A mood of intuitive style ran through the S/S 2027 season, seeing designers embrace eclectic combinations to reflect the ‘multiple perspectives and perpetual motion of all our lives’, as British designer Sarah Burton described, referring to her latest collection for Givenchy. It’s a summary that could have been applied to numerous shows this season.

Nowhere was this more true than in accessories: across New York, London, Milan and Paris, designers used bags, shoes, hats, belts, and even boas, to express this liberated approach to dress. Here, with input from the Wallpaper* style editors, we’ve collated the season’s statement-making accessories – from Jil Sander’s inside-out handbags to rain hats at Chemena Kamali’s Chloé.

Tory Burch’s velvet boas

In a collection fully loaded with maximalist accessories (the American designer was in a ‘more is more’ mood), it was Tory Burch’s reimagined boa that stole the show. A far cry from the camp staple of synthetic feathers that shed with abandon, Tory Burch’s boas were constructed from more luxurious plumage: carefully shredded velvet that read as the petals of a flower. India Jarvis

Mulberry’s ‘axe’ bag

As new creative director Christopher Kane took a figurative axe to the Mulberry tree – making space for new growth, as opposed to chopping it down to a stump – the image of a sturdy blade became something of a motif within his debut collection for the brand. Across the ready-to-wear, boxy scalloping resembled notches cut into wood, and slender bags took on the curvature of a metallic axe bit replete with signature padlock. The metaphors write themselves. India Jarvis

McQueen’s ‘armadillo’ bag

It must have been a particularly meaningful collection for Seán McGirr this season, who brought the McQueen brand back home to London after it had spent 25 years showing in Paris. Compounding this, the creative director borrowed from one of the late Lee McQueen’s most memorable creations, the ‘Armadillo’ shoes, which were presented as part of his last fully realised collection, Plato’s Atlantis, which was shown just four months before his death in February 2010. McGirr’s treatment of the armadillo motif for S/S 2027 took the form of a diminutive bag – constructed from rigid, high-shine leather, mimicking a plated armadillo rolling itself up into a defensive ball. India Jarvis

LII’s detachable hoods

Iterations of the humble anorak are mainstay shapes in the design language of the 2026 LVMH Prize Karl Lagerfeld award winner, LII by Zane Li, who this season distilled the garment down to its most essential component: the hood. Detachable hoods in bright waterproof technical fabric were worn fastened to camisoles or dresses, or tied like kerchiefs around the neck, their ties left to hang long. India Jarvis

Celine’s sized-up belts

Just as we saw throughout this summer’s menswear shows, statement belts are making their return to fashion. At Acne Studios, buckles were patterned like antique frames, Givenchy’s were worn double wrapped, and Polo Ralph Lauren presented an eclectic range of styles that riffed on the brand’s American roots. But the biggest statement of all came from Celine – literally – where belts with thick bands had exaggerated buckles, C-curve buckles in brass, cinching and adding drama to full monochrome looks. India Jarvis

Prada’s perforated pumps

Elements of the extraordinary, smile-inducing embellishment that encrusted skirts from the 66-look Prada collection were also applied to footwear – sparkling floral-shaped details studded onto heels like jewels. Kitten heels, sling-back pumps, and stiletto courts were made from graphically perforated leather and came in black, white, or grey, with the crystals perched on the uppers.

Bottega Veneta’s leather flowers

Much like her Bottega Veneta predecessor, Matthieu Blazy, the British designer Louise Trotter is using her runway show sets to forge links with the worlds of art and design: this season, the space included a sound installation by Florian Hecker transmitted by 20 speakers prior to the show’s start (the German artist said that he wanted the aural effect to be ‘weightless and enveloping’) and crushed cardboard-box stools by Illya Goldman Gubin. On top of each stool was a leather flower handcrafted by the house’s leather artisans – a keepsake that turned into Milan Fashion Week’s most covetable accessories, with guests from Jacob Elordi to Julianne Moore grasping theirs as they exited the venue. As for whether they appear in store remains to be seen – though the knitted floral bag charms, also crafted in leather, captured a similar feeling of romance. Jack Moss

Gucci’s horsebit belt

The horsebit is one of Gucci’s perennial motifs: introduced during the early 1950s, it was cemented as a hallmark of bourgeois style with the launch of Aldo Gucci’s horsebit loafer in 1953. Part of a collection that Georgian creative director Demna described as both ‘quintessentially Gucci’ and ‘broken bourgeoisie’, the horsebit featured throughout – whether blown up as the buckle on the back of a fur coat, or shrunken onto the collar of a shirt. It also featured on these triple-layered belts: part-equestrian, part-kink, entirely Demna.

Hèrmes’ layered cuffs

Leather is the foundational material of Hermès – the house began as a harness and bridle maker in 1837 – with its superlative accessories made in workshops across France. For S/S 2027, Nadège Vanhée teamed looks with stacks of leather bracelets – minimal in detailing, the thick bands put leather’s natural finish centre stage, designed to patina and mould to the body through time. Jack Moss

Loewe’s go-faster sunglasses

Sportswear-inspired sunglasses remained ubiquitous on the S/S 2027 runways – Givenchy, Rick Owens, Balenciaga, Balmain, Courrèges and Miu Miu all featured, sporty, streamlined styles. Though it was Loewe that provided the platonic ideal of the go-faster sunglasses: crafted from thick acetate branded with the Loewe logo, they wrap around the face to recall those worn by road cyclists and rock climbers, arriving in various neon hues and completed with high-shine mirrored lenses. Jack Moss

Jil Sander’s inside-out handbags

At Bally, Simone Bellotti proved a master of the covetable accessory – his Plume loafers, a lace up-cum-moccasin, remain ubiquitous within style circles today. Now, he brings the same approach to his new role at Jil Sander, from the ‘Hood’ shoe (a minimalist riff on the Wallabee), to brightly hued hosiery and ladylike pumps. For S/S 2027, all eyes were on the bags: a top-handle tote designed to splay open to reveal a colourful contrast lining. It came as part of a collection which rallied against perfection: ‘That idea of perfection at Jil, it’s not enough today, because you can find that many other places,’ he said. ‘Minimalism has become so mainstream.’ Jack Moss

Miu Miu’s New Balance RC 150

Now entering its fifth iteration, Miu Miu’s ongoing New Balance collaboration has spawned some of the most viral sneakers of recent years – from the frayed-edge 574s of S/S 2022 (their first co-branded sneakers), to S/S 2024’s suede 530 SL with their recognisable ‘double’ laces. For S/S 2027, Miuccia Prada puts her riff on the nostalgic RC150 racing sneaker, reimagined with zig-zag embroidery and colourful laces which wrap around the toe. It came as part of a collection which mashed up sportswear with flourishes of glamour. ‘The concept of mixing elements of sports with sophistication is something that has always influenced my work,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘But I have never been so precise, or taken it so far.’ Jack Moss

Chloé’s rain hats

‘May the love that poured into this collection endure forever,’ said the German designer Chemena Kamali of her latest Chloé outing, which is widely believed to be her last (she is tipped to take over at Saint Lauren from Anthony Vaccarello, who confirmed his departure from Saint Laurent last week). Befitting the metaphor, Kamali presented looks fit for a downpour: from colourful raincoats – some overlaid with clear plastic – to dramatic rain hats, sou-wester style and falling away into a draping drape. Jack Moss

Dior’s scarf bags

The silk carré appeared in various iterations throughout the season’s collections, including at Hermès, where its classic foulard was pleated and strapped to the collection’s streamlined tops, while at Burberry, it served as the show’s invitation. At Dior, Jonathan Anderson created a netted Dior bag with two metal hooks on each side: the idea is that you can attach a Dior carré (whether with tassels, petals or whimsical prints) in an act of constant transformation – when you tire of one scarf, you can simply replace it with another for a whole new bag (watch them in action here). Jack Moss

Saint Laurent’s golden heels

Rendered in glimmering shades of gold, Anthony Vaccarello’s S/S 2027 show for Saint Laurent was a fitting swansong for the designer, who evoked the metallic hue to represent fashion’s transformative power (he would leave the house the week after presenting the runway show, marking the end of a ten-year tenure at the Parisian house). The gilded mood went all the way down to the accessories, from opulent blown-up earrings – evocative of the house’s 1980s heyday – to intricate, jewellery-like footwear which appeared hewn from gold. Jack Moss

It is one year on since what was dubbed ‘fashion’s great reset’, a phenomenon which saw 15 new creative directors take their place at some of the industry’s best-known houses – among them Jonathan Anderson and Dior, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, and Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta.

And, while the majority of these names are consolidating their visions and honing house codes, fashion seems to stand on a precipice once again: next season will see a new round of debuts, including Pieter Mulier at Versace and Dario Vitale at Emporio Armani (Vitale’s own spirited debut last September at Versace saw him ousted after just one season, though his first and only collection has since gained a cult following; his successor, Mulier, comes to the house after an acclaimed stint at Alaïa). And, after news on Friday (9 October) that Anthony Vaccarello is leaving Saint Laurent after a decade, questions have arisen about what’s next for both the designer and house (Chloé’s Chemena Kamali is tipped to take over – though that will leave a role to be filled at Chloé, too).

This ever-shifting fashion landscape – one accompanied by fervent online commentary and constant speculation – seems an apt reflection of the overwhelm of contemporary life. Designers have faced this information overload by largely shifting away from the strict thematics or specific inspiration points which once defined runway collections, favouring of a more intuitive approach to dressing (itself a reflection of the way people are putting together an outfit on the street). This was a clear through-line of the S/S 2027 collections – which concluded with Paris Fashion Week earlier this week after shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris – whereby designers like Sarah Burton at Givenchy, Miuccia Prada at Miu Miu, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten and Michael Rider at Celine all proposed a way of dressing that mixed up eclectic elements for a resolutely individual of style.

That said, as ever, more definitive trends emerged throughout the month of shows – from the renaissance of the skirt (Prada showed one with every single look) to a pursuit of lightness that defined ethereal collections from Louis Vuitton, Hemès and Dior. Here, according to Wallpaper* editors, these are the five trends which defined the S/S 2027 season.

Skirt redux

Every look of Prada’s S/S 2027 runway show featured a skirt, a purposeful conceit from co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, who used the garment this season as a ‘canvas for ideas’ (the skirt has long been a part of the Prada ouevre; ‘a skirt is like a T-shirt,’ Mrs Prada said on the the Charlie Rose show in 2006). Here, they came in a multitude of iterations, from those which fastened with thick strips of coloured Velcro to colourful pleated nylon and latex, jewellery-like webs of flowers, or those wrapped in layers of tulle (feminine bows peaked out from beneath, as if preserved in a museum archive). In a preview, Mrs Prada called the skirt the ‘most flexible’ garment (she rarely wears anything else), with Simons adding that it can traverse different moods. ‘You want to be sexy, you want to be luxurious, you want to go to work, you want to be at ease with your kids,’ he said. ‘There are all kinds of skirts [for that].’

Editors seemed in little need of persuasion: such is Prada’s influence, the garment had a notable renaissance among the street-style set this season (the most popular? Dario Vitale’s colourful face-print skirt, created during his brief tenure at Versace). On the runway, there were multiple versions of the perennial womenswear style – proof of duo’s maxim that there is a skirt for everyone. At Prada’s sister brand, Miu Miu, they came in houndstooth with cross-lace fastening (left purposely undone, they revealed colourful swimwear beneath); at Loewe, skirts were dramatically draped to evoke traditional Andalusian dress; while at Dior, they came in delicate layers of organza – part of designer Jonathan Anderson’s ongoing pursuit of lightness. Meanwhile at Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, a multitude of skirts reflected his own ambition to cater to the multiplicities of women’s lives – largely narrow and knee-length they came in smocked tweed, sheer panels of organza, or were edged with the house’s superlative embroidery and beading.

A pursuit of lightness

The soaring temperatures across Europe this summer, which tipped over 40 degrees – including during the menswear and haute couture weeks in Florence, Milan and Paris in June – cemented the inevitable truth that over the coming decades, summers will only get hotter. Designers responded this season with collections which were defined by a pursuit of lightness; this was particularly true in Paris, whereby designers including Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, Nadège Vanhée at Hermès and Jonathan Anderson at Dior all reimagined wardrobe archetypes in ultra-lightweight fabrications. At the latter, Anderson created featherweight organza tailoring printed to appear like classic tailoring wools, while ethereal plissé fabrics and delicate petal adornment were designed to reflected the misted show set. ‘Something that, as it walks, leaves a kind of residue behind,’ he said, noting that such was the lightness of the looks, many could fit inside a shoebox.

Vanhée and Ghesquière, meanwhile, both said that their own breathable collections – the former featuring perforated suede for air flow; the latter diaphanous tailoring constructed from the lightest of knits – were a response to the rising heat (Vanhée had found it unavoidable during trips across Europe and America earlier this year). ‘[The warm summer] definitely was an influence,’ said Ghesquière. ‘We needed to think differently. You want one layer. It’s almost like a skin in these clothes – there’s a suit, but it’s a jersey with no lining, an extremely fluid.’

New florals

‘Florals for spring? Groundbreaking.’ So goes the withering refrain from Runway editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly in the first Devil Wears Prada movie. And, while the fictional editrix might be somewhat correct about the cliché in the Spring/Summer collections, this season saw designers embrace the floral motif in energetic and intriguing ways. At Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons used floral motifs throughout the collection: from those embroidered onto the collection’s Velcro fastenings to chintzy prints evoking 1960s home furnishings (crystal flowers also appeared across the skirts which evoked jewellery, as well as embellishment on perforated shoes).

A similar mood was captured at Burberry, whereby bold floral embroidery and prints had been designed by Celia Birtwell, a textile designer who is synonymous with the Swinging Sixties (she would dress several of its protagonists, and serve as a muse to friend David Hockney). Creative director Daniel Lee said he was inspired by her ‘her energy, and her zest for life’, and her designs for Burberry, which also featured playful smiley faces and a loosened-up version of the house’s check, encapsulated this approach. Flowers also appeared at MSGM (electric bright and adorning matching shirts and ties), Maison Margiela (clashing nostalgic floral prints recalling wallpaper or bed linen), Dries Van Noten (sequinned flowers peeking out from beneath the hem of a skirt), Dior (dresses adorned in organza petals), and Chanel (corsages evoking those favoured by Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel).

Meanwhile at Bottega Veneta, flowers might not have appeared on the runway but they did on guests’ seats: on each of the crushed cardboard stools, created by artist Illya Goldman Gubin, was a single flower, crafted from leather by the house’s atelier.

Inside out

Competing with the skirt for garment of the season was the bra top, which appeared in endless iterations throughout fashion month – including at Prada, where the collection’s skirts were largely worn with bralettes, from classic satin recalling vintage underwear to barely-there strips of fabric which had a futuristic bent. The designers called these looks ‘illogical combinations’, and indeed across the season the bra appeared in unexpected ways: at Miu Miu, bejewelled and worn over sporty rash vests; at Fendi, lace-trimmed and accessorised with a fur stole; while at Dior, a simple black bra top peeked out from beneath an otherwise delicate skirt suit crafted from trailing pale grey strands of organza. Bandeaus were also ubiquitous, from the playful (a knitted blue bandeau top came adorned with cartoonish poppies at Drew Henry’s Courrèges debut), to the streamlined, like those which appeared as part of Nadège Vanhée’s latest Hermès collection.

They were part of a wider boudoir mood also ran through the season, not least through the ubiquity of satin, which featured heavily in Michael Rider’s latest collection for Celine, treated to appear gently pressed and creased (the effect was like waking up having worn silk or satin pyjamas). Other dresses in the collection recalled nighties or negligees in their construction, albeit sized up and reimagined in heavier fabrications, or unbuttoned at the shoulder as if in a process of removal. Meanwhile at LVMH Prize Winner 2026 Julie Kegels’ latest show, sliced-up deconstructed bras sat atop T-shirts, and at Ester Manas – in the brand’s return to the runway after two years – a collaboration with 161-year-old Belgian lingerie brand Primadonna saw its one-size-fits-all approach applied to lacy, sheer negligees, slips and leggings (beating out the trend, the co-collection is available now).

Intuitive style

Some of the best collections this season were those where the designer embraced an intuitive approach to dressing – among them Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and Michael Rider at Celine. ‘I wanted a sense of balance and clarity,’ said the former a short note issued to guests. ‘A wardrobe to bring precision and simplicity to dressing as we speed through the multiple perspectives and perpetual motion of all our lives.’ As such, the British designer’s latest collection spanned the pragmatic (well-cut jeans; roomy poplin shirts; riffs on the trench coat; woolen overcoats) and more bold expressions of feminine style, from cinched-waist peplum tailoring and pom-pom-adorned pumps, to red-carpet-ready Grecian gowns with in-built metal ‘wings’ or those adorned with Japanese motifs in swathes of bugle beads. There were even belt buckles which doubled as powder compacts. ‘[I want to] make sure that she has the wardrobe, that she feels that she could use,’ Burton said.

This idea of designing for a woman on the move, and creating a wardrobe which transforms through the day, ran throughout the S/S 2027 collections (it continues from A/W 2026, where collections at Prada and Chanel literally depicted the metamorphosis of a wardrobe through a given day). Cue a more liberated approach to dressing: garments were often mixed up in clashing combinations – at Acne Studios, taffeta and brocade skirts and dresses were worn with leather trousers; at Miu Miu, bejewelled cocktail dresses with swimwear; or at Proenza Schouler, a simple ribbed vest and jeans worn with a ballooning sheer floral jacket on top ‘I think that there’s a lot of liberty in how women dress here,’ said Proenza designer Rachel Scott, referring to New York, where the brand is based. ‘We’re not following rules, like: eveningwear must be worn with this kind of shoe, or bag. You see people in New York in the middle of the day with a gown on, and it’s totally normal and invisible, and I find that really inspiring.’

