The Monse spring summer 2027 collection arrived last night as something more than a seasonal show: it was the first time in ten years that Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia had the creative bandwidth to pour everything into a single brand. The venue matched the ambition, the towering glass penthouse of the former Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, New York, styled by Alex White.
Tulips were the starting point. Not tulips as they appear in any garden centre, but tulips as they existed during Tulipmania, the 17th-century Dutch episode in which newly introduced bulb prices soared to extraordinary heights before collapsing in February 1637. Kim cited a book she had recently read on the subject, and the virus-warped, streak-veined blooms of that era gave the collection its central metaphor. ‘These tulips, it wasn’t their natural form,’ Kim said. ‘It happened because they got a virus. And I find that story very related to Monse. It’s like a broken beauty.’
From a Single White Shirt to a Full Bloom
The Monse spring summer 2027 collection ran through all the house’s established signatures, cascading paillettes, sculptural feathered finishes, ruffled hemlines, intricately fringed jackets, but every element traced back to one humble starting point. The white button-down shirt. Garcia and Kim deconstructed it a decade ago when founding the label, and the tension between that banal staple and the extraordinary things done to it has driven the brand ever since. ‘Laura and I never were happy from the beginning of Monse with the banal white shirt, so we deconstructed it,’ Garcia said, with a laugh.
The designers used the wrong side of certain fabrics to produce an organic, streaked effect across jackets and dresses, most vividly on a pink and green barn jacket. Elsewhere, bright lingerie pieces surfaced beneath black-and-white lace, Garcia’s description of them as ‘pretty glitches in the algorithm’ about right. The tulip motif itself appeared on hand-dyed sculptural silk pieces; the streaks and veins of colour running through them were painted by Garcia himself.
Ten Years at Two Labels, and What Comes Next for the Monse Spring Summer 2027 Direction
The context behind this collection matters. Kim and Garcia co-founded Monse in 2015, according to Vogue, and the following year they took on the creative reins at Oscar de la Renta simultaneously, running both houses in parallel. That dual role lasted the better part of a decade. Their professional relationship goes back even further: Garcia first arrived at Oscar de la Renta as a newly hired intern, stepping into Kim’s office when she was serving as a design director under Mr. De la Renta himself, according to Langham Hotels.
Their final collection for Oscar de la Renta was the fall/winter 2026 runway, shown in February, according to ELLE. Since then, the full force of their attention has been on Monse alone. Garcia was candid about what that shift means creatively. ‘We have been doing two brands for 10 years at the same time and sort of siloing our creativity into each one, depending on the aesthetic of the brand,’ he told ELLE. ‘And this is the first time in 10 years that we have had the chance to just focus on one brand and put all of our ideas into one as opposed to two.’
In the studio weeks before the show, racks of gowns dripping with sculptural silk tulips and lace dresses with specially developed matching ribbons filled the space. Kim’s personal love of gardening fed directly into the colour palette: garden-fresh hues, nothing clinical about them. The Monse spring summer 2027 collection, Garcia said, is ‘very special to Laura and myself’ precisely because it carries no divided loyalty. Everything in the room, every draped tulip and deconstructed seam, went into one brand for the first time. The next era, by their own account, is just getting started.
