NATASHA ZINKO: AW2026 | Family Bizness

SøEdited Team
SøEditor-in-Chief: Chris Saint Sims 
​SøFashion Director: Savannah Barthorpe
​
​For Autumn/Winter 2026, Natasha Zinko turns inward, tracing the origins of her label through memories of childhood in post-Soviet Odessa. The collection, titled Family Bizness, looks back to the street markets where Zinko first encountered the mechanics of fashion commerce. Alongside her parents, she watched handmade denim pieces — what would later become the first Natasha Zinko jeans — sold among the bustle of everyday trade. To her, they were simply “Dad’s jeans”: improvised, homemade, and, for that very reason, the best on the market.

Those early lessons in resourcefulness continue to shape the label’s identity. Reuse and upcycling have long defined the brand’s approach, informed by a childhood in which scarcity encouraged constant reinvention. Borrowed garments, altered pieces and unexpected combinations became a form of creativity in themselves — layering this, cutting that, wearing something differently to give it new life.

That instinct runs throughout the collection. Zinko pushes her recurring motif of exaggerated layering further, constructing trompe-l’œil activewear jackets where fleece zip-ups are cinched by shrunken tank tops worn over the top, creating improvised corsetry. A collaboration with Havaianas introduces the Pancake Flops — two pairs of flip-flops seemingly “taped” together with leather strips, referencing the designer’s own makeshift solution to the absence of platform shoes.

Elsewhere, humour meets commentary. A cardboard-brown “parcel” clutch stamped with the fictional retail platform NZBUY proposes a playful question: could any object become a bag if imagination allows it?

The collection’s emotional centre arrives in the form of the fur coat. Zinko recalls the mink coat once passed down from her grandmother — warm, durable and quietly glamorous. Here, that memory evolves into an “eternal” faux-rabbit coat, complete with sculptural rabbit-head epaulettes that reframe the traditional garment through a contemporary, animal-conscious lens.

Footwear developed with New Rock continues the conversation, placing soft faux-fur creatures atop heavy boots — a surreal gesture that blurs the line between ornament, companion and provocation.

Natasha Zinko
Press: ReferenceStudios