Victor Koehler can’t stop thinking about a picture. It’s black and white, a bit grainy. In it, Eden Ahbez, the elusive mid-century musician and proto-hippie, stands beside Nat King Cole. There’s a jacket draped over his shoulders, almost ceremonial. To Koehler and Victoria Baia, the design duo behind Paris-based label La Cage, that photo was everything.

“We were inspired by the rare pictures of him, especially one with Nat King Cole,” Koehler and Baia said. “In this picture, Eden Ahbez looks like a hippie who was given a jacket to join a ceremony.”

That image sparked the vision for The Lost Songs, La Cage’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection. It’s a fictionalized archive, a wandering wardrobe constructed from fact, rumor and imagination. Part biography, part costume design. Each look tells a chapter in Ahbez’s unconventional life, from his strict boyhood to his final sun-faded years.

“Each garment is part of an era of his life,” the designers said. “His childhood is strict, wearing a boy scout uniform, ready to camp in the Californian nature, singing songs around a fire. He becomes a young musician, camping under the Hollywood sign, dressed in clothes from India or Turkey, wider pants, light colors. Moving forward in time, he’s getting more elegant, wool pants, long coats, brooches, boas. A wardrobe to enter the more prestigious era of Los Angeles. At the end of his life, his clothes are worn out, ragged and sun-faded after years of wandering.”

Ahbez, best known for writing “Nature Boy,” was a figure who defied his era—living in a tent, preaching peace and dressing like a monk long before the counterculture caught up. His scarcity in the public eye left Koehler and Baia room to invent. They called the process docufiction.

“As Eden Ahbez was a very mysterious character, we worked with very little information and rumors about his life,” they said. “We filled in the blanks, imagining a boy scout childhood for him, costumes for his first concerts, etc.”

But this was more than nostalgia. The collection builds on La Cage’s ongoing exploration of musicianship and identity. Last season’s Last Tour followed an imagined band. This season isolates one mythic figure. Next season will continue the journey with a new wanderer, this time from France.

“We wanted the silhouettes to evoke a long journey,” Koehler and Baia said. “Coming back from traveling with trinkets on your coats, badges gathered along the way. The looks are built out of disparate elements, clothes and accessories from various periods of his life.”

That layered storytelling extends to materials. La Cage operates with an outsider ethos, rejecting industrial uniformity. Antique ribbons, vintage sheets and sun-faded fabrics lend the clothes their lived-in aura. “In a series with vintage elements, garments are each slightly different from each other,” they said. “We operate at the opposite of fast fashion.”

Performance also played a key role. Ahbez was a musician, after all—and the stage, even an imagined one, was never far from the designers’ minds.

“A lot of pieces are made to shine under the spotlights on stage,” Koehler and Baia said. “Mother of pearls embroideries and white silk decor. We were inspired by 60’s costumes in TV shows like ‘The Porter Wagoner Show.’”

Los Angeles itself is another character in The Lost Songs. The collection draws from the city’s terrain, especially the light. “The Californian sun was a very important element to evoke in the collection,” the duo said. “We thought of a few silhouettes like a walk under the sun at different stages of Eden’s life with sun-faded garments, short shorts, light tunics.”

Though Ahbez stood apart from the industry, La Cage honors that distance by designing for outsiders themselves. “We want people not to know if they are wearing an archive of a musician who has existed or a new piece,” they said. “This wardrobe is made for collectors, vintage lovers.”

Back in the present, Koehler is still thinking about that photo. The jacket, the posture, the presence. Maybe it’s the mystery of not knowing the full story that makes Ahbez—and this collection—feel timeless.

“We filled in the blanks,” Koehler said. And the result is a fictional life made real, one piece of clothing at a time.