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Save this story Save Story Save this story For Spring/Summer 2027, fashion got horny.
At Tom Ford, a woman panting — almost reaching climax — soundtracked the show as models engaged in various forms of play-acting, including one female model running her hand over another’s breasts as she walked past. Halfway through the Diesel show, more and more of the crowd started passionately making out with each other, in a sort of orgy flash mob. And at Mugler, the mood was set before the first look appeared, with screens beaming erotic footage that included mating snails, sweaty skin, a woman’s tongue and two people kissing. The accompanying show notes opened with a quote from Georges Bataille’s Eroticism: Death and Sensuality , with creative director Miguel Castro Freitas declaring that he wanted to explore the “lustful pulse of nature” and our animal instincts.
It begs the question: are designers leaning into more visceral, arousing runway spectacles in search of something that has felt elusive in the industry lately: a genuine sense of desire?
“The interest in fashion and the fashion economy is not going so well right now, with people choosing to spend their money on other [categories],” says Dr. Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology and author of Dress, Dreams and Desire: A History of Fashion and Psychoanalysis . “I think as a result a lot of executives at fashion houses are thinking, ‘Can you sex it up so we can get people to want to buy this?’ Because they know that some level of desire is necessary before you buy anything.”
There are signs that it can work. Under Glenn Martens, who joined the brand in 2020, Diesel’s sales grew 13% in 2023 and a further 3.2% in 2024, even as much of the luxury industry was contracting. Horniness has been baked into Martens’s vision since the beginning, from the orgiastic inflatable at his SS23 show to the 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms for FW23. London-based R&M Leathers , founded by Ruby Mariani, has built a fast-growing business around made-to-order leather and fetishwear, reporting roughly 45% annual growth since 2024. Sex positivity is embedded in the brand’s DNA, and for its SS27 Pornhub-backed London Fashion Week debut, OnlyFans stars featured among the cast.
“Whether it’s sexual symbolism, exposure, or something much more tactile about the clothes themselves, there are lots of ways fashion can make you feel turned on,” says Steele. “Even sharp tailoring and exaggerated silhouettes can make you feel more confident, as if they’ve sucked the narcissism and self-consciousness out of you. We’re constantly being told that we’re not enough. If the clothes feel special, they might make you special, too.”
Still, we’re so used to advertising trying to push our buttons that obvious attempts at sexiness can feel almost too easy. “I think there may be a step missing between, yes, this is a sexy image, video, soundtrack,” continues Steele, “but does that necessarily take you to the next step where you pull out your wallet and put it onto your body?” The more interesting question perhaps then is what else in fashion can get under our skin in 2026.
Backstage at the R&M Leathers runway show.
Much of the fashion conversation over the last year has centered on the luxury slowdown, as commercial pressure puts fantasy and creativity in a headlock. Tactics such as ragebait have only added to the fatigue, irritating enthusiasts already frustrated by the relentless churn of slop . Meanwhile, Ozempic and its libido-killing nature have dominated headlines alongside uncannily sterile AI-generated fashion campaigns. None of this takes into account our more primal drives and desires, which often sit at odds with the predictability and frictionlessness of technology. Or as the viral meme on Instagram goes: “A computer can never be spiteful or horny, therefore a computer must never make art.”
“Artificiality is driving so much of culture; fashion is capitalizing on more visceral and physiological reactions, because they can’t as easily be faked,” says fashion theorist Rian Phin. “With all the customers abandoning luxury over the last few years, it feels so different and special to elicit an uncontrollable physical response rather than just satisfying audiences with perfect work like AI-generated content does.”
All of this has happened as puritanical attitudes around bodies shame us into more submissive states of mind, estranging us from our more emotional, albeit sometimes irrational, desiring selves. “There’s a messiness to being human that has been sanitized recently, be it by burgeoning conservative ideals, gender norms and dress codes, or by the flattening nature of AI, digital fatigue and surveillance paranoia,” says Katie Devlin, fashion trends editor at Stylus. “What’s actually enticing consumers is a real acknowledgment of what makes us human, and that means leaning into subversive aesthetics and lifestyles that center an indulgence in vices, taboos and unabashed hedonism.”
As the age-old adage goes, sex sells — but this season, the more alluring collections didn’t overindex on the familiar visual codes.