Sometimes, it was just about adding small flourishes of glamour to everyday attire: such was the modus operandi of at Dries Van Noten, who said there was joy to be had when affixing a brooch to a simple rugby shirt, or slipping a bejewelled dress over the T-shirt you might have worn in bed. ‘Dressing up for yourself, playing in front of the mirror, trying things on, getting into a role,’ he described. ‘Discovering a different facet. A red lip, a dazzling brooch, a cinched belt – so little is needed to spark that feeling.’

It’s hard to identify a unifying theme across the architecture of S/S 2027, which oscillated between minimalist, gallery-style white cubes, artificial gardens, and high octane glamour. For some, art was the order of the day – like for Louise Trotter, who commissioned three separate artists to participate in the build of Bottega Veneta’s space, or at Calvin Klein, where curated pieces from the artist Walter De Maria were spread across multiple rooms.

Demna returned with another uncanny facsimile for Gucci, this time a boutique under construction, and in New York and Paris, Tory Burch and Jonathan Anderson respectively let ornamental gardens form the backdrop of their ready-to-wear offerings.

With global fashion month now at an end, discover some of the season-defining sets, as chosen by Wallpaper*.

The best runway sets of S/S 2027

Tory Burch

Rocks play an important role in a Japanese garden, their symbolism varied according to quantity (two, three, five, or seven), as well as shape, size, and facade. At the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, artist Isamu Noguchi had seven stones brought from the Uji River in Japan as the centrepiece for his sunken garden, built between 1961–64. Designed to counterbalance a neighbouring skyscraper, the harmonious composition of the rocks evoke a meditative, tranquil quality which contrasts the commerce and chaos represented by the surrounding Wall Street. For S/S 2027 Tory Burch played on this philosophy of balance, staging a show of riotous colour and a ‘more is more’ attitude, with the garden at the centre of a rotunda-runway which she had lined with a rich burnt orange carpet, its fountains visible through panels of red and turquoise, and the buzz of Wall Street overhead. India Jarvis

Calvin Klein

Multi-hyphenate Antwaun Sargent curated an installation of sculptural works by the Minimalist artist Walter De Maria in Chelsea’s Terminal Warehouse, to serve as backdrop for Calvin Klein’s own take on minimalism this season. ‘[They all] speak to De Maria’s fascination with geometry, repetition, and mathematical order, while their polished steel surfaces interact with the architecture, light, and movement of the fashion show,’ Sargent told Wallpaper*. ‘There is a natural connection between the principles of American Minimalism and the design language of Calvin Klein, particularly in their emphasis on clarity, restraint, and essential form.’ ‘American Minimalism was a discipline of removal: take away everything that does not carry the work, until only what is necessary remains,’ added creative director Veronica Leoni, who applied the same principles to her stripped-back S/S 2027 collection. India Jarvis

Read Wallpaper’s conversation with Sargent here.

Burberry

Where the backdrop for Daniel Lee’s A/W 2026 outing for Burberry was a drizzle London at night – trompe l'oeil puddles on tarmac and darkly-lit scaffolding – this season was a brighter and more optimistic mise-en-scène. Staged at Chelsea College of Art, the space for London Fashion Week’s closing show was sparsely dressed with pale-wooden seating and doors, shot through with criss-crossing black lines in a subtle ode to the classic Burberry check. Otherwise the room was an uplifting white, a blank canvas for a collection which featured colourful prints and embroidery created in collaboration with legendary British textile designer Celia Birtwell. India Jarvis

Prada

This season’s Prada show space mirrored the staging of Prada’s S/S 2027 menswear outing in June. The transparent Perspex runway was lit from beneath with strip-lighting – reinforcing the maxim of precision which has been at the core of the brand’s recent collections – after all, a lightbox is an essential instrument for meticulous accuracy in many fields. Wallpaper’s fashion and beauty features director Jack Moss described it as a bit like ‘being in an enormous photocopier.’ India Jarvis

Gucci

In anticipation of Demna’s newly conceived store concept for Gucci, opening in Paris this October, the Georgian designer transformed the space at Allianz Mi-Co into a store-in-progress to stage his sophomore ready-to-wear collection for the brand. Replete with stone friezes, plush, dove-grey carpet and velvet accents, and planes of solid marble, the set was a preview of what a Gucci store under Demna could include – yet for all the elegant trappings the artifice of the production was also a part of the storytelling (Demna would never go in for straightforward elegance, naturally). With rigging still visible overhead and faux street-views through ersatz windows, the set design became an uncanny simulacrum, a fitting backdrop for Demna’s ongoing musings on the fantasy of desire. India Jarvis

Saint Laurent

Four chandeliers formed the striking backdrop for Saint Laurent’s spectacular S/S 2027 show – the show many are speculating could be Anthony Vaccarello’s swansong (what a way to go, if so). Three of these were actual chandeliers, albeit blown up to epic proportions, candle-like torches emitting a dazzling gold glow, supported by ornate, three-tiered fixtures which echoed the curved ironwork of the Eiffel Tower – the fourth chandelier, itself illuminated in gold and assuming its position as magnificent Saint Laurent mascot. India Jarvis

Dior

Dedicated to the memory of Mathilde Favier, the long-term public relations director for the house of Dior who died in an accident this August, Jonathan Anderson pledged to replant the trees installed for his S/S 2027 show, in the Jardin de Tuileries, so that they will ‘continue to flourish in the years to come,’ a touching tribute to a much-loved figure.

The trees in question were camphors, arranged in clusters either side of the runway which bisected Le Bassin Octogonal – the second time the brand has centred its show around this feature of the Jardin de Tuileries during Anderson’s tenure. Dry ice hung low across the pond, like the fog of a forest at sunrise, before its burnt off by the morning sun. The show also saw the return of a pagoda-like structure around the perimeter of the basin – an enormous construction that days after the show was still in the process of being disassembled. India Jarvis

Maison Margiela

It’s a touching thing, to see designers in the top jobs supporting each other’s work, friendships and respect that transcend company delineations. Donatella Versace and Pierpaolo Piccioli were amongst those in attendance at the Saint Laurent show, while Haider Ackermann attended Nicolas Ghesquière’s Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur award ceremony (the designers are at Tom Ford and Louis Vuitton, respectively). Maison Margiela took this a step further for S/S 2027, staging the collection in a set designed in homage to fellow Belgian designer Raf Simons’ debut collection at Dior back in 2012, immortalised in the 2014 documentary Dior and I. Simons’ celebrated scenography saw floor-to-ceiling flowers in full blossom, each room a dazzling cornucopia of colour. For Margiela, floral designer Mark Colle imagined how this bouquet might have appeared once, as the saying goes, the bloom is off the rose – the vibrancy beginning to fade, the stems beginning to sag, the petals beginning to drop. Timeworn, no longer in its prime, but still beautiful in its own distinct way. India Jarvis

Givenchy

A specially constructed box in the grounds of Paris’s Hôtel National Des Invalides was transformed into a labyrinth of flattened shapes for Sarah Burton’s latest Givenchy show, hung from the ceiling rafters and emerging from the floor, the latter with graphic cutaways through which the runway snaked. The wooden shapes and stools were designed by James Chinlund, whose production design work in Hollywood includes sets for The Batman (2022), Requiem for a Dream (2000), and Autofocus (2002), and who previously worked with Givenchy’s Sarah Burton on the mirror and spotlight filled cubist space for A/W 2026, back in March of this year. Continuing in this vein, this season’s space could have been a tribute to Peggy Guggenheim’s pioneering The Art of This Century gallery, which opened in Manhattan in 1942 and, within the innovative modular layout by Frederick Kiesler, featured biomorphic shapes and works suspended at unconventional heights. Or, indeed, the graphic constellations of an Alexander Calder mobile. India Jarvis

Bottega Veneta

The audience seating at Bottega Veneta, cardboard boxed reinforced with resin, were bespoke for each guest, their shape formed by embraces by artist Illya Goldman Gubin. Atop each seat was a single flower, made from leather, handmade in the house’s atelier (some guests speculated that these were intended to be thrown like confetti during the finale, but of course most people took theirs home, and who can blame them). Elsewhere, creative director Louise Trotter commissioned Mark Leckey to curate the soundtrack, while German visual and sound artist Florian Hecker created a site-specific pre-show installation titled Scintillations 20 (2026) which unfolded prior to the show. India Jarvis

Read Wallpaper’s exclusive interview with Florian Hecker here.

Loewe

A ‘three-dimensional space’ somewhere between ‘an arena, a theatre and a gallery,’ was the brief for Casper Mueller Kneer, who constructed the Loewe S/S 2027 show space within a specially constructed white box in the grounds of former royal palace Château de Vincennes. ‘We wanted to build a show space that explored the unique energy of a stadium, arena, or theatre,’ said Loewe creative directors. Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. ‘The anticipation, the focus, the shared emotion – that electric charge in the air that everyone can feel. There’s something so real and immediate in those spaces, a sense of presence and proximity that felt very right for this collection.’ India Jarvis

Read more about the project here.

Acne Studios

Allusions toward the opulence of antiquity were seen across the details of the second womenswear outing from Acne Studios during its 30th anniversary year: belt and bag buckles which playfully mimicked gilded frames; timeworn brocades; Louis XIV shoes; portrait miniatures on broaches; and renaissance florals fragmented across denim.

Jonny Johansson reinforced this symbolism with a set hung with works by Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed, whose carpet pieces belong to a canon of traditional weaving techniques across Central Asia. The textiles Ahmed creates examine some of the tensions between memory and transformation – in the Acne Studios space they almost appeared to unravel; classic patterns melting into pools of pure colour, contrasting with the beige drapes which hung throughout the gothic nave of ​​the Collège des Bernardins. India Jarvis

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada seemed to be in a sporting mood this season – alongside a Miu Miu collection that included rash vests, sports bras, and New Balance collaboration sneakers, the show itself unfolded across a runway viewed from bleachers and painted like a sportsfield, but with a twist. It was purple, Mrs Prada’s current favourite colour, as she recounted backstage (she also wore purple jewelled earrings for her bow). There are not many athletic venues with purple pitches or courts – I’ve checked. Apparently American college football team the Curry Colonels have one in their hometown of Milton, Massachusetts; and the David Lloyd chain of clubs uses purple for their acrylic tennis courts. Miu Miu is in rarefied company. India Jarvis

Chanel

The monumental central nave of Paris’ Grand Palais – which features the largest glass-and-iron roof in Europe – has long provided a dramatic setting for Chanel’s runway shows, which have seen it take the form of a gleaming supermarket, an airport terminal, and even a launch pad for a Chanel-branded rocket (these show sets were defining facets of Karl Lagerfeld’s tenure). Matthieu Blazy, who presented his first collection for the house a year ago last September, has taken to the task of reimagining the space with aplomb: his own show sets have featured colourful blooming mushrooms, a glowing solar system, and enormous creeping vines – a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk. This season, he filled the space with a glowing flock of 95 birds in flight, suspended over a vast poured-resin runway. It was a metaphor, he said, for the transformation of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel over her lifetime. ‘This is not a historical collection; it’s a collection about Gabrielle Chanel’s layered stories,’ he said. ‘Ultimately, Chanel took off, and each step she took led to her being free, like a bird.’ Jack Moss

Louis Vuitton

‘What’s going to be the traffic in the cities of the future?’ asked Louis Vuitton’s womenswear artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière with his latest runway set, created in collaboration with production designer James Chinlund (it was his second set of the season after Givenchy earlier in the week). His answer was traffic jam of 34 floating ‘cars’ which hovered over a runway evocative of a motorway erected in the historic Cour Carrée du Louvre (such juxtapositions of past and future are also hallmarks of the designer’s runway collections). Backdropping a collection which saw garments instilled with new lightness for the world’s changing climate, Ghesquière said the runway set – which featured the house’s signature damier check branding – was a ‘symbolic way of saying how everyone is trying to make the best way possible in this moment’. Jack Moss

For over 12 years, legendary make-up artist Peter Philips has overseen every aspect of beauty at Dior, from the design of its bestselling beauty products to the creative direction of its campaigns and, six times a year, the make-up for its runway shows. The brand’s latest collection, its S/S 2027 show, was a study in lightness, with Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson using delicate, dynamic fabrics and silhouettes to explore how garments transform when they interact with air.

To create a complementary make-up look for these designs, Philips started, as always, by having a conversation with Anderson. ‘It is a kind of open [conversation],’ he says. ‘And then I work with the hairdresser, manicurist and me to propose some looks, show it on models and then decide.’

For this collection, ‘Jonathan wanted a natural look with a surprise element, something subtle,’ explains Philips. So, we went for two variations of eyeliner in silver. One look was a skinny silver metallic eyeliner and the other was a chunky silver glitter eyeliner wing.’

To create the look, Philips placed a premium on creating healthy-looking skin on each of the models, prepping them with the Dior Capture skincare routine and adding Dior Forever Skin Veil primer. For face, Philips used the Dior Forever Skin Glow Foundation, in which he blended a hint of blush using the Dior Backstage Rosy Glow stick in Rosewood, Toffee or Berry, depending on the skin tone.

He then gently powdered the T-zone with the new Dior Forever On Set Powder, and added a bit of Dior Backstage Glassy Glow Stick in Glossy Jelly on the high points of the face. Finally, eyebrows were naturally groomed and lips given a hydrated plumpness with the Dior Addict Lip Maximiser in 001 Pink. On top of this clean, healthy look, Philips added one of the two silver eye makeup styles.

As always with a runway show, the biggest challenge is time. ‘We have to come up with a look literally just before the actual show, so that’s always exciting. On the day of the show, the look is briefed to my team, so they can execute the look or looks and customise it according to the model’s face shape and skin tone,’ Philips says. ‘Making sure that the designer is happy is the goal, and when that’s the case, that’s where I get the most enjoyment from.’

For Philips, the runway is also a time for him to think differently than he does the rest of the year. ‘When we create a look for the show, it is to complete or complement the vision of the designer. In my role as creative and image director for Dior Makeup, I have to consider a broader approach too,’ he says.

‘I create products not only for women who are passionate about fashion. Not every woman wants to be in the latest fashion, but every woman wants to be beautiful. So, from that perspective I can say that the Dior woman is a multi-faceted one, she’s confident and knows that she’s worthy of the best. She can go for a simple, natural look or for a full game, she owns her beauty.’

The invitation for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a pair of ‘wenwan’ walnuts, encased in a grey box and embedded in velvet. The act of ‘wénwán’ – dating back to ancient China’s Han dynasty – is to rub the two walnuts together in circles in your hands for meditation or distraction, like worry stones or prayer beads. Do it for long enough, and they become smooth and polished, turning a deep plum red and ‘jade-like’ in texture (the process can take up to 50 years, which made the patinated wénwán walnuts highly covetable).

There is a clear metaphorical weight to Anderson’s choice of invitation – the idea that creating something beautiful takes time and patience. This not only applies to Dior as a house – after all, haute couture requires the ultimate acts of endurance, with gowns taking up to 100 hours to hand-stitch – but also perhaps to Anderson’s position as creative director. As tenures become increasingly short (look to Dario Vitale, who only lasted a single season at Versace, despite a critically lauded debut) and social media’s firestorm of opinion, that ‘some things take time’ felt like a necessary statement. ‘Coming across wénwán walnuts reminded me how we can find knowledge and preciousness in nature,’ he said.

Like last season, the show was staged in Paris’ historic Tuileries Gardens in a contemporary pagoda surrounding Le Bassin Octogonal, one of the park’s octagonal fountains. Last season, it was dotted with lily pads; this season, a more wistful mood was conjured with a cluster of camphor trees and dry ice, which gave the effect of fog hovering over a lake at dawn (the trees will be replanted in the gardens after the show). ‘Long before a tree spreads its branches to the sky, the nut holds the knowledge of its form,’ read the collection notes, a calligram of a walnut shell.

Indeed, this was a collection which saw Anderson finding the form of his Dior woman – a clear evolution of last season’s romantic silhouette (the millefeuilles of frills and ruffles returned here), and a counterpart to the Dior man he showed in June of this year (their shared wardrobe includes a metallic silver jean). Signatures are beginning to be forged, like his shrunken bar jacket (this time, it recalled a barn jacket with its contrasting collar); a use of plissé jacquard to create a more fluid tailoring line (plissé was used in his S/S 2026 couture collection, shown in June); alongside references to nature, whether in elongated petal-like earrings or painterly floral prints (nature was a perennial influence on house founder Christian Dior, who often returned to the flower in his collections).

Through it all, an eclectic, whimsical air that feels particularly Andersonian: a woven organza suit was left open to reveal a bra top beneath, and worn with asymmetric earrings and a silver handbag slung over the shoulder, while another look combined a pyjama shirt and delicate layered skirt, worn with Dior-chain branded heels – as if his protagonist for the season had dressed in haste. Elsewhere, there were floating organza bows; bouclé tweed left unfurling at its edges; metal evening bags shaped like swans; and shrunken cardigans in pastel-coloured cable knits, adorned with crystals.

Indeed, Anderson said that he wanted the collection to be one of ‘soft focus’, an apparition emerging from the fog. Part of this was down to the lightness of the garments: ‘What is tailoring is imagined as flou?’ was one question he asked himself, reimagining pinstripe and Prince of Wales check blazers in an organza-like fabric designed to appear as tailoring wool (flou is the term in haute couture to describe dresses made from fluid, lightweight fabrics, in opposition to the rigour and structure of tailoring). ‘Something that, as it walks, leaves a kind of residue behind,’ he described of the ethereal looks.

