It will likely come as no surprise that the opening look of Walter Van Beirendonck’s FW26 collection featured a model riding a moped, completely enveloped in yellow nylon, with two AK-47s on his back. Every season, the Walter show arrives as a blissful reprieve from all the self-seriousness. At its centre stands Walter himself, presiding as the ringmaster of a gloriously manic circus.

This season, the designer was feeling somewhat reflective. “I have always felt like an outsider in this industry,” he wrote in his characteristically honest show notes. “I’m not complaining. It’s a place from which you can look at things differently.” He went on to talk about one of the main inspirations behind his collection, the French outsider artist André Robillard. Spending most of his life in psychiatric hospitals, Robillard began making rifles out of found materials in the 1960s. He is still alive today, aged 94, and his huge oeuvre of assemblage guns stands as one of the most significant bodies of work of any living outsider artist. For Van Beirendonck, Robillard’s life and work “moves [him] deeply. [It has] an urgency and a complete disregard for what is expected or accepted.”

Hence, all the guns. But in a typically Walter move, the other major motif in the collection was flowers. Yes, a very literal metaphor, but one that fits. A standout silhouette was the all-body covering. Much like the opening moped, there was a focus on being totally wrapped up throughout the collection. This stemmed from Walter’s recent thoughts about the protective sheets placed over sculptures, how they are used to both preserve and reveal.

In terms of colourways, practically every hue and shade on the colour wheel was here. Traffic cone oranges, the hottest of pinks, and flouro-yellows. There was also some of Walter’s classic deconstruction in pieces such as blazers that were worn like tabards and frilly shirts acting like aprons. In a nice throwback, Puk Puk, the mascot from the 1990s diffusion line W&LT made a cameo appearance, which Walter described as “A signal to the fans. We’re still here. Keep going.”