One of the key aspects of writing a good lifestyle feature, I was told by a commissioning editor, is doing macroframing – taking a seemingly personal story and setting it to a larger context; i.e., how does my personal experience connect to a reader whose life story might be far removed from mine? What are the overlaps in emotional journeys that unify our experiences?

When looking at the second collection from the Indian-origin, Dubai-based brand Absent Findings titled Early to the Party, what stood out to me was how this collection did macroframing in its own regard - adding on layers of narrative and elements that might be relatable to a wider set of people, as opposed to their debut collection which was literally and figuratively developed on the concept of My Personal References by founder and designer Shivin Singh.

As the brand notes, “At its core, Early to the Party is a study of the interpersonal dynamics between loved ones - those subtle, unspoken exchanges where tension and tenderness blur. Inspired by Andy Shauf’s album The Party, the collection explores the awkward pauses, overheard conversations, underhanded words, and shifting power balances of human interaction.”

Building On The Highly Personal Debut

For Spring/Summer 2026, Early to the Party continues the dialogue set in motion by Absent Findings’ debut SS25 collection, My Personal References. Where the first outing leaned heavily into Singh’s personal stories, inspirations, and references, the new collection delves into psychological and human dimensions. It reflects a transition from the intimate to the collective, extending a personal vocabulary into something that resonates on broader, shared terms.

This is visible not only in the narrative framework but also in the evolution of silhouettes, fabrication, and construction. One of Shivin Singh’s clearest and consistent fascinations has been the sari, which he regards as the “purest and most beautiful form of dress.” In the first collection, he crafted silk sari blouses from an heirloom fabric, as well as utilizing surplus textiles, and even created designs that replicated old sari fabrics. In Early to the Party, this garment becomes the medium for experimentation. The sari’s endless draping possibilities are pushed into new terrain, reinterpreted through tailoring, technical patternmaking, and craftsmanship.

The resulting designs are multifaceted and elegant, often finishing in subtle flares at the hem. The brand describes this as its strongest visual identity yet, balancing architectural sharpness with fluid, draped softness. “Traditional suiting techniques are reinterpreted and hybridized with fluid yet strongly structured drapes and overlapping layers, producing garments that balance architectural precision with a mature, measured sense of movement,” they noted in their SS26 Lookbook.

This balance - of structure and softness, of personal memory and collective reference - forms the quiet tension that is definitive of Absent Finding’s Spring Summer 2026 collection.

In this collection, architecture plays a vital role in the narrative. The modernist design of Le Corbusier’s Palace of Assembly in Chandigarh - the site where Shivin’s parents met as students -  remains a central reference. Its geometry and construction logic inform the sharpness of the silhouettes and structural details that balance the collection’s otherwise fluid forms. According to the brand, another layer is added through a surrealist lens, most prominently through Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical painting Il Ritornante. Its muted yet charged palette informs the colors of the collection, while pleating, shadow-like cuts, and architectural folds mirror the work’s haunting dimensionality. As the lookbook explains, “Through these references, the surrealist nature of Absent Findings unfolds more fully, creating a collection where memory, architecture, and the metaphysical merge seamlessly.”

Archetypes That Are Early To The Party

Absent Findings frames Early to the Party not just as an extension of what has come before, but as a deeper excavation. As the brand describes it, “Early to the Party is not just an extension of what has come before; it is an excavation into the deeper layers of Absent Findings — its obsessions, its silhouette, its surrealist language, and its evolving study of dress.”

The surrealist narrative premise of Early to the Party is extended in the lookbook styling, where each outfit is imagined as a character at a gathering. Archetypes such as the Observers, the Confidants, the Dreamers, the Jesters, the Secret Keepers, the Romantics, the Ghosts, the Intruders, the Mirrors, the Collectors, the Pretenders, the Wanderers, the Flames, the Shadows, the Archivists, and the Strangers populate this world. Each archetype reflects a different shade of interpersonal interaction - silence, performance, longing, or concealment - and together they pen a nuanced social ethnography that the collection is meant to capture.

Through this collection, the brand establishes its identity as one that is equal parts personal memory, South Asian craft lineage, architectural influence, and surrealist imagery. With each season, Shiving is further sharpening his vocabulary — giving Absent Findings a language of designing fashion that is recognisable yet still evolving.

The lookbook shot by photographer and art director Laura Puscasu with styling by Noah Bashir Mohammed Abdalla, strengthened the founding designer’s dedication to having creative collaboration at the heart of his label. The set design, created collaboratively with Subrata Singh, Ravinder Singh, and Shivin himself, builds an atmosphere of both intimacy and distance simply through palette boards and gauzy fabric -but it effectively echoes the blurred lines of connection and isolation in social settings.

Evidently, for Absent Findings, the act of designing clothes is inseparable from storytelling — from layering memory, reference, and interaction into the garments themselves. Early to the Party pushes this approach further, staging not just clothing but the complexities of human dynamics. If the debut was an introduction, SS26 is setting the scene: building its own evolving language, rooted in personal references, cultural touch points that include but aren’t limited to architecture, memory, and surrealism, but grounded in the everyday rituals of how we gather, interact, and dress as a people.

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