Area spring 2026 review: Nicholas Aburn’s debut.
Area is for the New York girls. It always has been and always will be. But now there’s a new creative director. Nicholas Aburn’s resume includes Tom Ford, Alexander Wang, and Balenciaga’s couture studio, each one of which is associated with its own kind of downtown cool and rebellious dark glamour.
So what does the new Area look like? The spring 2026 collection was a tale of contrasts and conversations. Night and day, sequins and denim, formality and stripped back, bare glitz. It has all the elements of the old Area, only it’s a little bit more grown-up and concentrated. It’s here for the party but it’s also available for running errands. It has humor. Best of of all, though, it retains the delicious impracticality we love the brand for.
The usual distressed, gemmed-up jeans, for instance, are now sculptural extensions of gowns or turned inside out, flipped or folded. The crystal covered dresses became beacons of a bright maximalist paradise: tinsel, supersized paillettes and tangled woven webs of glittering rainbow chains closed out the collection and garnered an epic applause.
Given Aburn’s previous experience, it wasn’t hard to see the influence of Demna’s Balenciaga in the poppy silhouettes, dramatic trains and unconventional pairings of high-low materials. The really extreme, editorial looks with spires of sparkles and pom poms of rainbow tinsel brought to mind some of fashion’s greatest contemporary experimentalists like Noir Kei Ninomiya and Germanier. Still, Aburn brought his own twist—with sensual skin-skimming layers, careful juxtapositions and drama that’s destined for major editorials.
The most exciting parts of the collection where those were you had to look not once—but maybe twice, or even three times—to see the surreal little details. Gaze down at one of the trains and you just might notice the spaghetti straps from a slip dress.
The show notes were composed of a narrative style script: “What if I never stop getting ready? What if I want to be surprised? What if gum on the sidewalk spells out Something Special? What if my coffee is in a martini glass? What if I’m the luckiest woman alive, and alive is winning the lottery, and the lottery is a party tonight?”
Here, dressing up for dressing up’s sake is a religion.
All photos via Sudden Chic
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