Saul Nash fuses workwear tailoring and athletic uniforms in Milan

Saul Nash made workwear feel less like armor and more like propulsion inside the Milanese Gymnastics Society Forza e Coraggio, where his Spring/Summer 2027 collection, STANCE, turned tailoring into something that flexes with the body, moves through a commute and keeps its shape under pressure.

The designer's thesis: movement first, masculinity second

Presented during Milan Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2027 on June 21, the show carried themes of masculinity, strength, desire and the body in motion. Nash did not dress the man as a statue; he built a frame around action. He started from archival imagery of sports figures and male pin-ups, then translated that material into garments that accentuate the torso, the shoulder line and the sense of velocity through fabric.

Forza e Coraggio is one of Milan’s oldest sporting societies, and the room added a discipline that matched the clothes: not military hardness, but athletic control.

Where the workwear codes actually landed

The collection’s workwear-adjacent pieces were most convincing when they behaved like adapted uniform rather than costume. Technical wools, denim, hooded windbreakers, gorpcore vests and trousers that sat between functional and tailored gave the lineup a practical backbone for commuting, cycling and long days on your feet. They suggested protection without bulk and polish without stiffness.

The fabrics pushed that idea further. Ponte di Milano brought a denser, more disciplined hand, while drill added the utilitarian grain that keeps a garment from drifting into luxury theater. Merino wool pinstripes gave the tailoring a formal edge, but the lines never read as office-only dressing.

The crossover pieces that feel closest to real life

Nash’s strongest runway-to-wardrobe candidates were the ones that resolved movement and structure in one gesture.

• Technical wool tailoring: This is the cleanest bridge between Nash’s athletic vocabulary and everyday dressing. In technical wool, a tailored jacket can keep its line while handling the stop-start rhythm of a city day.

• Hooded windbreakers: The hood changes the whole equation. It shifts the jacket from decorative outerwear to something you can actually wear when the weather turns or when a commute demands adaptability.

• Flexible denim: Denim is where the collection gets closest to true workwear crossover. If it has enough give to move with you, it stops being a hard uniform and becomes a daily tool.

• Gorpcore vests: Vests can easily tip into trend shorthand, but here the outdoor reference has a purpose. Layered over tailoring, they make the clothes feel modular, which is exactly what modern work wardrobes need.

• Trousers between functional and tailored: The best trousers in this zone do not announce themselves. They sit cleanly, allow movement and avoid the deadness that can make corporate tailoring feel antique.

The clearest hybrid was the merino wool pinstripe jacket with a built-in hood, which drew on equestrian uniforms and pushed the garment beyond the boardroom or the stable into transit and weather.

Why the athletic references matter more than the industrial ones

The collection pulled from wrestling singlets, fencing uniforms and equestrian uniforms, and those references kept the silhouettes alert. Wrestling suggests compression and close contact, fencing implies precision and guarded movement, and equestrian dressing carries posture and control. Together they created a vocabulary of clothing that frames the body rather than hides it.

He used sports-uniform logic, not archive labor-clothes references or the usual idea of authority dressing, to shape the collection’s tailoring.

The lululemon chapter gives the collection an afterlife

The show also previewed SLNSH Summer 2026, the fifth and final chapter of Nash’s collaboration with lululemon. That partnership began on March 11, 2025 as a multi-season project.