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Fashion, at its most compelling reveals something essential about the human condition. With Animen, its Fall/Winter 2026–27 menswear collection, ETRO returns to one of its most intimate and enduring ideas: that beneath civilisation, structure, and style, mankind remains instinctual, mercurial, and animal.
Presented as a cabinet of wonders, the collection unfolds like a living taxonomy, not of species, but of selves. Under the creative direction of Marco De Vincenzo, ETRO revisits an iconography first crystallised in a 1997 photographic campaign, reactivating it for a new generation with intellectual clarity and playful irreverence.
Masculinity in a Different Way
Rather than offering a fixed idea of masculinity, Animen treats it as something fluid, shifting between classicism and whimsy, discipline and indulgence, reason and instinct. The men who inhabit this world do not demonstrate strength, they embody character.
Faces become metaphors. Physiognomy hints at animal associations, not literal, but psychological, ways of being rather than ways of looking. This conceptual underpinning gives the collection its depth, allowing each garment to feel like a second skin, or as ETRO frames it, a plumage: clothing as personal livery, infinitely adaptable and self-authored.
A Sensory Landscape
Sound plays an integral role in shaping the atmosphere. The hypnotic score by Wendy Carlos, a pioneer of Moog synthesizer composition, creates a looping, almost trance-like backdrop — reinforcing the sense of perpetual movement that defines the collection.
The Codes of Etrosity
At a material level, Animen is unmistakably ETRO, yet newly charged. Paisley, the house’s eternal signature, appears in unexpected guises: printed densely on velvet, scattered across liquid silk shirts like droplets, or rendered in pixelated jacquards that conceal animal faces within their weave.
Tailoring is impeccable but softened. Feathers edge suits with irreverent elegance. Robes and pyjamas move effortlessly between indoors and out, challenging traditional boundaries of formality. Knitwear is compact and protective, while robe coats, scarves, and trousers carry paisley boldly.
The palette is rich and bookish, dark browns, forest greens, organic neutrals, oxidised reds, evoking libraries, studies, and nocturnal interiors rather than city streets. It is a colour story that feels introspective, even scholarly, yet never severe.
Dressing as Choice
Accessories reinforce the collection’s relaxed authority: sweaters tied casually at the waist, soft oversized bags, caps pulled low over the eyes. These gestures strip away performative polish, replacing it with a sense of lived-in confidence.
What emerges is a philosophy of dress rooted in choice. Unlike the animal kingdom, where plumage is fixed, ETRO’s Animen dress is an act of self-definition. Their clothing is not armour, but expression, adaptable, layered, and deeply personal.
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