Jan-Jan Van Essche’s Clothes Make Art Wearable

I’m meeting Jan-Jan Van Essche, the 45-year-old Belgian designer, in his Paris Fashion Week showroom set in a solarium-like space at the end of a typical Parisian courtyard. His new collection, around one hundred wide-cut, earth-toned, hand-finished garments made from natural fabrics, hangs from a network of bamboo racks. It’s an intimate affair, and not just because the soft-spoken designer himself was directly involved in the production of every item on display. Van Essche’s partner Piëtro Celestina oversees sales; their friend Lamine Diouf, a Senegalese hand-weaver, models the clothes; and in the kitchen, hidden behind a large white cloth, another close friend prepares a meal. “Not strictly vegetarian,” Van Essche chuckles, his deep-set eyes twinkling. “I probably look more like a hippie than I actually am.”  

The Fall/Winter 2026 collection is titled “Soil.” Van Essche describes it as sitting at the intersection of “heritage and stories interwoven with materiality,” where “earthly minerals” create “a source of imaginative memories.” That’s a poetic way of describing something very tangible, best understood when seen, touched, and worn. The collection spans everything from wool-padded winter coats and garment-dyed denim pants to raw-hemmed silk tunics and chambray collar-pieces, their natural sheen coming from the contrast between a silken warp and cotton weft. 

None of these silhouettes will surprise anyone familiar with Van Essche’s work. And that’s just the point. Van Essche makes seasonal collections —  his Fall/Winter lines are, technically speaking, called ‘projects’ — but doesn’t follow seasonal trends. Each collection builds on the same core silhouettes, or “mother patterns,” which Van Essche, a trained pattern-maker, continuously revisits and refines through new fabrics, weaves, and finishes. Think of it as his invitation to approach your wardrobe differently: don’t chase newness for newness’s sake, but build it gradually, through subtle shifts in what works and feels good. That’s how Van Essche himself does it, anyway, layering and repeating the same clothes year-round, depending on the climate. 

Van Essche, high-piled dreadlocks, large hoop earrings, and clad in his own boxy designs, launched his eponymous label in 2011. Trained at the same academy as the Antwerp Six, he has spent the past fifteen years closely following the anti-establishment ethos he shares with them: gut feeling over brand concept. Not that Van Essche operates outside the modern fashion system. His clothes are stocked by fifty forward-thinking boutiques worldwide, including Dover Street Market in London and Ginza. In 2023, he made his runway debut at Pitti Uomo, in the Santa Maria Novella cloister in Florence. And his Spring/Summer 2025 collection was exhibited at the prestigious MoMu in Antwerp, the city where he lives, works and runs Atelier Solarshop, home to like-minded brands such as Evan Kinori, Lauran Manoogian, and Yoko Sakamoto. 

Even if much of it feels pleasantly familiar, there’s one major novelty in the Fall/Winter 2026 collection: “Soil” marks the start of a new series of pieces entirely manufactured, finished, and distributed from Japan. “Think of it as a collection within a collection,” says Van Essche. “All pieces in this artisanal sub-line, also titled “Soil,” carry their own label, hand-painted by me.”  

The Soil line will slightly differ from O-Project, the more accessible sister brand Van Essche launched in 2015 whose pieces are also made in Japan. Soil revisits silhouettes from past main collections through collaborations with Japanese artisans. This first edition features five garment-dyed styles: denim pants, a workwear jacket and shoulder bag, all crafted from a hemp/cotton/bamboo fabric, and a standing-collar jacket and dress shirt that are made from cotton/wool. All pieces come in two shades: an earthy tone achieved with doro-zome (mud dye) and a greyish-pink, created through kakishibu (persimmon dye) overdyed with iron mordant. 

With Soil, Van Essche further solidifies his long-standing connection with Japan, a country he visits twice a year partially for inspiration and creative work and partially, of course, for camaraderie. “For next season, I’ll be doing my entire design period in Japan as well,” he says. “It just makes sense, and it feels so natural to be there, around friends and close to the people we work with.”