Camiel Fortgens

Camiel Fortgens is Dutch, born in Amsterdam in 1992, and he did not train as a clothing designer. He studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven, an industrial design school, and started his label in 2014 on graduating. That detour is the whole story. He came to the garment as an object to be taken apart rather than as a discipline with rules to satisfy.

The method is consistent. Take an archetype everyone already owns, the work jacket, the mac, the tee, the tracksuit, the jean, and rebuild it slightly wrong. Seams do not run straight. Edges are left raw. Proportions are pushed until the shape reads as a drawing of the garment rather than the garment. The clothes are unfinished on purpose, and they are not fragile. The imperfection is a decision, not a shortcut.

He arrived on the official Paris menswear calendar only recently, and he stages it the way he cuts. Spring 2026 spilled into the street outside the venue alongside an installation of models walking treadmills against a desert backdrop. Autumn 2026 was held in an apartment, models padding around in socks like houseguests.

Camiel Fortgens at W Department

W Department carries Camiel Fortgens across men’s and women’s, and the range is unusually wide for a house this size: the Big Shirt in blockprinted cotton, the Boxy Shirt in lilac, the Inside-Out Basic Shirt in coral, the long-sleeve Big Tee, Normal Jeans, Suit Pants in cotton and linen, 150% Pants with a raw elasticized waist, an oversized worker jacket in recycled polyamide, a cotton-lined Cow Vest, a short mac in double-sided laminated cotton, a wool twill cocktail dress, a track jacket and trouser in sport blue, and a zip shopper. Production sits in small workshops in Portugal, Ukraine, and Bulgaria.

The names are honest to the point of comedy. Normal Jeans are normal jeans. That is not a joke about design. It is a position on it.

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Continue Exploring

• All Camiel Fortgens. The men’s and women’s pieces, in one place.
• COMME des GARÇONS. The Tokyo house that made taking a garment apart a working method.
• Trousers. Every trouser and pant we carry.
• Shop W Department. Everything currently online, across the whole roster.
• Visit W Department. 54½ Lincoln Avenue on The Plaza, open daily, 11 to 5.

Shop Camiel Fortgens