ESCAPIST GARDEN

Spring / Summer 2027 by MARIE-LOUISE MÜLLER. The runway debut at Berlin Fashion Week, 5 July 2026. A place kept at a steady twenty-two degrees. 19 looks, 2,500 hours of handwork, 70,000 glass pearls.

The Runway

The Cabbage Dress

The Cabbage Dress is a single cabbage, its leaves graded by size, draped straight onto the body and sewn by hand, cut short to leave the legs. Cabbage grew in the first garden I knew, so naturally it has a place in this one.

The Garden Hose

The Garden Hose is the hose itself, the one from my childhood garden, coiled and worked into a skirt and worn with a hand-crocheted flower bra in the same yellow. When I say the garden’s yellow is the sun and an old garden hose, this is the hose.

White Rose Jacket & Silk Pants

White Rose Jacket & Silk Pants is a jacket populated with hand-crocheted roses, each one made and set by hand, over sewn silk trousers. The garden’s base is beige and cream white; here even the flowers are white, a whole bed in bloom before colour arrives.

Pioni Jacket & Petal Shorts

Pioni Jacket & Petal Shorts is a cropped jacket knitted in pink cotton, its front gathered into petals around one full crocheted rose, with silk chiffon shorts ruffled the same way. Of all the pinks the garden gives, this look keeps the palest.

The Pleated Suit

The Pleated Suit is a vintage men’s blazer, found and reworked by hand with a bow, over pleated cotton trousers. Most of this look lived a whole life before the garden; it only needed to be let in.

The Tassel Set

The Tassel Set is two pieces of blue hand-crochet, a neck-holder top and a tube skirt, hung with hundreds of tassels, every one thrifted and finished by hand. The blue is the water and the sky; the tassels are every other colour the garden gives, gathered from leftover yarn and given a second life.

The Weeping Willow

The Weeping Willow is the heaviest garment in the collection, more than 800 pearled fringes falling from the neck, 70,000 glass pearls in all. The willow was the tree I loved as a child. I met two old ones again at a summer shoot last year, and knew I owed them something.

The Straw Hat Dress

The Straw Hat Dress is a white linen dress set with thrifted straw hats, graded by size down the body. Each hat shaded someone else’s summers first; the garden takes them in.

The Corsage

The Corsage is white silk shorts and a cotton tank, sewn plain, with a single flower made from the collection’s own silk remnants at the shoulder. Some looks bring the whole flower bed; this one picks one bloom.

The Raffia Set

The Raffia Set is a cotton-linen top and a tiered skirt hung with rows of natural palm raffia that part around the legs like field grass. I grew up beside a straw field, where I spent my summers with my sister and our friends. When the fringe moves, I am walking it again.

The Doily Willow

The Doily Willow is a dress of vintage cotton-lace doilies joined into an open bodice, falling into the willow’s long fringe in plain white cotton. Every doily is pre-owned, crochet from another lifetime given a second one here.

The Pink Crochet Gown

The Pink Crochet Gown is crocheted by hand in cotton, a single medallion worked into the bust, body-skimming to the calf. It is the garden’s pink at its quietest, one colour, worked stitch by stitch.

The Yellow Flower Dress

The Yellow Flower Dress is a floor-length gown in the yellow of the sun, with short puffed sleeves tied at the cuff and the skirt gathered low and full. It carries only the flowers I know from my own garden, chosen from far more than fit. The whole field is in bloom, and I am standing in it.

The Bug Dungaree

The Bug Dungaree is a short linen-cotton dungaree, cuffed at the knee, its bib and legs scattered with beaded beetles, no two alike. Each one clasps the cloth as if it had only just landed.

Ants in the Pants & Silk Polo

Ants in the Pants & Silk Polo is a silk polo over white cotton trousers, ants hand-embroidered climbing up from the hem. Insects cross these garments the way they cross any real garden; these found a way up and kept going.

The Corset & Petal Pants

The Corset & Petal Pants are a strapless linen corset and wide silk chiffon trousers layered into petals. The corset carries my grandmother’s flowers, stitched long before this garden and given another summer in it.

The Silk Beetle Dress

The Silk Beetle Dress is blue silk, cut close over the bust and gathered from a high waist, so the skirt takes the whole walk with it. Two beetles face each other across the bodice, beaded by hand in pink, green and turquoise, oversized, their antlers clasped like hands. Insects are easy to overlook, and yet they are the making of a garden.

The Pleated Bomber Set

Pleated Bomber Set is a cotton bomber jacket and pleated shorts in beige, their surface worked over by hand until the cloth stands up in small tufts, the way grass does when nobody cuts it.

The Flower Bed

The Crochet Flower Dress is a flower bed you can wear: each bloom crocheted by hand and planted one at a time into a pale ground, drawn in at the waist before it opens into full volume.

In the press

Coverage of the runway debut. Every entry links to the published piece.

MARIE-LOUISE MÜLLER, the atelier in Berlin