Olivier Theyskens Returns to Fashion With a New Brand, Boloria
The Belgian designer gave his label a proper introduction with a spring 2027 show in Paris.
One day before the haute couture fall 2026 shows began, a new fashion brand made its debut from inside the darkened Lycée Carnot school hall in Paris. At Boloria’s spring 2027 show, plumes of smoke twirled inside transparent boxes on the runway of the newly founded house helmed by Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens. Ethereal, haunting music played overhead—and before the first model even set foot on the runway, it was clear all the neo-Gothic allusions were pure Theyskens—a designer fashion has thoroughly missed since he left his former positions at Rochas, Nina Ricci, Theory, and of course, his namesake label.
Boloria was founded in Antwerp in 2025, under the creative direction of Theyskens and backed by We Are One World, the Belgian company that runs Tomorrowland electronic music festivals. Theyskens’s cult fans have been waiting for a comeback for years, and many of the pieces in Boloria’s debut show touched on the designer’s own core house codes. See: exaggerated tailoring, dark Gothic glamour, antique-influenced fabrications, and a genius eye for a great bias cut.
The collection opened with a series of spellbinding gowns in dazzlingly dark hues of black and navy blue; pannier-style hips completed the look. Huge, swanning trains trailed after each model, reaffirming Theyskens’s place as the unofficial king of dark romanticism with a never-ending imagination for reinterpreting old as new.
Beyond the big, bold gowns, a key signature of slinky, draped maxidresses with delicate touches—a zipper on the hip, buttons on the arm cuff—emerged. Elsewhere, buttoned shirts came styled with ultralong, superskinny ties and the appearance of half a jacket stacked on top, which was a nice note of whimsy.
The collection was titled Le Monde Flottant, defined in the show notes as “an existence within a single moment, an embrace of the ephemeral.” Many of the designs leaned on unusual, tailored suits with slight touches of Victorianism; these pieces were styled in ways that showed they could be worn for any gender. “We can imagine a past—rooted in the past century and beyond—a mirage of patrimony,” the show notes said. “Clothes may also allude to a before—their forms are contemporary, yet their construction cherishes values of the past. Linings, tailoring details, gestures in cloth. Methods of creation link today with yesteryear.”
Fashion absolutely craves the sense of drama and individuality that Boloria brings. Theyskens’s most memorable archival looks always prioritized emotional, personal design with a little bit of risk-taking (like dresses embellished with blood vessels). Boloria is clearly just getting started, and we can’t wait to see what happens when Theyskens pushes the boundaries even further for future collections.
