Less skin, more tease: Fashion’s changing relationship with sex appeal

No one in fashion did sexy with quite the same gusto and lasciviousness as Tom Ford in his heyday: carving logos in pubic hair for his Gucci advertisements; introducing the high-fashion G-string

So it’s not really a surprise that Haider Ackermann, Ford’s successor at his namesake brand, has embraced the ethos – though Ackermann’s take on titillation leans more toward seduction and away from smut

In a world where naked dressing is now taken for granted on red carpets and in real life, however – during a season where lingerie and bralets have become so commonplace, they have the frisson of a T-shirt – figuring out what qualifies as “sexy” is increasingly hard

It’s not simply bare skin anymore, or a glimpse of something once shocking

It’s not getting your cleavage out, or flashing a crotch shot in a teeny-tiny metallic cocktail dress, like those offered by Antonin Tron of Balmain in a show that traded heavily in 1980s look-at-me glitz

It’s not the micro minis and underboob-flashing bandeaus of Stella McCartney’s dancing-on-the-tables environmental activists

It’s not even the gilt nipple covers under sheer black knits featured in Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli show, an otherwise soignée paean to the glamour of Champagne hour

Even The Row, a brand practically monastic in its commitment to the Zen of the monochrome trouser suit, featured a crocheted bra beneath a sheer T-shirt

The show was essentially an argument for the solution of great pants and an artisanal top – tiny lace tablecloth tops, heavily fringed piano shawl halter tops, little beaded tops made from antique scraps

So what’s a house that trades on libido to do?

Since arriving at Ford, Ackermann has found his answer in focusing less on exposure and more on the allure of exposure to come; by teasing the possibility of what’s next, rather than baring it all

By channeling what the designer called in this collection’s show text, “the feeling that something has happened, or is about to”, through clothes so perfectly tailored and sensuously worn they seem like a sartorial caress

And by putting them on grown-ups, including a number of models of a certain age, in the rare recognition that the older generation are still sexual beings (an idea almost never addressed elsewhere in fashion, which is still obsessed with chasing the youth vote)

That was certainly the case this season, although – perhaps in response to all the nakedness around him – Ackermann also took the undercurrent of eroticism and made it even more overt. With mixed results

It started with the soundtrack: a symphony of unabashed heavy breathing, with the occasional moan. It started with a set made of mirrors, refracting the come-on of a glance

And it started with two perfect navy pinstripe suits – one for her, one for him (part of Ackermann’s signature is a sort of wardrobe mirror-imaging, so a version of what is worn by one gender is also often worn by the other), and a white T-shirt. Made of fishnet

Button-up shirts were unbuttoned to the navel, generally worn with nothing underneath; tank tops cut in a deep U that dipped well below the breast bone

There was a lot of black leather (jackets, bullet bras, cropped tops) and transparency

Sheer skirts seemed to have been dropped to the level of equally low-riding jeans, revealing the G-strings or boxers beneath. Then the legs came out. And the butt cheeks

One very buff guy wore a caramel sweater paired with a bubble-gum pink banana hammock. Another, a tuxedo jacket and teeny-tiny cutoffs that could barely contain his thighs

Halter-neck crystal bodysuits appeared as monokinis

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Rather than a finale of evening dresses, there was a finale of black bathing suits so tiny they were more like abstract squiggles over the body than actual garments

“There is something deeply sexual in a body that reveals itself without offering itself,” Ackerman wrote in the show text

But amid all said revelation, something more enticing was lost

Part of the power of Ackermann’s clothes has been in their subtlety; the way they turn a garment into a come-hither glance

Like, in this collection, an olive green trench coat that zipped both up and down (and practically purred “Unzip me”) or a ruby halter-neck dress, cut to reveal a triangle of flesh at the front and a bit of leg at the side

They were a reminder that when everything is available, what’s really sexy is capturing the imagination, and letting it run wild. – ©2026 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times