It is a vision of romantic femininity that is paying off for Anderson: the Christian Dior Group recorded revenue of €38.6 billion in the first half of 2026, with a growth of 3 per cent in the second quarter and the fashion and leather goods arm returning to revenue growth after a previous decline. On top of that, a starry collaboration with A24, launched during New York Fashion Week, is a reminder of Anderson’s unique knack for mining the cultural zeitgeist (he did so adeptly at Loewe, and looks to continue doing so at Dior).

But Anderson is not done experimenting yet: as he hones his vision for Dior, don’t expect him to settle into a groove (like the wénwán walnut, he is envisioning his transformation of the house in decades, not months). As he said after his first couture show in January, the role of a designer at a major house is to challenge expectation. ‘I think the idea of designing things is to make people want something they didn’t want. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt at Dior, it’s just about putting ideas out [there].’ Today, he reiterated this: ‘If you’ve already arrived, there’s nowhere to go.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2027.

Paris Fashion Week marks the culmination of a month-long season of shows, with previous stops in New York, London and Milan. Though it is by far the most substantial – and arguably, most significant – of fashion month so far, comprising a sprawling nine-day-long schedule and a line-up which includes fashion’s household names, among them Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (there are plenty more besides).

And, while this season’s edition might lack the surge of newness which has defined recent seasons – one year ago, there were eight major creative debuts during the week, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior – the week will, as ever, define the S/S 2027 season across its currently 68 shows and 33 presentations. That said, there will still be a handful of debuts, including former Burberry designer Drew Henry at Courrèges and Kai Nesselrath at Carven, who previously headed up womenswear at Saint Laurent.

Elsewhere, expect the reveal of John Galliano’s collaboration with Zara, the return of Maison Margiela and a celebration of 30 years of Acne Studios, alongside shows from emerging and established designers alike. All will make way for a no-doubt glittering finale from Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, who will provide this season’s final act on Tuesday evening.

Read below for all of Wallpaper’s moments to look out for at Milan Fashion Week S/S 2027.

Maison Margiela is back

Last season, Maison Margiela sat Paris Fashion Week out, choosing to show in Shanghai as part of a series of events which took place across China (these included exhibitions and immersive installations). For S/S 2027, it is back on the Paris schedule with a show late afternoon on Tuesday 9 September. It will also mark the first show from creative director Glenn Martens after the news that his S/S 2027 show for Diesel – held in Milan last week – will be his last as creative director (since his appointment at Maison Margiela, he has led both brands). This decision, he said, was to put his focus on Maison Margiela, which, alongside ready-to-wear, hosts annual ‘Artisanal’ shows – the house’s equivalent to haute couture.

Torishéju Dumi is our name to watch

Torishéju Dumi, who won the 2025 Savoir-Faire Award at the LVMH Prize, has been one of Wallpaper’s ones to watch for some time. Her expressive collections under her eponymous label Torishéju rework the contours of historical dress, influenced by her Brazilian-Nigerian upbringing and childhood spent within the Catholic church (she also draws parallels with the likes of Yohji Yamamoto, Hussein Chalayan and Rei Kawakubo in her intriguing approach to pattern cutting and form). ‘I have always been fascinated with the otherworldly. I’m always thinking: what else is out there?’ she told Wallpaper* when we profiled the London-based designer for our September Issue. This season, she will show off-schedule on Tuesday afternoon (29 September 2026) at Salle Wagram in Paris’ 17th arrondissement.

Paris’ landmark houses will all show on-schedule

No other city can rival the historic line-up of houses that populate the Paris Fashion Week schedule. This season is no exception, with Paris’ vaunted names – many of which are traditional haute couture houses – showing across the week. These include Chanel and Dior, arguably the city’s best-known houses, and both under relatively recent creative directors (both Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson, respectively, held their debut shows last September). As they enter their third ready-to-wear seasons, the focus will be on honing their vision for these two Parisian powerhouses (Dior will show 29 September; Chanel 5 October). The same applies to Givenchy and Celine (showing 3 October and 4 October), who are also under recently appointed creative directors Sarah Burton and Michael Rider. Elsewhere, expect shows from Louis Vuitton (6 October), Hermès (3 October) and Lanvin (2 October).

Zara will reveal its ‘creative partnership’ with John Galliano

Though his upcoming retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute may be cancelled, John Galliano will have his moment at Paris Fashion Week with the reveal of his collaboration with Zara on October 1 (the exact timing, 10am CET). Though there has been no word as yet whether there will be an official event – whether a show or party – it will mark the first in what is expected to be an ongoing collaboration between Zara and the designer, who was formerly at Maison Margiela. In fact, details remain largely under wraps across the board; when the partnership was announced this past March, all Zara confirmed was that this was a ‘creative collaboration’ which will see him rework the Zara’s archives, ‘deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations’. Watch this space.

Drew Henry will debut at Courrèges

Courrèges will mark its latest chapter on Wednesday morning (30 September) as new creative director Drew Henry begins his tenure at the house (he succeeds Nicolas Di Felice). His first creative director role, Henry comes to Courrèges from Burberry as senior design director under Daniel Lee, having begun his career at Phoebe Philo’s Celine (he later joined her at her eponymous label, and also worked as design director for ready-to-wear under Jonathan Anderson at JW Anderson). ‘André Courrèges believed in clothes that make sense for how people live. That matters to me. I have always been drawn to work that feels modern, useful and direct,’ he said in a statement when he was appointed earlier this year. ‘I am excited to shape a vision for the House that is optimistic, clear and grounded.’

Acne Studios will celebrate 30 years

In 1996, Acne Studios began with 100 pairs of jeans, recognisable for their red stitching, that creative director Jonny Johansson and his then-collaborators distributed to their friends and creative community in Stockholm, Sweden, where the brand continues to be based. Three decades on, Acne Studios – an evolution of its original name, Acne, which stood for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions – is now one of contemporary fashion’s best-known names, showing twice-yearly as part of Paris Fashion Week. And, while 30th celebrations have spanned the whole of 2026 – including a campaign celebrating its foundational denim collection, shot by Nan Goldin (above) – the brand’s S/S 2027 show will be followed by a dinner and afterparty marking the landmark year.

Louis Vuitton will provide the week’s finale

There are a few scheduling shifts this season, including Miu Miu moving from the final day of fashion week to Sunday afternoon (4 October). More notably, though, is Louis Vuitton’s return to being the final runway show of the season, with Nicolas Ghesquière presenting his latest womenswear collection for the house at 6.30pm on Tuesday 6 October. As yet, the show’s location is yet to be revealed, though with Tuesday lacking in other major-name brands (it will be joined on the schedule by the likes of Christopher Esber, Situationist and Litkovska), Louis Vuitton will no doubt command all of the day’s column inches.

It started with an invitation – to create a birthday cake to mark our 30 years in print, as celebrated in the October 2026 issue of Wallpaper* – sent to visionaries from across the creative industries that represent Wallpaper’s universe. Those that responded included architects, fashion designers, artists, image-makers, chefs, jewellers and furniture designers, all of whom have helped define our first three decades, and who continue to inspire, excite and shape the present and future of their industries. Among them are former Design Awards judges and winners – including Patricia Urquiola, Jon Gray (Ghetto Gastro), Nifemi Marcus Bello (Nmbello Studio) and Objects of Common Interest – alongside many of the creatives who have appeared on our pages over the years, and whose stories we have been proud to tell.

We were ecstatic with the response. Over the course of several weeks, cakes in all shapes and forms flooded our inboxes – both virtual and physical. They came in the form of drawings, objects, photographs and even real, edible cakes. Some ‘bakers’ invited other creatives to join them in the making of their cakes, leading to an ever-expanding constellation of creativity that made this celebration a perfect fit for our first 30 years. Happy birthday to us – now tuck in…

Issey Miyake

Bas Smets

Patricia Urquiola

Dior

ESTÚDIO CAMPANA

Gucci

Lina Ghotmeh

Marchesi 1824

Ma Yansong

Objects of Common Interest

Norman Foster

Rick Owens

Tosin Oshinowo

Kim Gordon

Faye Toogood

Hannah Martin

Georg Jensen

Completedworks

Nmbello Studio

Massimo Vitali

Samuel Ross

Isabel + Helen

We Are Ona

Ghetto Gastro

AA Murakami

Tai Shani

Lee Broom

Patcharivipa

Marcio Kogan

Perfumer H

Wallpaper’s 30th-anniversary, October 2026 Guest Editors’ Issue – with guest-edited sections by Es Devlin, Carrie Mae Weems and Palace Skateboards – is available from 3 September, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The Wallpaper* September 2026 Style Issue invites you to craft a new persona – an ode to an A/W 2026 season of shapeshifting looks. ‘For our annual digest of the A/W season, we’re drawing attention to the act of dressing and how we use clothing to create a persona, whether for purpose, pleasure or joy,’ wrote Bill Prince in his editor’s letter.

And, while our womenswear cover shoot saw model Aylah Peterson don a series of different personae for the lens of Antoine & Charlie, for our men’s cover shoot, we looked towards another act of transformation – the beauty pageant, albeit in unconventional style. Putting a cast of male models centre stage, photographer Steve Harnacke and Wallpaper* fashion & creative director Jason Hughes undid the usual froth and fantasy of the pageant for a series of spare and streamlined looks which pair denim with undone formalwear.

They spoke to the lean, narrowed line which ran through the season, from Dior to Prada. At the latter, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons called the look, which comprised slim double-breasted outerwear and tailoring, ‘eloganted and precise’, while at Celine, creative director Michael Rider said that his streamlined overcoats were part of the house’s DNA. ‘I do think Celine is a place you go to find beautifully cut clothing, a slimmer silhouette,’ he said.

Explore the shoot below.

Shop the story

A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Models: James and Gregorio at Premier Model Management, Mbaye at W Mgmt, Isaac Welton Sylvestre at IMG, Rupert Guinness and Jack Dracula at Kult, River at Twelve Mgmt, Nathan Howell at Supa Model Management. Casting: Miro Raynov. Hair: Kachi Katsuya using Bumble & Bumble. Make-up: Josh Bart using Rhode. Set assistant: Archie Thomson. Hair assistant: In Hyeok. Make-up assistant: Molly Lynch. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Agnese Strode, Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Danielle Quigley.

In the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper* – on international newsstands now – we identified an embrace of the traditional rituals of dressing up which ran through the A/W 2026 season, from the continuing ubiquity of the tie to tuxedo jackets, opera gloves and evening bags. The cufflink was another – once relegated to the annals of sartorial history, the accessory remerged this season as designers reimagined the archetypes of formalwear in imaginative style.

Eight of the best cufflinks, A/W 2026’s unexpected menswear accessory

This was largely down to Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons likened their A/W 2026 collection to ‘archaeology’, excavating the traditional elements of menswear dressing and reinterpreting them for now. Sometimes this was literal – shirts were purposely covered with dirt, as if dug up or retrieved from a long-forgotten wardrobe – though other pieces recalled a time of dressing with refinement and care. ‘We questioned what should remain, from the past – and what can you build, from what you learn?’ said Simons backstage at the show. ‘There is a lot here from the past. If you take the layers away, you always find a kind of beauty.’

This included cufflinks, which hung from the collection’s oversized shirt cuffs in jewellery-like flourishes of carved lapis, malachite and tiger’s eye; strange carved metal faces adorned with chains or beads; or chewing gum-like chunks of moulded resin. They feature here alongside eight of the season’s best cufflinks – from an Hermès classic to Paul Smith’s lucky coins.

Fans, feathers, chevrons and palm fronds – there is no shortage of motifs to choose from in the glamorous, geometric universe of art deco, a movement born just over a century ago, at Paris’ 1925 Exposition Internationale. But for Cordelia de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Maison, inspiration came from an equally bountiful source: the great archive of the French maison, which holds thousands of items spanning from 1947 to the present day.

Her find was the ‘Godron’ motif, a simple but effective design combining rows of rounded elements to create a fluted decoration. The first Dior Maison objects adorned with the Godron date back to 1974, with the motif particularly widespread in the brand's 1980s and 1990s collections.

Reinterpreted for a new tableware collection, its thin blue stripes, punctuated by rounded hatched rectangles in white, navy and gold, now run along a series of Limoges porcelain pieces ranging from egg cups to oval platters.

The blue stripes are used in a variety of ways throughout the collection, which is designed for both everyday use and grand occasions. They form what looks like tiny stepped pyramids – a classic art deco trope inspired by ancient Mesoamerican structures – on decorative plates and trays; swirl into concentric circles on tea cup saucers; wrap around a butter dish like a hat band; and create an elegant train track circuit on a relish dish.

The collection also extends to trays, vases, frames and trinket dishes, and a matching selection of linens, beachwear and bathrobes, for a truly luxurious art deco experience. The towels, on which a line of Godron crosses an elegant blue frame, are a particular highlight, while the placemat and napkin set would look equally at home on a seaside terrace or a Parisian restaurant.

The ‘Godron’ collection can be paired with de Castellane’s first furniture collection for Dior Maison, Dior Greenhouse. Also just launched, the latter’s clover-shaped rattan pieces are inspired by the winter garden of Christian Dior's childhood home in Granville.

Godron collection, from £95, dior.com

At Wallpaper*, we're always on the hunt for objects, homeware, accessories, fashion and tech that push the boundaries. The Design Drop brings together the month's most compelling finds.

In July: a legacy Italian sofa reupholstered for a new era, a foldable phone rethinking what ‘foldable’ means, and kitchenware finished in an of-the-moment shade. Architecture books rub shoulders with cult fragrances, archive-referencing footwear sits next to hand-cast jewellery, and a fridge gets the kind of finish usually reserved for supercars.

Read on for inspiration, temptation or both.

Located in Beverly Crest, Los Angeles, the Sheats-Goldstein Residence is one of John Lautner’s most cinematic homes. So screen-ready, in fact, it provided the backdrop for Jackie Treehorn’s house in The Big Lebowski, as well as numerous other films, music videos, and fashion spreads, including the July 2026 issue of Wallpaper*, which saw photographer David William Baum and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture the Pre-Fall 2026 season’s most striking looks in the home.

Much of this is down to its unique construction; designed by Lautner in 1962, it features a geometric, cantilevered roof which dramatically traverses interior and exterior. When the home was gifted to LACMA in 2016 by businessman and basketball fan James Goldstein – who acquired the house in 1972 – the institution’s CEO, Michael Govan, praised its ‘extreme choreography’. ‘You come through [the entranceway] corridor, you hear that sound of water, you have the plant material... and then, you have this clam shell opening to the view,’ he said. ‘I think that so many buildings have been influenced by it.’

Pre-Fall 2026 fashion photographed at the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, Los Angeles

More recently, Kristopher Conner and James Perry, of LA firm Conner + Perry – responsible for the renovation and upkeep of several of the city’s modernist buildings – have overseen works at the residence. Most notably, the creation of the Goldstein Entertainment Complex, which sits under a new tennis court as part of the estate and features a nightclub, offices and a spa. ‘It is an evolution of the visual language established by Lautner in the original house,’ says Kristopher Conner of the raw concrete, glass and stainless steel composition.

‘I’d always wanted to shoot at the home – I’m a big Lautner fan, and it’s such an architectural landmark of LA,’ says Jason Hughes. ‘For the clothes, we wanted them to be a juxtaposition to the building’s futuristic, angular lines. So the pieces have a feeling of romance, but still very sculptural, and sleek – dealing with this idea of shape.’

‘On the day it poured with rain – something rare in Los Angeles, and far from the sun-soaked views of the city we had imagined backdropping the shoot,’ he continues. ‘But despite this, and warnings of mudslides in the hills, the rain adds something atmospheric to these pictures – an unexpected view of a much-photographed city.’

Discover the full shoot below.

Model: Julia Bergshoeff at DNA Models. Casting: Evagria Sergeeva. Hair: Kelly Peach a WSM using Oribe. Make-up: Inge Borg at Call My Agent using Dior Forever Foundation and Dior Capture Le Sérum. Set design: Max Jezek at WSM. Local producer: Katie Binfield. On-set producer: Danielle Quigley. Photography assistants: Keith Bennett, Cés Martinez. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Mónica Garate. Production assistant: Sarah Hallal. Set assistant: Carter McNeill. Retouching: Emily Chan, Zach Liebenson. Special thanks to Kristopher Conner and James Perry, from Conner + Perry Architects, and the Sheats-Goldstein Residence, Los Angeles.

Haute Couture Week, which represents the lofty pinnacle of the fashion calendar, has had an injection of energy in recent seasons: in January, Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson made their debuts in the medium at Chanel and Dior, respectively. Joining them for A/W 2026 were Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier, who both presented opening haute couture acts at their respective houses this past week. Both were vivid, contemporary riffs on the historic art – haute couture requires garments to be made by hand to the specific contours of a client’s body, taking thousands of hours of handcraft – with bold silhouettes, architectural construction, and, in the case of Piccioli, a liberated use of colour.

Here, reported from Paris, Wallpaper* breaks down the shows that defined Haute Couture Week A/W 2026 – from Blazy’s couture fairytale at Chanel to Anderson’s Lynda Benglis-inspired outing at Dior, as well as a brilliant Paris debut from London-based label Standing Ground.

Dior

For his second haute couture collection for Dior, Jonathan Anderson looked towards the American sculptor Lynda Benglis for inspiration. Particularly, her process of ‘knotting, pleating and moulding’, which here inspired the collection’s free-flowing, abstract silhouettes – from molten plissé gowns and metallic hats, to collaged skirts which referenced Benglis’ Georgia on My Mind (the 2018 work saw her cast glitter paper over chicken wire structures). Another reference was her Zanzidae: Peacock series, which was inspired by the birds she witnessed while staying at the Sarabhai family estate in Ahmedabad, India during the 1970s (she would return to the Gujarat city throughout her career). Recalling ceremonial fans, the vibrant works were reimagined on crumpled silk gowns, adorned with appliqué flowers and beads.

