Aubero Spring 2026 Menswear Collection
Julian Louie was raised by two writers. The popular advice to 'write what you know,' given to aspiring penmen with ambitions of becoming authors, is a kind of mantra that has revolved around him since childhood. It's still fluttering in his mind today, and was a guidepost for this collection.
Louie indeed has a lot on his mind. Since he launched Aubero in 2022, the label quickly rose from a compelling experiment by an experienced designer—Louie started his career at Calvin Klein under Francisco Costa way back when—to an IYKYK favorite in New York, now a budding industry darling. He was the sole American finalist in the 2024 edition of the LVMH Prize and is currently a semifinalist for the 2025 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. He's had a whirlwind two years that could overwhelm even the most steadfast, but he projects a sense of stillness and the same tranquility that make his clothes enchanting. He does what he knows best.
'It only gets easier,' Louie said at his studio in Brooklyn before packing up his collection to bring it to Paris, 'every season that goes by, the more language there is around the collection; there is progressively more clarity.' As he started working on this lineup, he returned to that sage writing advice. As a designer, it translated plainly: 'Look at what's right in front of you, at what's real and personal." he said.
A California native, Louie has fashioned Aubero as a sort of topographic study of the landscapes of his childhood, only drawn from memory rather than a map. 'How do you build into a collection this idea of yearning for a place?' he asked. Yearning is the operating word. Louie's work is both nostalgic and forward-looking; his approach to material—the way he encapsulates fraying antique textiles or scraps from past collections under mesh in one-of-a-kind coats or trousers—is largely preservationist, yet feels new. The hand-crinkled voiles and the wash of his cottons, edges left raw; a crisp taffeta that will wrinkle throughout the day—they hold a patina that makes items his garments compelling. There's something for everyone here, which might be the reason behind Aubero's rising popularity: there's a great overcoat and a flattering, versatile trouser—the kind that could conquer the chore coat-wearing menswear contingent at Pitti Uomo.
Much of this collection, and the entirety of Aubero, really, operates like a working autobiography, one that relies on Louie's mental souvenirs. The skirt-like wraps pictured here are a nod to the surfers he would see in Santa Cruz changing by their trucks, a clutched towel on their waists as they slip out of a wetsuit ('a kind of foggy eroticism'). Louie's 'material fetish,' in his words, is a fascination he's traced to his paternal grandparents, who emigrated from China to the U.S. and ran a laundry in Long Island ('it's this inheritance of care for clothing and building a life around the caring and mending of it'). A dominating recollection this season was the echo of a drum circle heard through his childhood bedroom window. 'Grounding and transportative,' is how he described it. As Louie's star rises, may it remind him to continue to march to the beat of his own drum.
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