Luka Sabbat is now a designer, and yes, he just dropped the sophomore collection for the year-old brand Marking Distance.
The spring 2026 lineup featured slogan T-shirts, studded leather jackets, treated denims and patchwork hoodies that Sabbat had to work closely with factories in Italy to get the vintage, worn-out finishing right.
The collection could easily have come across as an ode to, or celebration of, punk, and the aggressive and destructive behavior that can come with it — and the customers would easily buy into that aesthetic too — but Sabbat said the core was, in fact, a social commentary about how people never learn from the past.
He dug into his archive of books, zines and visual references, and collaged old images that would find resonance today.
The front of one T-shirt featured an image of a bony Chinese man from the late Qing dynasty smoking opium on a bed, while the back came with an idyllic image of poppies in full bloom. An image from an old newspaper of a policeman getting arrested was on another T-shirt.
“With everything that’s happening in the world, especially in America, where the police are supposed to be protecting the people, they’re oppressing the people more than protecting them. This is nothing new. This image is like 30 years old. I am contextualizing and reintroducing them, like a nod to how history repeats itself,” Sabbat said during a preview.
The designer believed that the greatest designs and graphics have already been created, and Marking Distance is about reinterpreting these elements for a contemporary audience, making them relevant for today’s world.
