“I think this is not the time for overdressing,” Melita Baumeister said on a call from Paris. However, accessibility is a different matter entirely. The arty designer revealed his second Nike sneaker (see the first here) with the release of his Fall 2026 lookbook. It’s a Pegasus model, overprinted in neon yellow with black, with an eye on and inside the shoe. The slogan “Run like nobody’s watching” appears on the sole. (Yes, he’s aware of the irony that a neon sneaker will attract attention.)
Although Baumeister said she was “thinking a lot about women running in the city and their lives and the shoes were a contributing factor,” it felt like a foot-first collection. Not only are the eyes on the shoe (the designer’s own) used as a print in the collection, but Baumeister believes the shoe keeps things informal. As such, they can help translate the brand’s dramatic, bulbous designs as casual rather than dressy.
Minus the cute add-ons and some looks, like a knitted cardigan jacket, seen with pants with an inverted pleat at the center of the leg, or a pleated skirt shown with a shirt and pants at the back, and a leather moto with a peplum hem, were the MB equivalent of the wardrobe. The clothes, as usual, were anything but ordinary. Baumeister created the immovable volume with some new techniques. One was to bend the pleated and ribbed material in opposite directions. Another was making cuts and stitches into sculptural frocks. Baumeister’s take on the season’s Spiral Cut appears to be the sportiest look in the collection (it would be nice to see more of these in the future) and is achieved by using zippers that allow the user to customize the fit and volume, creating a different call to action than the MB x Nike Pegasus sneaker broadcast.
