Hodakova SS27: Strip for Your Next Beach Trip

Salt underfoot, fishing nets around the body, dresses soaked through and enough exposed skin to make sunscreen feel like backstage equipment: Hodakova has planned a beach trip for Spring/Summer 2027, though nobody appears headed toward striped parasols and frozen cocktails.

Pack lightly. The net may already count as an outfit.

Presented at Paris’s Institut Suédois, the show started with the floor itself. Pale salt covered the runway and crept onto guests’ shoes, making the environment physically present before the collection had properly begun. The gesture carried humor, irritation and a little menace at once. Hodakova was presenting an ecological meditation, and the environment had already crossed the polite boundary between spectacle and audience.

The mood stayed unstable from there.

Hodakova Goes to Sea

Larsson grew up sailing, and a two-week trip at sea during summer 2026 gave the familiar landscape a different charge. Her phone died on the second day, leaving the designer detached from the constant stream of messages and information that usually follows modern life everywhere. She later described arriving at a “very Zen moment with the ocean,” thinking more intensely about how necessary aquatic ecosystems are to human life.

The romantic version of this story practically writes itself: designer disappears to sea, reconnects with nature, returns with a nautical collection. Hodakova made the more interesting choice and focused on the working equipment of the ocean.

There are waxed surfaces associated with fishermen, sails, knots, rope, industrial fishing nets, salt and textiles that look faded, used and exposed to weather. Familiar maritime colors play a surprisingly minor role. The sea appears through function and material, not postcard imagery.

That distinction matters because it suits the way Hodakova already operates. Larsson frequently starts with an existing object or discarded material and lets its construction dictate the garment. Shape follows what is available. Limitations become design instructions. The brand has grown into a Stockholm atelier with more than 15 full-time employees plus freelancers, yet sourcing still relies heavily on manual sorting, touching and assessing individual materials.

Strip for Your Next Beach Trip

As the collection progresses, coverage becomes increasingly unstable. Industrial nets slide across shirts and chemises. Open mesh reveals lingerie and skin. Dresses appear soaked, making fabric cling and turn translucent. The effect lands somewhere between fisherman, shipwreck survivor and very committed beach club guest.

Yet the nudity has more logic than another round of runway naked dressing.

A fishing net naturally exposes the body because openness belongs to its construction. Wet fabric naturally becomes translucent. Rope naturally pulls, weighs and constrains. Hodakova allows the material to produce the sensuality instead of placing sheer fabric into the collection simply because transparency is fashionable.

The strongest pieces work through that physical intelligence.

Heavy marine rope becomes sleeveless tops and tent-like dresses, retaining enough bulk to make the body negotiate with the garment. Bowline knots appear enlarged until seafaring utility begins to resemble couture gesture. Industrial nets sourced around Stockholm harbours are layered, twisted and repositioned across the body.

Crocodile Without the Crocodile

One of the smartest pieces pushes Hodakova’s transformation game into trompe-l’oeil.

Discarded leather scraps are painstakingly reconstructed into a surface resembling crocodile skin. From a distance, the garment borrows the visual authority of exotic leather. Close inspection reveals an entirely different material story.

The technique is clever for several reasons. It gives leftover leather a visual richness normally associated with a premium skin, turns waste into surface construction, and quietly complicates the collection’s references to animals caught inside systems created by humans.

The effect also avoids the usual visual language of upcycling. Nothing about it needs to look homespun, rustic or morally virtuous. The surface aims for luxury first and reveals its material logic afterward.

Elsewhere, deadstock leather from Swedish glove-maker Hestra appears through driving gloves and small accessories, while old washing-machine covers, antique linen, sailcloth and harbour materials broaden the collection’s strange inventory.

The Clothes Were Looking Back

Then come the eyes. Models appear to stare straight ahead while their actual eyelids remain closed. Painted eyes sit across them with the slightly disturbing perfection of dolls, mannequins or surrealist photography.

At first the makeup reads as a visual joke. Stay with it longer and the image turns less comfortable. Wide-open painted eyes suggest awareness while the person underneath remains disengaged.

That metaphor carries particular weight inside a collection concerned with climate anxiety. Environmental crisis has become extraordinarily visible. Images circulate constantly. Scientific warnings have become familiar language. People can watch, scroll, acknowledge and continue.

Hodakova literalizes that strange condition on the face.

The soundtrack deepens the aquatic mood with a reference to Luc Besson’s 1988 film Le Grand Bleu, while salt, wet clothing and marine equipment carry the concept beyond styling into a whole sensory environment.

Climate Anxiety Looks Suspiciously Good in Fashion

Hodakova operates inside an industry built around producing desire while using SS27 to speak about ecological damage, animal suffering and environmental inaction.

Wet dresses look fantastic in photographs. Fishing nets frame the body beautifully. The faux-crocodile leather has obvious luxury appeal. Painted eyes are practically designed to travel across social media. Climate anxiety, once passed through the fashion system, can become seductively photogenic.

That does not automatically hollow out the message, particularly because reuse sits at the operational core of Hodakova. Larsson’s process begins with existing material. Supply determines design possibilities. Sourcing creates restrictions. Handwork and sorting limit scale. The brand has accepted a slower model partly because these irregular materials resist conventional industrial standardization.

Still, SS27 proves how easily environmental concern can become aesthetic capital. Hodakova seems aware of the danger, even when the collection occasionally enjoys its own visual drama a little too much.

Hodakova Is Growing Beyond the Upcycling Punchline

Five years after launching the label and two years after winning the 2024 LVMH Prize, Larsson has reached a different stage of development. The ability to turn discarded objects into surprising fashion has already been established. The technique is recognizable enough to function as a brand signature.

The harder challenge now is longevity. SS27 offers one of the clearest signs yet that Hodakova can move beyond isolated reconstruction tricks into a broader fashion language. The silhouettes are more grounded. The sensuality comes directly from material behavior. Tailoring provides discipline around the experimentation. Even the messier parts of the collection suggest a designer testing how far her vocabulary can expand before it breaks.

So yes, strip for the next beach trip. Wear the fishing net. Tie yourself into a rope dress. Arrive soaking wet. Just keep the eyes open. Hodakova already painted another pair in case anyone forgets.