playful.
And that’s where Henry starts messing with all that neatness. The geometry may remain precise, but its surfaces are allowed to roam freely. Oversized hats disrupt the proportions of controlled silhouettes. Cropped jackets and dresses end in deliberately frayed edges, belts trail loose against the body, and heritage boots return in distressed finishes that make them appear already lived in.
There is something compelling about seeing objects once designed to represent the future finally showing signs of age. Rather than presenting the archive as something immaculate and untouched, it feels like Henry uses styling and distressed finishes to make it feel worn and lived-in.
That energy extends to materials and accessories. Structured terry and wool introduce a heavier, warmer and more enveloping physicality to shapes that remain recognisably Courrèges, bringing a different texture to a house often associated with smooth vinyl and close-fitting jersey. Vinyl itself remains, but Henry is willing to play with it: the house’s familiar vinyl jacket is dismantled and reconstructed as a bright pink, folded and draped messenger bag. It makes you wonder: how much fun can you have simply messing with your own archive?
But the playfulness is not simply decorative, and this is where those mismatched chairs start to make more sense. Henry isn’t asking the design classic to beat the flea-market find, just as the black shirt and trousers don’t have to be more sophisticated than a giant hat, a bow or a pair of distressed Space Age boots. Taste here isn’t presented as choosing the right thing, but as having the freedom to like contradictory things at once. Singularity, in Henry’s Courrèges, seems to come from combination rather than uniformity.
Taken individually, many of these pieces remain remarkably close to Courrèges’ historic vocabulary. Henry’s intervention is not about replacing it, but about opening it up to more possibilities. And perhaps that is what makes his return to the past feel so relevant. By looking beyond the most familiar image of Courrèges and rediscovering its colour, humour and playfulness, Henry leaves more room for people to decide for themselves who they want to be in Courrèges. The archive becomes less of a rulebook than something to choose from, combine and make personal.
Movement has always been part of the brand, from the physical freedom of André Courrèges’ 1960s silhouettes to Di Felice asking how his Courrèges girl would move and dance in the clothes. Henry approaches it differently, opening up the house rather than immediately defining what it should become next. For a house built around movement, perhaps that is the point: sometimes the way forward begins by remembering how many directions were possible all along. And after years of such a precise image of the house, there is something joyful about that freedom. Let’s see where the brand moves next.
Text GIULIO POLVERIGIANI
Imagery COURREGES