“We are in a very stressful moment, with a lot of political and even existential threats to existence, so more than ever people’s internal psychic fears and desires are difficult to read, and are even difficult for people themselves to read,” says Steele. “You think it would be obvious. You would know what you desire and why you desire it, but you don’t. There’s also all kinds of new inhibitions and fears today.”
If desire is difficult to rationalize, this season, Mugler played into what happens when you stop trying to. Castro Freitas looked to Bataille’s writing on eroticism, exploring what it means to surrender to our more instinctive, animal impulses. Naturalia X, the final collection in the designer’s Trilogy of Glorified Clichés, blurred the line between the human body and the natural world. Feathers, synthetic hair and translucent organza were worked into exaggerated silhouettes, alongside insect-like décolletés, feline pantaboots, moss-green leather and cheetah-print effects. While the imagery around the show was overtly erotic, from the footage of mating snails and kissing bodies to the music and the projections, the clothes themselves were less about baring skin than creating a sense of sensuality.
“For me, this collection was about listening to those inner impulses and allowing ourselves to surrender to desire, sensation and lust — to something that exists beneath the rational mind,” says Castro Freitas. “Eroticism, to me, is never about vulgarity. It is about instinct, confidence and an understanding of one’s own power.”
Crucially, that wasn’t just something to look at: the clothes were designed to be experienced, he says, not just observed. Across 32 screens, imagery by Casper Sejersen played alongside Björk’s voice and Teho Teardo’s soundscape, for an intentionally overwhelming environment. “Overstimulation was central to what I wanted people to feel,” Castro Freitas says. “We live in a time where we are constantly being fed information — from social media, the news, the world around us — that being overstimulated has almost become the new normal. I wanted to embrace that sensation rather than resist it.”
It’s an approach that gets to the heart of why Castro Freitas has banned the word “sexy” in his atelier. “Sensuality is a feeling; sexy is an appearance,” he says. “Sexy can become a visual shorthand, and when removed from its context, it can feel impersonal. Sensuality is much more instinctive and individual. It is about what you feel rather than what you project.”
For brands, that distinction opens up a much bigger territory than simply showing more body. One of the defining conversations of the season has been the GLP-1-ification of the runway, with whittled-down bodies appearing in sheer and revealing clothes. In a culture so focused on optimizing and displaying the body, there’s a renewed focus on designers wanting women to feel embodied. Sometimes, that can be as simple as how a garment feels. “People are drawn both to things that hold them and things that embrace them. As Azzedine Alaïa, who always made the sexiest sort of body contrasts, said, ‘Being held by the textile is like being held by someone you love,’” says Steele.
That’s where material can also become part of the fantasy. “The latex trenches at Ferragamo are a great example,” says Stylus’s Devlin. “Of course, latex has major connotations with fetishwear, but using it for these super sleek trenches plays into touch and tactility more than it does voyeurism. These are not clothes meant to be seen on a screen; they’re made to be touched.”
It’s a strong proposition in a screen-mediated culture where it’s becoming harder and harder to tell what’s real. “We need proof that someone isn’t cheating or faking authenticity now, and horniness is the perfect avenue,” says Phin. Being in a state of desire produces physical reactions that are difficult to manufacture — sweat, blood rushing, dilated pupils — while offering up the human impulses behind the work, like what excites a designer and what they’re drawn to. She points to Loewe’s use of artist and photographer Talia Chetrit, known for her provocative portraits that explore sexuality and identity, as an example of this more intimate and unvarnished fashion advertising.
Meanwhile, Devlin points to Rosalía’s custom Yasmina Atta piece, recently worn while in New York for her Lux tour, as an example of a brand using eroticism as well as fantasy and dress-up to create something unpredictable. The look — a latex bodice, with a visible lace bra, studded belts and a tutu — played into the ballet and opera-inspired world of the music star’s latest tour, while twisting those traditionally more demure references into something more subversive. “World-building has become really central to effectively reaching consumers,” she says. “The brands who will win are the ones taking real creative risks and experimenting with fantasy in a really indulgent and singular way.”
Perhaps that is the more useful way to think about fashion’s erotic turn. It’s not necessarily about showing more skin or making clothes look sexier, but finding new ways to make people feel something within their bodies. In a culture where so much is designed to be scrolled past in a state of numbness and anxiety, that might be one of fashion’s most powerful ways to make us stop and connect again.
Source: Lifestyle
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