In fashion, 2025 was undoubtedly the year of the debut: over the course of the year, more than 15 designers showed their first collections for the industry’s major houses – including Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel – marking the start of a definitive new era in style.
For his own debut show at Balenciaga in October in Paris, former Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli delivered the year’s most intriguing invitation: a portable tape player and a pair of wired headphones, which, when played, reverberated with the sound of a beating heart.
Wallpaper* Design Awards: Balenciaga’s cassette-player invite is our ‘Best Heartwarmer’
A look from Pierpaolo Piccioli’s S/S 2026 show for Balenciaga, which marked his debut collection for the house
The effect was two-fold. On the one hand, it captured the anticipation and pressure such high-profile debuts involve, on the other, it was a symbol of Piccioli’s always heartfelt approach to design – one defined by a generosity of fabric, a bold use of colour and a veneration of handcraft.
‘The heartbeat is the rhythm we share, the pulse that reminds us we are human,’ he wrote in a letter released just before the S/S 2026 show. ‘For every heartbeat there is a name, a moment, a gesture. This collection comes from that place of love and connection. It is as much mine as it is of those who lived it with me – in every way. Perhaps with a different pulse, but always with the same soul.’
READ: Pierpaolo Piccioli makes Balenciaga debut ‘from a place of love and connection’
Discover all the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2026 winners in the February issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 8 January 2025. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
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