For spring 2026, the Khaite woman looks as fierce as ever, so it might surprise you to hear designer Catherine Holstein confess, “the whole idea of confidence that people always talk about? I really find that in insecurity and being self-conscious.” Holstein identifies as an outsider, even if, as she said, “I don’t look like one.” As a kid, she explained backstage, she was always cutting up her clothes and modifying them. This season, what occupied her was the question, “how do you twist this?”

It started with the leather blazer that opened the show. Holstein spliced it up the sides so it hung at an angle, clasping its model in a kind of embrace. Dresses got a similar sort of treatment. Pointing to Julia Nobis’s strapless cocktail number with its fluttery bodice, she said, “we took things apart: ripped this down from the corset, stuffed tulle in it…to make it a little bit stupid.” A ripple of laughter came from the assembled journalists, but Holstein made her point. “To take a risk.”

If some of the stuffed tulle pieces did come off as de trop, Holstein can afford to experiment. Her fifth US store, on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, opened this month. Though she’s often defined the Khaite customer as a stealth New York woman, one could perhaps see a southern Californian spirit in the skirts hitched to the hips of Kendall Jenner and Binx Walton, their supersize polka dots a few degrees of separation from the teeny weeny polka dot bikinis of legend. Ditto the wide gauge knit pieces in their laissez-faire shapes.

Backstage, though, Holstein insisted on the personal narrative. It made for an unusual mix of slick and naive: the padded shoulders of a tie neck silk blouse and the naive, almost childish renderings of embroideries on button-ups; the couturish allusions of basque waisted pinafore tops and double-breasted coat dresses juxtaposed against deeply cuffed raw denim, like a grade schooler might haveve worn jeans 60 years ago.

As ever, the accessories drew your attention. Those deeply cuffed jeans topped cute leather moccasins with little kitten heels. On the more formal side, caramel colored low-heeled slingbacks conveyed a cool confidence with dark rinse denim and a red leather jacket/cape hybrid. With a pair of simple black loafers the twist Holstein was after came via a beguiling little black dress with a portrait back that dipped all the way down to the sacrum.