Once you step inside the San Vittore e Quaranta Martiri, a deconsecrated church in Milan, you’re swept into an illusion of being somewhere far, far away. The soaring interiors are bathed in crimson; dozens of flickering votive candles line the walls. The air is thick with notes of amber, vanilla, and tonka bean. If you let your mind wander, if you let the world blur a little, you can even imagine heat waves shimmering off the rose-red sandstone of the tombs and palaces scattered across Jordan’s rugged desert. That, at least, is where Rowen Rose wants to transport guests during its co-ed fall-winter 2026 runway show: to the ancient city of Petra. 

“When I entered this historical abandoned church, I immediately got the vision of the mystical atmosphere of Petra we could recreate there,” Emma Rowen Rose, founder and creative director of the Paris-based label, tells me in a post-show email interview. Everything from the immersive soundscape to the L’Artisan Parfumeur’s amber-tinged scent that fills the space is designed to encourage guests to float off into an ethereal realm caught between what is real and what is imagined. “To me, it is the whole point of showcasing a show live,” she writes. “It should make you feel an emotion.”

Even before she’d staged her first runway show last year, the half-Spanish, half-Polish designer had a knack for world-building — spinning tales and characters around her garments. When I first met Emma in Los Angeles at the opening reception of a Rowen Rose pop-up at H.Lorenzo, she told me: “I’m incapable of [designing] even one piece without a story,” Whether it’s a film, a novel, or piece of art, there’s always a creative source material that Emma uses to set the scene and fill in the back story of her collection. 

This season, she looked at a particular work by the great master of surrealism, Salvador Dali — a 1946 painting entitled, fittingly, “Mirage.” The painting depicts a woman (Venus) standing in an arid Catalonian landscape, her long, unrestrained locks caught mid-movement. In this desert setting, a vision-like apparition floats in the air: a white desert flower emerging from the head of Apollo. It’s unclear whether Apollo exists at all, or whether he is a projection of the woman’s imagination. And so, Venus’s mirage becomes a metaphor for love itself.

Emma also looked at French poet Paul Éluard’s surreal poem “Le Mirage,” where he refers to a “femme cachée” as someone who resists definition. Against the backdrop of this romantic narrative, models wander down the runway like travelers searching for a distant love. With its giant, rounded shoulders, the opening look adheres to the confident and sculptural aesthetic codes of the brand, which Emma launched almost eight years ago. Since then, Rowen Rose has become synonymous with elegant ‘80s-inspired glamor.

This season, the silhouettes across its womenswear and menswear offerings are assertive and focused strongly on the shoulders, as the brand has accustomed us to. Sumptuous outerwear with big, rounded shoulders and chunky, waist-cinching belts come with double layered lapels — as if the models have two pieces on at the same time. (The best of this tailoring statement is a long double-lapeled coat in chocolate brown; it’s a knockout.) Cape-like overlays top the shoulders of light-and-breezy dresses as well as more structured coats. Attached scarves add a certain kind of put-together polish, especially when draped and secured with a brooch at the front. 

That evolves, through a series of silky looks, into long tassels flying from sleeves and scarves wrapped high around the neck. The add-on of plumes — fluffing up necklines and hemlines, and protruding from sleeve cuffs — bring an extra touch of flashy glamour. “The feathers played a key role in expressing the idea of the mirage,” Emma says. Two of the most dramatic, semi-sheer ensembles with plumed hems appear to waft through the space like a dream. Part of their ethereality could be owed to Rowen Rose’s bi-coloured palettes blended into an ombre effect. This idea shows up across everything from knitwear to the aforementioned feathered gowns. 

Rowen Rose has always had an affinity for statement-making color, but this season the palette feels more grounded. In keeping with the story, Emma pulls her hues from the desert — the reddish-pink of Petra’s sandstone cliffs and carved facades that earned it the name “Rose City.” That color comes from iron oxidation, a mineral reaction that makes the stone glow most vividly at sunrise and sunset. It’s no surprise, then, that intense ochres and burnished golds dominate, offset by the deep cobalt blues of the desert sky. There are also dusty roses, vibrant reds, murky olive greens, rich browns, and inky blacks. 

“I really did a lot of fabric and application research in order for the collection to explore as deeply as possible the visual references of the concept and inspirations,” Emma says. “Sometimes it was through textures that recall the landscapes I had in mind for the collection, such as different works of gradients or pleats, or color pairings like on the feathers that we tinted to create unique gradients and combinations.” Pleated leather, for example, brings to mind wind-formed sand ripples, and textured animal prints conjure images of dried-out earth, cracked like a jigsaw puzzle. 

This season, Rowen Rose also looks beyond the fashion binary in a way that’s fresh and bold — a sartorial antidote to the minimalist, boxy silhouettes that pervade most unisex clothing. “Every look we did was developed to fit everybody, so we decided during the last fittings which looks were going to be worn by men or women,” Emma says. When she began developing menswear, the challenge was ensuring Rowen Rose’s DNA didn’t splinter off into two separate worlds. “I find it very interesting to show how they can actually share a closet that is not what genderless fashion usually looks like,” she adds.

The collection also shows, if there was ever any doubt, that the designer has a strong, steady point of view. She is faithful to all of her brand’s familiar forms, but still gives herself ample room for creativity and play — drawing upon her imaginative and intellectual powers to invite guests into a beautiful, well-fleshed-out story. Every look has a confidence that’s palpable; I know this from my own experience. You put on a Rowen Rose belted jacket, with its extra-large shoulder pads and architectural cut, and you stand differently in it. When asked how she wants the brand to come across, Emma says: “Elegance that does not go unnoticed.” And it won’t.