Anrealage Spring Summer 2026 “The Heartbeat of Difference”. Story by Kate Granger, editor of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Anrealage.
Kunihiko Morinaga, the visionary behind Anrealage, unveiled a Spring/Summer 2026 collection that redefines the role of fashion as not just a medium of expression, but as a vessel for empathy, collaboration, and perceptual transformation. Titled “♥”, the show pulsed with vitality — literally. This was not just a theme but a manifestation of life itself, expressed through a singular collaboration with HERALBONY, the trailblazing Japanese creative company dedicated to elevating artists with disabilities.
Art as Life, Fashion as Translation
The collection is born from a simple yet profound question: Why do we see different landscapes, even when standing in the same place? It’s a meditation on boundaries — between individuals, perceptions, realities — and the moment when those boundaries dissolve to reveal the unfiltered essence of life. In this case, that essence takes form through the vibrant, emotionally resonant artworks of 18 HERALBONY artists, translated onto garments with the aid of Kyocera’s sustainable textile printer, FOREARTH.
Each look emerges as a tactile, wearable canvas: skirts swell like heart chambers, jackets ripple as if breathing, and dresses bloom into swirling psychedelic ecosystems. Volumes are not merely decorative but animate — wired flounces move with an energy suggestive of baroque organisms or alien flora. The garments do not dress the body; they listen to it.
The Pulse Behind the Prints
The heartbeat motif, rendered both literally and metaphorically, is layered throughout the collection — not only visually but aurally. Continuing last season’s exploration with Thomas Bangalter, this collection’s soundtrack, co-produced with HERALBONY, weaves real heartbeats and everyday human noises captured from people with disabilities into a soundscape both raw and poetic. It is a striking counterpoint to a fashion world increasingly filtered through the artificial lens of AI. Morinaga reminds us that human irregularity is not an error — it is the origin of beauty.
Technopoetic Accessories
Accessories play their own whimsical, tactile symphony. One standout piece: a cat-shaped handbag with a metronomic tail, co-developed with Yukai Engineering Inc. and inspired by their therapeutic robot Qoobo. The result is a metapoetic object — a bag that purrs, soothes, and pulses with its own rhythm, much like the garments it accompanies. This isn’t fashion as armor or costume; it’s fashion as a tender companion.
HERALBONY: The Silent Revolution
HERALBONY, founded in Japan and now with a European base in Paris, manages the work of over 250 artists with intellectual disabilities. Far from using art as therapy, HERALBONY positions these creators as the architects of culture itself, offering fair licensing agreements and fostering co-creation with global brands. In this collection, their work doesn’t “inspire” the garments — it is the garment.
Among the featured artists:
- Shigaku Mizukami layers fan shapes and dots with intuitive grace, reflecting emotional states through careful pattern repetition.
- Takafumi Yamane uses stamps and handmade tools to create rhythmic, meditative textures that breathe with deliberate precision.
- Momoko Nakagawa translates her joy into vividly overlapping circles, echoing laughter and song in visual form.
- Atsuhito Fujiki weaves affection for cars, food, and people into quietly powerful drawings filled with symbolic warmth.
- Midori Kudo creates pointillist fields that feel less drawn than dreamed, caught in a gentle trance between dimensions.
Each artist offers a singular vision of the world — not in opposition to the norm, but as a parallel universe of sensory truth. Morinaga does not appropriate their art; he amplifies it, reframing fashion not as spectacle, but as translation.
Beyond Inclusion: Toward A New Fashion Grammar
This is not “inclusive fashion” in the limited sense. Anrealage Spring/Summer 2026 goes further: it is an epistemological challenge to the way fashion perceives time, body, and authorship. Where conventional fashion insists on the visual and the linear, Morinaga proposes a model of clothing as living memory, a place where texture becomes thought and form becomes feeling.
In a fashion industry still caught between surface innovation and AI-fueled aesthetic automation, Anrealage offers a radical alternative: slowness, sincerity, and co-creation with those whose inner landscapes we rarely see — not out of charity, but because their visions are irreplaceably essential.
Final Thoughts: The Dress as Heartbeat
“♥” is more than a seasonal statement. It is an argument for the visible soul of things, for fashion that doesn’t simulate life but lives. It offers no spectacle, only reverberations — of emotion, of breath, of being.
And in a world where the line between real and artificial is increasingly thin, this collection dares to remind us: each heartbeat is different — and therein lies the whole point.
See All Looks Anrealage Spring Summer 2026
See Close Ups and Details Anrealage Spring Summer 2026