READ: At Dior Couture, Jonathan Anderson makes artist Lynda Benglis his muse

Schiaparelli

Daniel Roseberry’s haute couture collections have become incubators for the American designer’s more outlandish ideas, from robot babies to gowns adorned with enormous lion’s heads (memorably worn the next season by Kylie Jenner to watch from the front row). His A/W 2026 collection, shown at Paris’ Petit Palais, had begun with a trip to Barcelona to see the buildings of Gaudí, and, though there was certainly an influence from the Spanish architect’s surreal forms – as well as a vivid use of colour, more distinct than in recent seasons – Roseberry said that he was reticent to constrain the collection to prescriptive themes.

Instead, he found his creative stride when entering what he calls ‘the void’ – a space of unrestrained creativity and experimentation – prompting a journey which seemed to take him to the depths of the Mariana Trench, or the undiscovered realms of outer space. As such, the invitation was a tentacle, cast on metal; in the collection, the tentacle motif informed a latex jacket with protruding antennae, while frilled, spiked and heavily beaded surface details recalled the alien sea creatures that reside at the ocean’s darkest depths. And, just as those cast their own glow, some looks were installed with in-built lighting systems, the kind of fantastical, imaginative sleights of hand that continue to enchant the house’s dedicated haute couture clientele.

Chanel

Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel couture collection began with the discovery of a book of fairytales in the library of house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. The leatherbound volume accessorised the collection’s first look, held in the model’s hand, used by Blazy as a jumping-off point for pieces which referenced childhood fairy tales – from Puss in Boots to Jack and the Beanstalk (indeed, the Grand Palais show space had been invaded by enormous growing vines and flowers, as well as mirrors and vases sized up for a giant).

True to his vision for Chanel – one of wit and whimsy – pieces were embedded with fantastical details, from buttons that went from ugly duckling to swan to pumps with a golden egg for a heel, while lightness was evoked in ethereal layers of organza, mousseline and guipure lace (a riff on the house’s signature tweed suit, for example, was reimagined in sheer mousseline). However, Blazy said it was not just pure fantasy: a series of sleeker looks, in black, provided a more grounded counterpoint. ‘Gabrielle Chanel climbed the ladder to find her golden goose by making clothes for real women. Her clothes were never parodies. They were rooted in life,’ he said. ‘Chanel couture is not just about the big “wow”. Chanel couture is about the details.’

READ: Matthieu Blazy conjures a haute couture fairy tale at Chanel

Giorgio Armani Privé

Silvana Armani, in her second Armani Privé outing for the house – she took over the house’s haute couture line from her late uncle, Giorgio Armani, in 2026 – sought a mood of evening-time sensuality with a collection titled ‘Boudoir’. Rendered largely in tones of inky blue and midnight black, with the occasional interlude of leopard print, the collection riffed on the fluid Armani silhouette in seductive style: masculine tailoring came in satin and was decorated with gleaming shards of embellishment, while gowns came in liquid organza (an Armani Privé signature) or dramatic plumes of feathers, carefully stitched onto sheer bodysuits in a feat of handcraft. Silvana Armani said she was imagining the ‘boudoir as an intimate, deeply personal space’, one of personal rituals and pleasures. With it, she captured the essence of haute couture, which in its focus on tailoring designs to individual clients’ bodies, is an intimate ritual of its own.

Standing Ground

Michael Stewart of London-based label Standing Ground operates on his own schedule; last showing at London Fashion Week in 2024, he has since worked directly with clients who purchase the elongated, body-contouring gowns – part Azzedine Alaïa, part Alien – for which he is best known. This season, he chose to show as part of Haute Couture Week, presenting an A/W 2026 collection at the Irish Embassy on Avenue Foch in the 16th arrondissement. It felt like a fitting shift: Stewart is known for meticulous handcraft and works with private clients rather than wholesale retailers.

It made one of the season’s standout collections: the salon-style format left guests just centimetres from his exacting creations, which evolved a signature aesthetic originally drawn from the regal proportions of the standing stones of his native Ireland. Sculpted high-neck jackets were installed with channels of hand-fed beads under their surface (a signature technique, also used on the collection’s gowns), while draped gowns in velvet and satin saw Stewart experiment with a freer silhouette. One addition to the team was legendary corset-maker Me Pearl – known for his work with John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood – who added further rigour to Stewart’s already immaculate silhouettes.

Jean Paul Gaultier

The Dutch designer Duran Lantink is known for his surreal forms, which transform and manipulate the shape of the body in oftentimes provocative ways. And, while his debut collection as creative director Jean Paul Gaultier prompted heated online debate – particularly bodysuits printed with naked bodies, or the padded appendages which shot out from models’ breasts – his sophomore ready-to-wear collection, inspired by the severe uniform of Greta Garbo, showed his eye for truly inventive tailoring, and situated him as a fitting heir for fashion’s enfant terrible.

His debut couture collection for the house, presented at the Jean Paul Gaultier headquarters, continued this vision with a series of architecturally impressive pieces that drew on the Gaultier archive in surreal style. Panniered dresses shot out streams of tulle; sculpted body suits distorted the body, as if being viewed in a funhouse mirror; while twisting gowns appeared to have been crafted from the twisting necks of flamingos (one inspiration was the surrealistic costumes Gaultier created for Le Défilé, Régine Chopinot’s 1985 ballet). ‘It’s [a house] so built of freedom and playfulness,’ said Lantink. ‘I think Jean Paul is really interested in letting me be free to do my own take on the amazing history of the house.’

Balenciaga

Pierpaolo Piccioli has more than proved his mettle in the art of haute couture: his couture collections for Valentino are some of the most celebrated in recent times, recognisable for a liberated use of colour and abundant use of fabric. With his new role at Balenciaga, he drew on a similar spirit, presenting a series of vivid silhouettes in the grounds of Université Paris Cité in the blazing midday sunshine (such was the brightness of the scene, guests were told to ‘bring sunglasses’). Drawing on several of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s best-known gowns, what is striking about Piccioli’s haute couture is that despite the several thousand hours of handwork and oftentimes vivid embellishment that go into each piece, it feels entirely effortless – and thus, modern.

Summer travel has a way of exposing the weak links in your packing: the phone cable you forgot, the SPF that leaves a chalky cast, the toothbrush that feels like an afterthought, the passport cover that has seen better terminals. Whether you’re heading for a long weekend by the sea, a city break in the heat or something further afield, the right travel essentials solve those small, recurring problems, making the whole exercise feel smoother, smarter and far better looking. From well-designed luggage and clever tech to beauty staples, we’ve rounded up the pieces worth making room for.

12 of the best summer travel essentials for 2026

In the late 1970s, the American sculptor Lynda Benglis began her ‘Zanzidae: Peacock’ series, drawing inspiration from the colourful plumage of the birds she witnessed while staying on the Sarabhai family estate in Ahmedabad, a city in the western state of Gujarat, India. Recalling ceremonial fans, the works were constructed from wire mesh, enamel, glass and plastic, and were rich in embellishment – a vivid melange of appliqué flowers, feathers and colourful beads, evoking those created by local craftspeople. ‘The decorative sense, and the pleasure we receive from it, is very basic in the human situation – some birds have it, animals have it,’ she would say of the series in 2016.

Jonathan Anderson looks to Lynda Benglis at Dior Couture

Yesterday, in a black-lacquered wood pagoda constructed in the gardens of Paris’ Rodin Museum, versions of these fan-like pieces appeared in Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore haute couture collection for Dior, spread open across the chest of a crumpled silk dress, or jutting from the waistline, like a surreal crinoline bustle. Elsewhere in the collection, other works by Benglis were conjured: her ‘Pleated’ series, created through the 1980s and 1990s, in which fluid, undulating pleats were spray-cast in hard metal, was reimagined as a duo of molten plissé gowns, while ‘Sparkle Knots’ – which saw shimmering paper stretched over chicken wire – became netted, sculptural skirts. Metallic plissé hats, balanced jauntily on models’ heads, also recalled Benglis’ free-flowing, abstract forms.

But beyond specific works, Anderson said he was inspired by Benglis’ process, and the way she manipulates two-dimensional objects – paper, fabric – into three-dimensional forms through ‘knotting, pleating or moulding’ (something he likened to the act of haute couture dressmaking). A use of plissé ran throughout the collection: the nipped-waist contours of Christian Dior’s 1947 bar jacket were reimagined in finely pleated fabric, while scrunched-up, crumpled dresses – tied up on the back with enormous bows – reflected Benglis’ intuitive, tactile approach. Handbags, meanwhile, were crafted from chintz fabric – first created in 13th-century India – in a nod to Benglis’ time in the country, while cactus handbags and motifs recalling desert flora were inspired by the artist’s Santa Fe compound.

It is not the first time that Anderson has brought the artist into his creative process. In 2023, he staged his S/S 2024 menswear collection for Loewe amid a series of Benglis’ dripping bronze fountains, while his womenswear collection that same season featured jewellery created in collaboration with the artist. The latter won a Wallpaper* Design Award in 2024, praised for its ‘seductive fizz’. ‘There is something about Lynda Benglis’ experiments of the 1970s – the liberation, friction and violence – that I’m drawn to. I think there has to be a tension,’ said Anderson at the time.

The collection was concluded – as is tradition in haute couture – with a bridal gown. This season, it was an off-the-shoulder column dress in white organza, adorned with delicate fern appliqué and pooling into a lace train, prompting speculation as to whether it recalled that which Anderson designed for the wedding of Taylor Swift this past weekend (a statement from the house on Saturday confirmed that the designer had created both her and Travis Kelce’s looks for the day). ‘It was a big honour,’ said Anderson backstage. ‘But no, I can’t tell you anything about it. It will all come out in due course. It was a joy to work with her, and we became very good friends. It is an emotional thing, doing someone’s wedding.’

Haute Couture Week represents the rarified pinnacle of the fashion calendar, taking place each year in January and June or July in Paris. To be considered a couture house – and show as part of the official schedule – you must adhere to a series of rules set by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM). Notably, garments must be made to order for clients using a dedicated couture atelier of over 15 staff and 20 technical workers, with participants showing more than 50 designs twice a year (several of fashion’s biggest names, including Chanel, Dior and Armani, have couture arms, and present during the week). The FHCM also chooses a series of guest designers to show each season, while off-schedule events take place across the city – including the presentation of high jewellery collections in showrooms in and around Place Vendôme.

Held this season from 6-9 July, the A/W 2026 edition of Haute Couture Week looks set to be defined by a pervading newness: Pierpaolo Piccioli and Duran Lantink will show their first couture collections for Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier respectively, while Olivier Theyskens – formerly of Rochas, Nina Ricci and Theory – will debut his new label, Boloria. Meanwhile at Chanel and Dior, Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson, respectively, will host their sophomore haute couture collections, after lauded debuts earlier this year. Rounding out the schedule are shows from Schiaparelli, Armani Privé, Viktor & Rolf, as well as a debut on the schedule from London-based label Standing Ground.

In anticipation, we break down all the moments to look out for at Haute Couture Week A/W 2026.

There will be debuts at Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier

On Wednesday 8 July, there will be a duo of debuts at two of haute couture’s major houses: Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier. At the former, Pierpaolo Piccioli will show his first couture collection for Balenciaga, taking the mantle from Demna, who reinstated the house’s haute couture arm in 2021 (the Georgian designer’s couture collections were critically acclaimed in their subversion of the historic medium, with memorable moments comprising haute couture ‘jeans’ and runway appearances from Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman and Dua Lipa). Piccioli is no rookie when it comes to haute couture, though: his memorable collections for Valentino were some of the most lauded of recent times.

At Jean Paul Gaultier, Dutch designer Duran Lantink will host his first haute couture show at the house, having presented two ready-to-wear collections at Paris Fashion Week in recent seasons. Expect the unexpected from the boundary-pushing designer: his debut was a polarising take on the French house’s codes, featuring bodysuits printed with the naked body. ‘I’m trying to break free of what’s considered good taste,’ he told Wallpaper* in our March 2026 Style Issue.

As well as sophomore shows at Chanel and Dior

Last season was marked by its blockbuster debuts: there was something of a fashion arms race as Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior showed their first couture collections (both for the houses, and personally, having previously worked at Bottega Veneta and Loewe respectively, which do not have couture offerings). Both presented different – but equally beguiling – debut collections, with Blazy striving for impossible lightness (memorably, a pair of ‘jeans’ were cut from featherweight organza) and Anderson conjuring a series of bold sculptural forms, inspired by the contours of Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics, which bloomed with floral adornment. ‘You realise that that's why we love clothing – it's this idea of the make,’ Anderson said of his first experience in the medium. ‘Couture is really a dying craft; it’s nearly instinct. There are only a few houses doing it. So in a weird way, it’s about protecting that.’

London label Standing Ground will join the schedule

The acclaimed Irish designer Michael Stewart, who started his label Standing Ground in 2022 after graduating from the Royal Academy of Art, has never been one to stick to the typical fashion schedule. In fact, he hasn’t shown on the runway since 2024, preferring instead to either present via cinematic lookbooks or simply work directly with the clients who purchase his designs. This season, Stewart will show as a guest of Haute Couture Week on the evening of Monday 6 July, a decision that tracks with the designer’s vision: his elongated, columnar silhouettes are painstakingly constructed by hand and to the wearer’s body, in an echo of the couture atelier. Winning the Savoir Faire award at the 2024 LVMH Prize, expect a continuation of his distinctive aesthetic, which marries the graceful forms of ancient standing stones with a more futuristic sensibility, where body-clinging contours and ectomorph-like protrusions have an HR Giger-esque bent.

Fendi will show in Rome

Maria Grazia Chiuri will host her first haute couture show for Fendi not in Paris – where the house has shown traditionally, and did so under previous creative director Kim Jones – but in Rome, the home city of both the designer and the house. Taking place on 9 July (many editors will fly straight from Paris to Rome for the show), it will unfold at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – a nod to both Chiuri’s longtime collaboration with the art world, and the location of a new exhibition, ‘After, a Creative Journey. Fendi / Karl Lagerfeld 1985’. Marking just her second outing for Fendi, after a debut ready-to-wear show in Milan in February, the event will see guests move straight from show to exhibition preview, ahead of the latter’s opening to the public the next day, on 10 July.

Olivier Theyskens will reveal his new label, Boloria

The Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens, who began his eponymous label in the mid-1990s before roles at Rochas, Nina Ricci and Theory, is often seen as one of fashion’s most prodigious talents, forging a darkly romantic aesthetic that borrowed from historical costuming with an industrial edge (Madonna was an early fan, wearing a memorable corseted yellow dress for the VH1 Fashion Awards in 1998). On the eve of Haute Couture Week, 5 July, Theyskens will make his return, debuting Boloria, a new label led by the designer. Fellow Belgian Willy Vanderperre shot the teaser images for the brand, which is based in Antwerp and intriguingly funded by Weareone.world, a Belgian company that runs the Tomorrowland music festivals. What to expect? ‘[The] distinctly Belgian values – sensitivity, integrity, emotional resonance – that have always inspired Theyskens’ work and approach to fashion,’ said a statement when the news was revealed earlier this year.

A landmark Maison Martin Margiela auction will take place

For the wealthy few, Haute Couture Week is one for shopping: fashion house’s top-spending clients attend to shows to select the looks that they will purchase over a given season (they are then remade to the exact measurements of their body, and oftentimes in an edition of one). But, for those after something even rarer – or, at least, a definitive piece of fashion history – an unprecedented auction will take place on 9 July at 2pm in Paris, featuring 200 pieces from legendary Belgian designer Martin Margiela’s personal collection (known for staying entirely anonymous, he founded his highly influential eponymous house, Maison Martin Margiela in 1988, before leaving in 2009). Held in collaboration between Paris’ Maurice Auction and London’s Kerry Taylor Auctions, it will span clothing, photography and ephemera. ‘These objects are like holy relics of fashion; they’re part of a great mythology, which is a real dream for an auctioneer,’ Kerry Taylor Auctions’ Alex Baddeley told Wallpaper*.

READ: This auction sees Martin Margiela’s personal archive go on sale for the first time: ‘These are the holy relics of fashion’

When the weather has been as stiflingly hot as it was in Europe this June, most people agree that the ideal outfit is one that includes as few clothes as possible. How then, to best express a sense of personal style? At the end of the three-city romp that was men’s fashion month – which saw designers and brands present their S/S 2027 collections in Florence, Milan, and Paris – Wallpaper* has collated the standout accessories of the season, from playful jewellery to statement shoes, which will elevate even the simplest of looks.

Dior’s bold brooches

Jonathan Anderson chose to trompe-l’oeil some of his accessories this season, but the jewellery was very much real, and for S/S 2027 the Dior man is wearing a brooch. Dior was not the only place we saw brooches this week, but the oversized sparkly pom-poms pinned to jumpers, and the large metallic foxglove with coloured bead petals, worn on a jacket lapel, were among the standouts for the season.

Simone Rocha’s ballet pumps

In the run-up to Simone Rocha’s first standalone menswear show, held as part of Pitti Uomo in Florence, the designer told Wallpaper* that it was ‘contrast’ and ‘tension’ that excites her most about fashion. Nowhere was this better expressed in the show at Teatro Della Pergola than in the shoes: punky studded derbys were countered with soft ballet pumps, the latter replete with elastic strap and bow, and an occasional pearl-drop detail.

Prada’s belt bags

It was a highly streamlined affair from Muccia Prada and Raf Simons this season, and, as such, accessories were ‘integrated within these overall structures’, for maximum efficiency. In practice, this meant bags – some practical zip-up nylon, others in squishy leather – hung from belts via carabiner, swinging at the hip, a part of an outfit rather than an add-on.

