Lost Highway / Judassime

Runway show review

In this article, Judassime’s SS 2026 strongly narrative collection Lost Highway is first approached instinctively, before shifting to a more analytical perspective that considers the three acts in which the runway show is divided into.

The car had ended up off the road for no real reason, or at least she could not remember one. Someone else, not her, had been at the wheel, though even that she could no longer recall. Her nails sank into the mixture of sweat, earth, and concrete beneath her. She tried to rise, to recirculate energy through her body, and as she pushed her limbs in what felt like an extreme effort, her right cheek grazed against fine crystals, sharply broken shards from the car’s shattered windshield. A sigh of pain escaped her lips as a trickle of blood ran across her face, settling on her eyelids, flooding her lashes, and staining red that nocturnal vision illuminated only by the blaze consuming the car’s interior.

The wind blew, and her hair, saturated with fumes and the stench of gasoline, mingled with her sweat and the blood on her skin. It was so cold she could already feel it forming a crust on her face. A new scent joined the others, evoking what felt like the tail end of an image, a memory not yet fully formed. Summoning what little strength remained after the narrowly avoided tragedy, with her skin lacerated by twisted metal, she clenched her teeth and tried to stand, her knees unstable. They trembled, aching and weak, while her eyes remained fixed downward toward what was left of a pair of stockings, torn either by the impact or, more likely, by the figure who had left nothing behind but his smell, now absorbed by her hair. She advanced step by step, her clothes in tatters like her memory.

The driver’s door, flung open by the impact, concentrated that nauseating odour. It was as if pain had sharpened her senses so much that nothing else in the air could be perceived. She sat down, sinking into the leather seat, wishing to be swallowed and transported to another dimension where thoughts were more linear and truths undeniable, where she had no agency over herself, where it was decided what she must do and she had only to exist. She raised her arms, a piercing pain in her left arm making her emit a guttural sound full of anguish. She shook off the sensation, intensifying the cry, gripped the steering wheel, and summoned the last energies in her body to regain a moment of lucidity.

On one side were her memories, her identity, and the blackened wreckage of the vehicle that could help her understand how she had ended up there; on the other, the complete darkness of the highway, a darkness that would certainly lead her toward another kind of burning, that of the cities, toward other forms of pain and solitude unlike what she was experiencing now. She held the leather of the wheel as if strangling it, inhaled the scent left by the individual who had violated her body, the essence of the executioner, and brushed away the questions she had no energy, evidence, or perhaps courage to answer. She turned her gaze to the right: something was calling her attention. On what remained of the passenger seat she found a leather jacket. She caressed it and smelled it, immediately feeling her gust wrenching: an attempt to make sense of the fragments of someone to whom she had somehow belonged, someone she had probably loved, and who had come close to annihilating her. A thin smoke permeated the air inside the car, but it mattered little: the thought of disappearing did not frighten her at all in that moment.

It was in the acceptance of her own fragility that she could still keep her eyes open, tensing her muscles to remain as vigilant as possible without being overwhelmed by the desolation surrounding her, the flames of the burning car and her eyes the only lights cutting through the darkness. To stay and die from cold, from pain, from hunger, and from desolation, or to walk, to let herself be absorbed by the abrasive force of the concrete and earth beneath her, to endure an excruciating journey and then have the hope of beginning again.

She looked into the rear-view mirror, miraculously intact. That reflection no longer existed. Her knuckles shattered the reflective surface and blood flowed through the fractures in the glass. Images of herself multiplied, like her memories and the possibilities that laid before her.

About the runway

ACT I
The characters who appear on the runway inhabit a highway haunted by misaligned memories, blood and tortured flesh: a liminal space where rebirth and transformation remain possible through the acceptance of one’s own scars. In the first act, The Constraint and the Scar, the ideal muse and collection’s protagonist constructs a fortress around herself, a protective response to trauma, and the clothing mirrors this instinct. Dark palettes and constrained silhouettes dominate: leather fragments sewn together trace invisible wounds, biker-inspired gloves and jackets suggest defense, while belts and corsetry form cages around the body, offering both structure and solace. This sense of constraint functions as a metaphor for those restricted, even toxic spaces in which, in moments of frailty, one tends to find comfort: the blurred line between what is protective and what confines. On the mannequins, sleeves begin to take on a more menacing quality, combining cuts and padding that hint at a future act of revenge. Within this framework, a guardian figure appears (look 6) embodying protection and vigilance. Armor-like pieces and shielded silhouettes further evoke the suffocating tension of male-coded stereotypes, while leather and padded motorcycle elements recur throughout, reinforcing the themes of defense.

ACT II
In the second act, The Feral Fury & The Reckoning, the protagonist begins to feel the urge to step outside the protective shell in which she has long kept herself hidden, and this transition is translated into garments that attempt to reconcile two apparently opposite codes: the corporate and the provocative, the world of office wear and that of the club. In this way, Judassime’s usual language of provocation, bondage hints and nocturnal energy finds a new, more introspective direction. By appropriating what is usually associated with the notion of normality, the protagonist performs a subversive act, reworking those same codes through an irreverent lens, and this inversion becomes a vital necessity, a symbolic movement through which she detaches herself from the weight of trauma. The act opens with silhouettes that draw from the grammar of sportswear, translating the energy of survival into the sculptural dynamism of form.

Little by little, these looks evolve into something that no longer belongs to a single world, merging the tailored sharpness of corporate structures with the tension and rawness of the carnal sphere, as if both sides were negotiating for dominance within the same body. The references to motor vehicles, to the velocity and brutality of movement, persist and grow stronger, finding their tactile expression in the presence of fur, which for the designer becomes a metaphor for metamorphosis, for the alchemical process of turning a wound into a symbol of survival. By the end of the act, the protagonist has completed her descent into feral form. She becomes a monster, gripping a bit between her teeth, no longer delicate or fragile but terrifying in her transformation. The softness that once defined her has curdled into something corrupted, distorted by the very normality that once promised salvation.

ACT III
The third act The Ascent & the Unrepentant Self opens with the silence that follows the storm, the calm that belongs to those who have survived. The protagonist has emerged from the long battle against the shadows that sought to shape her, and from the internal struggle between what she truly is and what others demanded her to be. In this phase, she reaches a state of clarity, a grace that coexists with strength, through which she can finally claim her identity and her sensuality without apology, displaying them not as weapons but as trophies. Collars rise and shoulders widen, as if deciding for themselves when to be sensual, when to be playful, when to be commanding. Each look balances on the edge of chaos and control, holding its own rhythm within the narrative, its own measure of power. Even the male figure is drawn into this evolution; his sensuality becomes more fluid, his strength redefined through a gentle, almost feminine magnetism that pulls him away from the rigidity of convention. The final sequence is one of convergence, where softness and severity, delicacy and domination, finally coexist without contradiction. The protagonist’s presence crystallises into the image of a dangerous beauty, magnetic and perilous, the kind of tenderness that wounds and heals at once. She is no longer a victim, nor merely a survivor, but a being made indestructible by her own metamorphosis.

Lost Highway / Judassime

Credits:

Brand: Judassime / @judassime
Words: Giulia Piceni / @giuliaapiceni
Images: @elena.murratzu @studiovitalesca @vitalessca @cellulemere @pedrocostark @peggy_thdrgn @kennakroge @judassime
Backstage photography: Nox Lux / @nox.lux_
Editor: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei

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