The Alaïa cocoon-style jumpsuits seemed to constrict the models’ arms — until they turned around, revealing completely open backs, the porthole also revealing the waistband of cool jeans worn underneath.
The Balenciaga tunics seemed similarly austere, until the models did an about-face, revealing a slit that sagged open seductively.
Several spring 2026 collections put an emphasis on the exit impact of garments, an underappreciated aspect of fashion that returns to the forefront from time to time.
“Backs are always important, and they have been ever since I started at Max Mara,” said creative director Ian Griffiths, who credits the Italian firm’s formidable head pattern cutter for instilling this idea. “She told me that if a designer only does the front of a design, not the back, they should only get paid half.”
Rest assured, Griffiths has always collected his full salary.
“Even to think just about the front and the back is still very two-dimensional, because we are more than a front and a back,” he said in an interview. “To be a good designer, you have to really think about everything in the round… In real life, we see people from every angle, including the back.”
For his latest Max Mara collection, Griffiths designed many looks with bare backs demarcated with harness-like arrangements of black elastic straps. “The back is always an important element, and one that can give a surprise,” he said. “I love to have something unexpected happening at the back.”
When the designer sketches a new collection, there is always a back perspective, even if it’s just a thumbnail.
A look from the Max Mara spring 2026 collection, as sketched front and back by Ian Griffiths.
Courtesy of Max Mara
Other spring 2026 collections with back interest included Schiaparelli, Bottega Veneta, Givenchy, Yohji Yamamoto, Rabanne and McQueen, which brought back the house’s infamous bumster pants.
In a similarly racy register, Vetements based its entire spring show on looks that were “normal” in front, but nearly naked viewed from behind — riffing on a scene from “Eyes Wide Shut” when star Nicole Kidman hiked up the back of her evening gown and gathered it in front to sit on the toilet.
“I was thinking about the flat imagery,” creative director Guram Gvasalia said. “No one cares about the back so much… So I said, ‘I’m going to start working with the back of the clothes to make it more interesting.’”
Most skirts hung forward, leaving a view onto buttocks and seamed hosiery, while gowns were worn in the “Eyes Wide Shut” fashion. Men’s jeans were denim in front, transparent PVC in the back.
Carla Sozzani, president of the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation and one of the late Tunisian designer’s most ardent supporters, said its current exhibition in Paris, dedicated to the designer’s 2003 couture collection, demonstrates how much he considered the 360-degree impact.
“When we look at these clothes, the back is almost more interesting than the front,” she said in an interview. “For him, it was super important. He always said, ‘A women is not a picture, it’s a life. It’s important the way they move. And the back is very sensual… He was sculpting the body, so the back is very important.”
A look from Azzedine Alaïa’s 2003 couture runway.
Across the 2003 collection, lacing, pleating, seaming and godets enliven jeans, skirts and leather coats, reaching a zenith with his tailored jackets in alligator skin, the tail left intact for a tailcoat effect.
Having spent decades as a buyer as founder of 10 Corso Como, now lending her expert eye to Dover Street Market, Sozzani said she’s always paid attention to the backs of clothes “because it changes the whole silhouette. If you have a plain back, it can be quite sad or inconsequential. It’s very important for the shape of the body — and to make a woman feel feminine.”
Cristóbal Balenciaga and American costume designer Adrian Adolph Greenburg were particularly renowned for back interest in their designs, she noted. “In the ’70s, nobody was paying attention to the backs.”
“I always look at a woman from behind so as to avoid being disturbed by her gaze,” Azzedine Alaïa once said. “The back is as important as the front.”
In Griffiths’ experience, customers are very attuned to all angles of a garment.
“If you observe women trying on clothes, they step out of the fitting room and the first thing they do is turn around and see how it fits at the back,” he said. “They want to make sure it’s flattering.”
Fashion historian Alexandre Samson, director of contemporary collections at the Palais Galliera fashion museum, said designers who work in three dimensions, draping fabric on a Stockman and creating patterns, tend to consider garments from all angles, mentioning the likes of Alaïa and Rick Owens.
Moschino is another house that used the backs of clothes as a “whiteboard for messages or surprises.”
The flip side of fashion secured a big moment in the spotlight in 2019, when Samson mounted an exhibition at the Musée Antoine Bourdelle in Paris that focused on the importance of the backs of garments, showcasing designs all the way from Comme des Garçons to Zara, and from the imposing trains of the 13th century to the numbered football jerseys of today.
The “Backside” exhibition catalog opens with a quote from Yamamoto, who called the back “the focal point of my construction. Right there, near the collarbones. It’s what will determine the emotion of a garment. I believe that clothes should be made from the back, not the front.”
Samson noted the back tends to be a symbol of vulnerability “because it’s the only part of your body that you cannot touch entirely.”
It tends to come into fashion focus occasionally, with notable examples being the 18th-century sack-back dress, the bustles of the 19th century, and then the backless dresses that became popular in the ’30s and persist still.
“That opened up a whole category, a whole new focus for attention,” said Samson, who credits American socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig for being the first to wear a backless evening gown one night at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1910s, reportedly to gasps from the audience.
Samson noted that throughout fashion history, only garments for women have been designed with rear closures, with the possible exception amid the utopian Saint-Simonian sect in 19th-century France, when men wore waistcoats that fastened from behind, requiring assistance.
To protect their designs, French couturiers including Madeleine Vionnet documented dresses from the front, side and back, and deposited the photos with a Paris court in the early decades of the 20th century. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen reprised this triptych idea with their spring 2026 lookbook for The Row, revealing draped, caped, pleated, notched and racer backs.
Samson said the “Backside” exhibition attracted roughly 90,000 visitors, much to his surprise. “It was very unexpected, because I was sure that no one could care about my project,” he said.
So how to bring more attention to the backside of clothes?
Max Mara’s Griffiths noted that fashion professionals who attend runway shows end up seeing clothes mostly from the side. “I would encourage editors to move their heads more,” he suggested.