Celine’s colourful cummerbunds

Michael Rider’s first menswear proposition for Celine was dictated by his own taste, and creating garments he and his team would wish to wear themselves. Cue the cummerbund, a standout piece in a collection teeming with highly desirable accessories, including chunky wooden bead necklaces, spangled fringe scarves, jangly belts and jumbo pins. The fuchsia silk sash offered a colourful contrast to a neutral-toned ensemble, and a version in turquoise worn over a black long-sleeve and white slacks made a case for incorporating the cummerbund into a daytime look.

Ralph Lauren’s statement belts

If the Ralph Lauren gentleman doesn’t have a cable-knit jumper or a striped neck-tie slung around his waist, no matter, he is not short of statement belt options for the season. There was a bit of an emphasis on the accessory at the dual-Polo and Purple Label show in Milan, with an eclectic offering including a brown leather belt with cowboy-esque buckle and studs, a version in black with a clip-on chain, and skinny, woven iterations in contrasting colours, the straps either tucked neatly through D-rings or left to hang loose.

Dolce & Gabbana’s bejewelled slippers

What do you get the man who has everything? Why, a pair of Dolce and Gabbana S/S 2027 bejewelled slippers, of course. One pair came in blue suede with matching beading, another pair positively barnacled in crystal in golden setting – contrasting with the easy, lightweight cotton and sensual linen garments proposed for a vacanze Siciliane.

Paul Smith’s undone ties

Nostalgia for summers gone by was a major theme of this season’s Paul Smith collection – one which takes place in the designer’s 80th birthday year. In the accessories, as in the way they were styled, this theme took us back to Smith’s childhood: memories of his grandfather’s relaxed approach to suiting translated into unknotted neck ties that hung loosely, as if they’d been undone at the end of a hot day. Charms cast in pewter and brass were worn on pins and on necklaces and were shaped like pennies (that a kid might collect), and seashells and sailing boats – the idyllic imagery of long ago school holidays.

Saint Laurent’s see-through shoes

The contentious see-through shoe has been mainly the preserve of womenswear discourse before now, but, thanks to Anthony Vaccarello, men too can join in the conversation. Saint Laurent’s footwear offering for the season included an elongated Oxford dress shoe with its upper portion crafted from transparent vinyl. For proving one’s fashion chops, even if it does mean giving away foot content gratis, there is no better option.

Auralee’s holiday beads

Evocative of the kind of easy souvenir one might pick up on holiday in the tropics, multi-coloured beads the size of seed-pearls were woven on strings and into micro-charms for Auralee’s S/S 2027 presentation – worn as anklets, belts, and even looped through eyelets in lieu of shoelaces.

Louis Vuitton’s surfboards

Pharrell Williams made a convincing argument that the ultimate accessory for the season is one on which you can ride the waves. For the surf-inspired show, which featured neoprene-clad models, the usual leather goods were almost upstaged by LV-monogrammed boards, an impossibly chic addition to any beach look.

Dries Van Noten’s animal-print lace-ups

An 1876 poem about a fantastical creature, half-man, half-animal, was Julian Klausner’s inspiration for Dries Van Noten this season. Presumably it was the bottom half that was the animal, for amongst the shoes featured was a series of slender brogues in photorealistic cheetah print, an effect which was also mimicked on gloves and capacious pouches.

Wooyoungmi’s laundry bags

If doing the washing doesn’t feel like an automatic association for a collection centred around joy to suggest, allow Wooyoungmi’s take on a laundry bag to make you reconsider. An array of striped versions with contrasting leather handles and piping featured throughout, reinforcing the way heung, a Korean concept based on optimism, joy and spontaneity ‘can be evoked through meditative manifestation in every area of life.’

The subject of conversation this Paris Fashion Week Men’s rarely strayed from the oppressive temperatures as a Europe-wide heatwave engulfed the city (with the mercury tipping 40 degrees, it was the epicentre of the weather phenomenon). Shows were moved from the heat of the day to early morning; venues came with paramedics on standby; and the endless flickering of fans provided the backdrop to almost every show. Marking the closing act of a sweltering fashion month, it left questions of how sustainable a fashion week is in the heat of mid-June, should this become the new normal.

And yet, the show went on. Across a six-day schedule, there were shows from fashion’s biggest houses – notably Saint Laurent, Dior, Celine and Louis Vuitton (the latter gauged the mood by making its show set a beach with an enormous ‘tidal wave’ at the end of the runway) – as well as those that define the cultural zeitgeist, like Rick Owens (his looks came with pre-installed air conditioning), Dries Van Noten (Julian Klausner’s ethereal lightness looked particularly attuned to the heat), and Willy Chavarria (the American designer talked finding joy in times of ‘chaos and darkness’). Elsewhere, Nick Wakeman hosted her debut runway show for Studio Nicholson, 16 years after its founding, and Kiko Kostadinov marked 10 years of his own eponymous label.

As the week concludes, Wallpaper* looks back over Paris Fashion Week Men’s to pick our highlights – from Jonathan Anderson’s ‘sampled and remixed’ collection for Dior (inspired by the music of Fred Again, who also soundtracked the show), to Michael Rider’s brilliant first menswear show for Celine, which closed out proceedings on Sunday.

Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello has made the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection gallery the location for his Saint Laurent runway shows for a number of seasons – a suitably monumental setting for the vision he has honed at the house over the past decade, one of cinematic sensuality and the uncompromising repetition of a single silhouette in a given collection. This season, the space was transformed by Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156, currently on display in the institution. The installation, one of a series of ‘fog’ sculptures by the Japanese artist, sees water vapour emitted from the floor, before being manipulated by a series of high-pressure pumps and nozzles for a 16-minute display (the technology was originally developed in 1969 alongside engineer Thomas Mee). ‘Fujiko Nakaya does not depict fog; she sculpts it,’ says art critic Anne‑Marie Duguet in the installation’s accompanying catalogue.

It set the scene for a collection in which Vaccarello explored the idea of ‘restraint as seduction’, the lingering fog around the models a symbolic gesture of the kind of undefinable desire that certain figures can provoke. ‘Nobody is trying to seduce you,’ he said of this season’s protagonist. ‘What makes them seductive is that they do not need to.’ Touchstones for this figure were ‘Marguerite Duras, whose writing found meaning in what remained unsaid; Tina Chow, whose legendary style embraced reduction rather than excess; and the fictional Mr Ripley, whose outward composure concealed a far more complicated interior life,’ as he explained via the accompanying notes.

It led to a collection defined by lightness and simplicity: there were featherweight ribbed knits that traced the contours of the body, shrunken waistcoats worn with nothing beneath, and the reemergence of the windbreaker, here in breezy hues of yellow and orange (Vaccarello said he imagined it as a collection which could be easily packed into a suitcase for travel). Tailoring this season remained broad across the shoulder, though had an easy, oversized line, while nods to the opulence of Yves Saint Laurent came in jewellery-like buttons and trench coats rendered in molten gold. Though the use of the luxurious hue was less about excess, Vaccarrello argued; rather, it was used to venerate the garment itself, ‘transforming the utilitarian trench into something extraordinary’. Jack Moss

Auralee

Auralee’s Ryota Iwai dealt with the expectation-versus-reality of the summer season in his S/S 2027 collection for his Japan-based label – the total vacation switch-off we fantasise about while on home soil, and then the slightly uncanny version of ourselves that actually shows up, still plugged in but perhaps a little more susceptible to chance.

Played out in three chapters: ‘The anticipation of departure, the sense of freedom that travel awakens, and the return to everyday life – subtly changed, soaking in the afterglow of the trip,’ looks became more relaxed as things progressed. What started as summery – but still smart – tailoring in office-appropriate blues and greys gave way into softer beach cover-up styles, brighter hues, and the addition of cute trinkets. India Birgitta Jarvis

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams drew an unlikely yet astute comparison between surfers and dandies for Louis Vuitton’s S/S 2027 collection, noting their mutual reverence for performance, craft and travel. Where the dandy peacocks in a more urban context, the surfer commands the beach and rides the waves, but both are drawn by impulse and a certain non-conformity. In fact, ‘dude’, that enduring hippie slang which calls to mind tousled beach-waves and shark-tooth necklaces, used to mean dandy, once upon a time.

The two archetypes converged within Williams’ artfully staged show – a beach scene with real sand, boardwalk and an eight-metre-tall wave set within the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. Classic city pieces, including two-piece suits and collared shirts, were given the surf treatment with tailored jackets constructed in neoprene and what the brand described as ‘hand-spun’ textures. Blue was the prevailing colour, from flashes of ultramarine to dusty-shaded denim which appeared time-worn and sun-bleached. This was not just a tribute – Louis Vuitton has pledged its support to reef conservation projects and enlisted the help of competitors at the Tahiti Pro, taking place this August, to monitor progress. IBJ

Dior

This season, Jonathan Anderson drafted the British producer and musician Fred Again to soundtrack his S/S 2027 show, held at Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, a decorative arts museum in the 8th arrondissement. Fred Again, who produced songs for artists including Skepta and Charli XCX, rose to prominence with his three-volume Actual Life mixtapes, an aural diary of the years 2020-2022 which comprised voice notes from friends, spoken word and samples, alongside his own music. Anderson said that Fred Again’s creative process had inspired his approach to this season, which he described as ‘sampling and remixing to carve out new meaning for what’s known’.

As such, Anderson presented a collection which traversed eras – frock coats and 19th-century embroidered met tattered denim, baggy polo shirts and leather pants – while transforming familiar garments as one might remix a record. This included the tuxedo, this season’s protagonist, which shape-shifted across the collection, reimagined in a draped, organza-like fabric printed to look like tailoring wool, elongated into a robe-like coat, or transformed into a windbreaker-style jacket with a toggle fastening at its hem. Elsewhere, moments of eccentricity and play that have defined Anderson’s approach at both Dior and Loewe before it continued to come to the fore, from shimmering metallic jeans and zig-zag tote bags to corsage brooches and skewiff bow ties. ‘Fashion has to be enjoyable,’ he said. ‘It has to be fun.’ JM

Rick Owens

As Europeans across the board reckon with heatwave-proofing their homes, debating the merits of windows closed versus windows open and so on, Rick Owens was typically one step ahead. The S/S 2027 collection not only incorporated Adidas’ ClimaCool technology, but was supplemented with in-built fans and ice elements, creating a ‘personal air conditioning system’.

This technology means that Owens may have just cracked the technique for wearing all-black through the warmer months – and, to prove it, the 72-look collection was almost entirely black with the occasional contrasting buff-tone. In addition to the signature Rick Owens sharply elongated silhouette, S/S 2027 offered more sporty options, including track pants (with Adidas stripe) and puffer coats – ones which literally puffed, thanks to the air circulating within. IBJ

IM Men

‘In Praise of Bamboo Shadows’, as IM Men’s S/S 2027 was called, celebrated every conceivable association of the plant. Its usefulness and versatility as a material was expressed through fabric made from a blend of bamboo fibres and organic cotton, on which graphic designer Rikako Nagashima had printed shadowy patterns. Its deliciousness as an ingredient came through in supple leather bags, inspired by chimaki, a Japanese dish of steamed bamboo leaves filled with glutinous rice.

Most important of all were the aesthetic and cultural associations. The patterns cast by bamboo forests, light dappled in beams, was translated in a Japanese dyeing technique called ironaki, and the repeated straight lines created by the plant found their echo in hand-pleated pieces. Papery textured outerwear ‘[drew] inspiration from the jūnihitoe (the twelve-layered kimono) worn by Princess Kaguya in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, one of the oldest Japanese folktales,’ and denim in graduated colour evoked traditional ink wash paintings. IBJ

Dries Van Noten

Julian Klausner’s latest collection for Dries Van Noten came with a warning prior to the show: guests could expect to be subjected to extreme temperatures in the Tennis Club de Paris showspace due to the heatwave which continued into Thursday evening. So much so, on arrival, two paramedics stood on standby, ice lollies were distributed to guests, and fans were left on the seats which stretched the length of the monumental space. Luckily, this is a house with an enormous amount of goodwill, one which has extended from the eponymous Van Noten – the designer exited his brand in 2024 – to Klausner, who has astutely evolved the Belgian house’s codes with a series of lauded men’s and womenswear collections.

His S/S 2027 menswear outing was equally beguiling, a masterclass in lightness and beauty that more than distracted from the venue’s heat (in fact, the collection’s diaphanous layers looked all the more appealing). The inspiration had come from L’Après-midi d’un faune (The Faun’s Afternoon), an 1876 poem by Stéphane Mallarmé in which a ‘dream-like creature’ wakes up in the woods having dreamt of dancing nymphs; in his slumbering state, he cannot remember if the scene happened or not. ‘I was moved by the haziness the verses depict, by the constant blurring between the real and the imagined and by the fluidity with which the senses and fantasy slip one into the other,’ said Klausner.

In the collection, this feeling was conjured in the reimagining of a ‘masculine wardrobe’ in delicate, sheer fabrications or adorned with embellishment – from a breezy parka decorated with transparent paillettes, to vividly printed silk trench coats and safari shirts – while colours moved from watercolour hues and sun-bleached pastels to inky black and navy. ‘The idea of sensuality guided many of our choices, colours and fabrications, rendering wardrobe staples as clothing that feels soft and intimate,’ Klausner continued. ‘Like a dream that vanishes upon waking up, I hope everything feels loose, delicate, easy to remove, ready to fly away.’ JM

Studio Nicholson

‘This is who we are,’ declared Studio Nicholson, the British brand that held its first runway show in its 16-year history as part of Paris Fashion Week Men’s. The collection doubled down on its position as a leader of discerning, minimalist style: high-quality fabrics presented with low intervention, expertly cut and relatively unisex. The S/S 2027 show included both men’s and womenswear, but the majority of Studio Nicholson pieces could be worn interchangeably – a shared wardrobe for tasteful couples.

Although this was their first show, in ways it also served as a retrospective. ‘The Sorte’ trouser, which has been a mainstay for Studio Nicholson since the very beginning, opened the show in navy gabardine, and slightly barrel-legged jeans (the brand is the well-established go-to for this cut) appeared multiple times throughout. There was an expansion in other categories, particularly accessories and shoes, which included, in true summer style, espadrilles, flip-flops and garden clogs. IBJ

Junya Watanabe

The number of collaborators listed in the show-notes for Junya Watanabe’s S/S 2027 collection totalled 17: from other clothing brands, including Carhartt, Kappa, and New Balance, to every fashion assistant’s bête noir… DHL. The multinational’s logo appeared on caps created by another collaborator, artist Kota Okuda, which were blingified with ostentatious gold chains and strings of pearls.

Costume jewellery ran through the collection, which closed the gap between traditional tailoring techniques and more recent sportswear tropes, with more than a sprinkle of 1980s references throughout. There was a stone-washed denim jacket, cropped short and worn on top of a Wall Street blue-and-white striped poplin shirt. Tracksuits were high-sheen and colour-blocked, and bouclé accents and the occasional exaggerated epoulette called to mind classic yuppie style, albeit with more swagger. IBJ

Willy Chavarria

Since transplanting from New York, Willy Chavarria’s Paris shows have become a highlight of the schedule – previous outings have included a near-religious experience in the American Church of Paris, while last season’s all-singing, all-dancing spectacular played out like a telenovela on steroids. This season, Chavarria chose Espace Niemeyer, the Oscar Niemeyer-designed former Headquarters of the French Communist Party, for the show, which took place under its futuristic subterranean dome. The setting felt apt: the utopian architecture provided a reflection of a collection that Chavarria said was about a search for joy amid a time of ‘chaos and darkness’.

Soundtracked by a quartet of musicians, he titled the S/S 2027 outing Comunión (flyers for the show posited it as ‘New Age Group Therapy’) and drafted a group of friends and collaborators, including Bella Freud and Romeo Beckham, to walk the runway. Their looks continued to hone Chavarria’s signature aesthetic, one which reimagines work- and sportswear silhouettes in expansive proportions (and with new elegance) while his growing womenswear offering riffs on mid-century silhouettes.

This season, vivid colours were inspired by the work of Louis Carlos Bernal, and bolstered the joyful mood, while an exposure of the body – T-shirts were pushed over the head to reveal models’ chests; shorts sliced so short that the pockets hung beneath the hem – lent a pulsating sensual undercurrent. ‘There are two strong feelings in this collection,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘One is joy, colour, levity, and playfulness. The other is shock and awe.’ JM

Kiko Kostadinov

Kiko Kostadinov was in a self-referential mood this season, which he began by ‘looking back at the minimal geometric forms of the previous season and asking what could be challenged and pushed further’. With engineer-like precision, the collection emphasised structure and materiality, eschewing embellishment for a streamlined finish.

There was an air of Y2K cyber-core about the 33-look collection, which borrowed its colour scheme from the Apple iMac G3 range: turquoise, dove grey, grape. The canvas interventions of the late Italian artist Agostino Bonalumi were referenced through shape and drape, and through the use of internal boning to create ‘curved, rippling protrusions, emphasising a tension between softness and structure’. IBJ

Wooyoungmi

Madame Woo was searching for a universality in her research for S/S 2027, particularly what various cultures and geographies have in common when it comes to reading joyfulness in apparel. Her answer was threefold: ‘light, colour and the imprint of individuality’.

Light was articulated through surface treatments which gave garments an aged appearance, as if sun-bleached. Colour, mostly pastel but with occasional flashes of vivid chartreuse or tangerine, was applied liberally. And a sense of individuality came from pieces appliqued with playful, juvenile pictures, leather keyrings hanging from belts, and ties worn rebelliously around the head. Applying these principles imbued the 47-look collection with a feeling of levity which can be recognised the world over. IBJ

Celine

Taking place on the final day of menswear fashion month, American designer Michael Rider presented one of the collections of the season with his first standalone men’s show for Celine, held in an all-white showspace constructed in the Tennis Club de Paris. Honing an already distinctive aesthetic which is based on the idea of developing an evolving wardrobe – and combining an American preppiness with the Parisian insouciance synonymous with the house – Rider said he was thinking less about thematics, and more about what he (and his team) actually want to wear. ‘[It’s about] enjoying what we do in the studio, and desiring it ourselves, all of it, the clothes and the characters,’ he said.

