Designer Pierpaolo Piccioli is almost a year into his role at Balenciaga, having been announced as Demna’s successor last May. But in just three collections, he’s showcased different facets of the French fashion house, from his sculptural, romantic debut to his sporty exploration of the human form for pre-fall 2026.
In his second runway show and third outing for the brand, Piccioli presents yet another side to the Balenciaga wardrobe. For winter 2026, the collection—titled Clairobscur, a reference to the chiaroscuro painting technique that dates back to the Renaissance—is more austere when it comes to color, but not to the extent of what would end up being his last collection for Valentino, which was exclusively black.
Still, it wasn’t too far off. The opening looks consisted of a leather-bomber-and-pencil-skirt set with a high slit up the front, a hip-length peacoat with a dramatic raised collar over leggings, a belted long-sleeve jumpsuit, and a leather cape dress, all in black. A trench and jumbo hoodie screen-printed with photographs opened the door for red-orange, gray-brown, burgundy, and chocolate.
This collection uses “interplay in these inherent antinomies” in color—“light defined by its shadow, darkness always relieved with light”—in order to “discover new dimension,” the show notes read. “Metaphorically, darkness and light are explored as defining elements of the human condition—creating portraits of people, evoked through cloth.”
To really drive the message home, Piccioli tapped Euphoria’s Sam Levinson to create an immersive video installation in the show space. Guests got sneak peeks of the upcoming third season of the HBO series, interspersed with portraits of the models that walked the runway and landscape shots that went from sunrise to sunset. The result was “a refraction and reflection of principles central to Levinson and Piccioli—of truth, compassion, affinity, and above all humanity, its fragilities and strengths, struggles and joys,” the brand said in a statement. “These are mirrored within the message of hope and perseverance key to Levinson and Euphoria, and also within the universe of Pierpaolo Piccioli and Balenciaga.”
Whereas his debut collection put a daytime spin on gowns, floral dresses, pencil skirts, and embellished tops that look just as good on the red carpet (see: Sarah Pidgeon, Yerin Ha, and more at the 2026 Actor Awards) as they would in a VIC’s closet, Piccioli shifted his focus for winter 2026 to more traditional separates: leather jackets, high-waist trousers, draped tops, and suiting. Even the dresses, for the most part, sat closer to the body, with no superfluous volume that could get in the way of additional layers.
The clair-obscur theme also translated to the draping on dresses, tops, and even shoes created in collaboration with J.M. Wetson. Embellishments and ombré effects on dresses, bags, and sneakers “can act as painting,” the show notes said, because of how they allow you to see the lightness.
Piccioli shares Cristóbal Balenciaga’s reverence for the body, and continues to explore that in the winter 2026 collection by emphasizing it with the clothes—through collars that frame the face, necklines that show off the décolletage, cutouts that reveal slivers of skin, belts that cinch tight at the waist.
On a cast of models representing a range of backgrounds and ages, Balenciaga’s latest assortment aims “ to symbiotically fuse them as a collective power yet celebrate them as individual forces, unity in being,” per the show notes. “Alive, collective, here, they form a fresco of humanity.”
