Peter Som’s Amalfi-inspired Rent the Runway Summer ’26 collection arrives alongside Maison Perrier’s French Girl Summer edit, as the rental platform leans into branded designer capsules.
Peter Som built his name on dresses that did one job exceptionally well: they made the wearer want to smile. For the better part of two decades he sent sleek, color-drenched looks down New York Fashion Week runways, where they were photographed on Michelle Obama and Scarlett Johansson and folded into front-row closets. These days, the designer would rather lend you the dress than sell it.
Som’s Peter Som x Rent the Runway Summer ’26 collection is a capsule built around what he calls the “sun-drenched glamour of the Amalfi Coast.” The pieces, all postcard prints, breezy striped cottons, and slip dresses cut for long lunches, are made to be rented for a week in Positano and returned before the tan fades. “Vacation mode, activated,” Som wrote in the collection notes, describing looks “made for long lunches, late sunsets and Aperol Spritzes in hand. Whether you’re in Positano or the West Village, these are the looks that bring a little escape wherever you are.”
Rent the Runway and the branded summer capsule
Som’s drop landed within days of “French Girl Summer by Maison Perrier,” a separate Rent the Runway collaboration that pairs the sparkling water brand with more than 150 rentable pieces meant to evoke an afternoon on a Parisian terrasse.
“Maison Perrier brings the spirit of the French terrasse to sparkling water drinkers wherever they are,” Molly Lyons, senior marketing manager at Maison Perrier, said in a statement. “With ‘French Girl Summer by Maison Perrier,’ our collaboration with Rent the Runway pairs that sense of everyday French style with access to a curated summer wardrobe, creating an experience that feels both elevated and effortlessly approachable.”
For Som, the partnership is no side experiment. When he stepped back from his namesake runway label to write a cookbook, Family Style, he was quick to correct anyone who read the move as an exit. “I would definitely not call it a pivot,” he told the South China Morning Post in May 2025. “I haven’t left anything behind — I still do clothing with Rent the Runway; I have a few deals and projects coming up.”
The line from runway to rental rack runs through the same conviction that runs through his cooking, that clothes should feel good first and impress second. “I always said I design happy clothes,” Som told the publication. “I want clothes to make you smile, to be a mood lifter.”
Kaitlyn Bailey, senior vice president of buying at Rent the Runway, said the platform “aims to empower women to feel their best every day, making high fashion accessible and approachable.” The company has spent the past year leaning into resale and exclusive designer capsules to widen who walks through its closet.
Som, as ever, returns to feeling. The dresses he once cut for a red carpet now hang on a rental rack, available to a woman heading to a terrace dinner she will remember far longer than the outfit she borrowed for it, which was always the point of a Peter Som dress to begin with.
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