Besides a multitude of great clothes (this collection will be much-imitated, particularly in its playful, thrown-on styling), what is striking about Rider is his ability to evoke a ‘Celine man’ (or indeed woman), despite the eclecticism in the looks on show. Much of this is down to his own belief in what he puts down the runway: a navy cummerbund over a red sweater, an enormous bag slotted into the crook of the arm, ballooning pants, a mix of the slouchy and the shrunken – these are familiar garments that he has somehow made feel entirely new. And, while the show might have presented these pieces in more unconventional combinations, take these looks apart and this is a wardrobe that can be adopted by a wide gamut of men. ‘It’s about building towards something bigger,’ he said. ‘Something with legs, and roots.’ JM

Despite having produced songs for some of music’s biggest names – among them Charli XCX, Skepta and Ed Sheeran – the British musician Fred Again (stylised Fred again..) did not rise to prominence until the release of Actual Life, a three-volume series of mixtapes that served as an aural diary of the years 2020-2022. Alongside his own music, they collated samples from other artists, voice notes from friends, and spoken-word skits. ‘I just kind of amassed [the clips] over time,’ he said in 2022. 'The ones that poked out to me at different points were obviously because of what was going on in my life.’

This morning in Paris, Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson recruited Fred Again to soundtrack his S/S 2027 menswear show for Dior, his third men’s outing for the house so far (Anderson became creative director in 2025). A custom mix for the show, it featured the songs of KTNA, Mabe Fratti and Jamie T, as well as original vocals from Christine and the Queens, pulsating from speakers surrounding the halls and gardens of Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, where guests sat on traditional French chairs or on benches tiled to look like black disco balls (the show’s invite was also a Dior-branded disco ball in black).

Besides soundtracking the show, Anderson said that Fred Again’s musical process inspired the collection’s construction – one of ‘sampling and remixing to carve out new meaning for what’s known,’ as he described. In practice, this meant a shuffling of eras – 19th-century embroidery met distressed denim, for example – but also a shifting of a garment’s context. For this, the tuxedo was the protagonist: Anderson reimagined it in an organza-like fabric printed to appear like tailoring wool in the breezy opening looks, while other tailored jackets came in loosened proportions or were transformed into the silhouette of a blouson.

The choice of the historic venue, Anderson explains, also reflected this idea of the ‘remix’. ‘It’s about juxtaposing the historic and the contemporary and bringing Fred Again’s music into this typically quiet place,’ he says. ‘The opportunity to show here is special because the building is about to be restored, so it’s in this interesting in-between phase.’

The museum – which Anderson had first encountered during an exhibition of the work of British artist Edmund de Waal in 2021 – is the former home of former home of Moïse de Camondo, a French banker, who established a major collection of 18th-century decorative arts during his lifetime. ‘I became fascinated by its story, particularly in the context of Dior,’ he says. ‘I loved the idea of bringing the new into this historic space. And as we know, Monsieur Dior loved the 18th century.’

‘I think in some ways he was similar to Moïse de Camondo – they were both interested in reinvention as much as preservation,’ he continues. ‘The museum is currently in a phase of restoration. I like the slightly undone nature of it and how that connects to the collection – there’s this aspect of finding beauty in the imperfect.’

Follow our live coverage of Paris Fashion Week Men’s here.

13 Rue François Sibilli has seemingly become the epicentre of Saint-Tropez’s summer social circuit. Two stone pillars, each bearing a discreet Dior medallion, open onto a herringbone brick path that heralds a sprawling manifestation of the maison’s universe, luring in both ritzy passersby and those with weeks-in-advance bookings. Here, the majestic boutique – with its pale blue shutters and ivy-clad façade presiding over the whole scene – showcases the latest creations by Jonathan Anderson alongside Riviera-inspired pieces.

Meanwhile, a chic café, open all year round and offering a delectable afternoon tea experience, faces a lush scene punctuated by a colourful stone totem by Swiss sculptor Ugo Rondinone and a carp-shaped gilt bronze sculpture by French visual artist François-Xavier Lalanne.

A new chapter in Dior’s Saint-Tropez story

New for this season is Monsieur Dior, a restaurant helmed by three-Michelin-starred Argentine chef Mauro Colagreco of Mirazur fame as a tribute to the late couturier. Its entrance is discreetly concealed, tucked into a garden beside the boutique where lavender, sunpatiens and cape plumbago grow freely, and the scent of jasmine drifts through the air. The setting is open to the sky, shaded by cream parasols with frilled golden edges and anchored by rattan details echoing Dior’s cannage motif: a geometric pattern of interlacing squares and diagonals.

Colagreco is no stranger to cooking in dialogue with the maison. The first iteration of Dior by Mauro Colagreco opened in Bangkok as a café in 2024, within a Dior boutique infused with Thai craftsmanship and flavours such as pandan and coconut. Saint-Tropez is its Mediterranean counterpart. To prepare for this collaboration, Colagreco spent a week in Paris, fully immersing himself in the Dior museum and the archive with a research team that included anthropologists, artists, writers and ethnobotanists alongside his cooks.

‘It made us leave our creative process,’ he tells me, from one of the café’s deep wicker armchairs. ‘In general, we take an ingredient or a culinary technique. Here it was a dress, a way of thinking of Monsieur Dior.’ Among the most unexpected discoveries: a cookbook. ‘Christian Dior cooked, and cooked with conviction. His recipes revealed more about the man’s sensibility – a love of simplicity, an attentiveness to quality – than any archive photograph could.’

Beyond their shared passion for gardens, the deeper connection is celestial. Christian Dior consulted astrologers before each collection, carried talismans and read the tarot. Colagreco, meanwhile, has farmed biodynamically for years – his calendars at Mirazur are determined not by season alone but by lunar cycles. When he began reading about Dior’s beliefs, something clicked into place. ‘The cosmic influence on the plants is one of the bases of the biodynamic techniques we use at Mirazur,’ he says. ‘It is much more known in winemaking than in agriculture. We follow a lunar calendar to grow our produce.’

The menus follow the rhythm of the day. Breakfast ranges from the pared-back Lever de Soleil to the more generous Rosée du Matin and Éveil Gourmand, centred on artisan breads, seasonal fruit and eggs cooked to order. Lunch is served as the three-course Déjeuner de Soleil, while dinner takes the form of the five-course Clair de Lune. Most ingredients arrive from Colagreco’s biodynamic orchards and vegetable gardens in Menton within 48 hours of harvest.

When I ask Colagreco what he would serve Monsieur Dior first, were he to be seated here with us, his eyes light up. ‘The Champ de Trèfle,’ he says without hesitation: a tartare of red Sicilian gamberoni with lime and wood sorrel, the scattered leaves standing in for the four-leaf clover Monsieur Dior never left home without.

At breakfast, the Casse-croûte truffé combines flaky brioche with a softly set egg, jasmine-infused cream and shaved summer truffle. The Mediterranean John Dory, wrapped in a zucchini flower and served in a saffron sauce (dubbed Drapé de Soleil), is among the menu’s standouts. During my visit, a special of Poisson Mille-Fleurs – the menu changes every three weeks – arrived covered in petals and herbs, assembled with the precision of couture embroidery.

The attention to detail extends to the smallest gestures: amuse-bouches served in rose petals, desserts finished with insect-shaped golden chocolates. The references are deliberate. Throughout his career, Christian Dior returned repeatedly to the garden as a source of inspiration, weaving flowers, leaves and insects into his collections. At Monsieur Dior, Colagreco translates those same motifs onto the plate.

The cocktail list continues the narrative. Jardin d’Étoiles, a pear and fig leaf cordial, references Christian Dior’s belief in fate and the lucky star he carried throughout his life, while Brume Marine is built around passion fruit and tomato distillate, drawing on Saint-Tropez and the couturier’s enduring relationship with the Riviera.

Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Colagreco what he most enjoys growing in Menton. The answer is not fruit or vegetables, but trees. ‘When you plant a tree, you plant it not for yourself, but for everyone that comes after you.’

Monsieur Dior by Mauro Colagreco is located at 13 Rue François Sibilli, 83990 Saint-Tropez, France

This evening (16 June 2026), guests will gather in the cloisters of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Church for a dinner hosted by the Umbrian designer Brunello Cucinelli – a twice-yearly tradition that marks the opening of Pitti Uomo, the historic Florentine menswear fair. And with it, the beginning of Men’s Fashion Month: after Florence, there are stops in Milan and Paris across a 12-day schedule which will see S/S 2027 menswear offerings from fashion’s biggest houses – among them Prada, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent – as well as a raft of newer names. By the time Paris wraps up on 28 June 2026, we will have the blueprint of how menswear might look a year from now, and no doubt plenty to mull over: this looks to be a season of consolidation and world-building as relatively new creative directors settle into their tenures and others steady the ship amid the backdrop of a global luxury slowdown.

And, while the schedule is certainly lighter than its womenswear counterpart (the S/S 2027 women’s shows will take place in September, and traditionally have a busier line-up), plenty of intriguing moments remain – from Simone Rocha’s first dedicated menswear show (she will be a guest designer at Pitti Uomo, showing in the historic Teatro Della Pergola), to calendar shift-ups, designer returns and (a small handful) of debuts. We've picked the eight moments to look out for this Men’s Fashion Month S/S 2027 below.

Simone Rocha will be Pitti Uomo’s guest star

Historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo, taking place in Florence twice-yearly, marks the start of Men’s Fashion Month each season, centring around the 14th-century Fortezza da Basso. But alongside the main fair – where you will find stands from Brunello Cucinelli, Herno and the like – organisers invite a number of guest designers to show each season in locations around the city (previous guests have included Raf Simons, Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner, alongside numerous fashion houses). This time, it is the turn of Irish designer Simone Rocha, who will host her first dedicated menswear show on Thursday 18 June at the 17th-century Teatro Della Pergola, an opera house and theatre that is one of the oldest in Italy (previously she has presented menswear as part of her womenswear show, or via lookbook). ‘I would like to thank Pitti Uomo for their generous invitation to present my first independent menswear show on the men's calendar,’ she said when the news was announced, elucidating that she will use the moment to show ‘the length and breadth of [her] menswear proposition... [and] a new chapter in my work and world.’

Two menswear greats will return to Milan

Milan is well known for its sartorial prowess – particularly when it comes to men’s tailoring – something that has drawn two legendary international designers back to Milan Fashion Week Men’s this season. They are Paul Smith, who has shown in the city for a handful of seasons now, and Ralph Lauren, who returned to the Milan schedule in January of this year, marking the American designer’s first Italian menswear show in two decades. Both will show in their headquarters in the city: the former on Viale Umbria, the latter at Palazzo Ralph Lauren, which resides in an imposing 1941 Mino Fiocchi-designed building formerly known as Casa Campanini-Bonomi. Both will likely be celebratory affairs: particularly for Smith, who will turn 80 in July and use the latter half of the year to celebrate the landmark, including the release of an autobiography, Threads: My Life in Style, in September.

While Thom Browne will make his Milan Fashion Week Men’s debut

American designer Thom Browne has adopted something of a travelling schedule for his runway shows in recent seasons, showing between Paris and his native New York, as well as a one-off show in San Francisco earlier this year to coincide with the Super Bowl (Browne’s tailoring is a favourite among American athletes, and NFL players DeAndre Hopkins, Justin Jefferson and Steeler Marcus Allen walked the show). This season, though, he is breaking new ground: a runway show in Milan on Monday 22 June will mark his debut in the Italian city. Apart from the venue, the neoclassical Palazzo Serbelloni, little has been revealed about the show – though, if his previous outings are any indication, expect his usual eye for fantasy and play (his last menswear show, in Paris, for example, featured enormous glittering alien heads, worn by the models as masks).

Saint Laurent is back to opening Paris Fashion Week Men’s

Last June, Saint Laurent opened Men’s Fashion Week with a S/S 2026 collection that transported guests from ‘Paris to Fire Island’ amid a serene installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection (it comprised a circular pool on which a series of bowls floated across its glimmering blue surface). This season, the house will return to its first-day slot (for A/W 2026, in January, it ended proceedings) with a menswear show that is expected to take place in the contemporary art gallery. It will be followed that evening by another blockbuster show: the latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection by Pharrell Williams, which will take place at 9pm in an as-yet-undisclosed location.

All eyes will be on Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Men

Three seasons in, Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has succeeded in making Dior one of fashion’s most talked-about houses: case in point, a Hollywood-inspired Cruise 2027 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in May, which alongside a starry front row (Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus and Al Pacino were all in attendance), featured collaborations with artist Ed Ruscha and milliner Philip Treacy (fittingly, one of the headpieces spelt out ‘Buzz’ in feathers). On Wednesday 24 June, he will return to Dior’s home city for his S/S 2027 menswear show – arguably the most anticipated on the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule, following an acclaimed A/W 2026 show that drew inspiration from the outré stylings of couturier Paul Poiret and his infamous Belle Époque dinner parties.

Sarah Burton will reveal her vision for Givenchy menswear

Sarah Burton has shown three womenswear collections on the runway since the beginning of her tenure at Givenchy (she came to the house from Alexander McQueen, where she succeeded the eponymous designer as creative director); this season, in Paris, she will begin to expand her Givenchy universe with her first dedicated menswear presentation. Because, despite overseeing commercial collections – as well as dressing figures like Timothée Chalamet for the red carpet – she is yet to formerly introduce her menswear vision for the Parisian house. What to expect? Some great tailoring, no doubt – Burton is adept when it comes to a pin-sharp suit – alongside the bold flourishes of colour and print which defined her critically lauded A/W 2026 womenswear show last season.

At Celine, Michael Rider will host a dedicated menswear show

An intimate presentation of Michael Rider’s first dedicated menswear collection for Celine – presented earlier this year in the brand’s headquarters – was one of the highlights of the A/W 2026 season, despite a lack of models and runway (the clothing was instead staged in a series of playful tableaus, while guests snacked on Celine-branded popcorn). For S/S 2027, the American designer – formerly of Polo Ralph Lauren, as well as Celine during Phoebe Philo’s tenure – will host a dedicated menswear show on the final Sunday of Paris Fashion Week. Expect the infusion of Parisian insouciance and Ivy League stylings that have become his signature – and won him a devoted legion of fans, as well as thousands more aping the look in Instagram GRWMs, from colourful sweaters slung around the waist to rugby shirts and sliced-away ties.

London label Studio Nicholson will make its runway debut

This menswear season is suprisingly light on debuts, either from fledgling labels or major houses welcoming a new creative director. Studio Nicholson is an exception, though it also doesn’t fit into either camp: founded in 2010 by Nick Wakeman, the London-based label has already established itself as a cult destination for those who favour a simplicity of design and high-quality fabrications. But, while the brand has undertaken high-profile collaborations with the likes of Zara, it has never hosted a traditional runway show, something that will change this season: Wakeman has opted to present a collection during Paris Fashion Week Men‘s. Taking place on Friday 26 June at Hotel d’Evreux in Place Vendôme. Comprising her men’s and women’s collections for S/S 2027, it is a new addition to the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule – others include Meryll Rogge’s first menswear presentation, 2025 LVMH Prize winner Soshiotsuki and Australian brand Song for the Mute.

The collection notes for Jonathan Anderson’s first Cruise show for Dior, held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) yesterday evening (13 May 2026), were a fantasy film script, with the designer himself – who as a teenager had travelled from Ireland to the United States to become an actor, before shifting course to fashion – as the star. In its pages, Jonathan Anderson (the character) narrates the collection’s inspirations as the action lines describe a runway show that is yet to happen. ‘A model appears on the runway in a buttercup-yellow dress,’ they begin, with everything from music to scenography accounted for – a meta-nod, perhaps, to the way we now consume runway shows through the mediation of a screen.

But the script also set the stage for a Cruise collection that was about the perennial allure of Hollywood, and deeply rooted in the Parisian house’s history and lore. Christian Dior would outfit a coterie of cinema’s leading ladies – from Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe to Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly – both on and off the screen, receiving an Oscar nomination in 1955 for his work on Terminal Station (Anderson has also dabbled in film-costuming; while at Loewe, he was costume designer for Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and Challengers).

Lights, camera, action: Dior heads to Hollywood for Cruise 2027

‘I was about to find a less unknown world: California,’ Christian Dior wrote of his first trip to the area in 1947. ‘Was it not the earthly paradise of which all Americans and so many Europeans dreamed? A year-round climate, an ever-shining sun, a bounty of fruit trees and flowers, large beaches lapped by the Pacific waves. In short, a super-Riviera.’

It was in this spirit of escapism that Anderson approached the collection, which found inspiration in both the Californian landscape – the state’s poppy became a recurring motif, appearing as rosettes of gathered fabric on dropped-waist gowns – and the gleaming sound stages of golden-age Hollywood. ‘Christian Dior understood how important the idea of “the dream” was for people after the war, as a form of escapism,’ Anderson says in the script. ‘He explored this in couture, his Surrealist friends were obsessed with dreams and, of course, Hollywood is “The Dream Factory”. It was all part of the same cross-cultural shift.’

Speaking that morning at a preview in the showspace, which saw the exterior of LACMA (where the new David Geffen Galleries have recently opened) dotted with vintage Cadillac cars, Anderson elucidated that this was a collection about finding joy in clothing. ‘We started with this idea of dressing up, dressing up in daytime, dressing up in evening – we just wanted a collection that is a bit fun,’ he said. Feathered headpieces, made by milliner Philip Treacy, recreated from an original design for Isabella Blow, read ‘Dior’ or slogans like ‘Buzz’ and ‘Star’, while bias-cut gowns had an insouciant glamour. Swathes of sequins, hyper-real floral adornment, and flashes of red also featured – the last a reference to Monsieur Dior, ‘who always put a red dress part way through his collections, simply to wake people up’.

