“I wanted it to feel strong,” fashion designer Tinka Weener said to me. We had met to talk about her second collection, for her brand, Songs Of Siren, and her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, The Siren Call. “I didn’t want it to be like a costume, like it’s Halloween or something, I wanted it to be wearable throughout the year, by different types of women that just want to kind of put an armor on.”
When I spoke with Weener earlier this year, I learned how much thought about the power of clothing went into her designs, how that can affect the person wearing the garment, and why ‘happy dresses’ mean so much to Tinka’s clientele. Anyone who reads my work regularly will understand how much that idea resonated with me personally.
This second collection, which debuted at New York Fashion Week, builds on the most successful aspects of the designer’s first collection (which, btw, she was invited to present at London Fashion Week), and then begins to explore some rather exquisite new (and larger) concepts.
But let’s start with the brand’s Spring/Summer 2026 NYFW show and then work backwards. Let me show you some astonishingly elegant apparel, then prove to you how much effort goes into the moment you first see one of Werner’s designs. Because that first peek is likely to leave you feeling slightly breathless, imagining an excuse to let Tinka Weener turn you into a mythological entity for a night. There is an undeniable feminine power in the designs of this Dutch designer.
Back in September, for NYFW, at the W Hotel Times Square, The Siren Call was presented as an immersive art exhibition titled Living Room, staged under the direction of SoS’s creative director, Indiana Roma.
“We had an office ‘Siren Team’ in which our set designer built an office,” Weener explained, “with very unique furniture designed by Gaetano Pesce that literally just came out of a museum exposition. I was very grateful that Indiana was able to make that work. During the presentation we had the models wandering around the office; working, gossiping, even printing visuals from our previous campaigns. At London Fashion Week I did a runway, this time I really loved the idea of being able to connect more with the visitors by doing a presentation, so I could walk around, talk to press more, talk to the visitors more. I think that builds more of a community, instead of just walking a catwalk for five minutes, waving to the photographers, and that’s it.”
It sounded like a Happening, a form of partially improvised artistic performance which generally involves audience participation. I liked this a lot, it framed Tinka’s designs in the manner they deserve to be seen and interpreted; this work is objectively art, the dresses and separates and the handbags, each an origami sculpture as mystical as the ancient pyramids which inspired them.
“I told the models,” the designer continued, “you can engage with anyone, just talk, have fun, have a good time. Just pretend you’re in an actual office and you’re gossiping with your girlfriends, just enjoy.”
Community, within culture and the more personal circles we all create, the places where people come together, are geography that Tinka Werner cares about very much. There are women who feel the need to compete with others, who have a competitive mindset even when they’re with the ladies they are closest to.
Weener designer works 180° in a better direction; she wants everyone to know they are welcome at her party and the only games she’s ever interested in are never zero sum. Tinka Weener believes everyone can win. As someone who very much believes that the tide raises all ships, and thinking about this as I formed my next question, I asked Weener about her brand’s sense of community, the emotional resonance that I fell in love with the moment I first saw one of her dresses, the ineffable resplendence clients come to SoS for, how did these less tangible considerations impact her second collection?
“I mean, I get inspired by women all the time,” Tinka told me with a smile that began with her eyes. “I think we’re so strong. We truly change the world, and I’m very, very grateful for the women in my life. And I would love to also give a very well deserved shout out to my creative director, Indiana Roma Vos. She’s been next to me since the very beginning when all I had was a couple of dresses and a story in my mind. Indiana is extremely talented at visualizing and bringing everything together for the photo shoots and the shows in such a professional way. I really trust in her vision, the passions she has for the brand. I always give her full creative freedom when we’re working together on projects.”
“Originally, we were friends,” Weener said of her relationship with Vos. “Now that we work together so closely, we travel together, she came to London Fashion Week with me, came to New York Fashion Week with me. It just gives me such a feeling of gratitude and support, both professionally and privately. I just can’t imagine doing this without her, she’s absolutely a woman in my life that really changed the direction of the brand and who has lifted me up so much.”
And outside of her team, were there other women Tinka felt were part of the successes she’s celebrating as 2025 inches closer to its end.
“You know,” the designer said, “I think one thing that’s felt very surreal to me and very cool is that women like Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson and Natasha Bedingfield wear my designs, because I grew up in the 2000s. I always wanted to have my own clothing line, even back then. And to have these women, who I grew up hearing so much about, for them to support my brand by wearing it and then to DM me about it, it l feels so full circle. That’s something I’m definitely proud of.”
