Clothes as Exciting as Rhubarb (EXCLUSUVE)
Look out upon Ranra's Spring/Summer 2026 collection, rich with deep-dyed jewel tones and richly washed staples, and taste the rhubarb. Er, rhubarb? Yes, rhubarb.
"My grandmother used to stew [rhubarb] slowly on the stove, and the smell would fill the whole house," says Ranra cofounder Arnar Már Jónsson. "It’s such a small thing, but it’s stuck with me the way she never rushed it, the patience in the process."
Patience. A phrase tossed out by everyone in and around fashion but hardly every epitomized by anyone. How can you be patient when you have to deliver dozens of clothes in biannual collections?
Ranra finds a way.
"We were drawn to rhubarb because you don’t really grow it, it just returns every year with no effort," says cofounder Luke Stevens. "That resilience felt like the spirit of what we’re trying to do with Ranra. Clothing that belongs to the landscape, that waits with you."
Much like rhubarb, which is a plant edible and toxic all at once, Ranra's clothing is a delicious contradiction.
London-by-way-of-Reykjavík Ranra specializes in organic technical garments, recontextualizing the notion that hardwearing outdoorsy clothing is also harsh or distant. Ranra lends a warm human touch to cold functionality, reconsidering utilitarian classics — the knee-length car coat, the zip-hooded field jacket, the military liner — in satisfyingly odd fabrics like silk ripstop, crisp cotton, crumpled modal, and washed nylon.
"The best things in life aren’t fast. They’re slow, seasonal, irregular," Stevens continues. "Rhubarb is a reminder of that you don’t know exactly when it’s coming, you just know it will. That’s the feeling we wanted this show to give: being outside in Iceland in late spring, when the light stretches on forever and the first real flavors start to come back into your life."
Ranra's SS26 silhouettes are almost thrillingly easy, their generous forms encouraging a dynamic blend of layered shapes. These full-figured shirts and slick bomber-style midlayers pile atop trousers whose pajama affect is only amplified by deep color and desaturated patterns.
Like rhubarb, these clothes are entirely unbothered by the rest of the world. They exist out of time, out of season, out of any notion of industry. They're stubborn in that way. And also quite beautiful.
"In Iceland, you don’t force the seasons. You wait. You observe. Rhubarb taught me that," Jónsson says. "It just shows up one day, a shock of red against dark soil, and you know spring has arrived. That moment still moves me every year. This collection came out of that kind of stillness, that kind of watching. That’s where the magic is, I think. In the everyday, when you slow down enough to see it."
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