Going places with Bench Fashion Week

Every collection this season has somewhere to be.

At Bench Fashion Week SS2026, Peter Gagula’s “Paddy’strian” takes us to his childhood in Capiz—of rice paddies, the walk to school and back. The Iloilo-based designer, fresh from Tokyo Fashion Week, translated that bodily memory into earthy silhouettes that move like they know the terrain. 

Karl Nadales’ “Meet Me at Shinjuku Station” under the brand nadalē planted itself on a platform mid-transit; think asymmetrical cuts and precarious draping, capturing the person who is no longer who they were but not yet who they are becoming. 

Steph Verano’s “Airhart” went further still, with aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noon Noonan as muses, sculptural silhouettes caught between ascent—and farewell.

These three in particular felt like the season’s emotional core, working from something personal and specific rather than a trend.

Elsewhere, the destinations were more cultural than geographic. Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr.’s preppy ease came to mind at 8seconds. 

Bench Body and La Vie En Rose celebrate loving your body through different routes: one through pared-back ‘90s minimalism—spaghetti straps, low-rise bikinis, deep-V maillots stripped of all excess—the other reframing intimates as outerwear, with the body itself as the destination. 

Kashieca Luxe is going to Paris, or close enough, with frocks and sets pulled together by scarves into something polished.

The city had its own contingent. HUMAN x Mimaaaaaaaaw’s All Walks put 18 bespoke one-of-one pieces on the runway that functioned more as urban dispatches than garments—raw, experimental, the artist Mariel Cruz’s wide-eyed archetypes embedded into every silhouette. 

Urban Revivo worked similar ground with more opulence: tactile embroidery, flowy satins, mixed-media layering that felt genuinely considered. 

It was y2k at Cotton On with lots of flounce, unexpected lace, and embroidered denim on low-rise silhouettes.