How do I like your saliva? It’s all over my tongue
From kisses to couture, fashion reclaims intimacy as cultural value: touch and human connection drive campaigns and collections
Across runways, campaigns and exhibitions, the image of perfection is giving way to something wetter, warmer and harder to fake: two mouths meeting, hands on fabric, bodies close enough to share breath. The kiss has become couture’s most honest gesture, an exchange that cannot be retouched. What follows traces how the industry is moving from observing to absorbing, and why saliva, the first enzyme of digestion and the oldest medium of contact, might be the best metaphor for where culture is heading.
Before and Next: Prada FW26 Menswear
«What can we build from what we have learned?» The Fall/Winter 2026 menswear collection suggested an evolution, where new ideas were created while bearing the echoes of a collective anterior. In uncomfortable and unpredictable times, the brand offered clarity. This was achieved through a new silhouette—elongated, precise, and deeply conscious of the human form within, its specific postures, and its attitudes. These silhouettes, moving away from a forced perfection, became the epitome of the profound “lived-in” quality we had sought for so long.
Built on traces of tradition, the pieces were composed of familiar elements transformed through a questioning of convention. The collection found its sensory grounding in detail that underscored the significance of duration, carrying the literal impressions of life. By reducing the architecture of the garments, Prada afforded an awareness of the human within; the clothes appeared simple but were complex in construction, provoking curiosity and revealing what was usually concealed. Collaged prints excavated considerations of other times, juxtaposing antiquity, renaissance, and modernity to represent the full scope of our human experience.
The show space at the Fondazione Prada’s Deposito mirrored this focus, acting as a liminal space marked by an imagined past. Here, vestiges of interior lives framed an arena for public display, connection, and unity. The collection functioned as an archaeology of thoughts, beauty, and lives, reinforcing the idea that to remember was a sign of respect. It asserted that universal human values—culture, meaning, intelligence, and care.
Ultimately, this narrative aligned with the raw, biological honesty of a shared kiss or the internal heat of a lifelong friendship. This focus served as a direct response to a deep-seated desire for real human connection, offering assurance through the sincerity of the “saliva”—the unpolished, intimate reality of our shared existence. Like saliva, this raw intimacy protected the core of the brand, making it regenerative and inevitable across decades. The human within remained constant across time.
Promoting Unlimited Love: Moncler x Rick Owens SS26
The Moncler x Rick Owens Promoting Unlimited Love campaign (SS26) shot by Juergen Teller featured a visceral series of kisses, a natural ritual of contact that prioritized raw flesh over the perfect. Teller’s participation was definitive; his signature overexposed, un-retouched aesthetic stripped away the artifice to reveal a biological honesty. Through this lens, the kiss was an irreducible exchange.
Owens grounded this intimacy in his “Brucolic” style, merging Brutalist architecture with Bucolic nature. Inspired by monolithic concrete and the wild greenery that broke through it, the collection functioned as a shared membrane, a biological interface that was both intimate and regenerative. This six-image series, in which each couple swapped so all four creatives shared a kiss, served to convey love, passion, and human connection while showcasing the first summertime wardrobe in the history of the collaboration.
By centering on the static smooch, the campaign framed the clothing as a secondary skin for radical affection. The SS26 collection drew direct influence from Berlin’s brutalist architecture, translating heavy structural forms into a lightweight summer dialogue. It suggested that even within the cold rigidity of stone and concrete, the impulse for physical connection remained the dominant force. Ultimately, the narrative asserted that love was the only infinite resource, using the “brucolic” aesthetic to bridge the gap between hard structures and soft, human vulnerability. It reminded us that the return to the core, the real, and the intimacy within were what grounded our shared humanity through an unlimited love.
Warmer Together: Moncler AW25
Moncler’s Warmer Together campaign (AW25) reframed “warmth” as the bedrock of human connection: friendship, trust, and affection. Featuring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, lifelong friends captured in intimate conversation by Platon, the narrative argued that true warmth came from within.
Here, Moncler’s iconic outerwear, like the Maya 70, guarded the emotional bond shared between two legends. It functioned as a protective shell for a dialogue that had lasted decades and framed the DNA of the brand as something far more profound than insulation.
Platon’s lens stripped away the gloss of high fashion, using high-contrast black and white portraiture to focus on the raw textures of nylon and character. This visual clarity treated the Maya 70 as human infrastructure; a tool designed for endurance rather than a mere trophy of the moment. By pairing the technical shell of the jacket with the core heat of a sixty-year brotherhood, the campaign moved beyond celebrity endorsement into a study of cultural permanence.
Ultimately, the campaign positioned Moncler as a witness to history. It suggested that while the environment might be cold, the jacket served as the boundary where the elements ended and a private, unshakable loyalty began. This was a pivot toward slow luxury, where the product value was measured not by its thermal rating, but by its ability to shield the vulnerabilities and shared histories that defined us. It reminded us that the core values of togetherness and shared warmth were what remained constant across decades.
Dior, Grammar of Forms Exhibition w/ Kids (Couture, 2026)
Held at Musée Rodin, Grammar of Forms brought selected looks from the Dior Spring Summer 2026 Haute Couture collection by Jonathan Anderson into dialogue with works by Magdalene Odundo and designs by Christian Dior. Extending beyond display through school tours and public talks, the exhibition invited broader audiences to engage with couture as both art and craft, aiming to inspire new generations and help preserve the art of couture.
A living laboratory where the couture blueprint is intentionally stripped of its pedestal. It facilitates a direct, tactile contact where the hand of a child meets the heritage of the house, fostering an active “digestion”.
By allowing the next generation to touch and deconstruct, Dior ensures its brand remains metabolically active. This inheritance brings the narrative back to the visceral connection we seek, transforming a distant legacy into a real, physical touchpoint.
This collaborative exchange is a regenerative force. A direct response to a deep-seated desire for real, shared human connection. By opening the “closed” world of couture to the unrefined curiosity of a child, the exhibition addresses the fundamental question: what is it that we want to leave behind?
Raw, intimate and irreducible
True duration is found in the persistence of values: constant, fluid process of breaking down tradition to nourish the future. We are rejecting the superficial in favor of a fluid, biological truth. The endurance of houses like Moncler, Rick Owens, Prada, and Dior is found in this metabolic capacity—the ability to keep the soul alive through active, intimate use. Connection that is raw, intimate and irreducible. This is how we like our saliva.
Melis Özek
