Blumarine’s Dark Romanticism
Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Blumarine Spring/Summer 2026 collection by David Koma.
At Blumarine, David Koma has become a storyteller. Contrary to the collections he designs for his eponymous brand back in London, which are usually fuelled by more historical and current references, he approaches the Italian house with fantastical narratives. For a label known for sweet glamour, it’s a clever way of injecting new intrigue to the butterflies, roses, fur-trimmed cardigans, and hyper-femininity that defines it. Evolving the dark romanticism he instilled last season, Friday morning’s collection — presented under the cloisters of the opulent Palazzo Isimbardi — was inspired by a daydream that had developed in Koma’s mind.
“I was imagining shooting an art-house movie where Dracula’s daughter marries herself in Italy,” he said, casually, backstage. If it sounded like goth pop, that was the idea. Koma’s work has never been pretentious. It’s high-octane glamour and va-va-voom made for the women who want it, but it comes from a place of knowledge; of conscientious research and technical know-how. You could see that in his dress constructions. “It was inspired by Gothic poetry and love stories,” Koma said. He’d clearly been reading the Victorian greats, from Stoker to Shelley and so on.
BLUMARINE
The courtyard was scattered with giant church bells, the smoke of fog machines filled the air, and the soundtrack featured a voice ominously counting from one to eight to a remix of emotive classical music. Poet blouses and dresses with dramatic drapes and trains wafted through the cloisters like a danse macabre at a vampire ball. Tiered skirts bounced slowly like thick, grey smoke rolling down the runway. But remove these dresses from the show context and they’d easily take on a different, much sweeter sense of romanticism. Vice versa, up close, saccharine pink satin dresses were actually constructed from raw, frayed panels that weren’t so sweet at all.
Ditto the motifs: elastic tulle that looked like spiderweb was really a web of butterflies, a ferocious leopard print morphed into pretty butterflies, and butterfly and dragonfly motifs — including big hardware ones worn as bras — appeared interchangeably, blurring the lines between the soft and the strong. “I wanted to mix Blumarine’s softness with a nocturnal edge. It was important to me to explore ideas of fluidity, freedom and transformation, but with the more structured, more controlled handwriting that I’m known for,” Koma explained. He hit that balance — and the current appetite for all things gothy — eminently.
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