Paolina Russo charts autumn’s narrative through wayfound memory

Paolina Russo’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection, titled ‘wayfound’, distils the intimate vocabulary of discovery into garments that feel lived in before they are worn. The designer has long worked at the intersection of memory and material, and this new offering deepens that conversation by collecting moments, the accidental encounters, the found objects, the paths taken without intention that somehow lead to the right place.

The collection moves between earth tones and deeper jewel notes, favouring textures that speak of patience: weaves that layer, knits that hold depth, silhouettes that follow the body without claiming it. There is an ease to the pieces, a sense that they have been gathered over time rather than designed at once. Oversized proportions sit beside more tailored forms, creating a dialogue between protection and precision.

The campaign, realised by photographer Paola Gagliardi and creative director Freya McDonald, removes the collection from the studio and places it onto London streets. The subjects move through urban space on bicycles and on foot, their clothes catching light and motion, their bodies at ease within the garments. This is fashion as lived experience rather than aspiration: pieces that belong to the people who wear them, that settle into routine and ritual.

Paolina Russo’s work continues to resist the tyranny of novelty, instead proposing that the most beautiful things accumulate meaning through time. This collection is both departure and continuation, a new chapter in a conversation about how we dress ourselves when we are simply living, moving through the world without performance.

Available through Paolina Russo’s website and at Dover Street Market London, Nordstrom, End Clothing, Addicted Seoul, Case Study, Her Official, Gr8, Radd Lounge and O83O.

Imagery courtesy of Paolina Russo (@paolina_russo).