After stepping back to redefine his vision, Johannes Warnke returns with a collection that balances a softened resilience and wearable art
- Who is it? Johannes Warnke is a CSM-trained womenswear designer born in Estenfeld, Germany
- Why do I want it? With layered drapery, colour, and imbued with a sense of movement, Warnke’s garments feel both poetic and resilient
- Where can I find it? Johannes Warnke is available exclusively to purchase through their website
Who is it? Johannes Warnke grew up in Estenfeld, a small village near Würzburg, Germany, where his childhood was framed by stark contrasts: his mother’s garden overflowing with flowers and fruit trees on one side, and the postwar concrete of brutalist housing blocks on the other. In the church nearby, cubist stained glass filtered colour into the grey interior, planting early seeds of fascination with a sense of duality – light and shadow, fragility and strength – that continue to shape his work today.
He was five when fashion captured his imagination. He began sketching teenagers – “for me they just had style,” he says now. Warnke also danced semi-professionally from the age of seven to 20, training in ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz and tap, and he painted obsessively. Those disciplines became inseparable from his approach to design: immediacy, rhythm, the brushstroke, the body in motion.
At 21, Warnke escaped to London and studied fashion design with marketing at Central Saint Martins. He interned for Balmain, Viktor & Rolf and Charles Jeffrey among others, but his real discovery was the draping technique that would become his calling card. Using wire and translucent fabrics, he sculpted shapes that floated and moved around the body. They were delicate but never flimsy, fragile yet oddly tough, expertly draped with soft colour like a waterfall you’d want to run your hands through. Even in those early designer teething stages, Warnke’s aesthetic vision was crystal clear.
He graduated in 2020 and earned a good reputation dressing Björk, Grimes and showing with Fashion East for a season. Then, in 2023, he hit pause. “It wasn’t really a break in the sense of going to Bali and chilling, it was more an active pause, almost a year,” he says. “After the Selfridges exhibition, I felt I needed a break after years without one. Instead of rushing into another collection, I wanted to pause and reflect on the essence of my work, and what I truly wanted to express with my brand moving forward.”
Warnke moved to Berlin to work with neurodivergent children, teaching workshops and rethinking the whole point of having a brand in the first place. “Being neurodivergent is part of why I design the way I do. My process is very intuitive, very sensory. I like immediacy – you dip fabric in dye and it changes instantly, you drape something and the shape is there,” he says.
Why do I want it? Lichtfall, Warnke’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, is the result of that break. “I think this is the longest I’ve ever worked on a collection,” he says. “[The break] gave me the time to develop something more wearable, a bit more refined, though still not ready-to-wear in the traditional sense.” Developed between London and Berlin during a period of personal and global uncertainty, it is a meditation on transformation and resilience. “It’s about self-discovery, about how to cope with uncertainty,” he explains.
Slashed layers conceal sequins that glimmer like subtle assertions of hope. “I always hated sequins, so I challenged myself to use them, layering them under fine gradient jerseys so they break through in a subtle way,” he says. “I think of it as peeling layers away, things breaking through.” The inspiration loops back to his childhood stained glass windows, particularly the cubist works of Georg Meistermann and to the abstraction and colour layering of Gerhard Richter and Franz Marc. Each garment treats the body like a segmented canvas, shaded with natural dyes to echo the planes of stained glass. Draped transparencies reveal and conceal, opening and closing like windows that let in light.
This is also the first time Warnke has moved beyond his couture-leaning flou into functional pieces: wind jackets, slashed tailoring, trousers, and sequin-layered tanks sit alongside his draped dresses. Accessories make their debut too: sculptural handbags shaped from deadstock leather and silver jewellery, made in collaboration with Carol Wiseman and Charlotte Doggett, with glass marbles floating inside hovering structures. “I love when jewellery feels playful, almost like a toy,” he says.
“I think fashion needs a lot of resilience,” Warnke says. “Especially as a young brand you constantly face so many hurdles.” For him, resilience has become a method of design; you can see it in those peeling away layers that let the light in, making space for both fragility and strength in a single cut of fabric. That healthy pause has sharpened his focus. Now he’s back, and from here on, Warnke is going to be one to watch.
Where can I find it? Johannes Warnke is available exclusively to purchase through their website. Shop here.
Photographer: Vitali Gelwich. Stylist: Laetitia Gimenez. Hair: Anna Cofone. Make-up: Leana Ardeleanu. Production: Services United, Julius Salvenmoser. Casting: Monika Domarke. Models: Lou Hughes, Eliza Petersen, Matilda Liedholm. Partner: Tencel TM. Jewellery: Carol Wiseman Jewellery and Charlotte Dogett. Camera Assistant: Mina Aichhorn. Lighting Assistant: Ian Do. Runners: Dani Mayrhofer, Leoni Sophie. Hair Assistant: Katja Maassen. Design Assistants: Ainhoa Cadarso, Isobel Archer, Maja Mialkowska. Production Assistant: Aaron Tefera
