MARIE ADAM-LEENAERDT TURNS THE AIRPORT INTO A RUNWAY (QUITE LITERALLY)

A boarding pass to nowhere

Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt decided that the world hadn’t seen enough airport chaos, so she brought it straight to the runway. Her Spring collection transformed the dreaded passport-control maze into a fashion show, complete with the energy of missed flights and overpriced sandwiches. The concept? “Affirming the freedom of clothing” through deconstruction and practicality or at least the illusion of it. Adam-Leenaerdt’s mission was to make fashion relatable to women’s daily lives, because who among us hasn’t dreamed that our outfit could double as a boarding pass?

This season, travel became both metaphor and muse. Each look represented the wonderfully random assortment of travelers one might encounter at Gate C42: the jet-setter, the overpacker, the one still half-asleep in duty-free. Flexibility, longevity, and adaptability were key words, though “comfort” might have been left behind at security.

Luggage, heels, and airport survival

Since modern travel often feels like hauling your entire apartment through terminals, Adam-Leenaerdt made sure the models carried appropriately gigantic bags practically portable closets with more compartments than humanly necessary. They swung from shoulders like burdens of beauty, both ridiculous and impressive.

Footwear, on the other hand, was a cruel joke disguised as design. Towering stiletto platforms and hyper-pointy pumps strutted down the runway until one brave model surrendered to gravity, kicked off her shoes, and continued barefoot. It was the most honest moment of the show: a poetic ode to the exhaustion of air travel and the silent suffering of heels.

The anatomy of chaos

The collection unfolded like a visual diary of airport dressing: spontaneous, layered, and slightly unhinged. Dresses took cues from black velvet jewelry busts, reimagined as wearable sculptures. Sequined aprons were draped carelessly across bodies, sparkling like duty-free souvenirs tossed into a suitcase at the last minute.

Pants, pinned precariously over tunics, seemed to hang in mid-escape, as if the mannequin had grown tired of its own styling.

One floral gown was visibly clamped at the back to “fit”: a glorious nod to every woman who’s ever negotiated with a mirror in a fitting room. Two floral slip dresses, one in positive print and the other in negative, were stitched together at the spine like sartorial Siamese twins, beautiful and bizarre in equal measure.

There were crystal-covered numbers that shimmered like fishnets trapped beneath a disco ball, catching every flash of light with hypnotic insistence.

A bat-winged poncho-dress flapped asymmetrically with defiant charm, printed in an oversized bandana motif that screamed rebellion or perhaps just turbulence.

Even the classic trench coat couldn’t sit still: its belted lower half detached entirely, revealing that it could moonlight as two separate outfits. Practical, if you ignore the fact that you’d need a PhD in fashion origami to reassemble it.

The ghost in the garment

There was something hauntingly familiar in Adam-Leenaerdt’s aesthetic—a spectral whisper of Margiela, perhaps, lingering at the hems. It was irreverent, clever, and just self-aware enough to wink at the audience without turning into parody. Her humor danced delicately between absurdity and sincerity, making the entire show feel like a love letter to fashion’s contradictions.

She invited us to laugh, to question, and to reconsider the ritual of dressing not as an act of perfection, but as a beautifully chaotic performance. After all, what is fashion if not an endless cycle of departure and arrival?

The final call

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s airport fantasy was not about escaping reality, but about confronting it with style and irony. Between the impossible heels, the Frankenstein dresses, and the bag-sized metaphors, she reminded us that clothing like travel; is never just about the destination.

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