The essence of Songs Of Siren, the figurative heart behind the designs, it’s as cohesive here as it was in SoS’s debut collection, though that vision is expanding. Nothing about Tinka’s work ever feels disjointed or out of place, after my own heart, Tinka is a woman who believes all the finest details are equally important, inside and out, apparel or.
“For this collection,” Weener explained, “I really wanted to stay true to the brand’s DNA of high quality beading, slow fashion and mythical designs. But I also wanted to include completely new pieces, such as the luxurious silk trench coats and Zodiac and nature inspired corsets. I wanted to expand so that more people are able to find something that makes them feel beautiful in my clothes. And that is not just limited to short dresses.”
So what did she add and where did she add it?
“I reimagined some of the best selling pieces of the core collections,” Werner explained, “such as the orange Eternal Sunshine, I think that one got ordered the most of all my pieces and I made it in gold this time. I got some feedback after the first collection, from women who really love my designs, that they didn’t always want to show their legs or body as much, for a few different reasons. I wanted to make sure that, although a brand of course cannot cater to everyone’s needs, that I did expand for different preferences and to be inclusive.”
One such elegant compromise is the new trench coat dress, which manages to connect directly to Weener’s overall body of work while simultaneously providing a silhouette that allows more people to find reason to connect with and wear her designs.
“The trench coat,” Weener explained, “which has such a long history in the fashion industry, this one you can wear as a dress, but also over someone’s own outfits. Like the business suits, it has some history incorporated into it, it’s my reimagination of what power dressing can mean for women today. Traditionally suits were of course kind of designed to mask softness in the 1980s to fit women into a masculine idea of authority. For this collection, I wanted to flip that. It’s the icy blue and the rich steel, the delicate embroidery, the intentionally gentle, but the structure is very sharp. It’s about power expressed to grace and the remainder that femininity itself is strength, not something to hate.”
Knowing it was unfair to ask, Lovely Reader, I had to know if Tinka had a favorite piece from this new work.
“I mean, I love all the babies,” she told me with a warm laugh. “But I would say that my favorite piece from the Siren Call is the satin red corsets and skirt ensemble, inspired by Medusa. Because the gold embroidery and the serpent motif really embody her misunderstood, powerful, magnetism.”
Usually when Medusa comes up in conversation, different words are used to describe her. Thinking about such ancient archetypes, paging through the collection’s look book, the facial expressions on her models, the body language captured in their poses, there are sharper edges and darker themes at play than SoS’s debut collection. I felt like Weener was leaning into the scary parts of our world, which seem to be overtly everywhere right now.
Living in the future, the way we do, with all the tech and magic and terror about what comes next, I felt that in Tinka’s designs. I could feel her consciously choosing hope and aspiration for the future. Clothing communicates, it can be an elegant system to transmit information, and considering her second collection as a whole, it seemed to me that Tinka was using her craft to fight back against evil and terror with the best weapons we’ve ever had against such things: with beauty and with art.
“I love that you see it like that,” the designer said. Because I definitely came from a darker place with this collection. Not a hopeless one. I mean, there’s so much chaos in the world and I wanted the beauty to feel like resistance, as if the sparkle isn’t an escape anymore. It’s defiance, and my mythical inspirations kind of shifted from fantasy to truth, from dreaming to transforming. I really wanted to capture that moment where danger and beauty coexist, just like what’s going on in the world nowadays. And for me, this look really tells the story of reclaiming the myths, turning the gaze back, owning the narrative and also finding strength in seduction. A matured version of the Siren from the first collection, which embodies the contrast of what it feels like to be a woman today and a reflection of what’s everything that’s going on right now.”
Talking with Tinka about The Siren Call, an exceptional sophomore collection, thinking about all the achievements she’s had in 2025, in only two seasons. Because, in very little time she has done truly incredible feats. I mean… London Fashion Week, check. New York Fashion Week, check. So, I asked Tinka if she had her sights set on Paris next.
“I would love that,” the designer said to me with a grin. And when Tinka Weener smiles, please understand, she lights up a room, or a Zoom, whatever the case may be. “I would love that and I will make it happen somehow. But I’m already so grateful for all of this, every day I am grateful.”
This writer fully expects to see Tinka Weener’s work at Paris Fashion Week sometime soon. I don’t think there are any other couturiers (or couturières) working as hard as she does to encourage women to embrace their own fierce strength and I cannot wait to see her art and craft in the City of Light.
Intuitively, I know she’ll find inventive ways to refract, to push the boundaries of femininity with exactly enough darkness to say to the world; This Siren Has Teeth.