But there was also a nod to Hollywood’s seedier side: Anderson said another inspiration had been Scotty Bowers’ Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, a gossipy tell-all that recounts the former gas attendant and bartender’s double-life arranging sexual liaisons for the town‘s biggest stars. ‘He was sleeping with most of Hollywood,’ said Anderson. ‘I thought that was an interesting starting point for a collection, this idea of action, when something is thrown into the camera lens.’

The collection featured menswear, the first time that the Dior man and woman have walked the same runway (Anderson is the only creative director of the house to have designed across genders). The menswear collection, which saw new riffs on nipped-waist Bar Jacket – including one in metallic tweed, shrunken in proportion as in Anderson’s previous collections for the house – also featured a collaboration with Ed Ruscha, seeing graphic slogans typography appearing across shirts. ‘I had wanted to do something with him for years, but he had said no. So that was my mission,’ Anderson said. ‘He took the canvas of the shirt and did what he wanted to do with it.’

The same could be said of the wider collection, in which Anderson seemed to revel in the freedom of showing a collection away from Dior’s home city of Paris. ‘It’s a moment to lean in,’ he said. ‘It’s my first time doing a resort show – you are going somewhere, and it’s fine to be a bit ironic – you can lean into the cliches, the nuances. You can have fun with it.’

As seen in the June 2026 Travel Issue of Wallpaper* – a series of ‘horizon-expanding adventures and voyages of discovery’ – here’s how to stand out this summer with our pick of the season’s most eye-catching accessories, from the fantastical (Prada opera gloves; Givenchy feathered mules) to the functional (Mulberry denim sun hat; Celine oversized sunglasses). Each is primed to make a sartorial statement over the warmer months – a time for dressing with joy and abandon.

Prada opera gloves (above left)

A glove might not immediately call to mind the summer months, though the elongated opera glove was ubiquitous on the S/S 2026 runways, including this pink satin pair at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons mixed up the working uniform with flourishes of eveningwear (often in a single look). ‘There is the license to combine different elements, to compose,’ said the latter post-show.

Loewe’s ‘Amazona 180’ bag (above right)

A reinterpretation of the archival Amazona bag has become the hallmark accessory of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s tenure at Loewe so far (they debuted for the S/S 2026 season). The ‘Amazona 180’ – referring to the 180th anniversary of the Spanish house this year – reimagines the boxy shape of the original with a slouchy new structure, designed to hang open when worn. Our favourite? This mini version in bold azure blue.

Celine sunglasses

Celine’s Michael Rider, who formerly worked at the house under Phoebe Philo before heading up Polo Ralph Lauren, marries his American roots – he was born in Washington D.C. and attended Brown University – with the house’s Parisian sensibility. Like these gleefully oversized sunglasses, which are a nod towards the bourgeois-inflected uniform of house founder Céline Vipiana in her 1970s heyday.

Givenchy’s ‘Boudoir’ mules

The summer months are primed for dressing with abandon – particularly this S/S 2026 season, where designers channelled a mood of colour, optimism and joy. These slip-on Givenchy ‘Boudoir Fringe’ mules – designed by creative director Sarah Burton – epitomise this liberated attitude, adorned with fronds of feathers.

Chanel’s resin necklace

Thanks to the stewardship of Belgian designer Matthieu Blazy, Chanel has fast become this year’s most sought-after brand – the arrival of his S/S 2026 collection in stores earlier this year sparked a much-documented shopping frenzy. This necklace, with an enormous resin charm recalling a black oyster shell, is a way to pledge your allegiance.

Fendi’s ‘Lui’ bag

Fendi has long been known for its colourful accessories which marry Made in Italy leathercraft with a sense of humour and play. Case in point: the Lui bag, a slouchy shoulder bag designed to slot neatly onto the body when worn cross-body. This version is finished with supersized leather topstitching.

Dior’s ‘Lady Dior by Sheila Hicks’ bag

At both his eponymous label, JW Anderson, and Loewe, where he was creative director for a decade, northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has fostered a close relationship with the art world, often through collaboration. This continues with his new role as creative director of Dior, where his S/S 2026 collection featured this Lady Dior tasseled bag, a collaboration with American artist Sheila Hicks.

Limited-edition Hermès lipsticks

A trio of limited-edition Rouge Hermès lipsticks will add a flash of colour to your make-up bag, and not only in their rich pink and mauve shades. Because the real joy of these lipsticks is the Pierre Hardy-designed packaging, adorned with graphic motifs in eye-catching primary hues.

Bottega Veneta’s ‘Baby Veneta’ bag

Bottega Veneta’s intrecciato technique – which sees strands of leather woven together – is the house’s hallmark, eschewing the need for more overt logos and branding. The new ‘Baby Veneta’, a mini hobo bag, is crafted from padded intrecciato leather, here in vivid ‘Cardinal’ red.

Mulberry denim hat

A sun hat is a perennial summertime essential. This one, from British house Mulberry, combines function with flair: crafted from classic blue denim, it comes with a bright-yellow cord-fastening, like those you might find on hiking attire.

Louis Vuitton’s summer scents

This duo of Jacques Cavallier Belletrud-masterminded Louis Vuitton fragrances capture the scent of summer: the first, On The Beach, has citrus fruit yuzu at its centre, married with fresh neroli and woody cyprus (the idea was to capture the ‘ecstasy of sun and the warmth of sand’). The second, Sun Song, is a radiant mix of orange blossom, neroli and petitgrain, finished with a final touch of lemon.

Loro Piana’s ‘Just Bag’

Sometimes the summer months require simplicity: in the heat of the day, the last thing you want is complicated. Loro Piana’s effortless ‘Just’ bag is inspired by the simple proportions of a classic paper bag, though here rendered in the Italian house’s soft and lightweight ‘Silk Calf’ leather.

Fashion/set assistant: Alice Heluin-Afchain

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A languid elegance defines S/S 2026’s most desirable menswear, where lines between the ornamental and the utilitarian are blurred, and perfection is eschewed in favour of the effortless and the undone.

A series of these looks are captured in the pages of the May 2026 Design Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), photographed by London and Paris-based image-maker Ana Garcia and Italian stylist Nicola Neri amid the serene interiors of Ed’s Shed, a wooden Adjaye Associates-designed home in London’s De Beauvoir neighbourhood (it takes its name from owner Ed Reeve, an architectural photographer).

Each captures a juxtaposition between the functional and the dressed up – whether the voluminous line of a pair of Dior cargo pants, their layered back inspired by a Winter 1948 haute couture ‘Delft’ dress, or the purposely creased texture of a Zegna suit, its surface covered in safari jacket-style pockets.

Elsewhere, the mood is conjured through intriguing layering: a Loro Piano jacket slung around the waist, a cardigan emerging from the neck of a Loewe jacket. Other pieces simply capture the effortless elegance of the S/S 2026 season, like a JW Anderson wool coat, worn here with a decorative Dries Van Noten necklace, and nothing underneath.

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Models: Amedeo Mancini at The Claw, Vincent Rockins at Kate Moss Agency. Casting: Monika Domarke. Grooming: Lachlan Mackie using Sam McKnight. Set stylist: Haruka Kogure. Photography assistant: Ricardo Muñoz Carter. Fashion assistant: Olivia Renouf. Production assistants: Danielle Quigley, Archie Thomson, Indy Davy. Set assistant: Cedrick Jison. Photographed on location at Ed’s Shed, London N1, edsshed.co.uk

Spring has arrived – and with it, that irresistible urge to get away (if it ever really left). It’s time to dust off your passport, start planning, and say yes to new adventures. Whether you’re booking a spontaneous weekend escape or mapping out something further afield, a little smart prep goes a long way.

From versatile luggage and bags perfect for quick getaways to must-have tech, beauty essentials, and clever hacks to outsmart travel’s usual health pitfalls, we’ve rounded up everything you need. The goal? To help you pack smarter, stay comfortable, look fresh, and – most importantly – keep things stress-free wherever you’re headed.

The Wallpaper* guide to spring travel essentials

The ‘Dior Bamboo Pavilion’ opened its doors in Tokyo earlier this year, on 12 February, the very same date that the maison’s founder, Christian Dior, inaugurated his neo-classical boutique at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris in 1947. Tucked away in the quiet residential area in Daikanyama – different from the traditional shopping areas of Omotesando and Ginza – the dramatic new address serves as a stage to celebrate the long-standing relationship between the Parisian house and Japan, which dates back to the first fashion show held in the country in 1953, six years after Dior’s first haute couture show in 1947.

The 2,465 sq m site features a traditional Japanese strolling garden, crafted by Sora Botanical Gardens, helmed by Japanese planter Seijun Nishihata, with pine, cherry and plum trees – each symbolic of Japan – alongside more verdant planting. At the end of a meandering promenade stands the Bamboo Pavilion, which recalls 30 Avenue Montaigne and is clad in a golden bamboo façade made from recycled Japanese aluminium. This 740 sq m pavilion features Dior’s latest collections by Jonathan Anderson, alongside furniture and fittings made in Japan (Monsieur Dior’s own homes were influenced by Japanese interior decoration and art, one which also filtered into his collections).

Passing through the bamboo grove façade, you enter the inner garden, created by floral artist Azuma Makoto, which evokes an orangery where shrub flowers such as lily of the valley, reeves spirea, sweet alyssum and marguerite bloom season by season, paying homage to Monsieur Dior’s love of the botanical world. Inside, the circular central space feels as though one has stepped inside a giant lantern; it is seamlessly covered from floor to ceiling in Awa washi, a handmade paper from Tokushima prefecture, while lighting embedded within the walls softly envelops the space. From this central atrium, six separate rooms can be accessed: the Timeless Room, the Small Leather and Accessory Bar, the Leather Goods Room, the Men’s Collection Room, Café Dior, and the Women’s Collection Room.

In the white-clad ‘Timeless Room’, you are drawn into the world of Dior’s 30 Avenue Montaigne store, with white wall coverings replicating the spiral staircase, neo-classical wall panelling, and French windows of 30 Avenue Montaigne, but here, realised with Echizen Washi paper made by Osada washi. At the far end of the room is a fitting room where the walls are embroidered with another leitmotif of Dior – Toile de Jouy – but realised here through the hands of designer Hana Mitsui in collaboration with a long-established embroidery purveyor Sun Look, in Fukui prefecture.

The menswear room, meanwhile, is adorned with Dior’s signature blue, with fitting rooms where the walls have been replaced with blue tatami mats designed by Hana Mitsui and woven by a tatami manufacturer Ikehiko from Fukuoka Prefecture – a novel concept, it overturns the conventional notion of using tatami mats on the floor to walk upon. But it is not just a new perspective that stands out; the manufacturing process also differs from traditional tatami-making. By exploring new techniques such as weaving Toile de Jouy motifs into the surface of the tatami, the fitting room gives a new look to traditional craft.

Other pieces are more futuristic in their innovations, like a series of stools and tables by the Tokyo-based design duo We+, created by melting down styrofoam boxes used in fish markets and recasting them into new forms. In addition, benches made using algae also feature in the space. This furniture is part of We+’s project exploring new possibilities for sustainable colour coating, whereby a material combining algae powder and naturally derived resin is applied to the pieces’ surfaces.

The space is completed with a new outpost of Café Dior, led by three-Michelin-star French chef Anne-Sophie Pic. The whimsical creations feature interpretations of the house’s quilted cannage motif, as well as those recalling flowers, four-leaved clover and ladybugs, motifs in Anderson’s early collections for the house.

Together, the ‘Dior Bamboo Pavilion’ is a love letter from Paris to Japan – a country which, despite its influence on the couturier, Monsieur Dior was ever able to visit in his lifetime.

Dior Bamboo Pavilion, 8-1 Sarugakucho, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0033, Japan.

dior.com

From abstracted plays on domestic spaces at Prada and Marni, to sets celebrating icons of urban architecture at Burberry and Dior, the A/W 2026 season offered much in the way of innovative set design.

As always, these temporary constructions can tell us as much about a designer’s current preoccupations as the garments they send out into them. For Loewe’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez it was an invocation of play, at Prada Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada are thinking about what is revealed when the surface layer is stripped away, and for Demna, it was investigating the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’ – a quest which, ahead of his first outing for the brand, led him back to Florence, the city in which it all started. Discover some of the stand-outs from fashion month below.

The standout show sets of fashion month A/W 2026

Burberry

Midway through February, it was reported that it had rained every day of 2026 in the UK – a news story that Daniel Lee might have had in mind whilst conceptualising the set for Burberry’s A/W 2026 collection. Trompe l’oeil puddles of resin scattered the tarmac-effect runway at Old Billingsgate Market, which was transformed into a night-time vignette of Tower Bridge, replete with that most familiar urban sight: scaffolding.

If a former 19th-century fish market seems an unlikely venue for London’s most high-profile luxury brand to show a collection, consider that gabardine, the fabric created by Thomas Burberry in the 1870s, is to this day a mainstay of angling attire – indeed, a quote singing the praises of Burberry from the Fishing Gazette was used in early advertising for the brand. The infusion of that practical, outdoorsy heritage with contemporary cosmopolitan glamour translated into a collection of opulently finished outerwear – from signature trench coats reimagined in silk or with ruffled lapels, to rich swathes of shearling.

READ: A first look at Burberry’s A/W 2026 show set, which depicts London landmarks ‘under construction’

Diesel

Diesel’s A/W 2026 runway set consisted of around 50,000 pieces of memorabilia from the brand’s archive, a monumental time capsule dedicated to almost 50 years of partying. Displayed under bleached lighting, the installation was awash with high-voltage colour, with objects ranging from a fringed parasol and inflatable beach doughnut, to a coffee machine, motorbike, and lava lamp. Creative director Glenn Martens described the season’s mood as ‘waking up in a place, with no idea what happened last night’: think crinkled denim and ripped hems. Judging by the contents of the eclectic clutter, the place could be anywhere from a roadside motel, MTV Beach House, or a teenager’s bedroom. Pick your poison.

Marni

If ‘familiar’ is a recurrent, self-confessed description of Meryl Rogge’s aesthetic tastes, it’s certainly not meant as a synonym for ‘samey’. There is always a little surprise, a fun tweak, or a new addition that keeps things fresh and exciting. For Rogge’s debut collection for Marni, this took the form of palm-size sequins, pointed mules with laces on the toes, and pants with two sets of stacked belt loops. And in the set design – a collaboration with Wallpaper*’s Designers of the Year 2021 Formafantasma – it meant something that looked ‘as if a room has been carefully disassembled and reassembled in another order,’ as Formafantasma’s Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin told us before the show.

The bones of the space were augmented with wood-effect panelling and fabric-covered benches, and a giant door mat in lieu of carpet. Mirrored panels, which were hand-painted with ‘fragments drawn from quotidian life’ like car headlights and office chairs, played with perception. Are they images? Or are they portals?

‘The decision to carefully hand-paint these ordinary details was important,’ say Trimarchi and Farresin. ‘Spending time rendering something banal gives it attention without turning it into spectacle. In a moment when most images are produced and consumed quickly, the act of painting introduces care and slowness. It allows us and hopefully others to look again at things we normally overlook, to pause for a second longer than usual.’ It’s a message that carries through to Rogge’s attitude toward design: robust, realistic and resonant.

READ: Formafantasma created the ‘familiar yet unsettled’ show set for Meryll Rogge’s Marni debut

Gucci

A few hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci in the Tuscan city of Florence sits one of Europe’s most prominent art museums – the Uffizi, in an architectural complex begun by Giorgio Vasari in the year 1560. It is home to such illustrious works from the Western canon as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, da Vinci’s The Annunciation, and Caravaggio’s Medusa. It was also the starting point for Demna, the Georgian designer who took the helm of the 105-year-old brand in 2025, when the shape of the A/W 2026 show space began to form in his imagination.

‘When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci,’ the designer wrote in a letter published online the day before the show. ‘In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

His recreation of something resembling the storied museum, in Milan's Palazzo delle Scintille, was executed with typical Demna-like innovation: all hard edges and ultra-modern materials. The slick geometric hall was clad in travertine Stoneleaf, made from ultra-fine sheets of Italian marble bonded onto sheets of fibreglass and transparent resin. Classical sculptures were made out of plaster using 3D scanning, and then treated to look like aged marble. The runway itself was marked out by a skinny beam of fluorescent light, through which models sauntered and languished at a museum-appropriate pace.

READ: Demna’s first runway set for Gucci is an imagined museum filled with sculptural greats

Prada

If Prada’s A/W 2026 show was, as Wallpaper’s Jack Moss described, ‘an exercise in extreme layering’, the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, where 15 models showed a total of 60 looks, was in many ways its antithesis – or perhaps its logical conclusion. The collection itself was cleverly conceived to reveal itself through the gradual stripping away of garments, so that by the time each model had taken her fourth turn about the room, coats and scarves had given way to light cotton pinafores and bloomers. However, the set had been stripped already, leaving only an eerie whisper of what might have been there before, like when you see a partially demolished house. Fireplaces exposed to the elements. Masonry jaggedly revealed. Interior made exterior.

In a continuation of the sliced-open palazzo created by OMA for the menswear offering in January, artefacts which spanned five hundred years – from 16th-century tapestries to modernist lampshades – were effectively suspended around the perimeter of the room, each level an echo of a floor without a floor. Walls were delicate pastel shades with intact wainscotting juxtaposed against the imprint of former joists, or the patinated shadow of where a dividing wall once stood.

