Extraordinary runway sets from the A/W 2024 shows

A charred desert of Murano-glass cacti, a damask-curtained boudoir, a simulacrum of an art gallery – this season’s runway sets were an exercise in the theatre of fashion. Here, we select 12 of the very best runway sets and show spaces of A/W 2024 fashion month, which concluded in Paris last week.

Best runway sets of A/W 2024

Saint Laurent

For Anthony Vaccarello’s sensually charged A/W 2024 show, a boudoir-like mood was conjured by the show set, which comprised two vast circular rooms lined with emerald damask curtains. The curtains, said Vaccarello, were a nod to those found in the house’s historic haute couture salon on Paris’ Avenue Marceau. 

Read our review of the show here.

Jil Sander

Designers Lucie and Luke Meier said that this season they were thinking about sound and the way it influences our ’emotions, desires and needs’. As such, the warehouse space on the outskirts of Milan had been transformed into a green-toned ’smooth and immersive capsule’, populated by a series of blown-up cobalt-blue horns.

Read our review of the show here.

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière returned to the Louvre’s Cour Carrée for his tenth-anniversary show for Louis Vuitton, the location of his debut as creative director for the house back in 2014. This time, a dramatic installation by artist Philippe Parreno – made in collaboration with film production designer James Chinlund and sound designer Nicolas Becker – centred around an enormous orb, which crackled and flashed as the show began.

Read our review of the show here.

Prada

A continuation of the menswear show in January, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest OMA-designed show set featured a lush forest floor – complete with springs of real water, ferns, grass, pebbles and soil – encased beneath a gridded floor of futuristic clear perspex, to extraordinary effect. 

Read our review of the show here.

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy collaborated with Cassina to organise a special edition of Le Corbusier’s LC14 Cabanon stool – here in burnt wood – for the 350 guests attending his A/W 2024 show. In the formerly industrial Milanese space, they were combined with a burnt wood floor and enormous Murano-glass cacti to create a ’barren’ desert-like landscape inspired by Calabria in the south of Italy. Together, it provided an apt backdrop for a show celebrating regeneration and resilience. ’In a world on fire, there is something very human in the simple act of dressing,’ he said. 

Read our review of the show here. 

Loewe

The ’small but intense’ paintings of Albert York provided the backdrop for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Loewe collection, which subverted aristocratic dress codes in the designer’s typically idiosyncratic style. As such, it was the largest exhibition of the American painter’s work outside of the United States, where his devoted following included the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

Read our review of the show here.

Dior

Continuing a tradition of collaborating with international women artists on her show sets, at the centre of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s A/W 2024 runway was a series of sculptures by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni. Evoking ceremonial figures of women, created from cages of cane, the house said they capture a feeling of ’protection and transformation’.

Read our review of the show here.

Hermès

Hermès’ A/W 2024 show came complete with a downpour: as the show began, rain fell from the ceiling of the Garde Républicaine space, providing a dramatic backdrop to Nadège Vanhee’s latest collection, which was titled ’The Rider’.  ‘Astride a horse or a motorcycle… boldly she rides on,’ said Hermès. 

Read our review of the show here.

Acne Studios

A series of blown-up armchairs and footstools crafted from recycled black rubber tiles provided the centrepiece to a full-throttle collection from Acne Studios. They were created by Villu Jaanisoo, an Estonian artist who lent the existing pieces for the show. ’I was basically deep into a “racing” mode [last year], into everything related to racing, and I stumbled across these amazing pieces,’ Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johannson told Wallpaper*. ‘They symbolise the mood I was trying to create, and they do so in a modern way.’

Read more about the Acne Studios show set here and read our review of the show here.

Balenciaga

At Balenciaga, floor-to-ceiling screens surrounded the runway, an attempt to capture the dizzying feeling of scrolling on your phone. Created by Demna alongside Berlin-based studio Sub, the flashing AI-created images – which spanned photorealistic natural landscapes and glimmering cityscapes before descending into glitchy internet-style graphics – reflected the eclectic nature of the collection, which featured DIY ’one-minute’ dresses made from a collage of other garments. 

Read our review of the show here.

Chanel

The centrepiece of Chanel’s A/W 2024 show was an enormous curved screen which bisected the interior of the Grand Palais Éphémère and played a short film starring Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt as a pair of lovers. Around it circled a wooden runway designed to evoke the boardwalk at the French seaside town Deauville, where Gabrielle ’Coco’ Chanel opened her first millinery store. 

Read our review of the show here.

Fendi

Vast drapes of silk, in various sorbetto-hued tones, divided Fendi’s Via Solari showspace into a series of more intimate ’rooms’ to showcase Kim Jones latest womenswear collection for the house. They recalled those found in Roman statuary, one of the inspirations for this season’s collection in a nod to Fendi’s home city of Rome.

Read our review of the show here.