‘Their meaning is layered [and] inherently personal,’ explains Prada of the mish-mash of objects within the space: a Venetian mirror, various consoles, paintings from different periods and more. The house’s co-creative directors and their respective tastes and preoccupations are keenly visible in this selection, but they also leave room for imagination. By revealing so little, we are left to fantasise for ourselves about who the inhabitants of this dilapidated, but once grand, former dwelling might have been.

Dior

What more appropriate way to kick off Paris Fashion Week than a promenade in the Jardin des Tuileries? And for Dior, no less. The 1st arrondissement park has been open to the public since the late 17th century and has been a fixture of Parisian life ever since, not to mention a favourite subject of Impressionist scenes and a backdrop for revolution. This March, it became the site of Jonathan Anderson’s second womenswear collection for Dior, in a show space described as ‘an imitation of a park, within a park’.

Designed around Le Bassin Octogonal was a structure which drew from the familiar grass-green garden furniture that is scattered throughout the park, with a runway which snaked 360-degrees round the perimeter of the water, and across its centre (water which was filled with imitation water-lillies, an unmistakably Andersonian touch, and a nod to the eight murals by Monet which are housed at Musée de l’Orangerie in the western-most corner of the Tuileries).

In a conversation which aired before the show, Anderson told his friend, designer and podcaster Bella Freud that he ‘will always feel like a tourist in Paris’ and yet the city itself seemed to look upon him as a treasured friend this A/W 2026: the early-spring sun shone brightly, and the water reflected dappled light throughout the scene.

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

Now in his tenth year at Saint Laurent, for A/W 2026 Anthony Vaccarello chose to focus ‘on the house at its most foundational’. For the collection, this meant mega-watt sex appeal, body contouring, and the glorious revival of Le Smoking. And for the setting – it could only mean Paris, and that perpetual, romantic emblem of the French capital, Le Tour Eiffel. Gustave Eiffel’s iconic landmark has been a mainstay visual for what is arguably the city’s most illustrious house since the days of the maison’s namesake. Vaccarello himself has regularly used it as a backdrop for his work with the brand – sometimes with the runway literally beneath its iron frame.

This season, the glittering structure was glimpsed through vast windows, part of a set designed to evoke the apartment once inhabited by Yves Saint Laurent himself, with his partner Pierre Bergé. That duplex, at 55 rue de Babylone, is now the stuff of legend, its contents scattered to the four winds after Yves’s death, but once upon a time it was home to a vast collection of artworks (from Burne-Jones to Mondrian), furniture, and books. Archival photographs of the space show the same wood panelling and thick-pile carpet that we saw at the show space, which also featured a replica of a bust owned by Saint Laurent and Bergé, blown up to oversize proportions.

Loewe

How better to dress the backdrop to a collection foregrounding ‘joy, experimentation and play,’ than with toys? The work of Cologne-based artist Cosima von Bonin was a key influence for Loewe’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez this season, finding its way into both the ready-to-wear and the mise-en-scene. Known for creating larger-than-life plushies and other animalistic sculptures, often fabricated in textiles or constructed from found objects, von Bonin’s mark was left in the show space by a host of black velveteen sea creatures who rubbed up against journalists on the high-gloss, oversize shoebox style seating. These critters and creatures (the soft toys, not the journalists) were dramatically shrunk down too, appearing as hard-shelled minaudièrs and dinky bag charms throughout the show. The room itself, at Château de Vincennes on the very fringes of the city, featured high-contrast, optimistic decor: stark white walls and vivid vinyl yellow floor which echoed the sheen of moulded latex and lacquered leather seen on the runway.

Chanel

‘Matthieu Blazy does it again’ was Wallpaper’s first reaction to Chanel’s A/W 2026 show. After last year’s electrifying debut, Blazy had set the bar at lofty heights for himself, heights he cleared with no trouble in this latest go-around. Drop waists, metallic hair, and some of the most coveted shoe of the 2020s were all part of the magic, but as we’ve already come to expect from Blazy’s tenure, so was the set design. Where his first two outings, for ready-to-wear and couture, saw an immersive take on the solar system, and then something rather more down-to-earth in the form of sugary pink mushrooms, respectively, A/W 2026 featured enormous cranes in Playmobil primary colours, piercing the space within the Grand Palais’ main atrium.

With their resemblance to stage rigging, these monumental installations were assembled on a glitter floor to evoke the joy of dance – reinforced through a soundtrack of Lady Gaga remixed with dialogue from Billy Elliot. The whole effect was a glorious reminder of what Blazy’s Chanel is to be: totally joyful.

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

Paris Fashion Week culminated yesterday, marking the end of a month-long season of shows that has seen previous stops in New York, London and Milan.

With a nine-day schedule standing at nearly double the length of its counterparts, Paris remains the defining city of fashion month – not least because it comprises shows from fashion’s heavyweight houses, among them Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (to name just a handful).

After last season’s debuts dominated the S/S headlines, A/W 2026 was about the sophomore show, as designers settled into their positions as creative directors. Without the weight of expectation, we saw some brilliant shows – notably Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Michael Rider at Celine, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel (all were showing their second ready-to-wear collections).

Here, reported by Wallpaper* fashion & beauty features director Jack Moss and contributing writer India Jarvis, we pick the standout shows that defined the week.

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

Jonathan Anderson staged his A/W 2026 runway show for Dior in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries, constructing a circular show set around one of the park’s ponds (for the occasion, it had been populated with Monet-esque lily pads, meticulously constructed to look like the real thing), while the invitation comprised miniature versions of the park’s signature green metal chairs. Across the pond’s centre ran an elevated runway, echoing the line of the Tuileries’ Grand Allée, a historic promenade since the park opened to the public in 1667 after a renovation by Louis XIV. It led to a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’, a contemporary imagining of the promenade, ‘[where] a walk in the park becomes a performance’. Cue a ‘panoply of Parisians’ in eclectic, time-hopping attire, from the woozy ruffles of the Belle Époque (here transformed into mini dresses with bouncing trains) to plays on bourgeois tropes, such as fabrics that recalled heritage tweeds, blazers with golden buttons, and shearling jackets reimagined with wave-like hems. What was most striking, though, was a feeling of levity: lily-pad-adorned footwear, polka-dot motifs and crystallised denim were both playful and pretty. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ Anderson said. ‘Now I feel free to release it from that.’ Jack Moss

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

A cinematic offering from Anthony Vaccarello unfolded in a simulacrum of a sleek, modernist home; at its centre, a sized-up recreation of a bust that lived in Yves Saint Laurent’s own apartment. Through it strode this season’s Saint Laurent heroine, her heavy-smoked eye and slick, side-parted hair a nod towards Helmut Newton’s Paris Vogue photograph of a model in Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo on Rue Aubriot in 1975. Indeed, tailoring was central to the A/W 2026 collection: eight trouser suits opened the show, while various other iterations appeared throughout (including Vaccarello’s own riff on the tuxedo, worn by model Loli Bahia, who walked exclusively for Saint Laurent this season and closed the show). Here, the silhouette was sloped across the shoulder and narrowed at the waist – though not constricted – for a riff on the power suit that was more ‘insouciant shrug than swagger’. As a counterpoint, Vaccarello looked towards the ‘troubled heroines’ of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, as well as Romy Schneider in the 1971 film Max et les Ferrailleurs (she was this season’s protagonist, he said), to capture an ‘elegance tinged with ennui… the beauty of intimacy and vulnerability’. To capture this mood, a series of slips and dresses came in lace coated in silicone, while enormous fur coats had a vivacious confidence. Jack Moss

Dries Van Noten

For many of us, the stylings of awkward adolescence are best not dwelt upon – after all, who looked or felt their best as a teenager? Evidently, Julian Klausner takes a more romantic view of this impressionable time, but, then again, Klausner was likely a more sophisticated brand of teenager than most. In any case, this was the impression given by his A/W 2026 collection for Dries Van Noten, which was inspired in part by a visit to Lycée Carnot, and the memories of being an adolescent ‘work-in-progress’. The Lycée is a Rive Droite public school with alumni including Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord, and Daft Punk, and its Gustave Eiffel-designed great hall has been the backdrop for numerous Paris fashion shows over the years – in other words, a suitably rarefied and creatively rich starting point.

The 61 looks at Dries Van Noten asked that most teenage question: who am I going to be today? For the confident moment, a navel-bearing button-up knit with a vibrant silk skirt. When a suit of armour is required, a protective duffel coat that does the talking for you. Or maybe one day the mood might be scholastic – collegiate blazer and pleated skirt, but always, always customised, an embellishment here, a contrasting trim there. ‘Just like a pixelated picture, the more one gets far from that time of endless questioning, the clearer it becomes,’ Klausner said, a metaphor he extended through prints with digitally warped 17th-century Flemish still life paintings. Opulent, mature fabrics and finishings were styled with a youthful irreverence best summarised by the final lines from Gala Dragot’s vocal performance, which soundtracked the show: ‘Don’t be too serious... Wear a collar... Keep it blurry though.’ India Jarvis

Acne Studios

If Dries Van Noten was an homage to the experimental attitude of youth, then Acne Studios marked its 30th birthday year with a collection that declared (as one does at 30): I know exactly who I am. A/W 2026 was an affirmation of the house’s irreverent signatures, such as a revival of the particular 1996 cut of jean that made their name, and photographic elements that nod to the brand’s unconventional marketing style, including the bi-annual Acne Paper.

The setting for this season was a succession of intersecting cuboid rooms that, viewed simultaneously from the end of the runway, appeared like a Josef Albers work made three-dimensional. According to Jonny Johansson’s show notes, this was conceived ‘like an enfilade of salons … the portals marking what has come before, and what might follow’. Where a salon in the Parisian tradition might mean a bringing together of clashing or complementary ideas, at Acne Studios, the determination is to blur those boundaries as much as possible. Standout looks saw cropped aviator jackets worn with skin-tight jodhpurs and desirable point-toe pumps, Prince of Wales check jackets worn over one shoulder, and larger-than-life portraits of art school students, taken by Paul Kooiker, printed onto stiff pencil skirts and draped dresses.

Alaïa

Late last year, just after the completion of the Italian house’s sale to Prada, it was announced that Dario Vitale would be leaving his position as creative director of Versace (he lasted a single, but impactful season), to be replaced by Belgian designer Pieter Mulier. It meant that this season’s Alaïa show, watched by designers Matthieu Blazy and Raf Simons, was to be his last: the swansong of a five-year tenure defined by commercial expansion and critical success (he has also established a coterie of model muses, many of whom walked this final show, and will likely follow him to Versace). Held in an intimate showspace in the former Fondation Cartier – Mulier said he wanted it to recall a 1990s pre-iPhone runway show – the collection itself eschewed his more recent experimental silhouettes in favour of stripping things back to the essence of the house, from simple body-contouring tank dresses to lean tailored overcoats, stretch knits, and peplums and ruffles (the last flourishes rendered in Mulier’s contemporary, streamlined style).

‘This collection is about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress?’ he said backstage after the show. ‘It’s basically a vocabulary of the last five years. It’s what I learned at Alaïa, that I’m giving to the next designer. It’s like leaving the keys on the table. At Alaïa, I learned precision, editing and [that] real luxury is not what we all think. It is a perfectly cut jacket.’ Jack Moss

READ: Pieter Mulier delivers a swansong collection at Alaïa: ‘It is a vocabulary of the last five years’

Rabanne

Of all the distinct fashions of the long 20th century, it could be argued that 1940s style is the hardest to reference without veering into the territory of costume. Perhaps it’s because boxy tailored silhouettes and victory rolls are so much associated with the vast canon of British war movies, or perhaps because austerity-driven ‘make do’ dressing is antithetical to contemporary fashion at either end of the high-low scale. It’s a testament to Julien Dossena’s eye, then, that for Rabanne A/W 2026 he incorporated patently 1940s-inspired styles – T-bar heels, tea-dress florals, and clashing knitwear – without evoking even a hint of reenactment.

After all, Rabanne has always been a house noted for its futuristic bent. Unconventional, industrial materials, like metal and plastic, are at its very heart, and remained so this season alongside those more vintage ideas – coming together in a collection that the brand called ‘a little louche’. This take on modernist femininity was told through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of a slip through an unbuttoned blouse, a hint of lace underneath a more conservative skirt, and pussybows left suggestively undone. Dossena told Wallpaper* post-show that the character he wanted to build with these contrasts was that of ‘a resistant woman’, and that for him, there was a suggestion of retro-futurism with the 1940s-derived shapes (for example, hair pulled into sculptural pompadour styles was less Vera Lynn and more replicants in Blade Runner). India Jarvis

Rick Owens

What might the cyberpunk cousin of Marlene Dietrich wear for a night on the town? It’s a question that could only be answered by Rick Owens – whose A/W 2026 collection was an homage to the ‘dignified sequence of her life stages’, all shot through with classics from his own particular design language. Think body parts augmented through prosthetics and sci-fi silhouettes in a post-apocalyptic landscape heavy with dry ice and punctuated by magnesium-bright beams of light. Presenting the collection as the second part of ‘Tower’, which premiered during the men's collections, Owens drew from Dietrich’s qualities of ‘steeliness’ and ‘grit’, and interpreted them as sheath-like dresses, abundant piles of faux fur, and flight jackets.

Just as the German star’s enduring legacy was in part a product of her striking collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, Owens is an artist quick to credit the rich input his work receives from his creative partners. This season, much attention has been lovingly devoted to name-checking the hands through which his raw materials pass – from the third-generation, family-run mill in Como, Italy, which weaves a high-performance fibre called Kevlar (purportedly five-times stronger than steel), to the Veneto-region wash house committed to reducing water waste, which treats industrial indigo canvas. India Jarvis

Loewe

Presented on a bright-yellow runway populated by German artist Cosima Von Bonin’s plush figures of clams, octopi and dogs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s sophomore Loewe collection was a welcome jolt of energy on the Friday morning of Paris Fashion Week. ‘What is fashion but an open field for endless creative play?’ said the American designers, whose poppy A/W 2026 collection translated their colourful beach-ready debut for the winter months, resulting in a riot of curvy dégradé shearling parkas, 3D-printed slips and shaggy-hemmed dresses with trailing trains. Other elements had a sporting feel – like face-shielding sunglasses, boldly coloured anoraks and chunky riffs on half-zip ski sweaters – while inflatable elements meant garments could be transformed in size and proportion (a lobster-claw-shaped pump, shown at the re-see the following day, will be sold separately).

Such experiments were made possible by the abilities of the Loewe atelier, particularly when it came to leather: bouclé overcoats were made from intricate loops of leather yarn, while the gradient shearlings were treated ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’. ‘As we began [creating] our second collection, we were struck by a simple truth: for us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ said the designers. ‘The path taken matters as much as the end result. It is the idea of play as rigorous experimentation and problem-solving, moving between instinct and experience, between a devotion to craft and its endless opportunities for innovation.’ Jack Moss

Issey Miyake

For Satoshi Kondo, the role of designer is as much about relinquishing control as it is wielding it. Knowing when to hold back, not to overstep the mark, to let the materials speak for themselves. This was the credo he brought to the fore for Issey Miyake’s A/W 2026 offering – a characteristically Japanese recognition of innate, simple beauty.

Titled ‘Creating, Allowing’, the collection navigated this specific tension understood by designers through pieces where the artist’s hand was inserted sparingly, never tampering with the true essence of the fabrication, only enhancing. At its best, this looked like expanses of cloth cut with technical lines that left their impression on the negative space, like the wine-coloured single-breasted coat with inbuilt cape that the model held up over her shoulders to exaggerate its rectangular construction. The innate movement of the house-signature pleats was used only intermittently and, instead, dramatically inflexible lacquered washi paper was introduced through breast plates, bodices and belts – creating a contrast between motion and restriction. Kondo’s intention with this was that the most important impact was made through the human frame, by ‘minimising design intervention and leaving the form-making to the wearer's own body’.

As for the space itself, the Carrousel du Louvre was transformed with a layer of silvery sand and ‘finely shredded aluminum foil, [serving] as a device for the interaction between "material", "people", and "clothing"’. This surface became marked and patterned as the models moved across it, another allusion to Kondo’s metaphor of ‘considered disruption’. India Jarvis

Lanvin

This year marks the centenary of menswear at the house of Lanvin – a celebration that filtered into the season’s womenswear outing through nods to the boyish silhouettes that characterised interwar ladies’ fashion. It was a time when overtly feminine curves were flattened into straight lines from bust to waist, creating an elongated, athletic outline that came to epitomise the emancipated New Woman.

Peter Copping, who took the reins at Lanvin in late 2024, imagined ‘a dialogue between generations’, which came together beautifully to meld the concerns of Jeanne Lanvin’s customers in the 1920s with those who shop the brand in the present. What do they have in common? Evidently, a love of opera – gloves were cuffed and elbow-length, and belted opera coats were voluminous enough to be worn over an evening gown, and trimmed with faux fur. They wear hats (Jeanne Lanvin’s first foray into fashion was as an apprentice milliner), with A/W 2026’s borrowing from cloche shapes but with exaggerated sou’wester-style brims. They favour a dash of restrained glamour. If some of the cuts leaned slightly austere, they were countered with an opulence of fabric and finish: hand-embroidered bead droplets, inky velvets, laser-cut fringes.

Lanvin is the oldest French maison still in operation, its HQ still in its original site – therefore, the weight of its legacy must hang heavily over every designer who takes its helm. Its founder insisted on le chic ultime, a phrase that surely needs no translation, and which is no small order. It is a comfort that, for every moment of reinvention it undergoes, Lanvin is still a place that women can go to for guaranteed elegance. India Jarvis

Givenchy

The idea of individual style was a throughline of Paris Fashion Week, one expressed by Sarah Burton with her third collection for Givenchy – the former Alexander McQueen designer’s most liberated outing yet (and, as a result, her best). ‘How can we put ourselves back together in the world we’re living in?’ was the question Burton asked this season, elucidating after the show that she was thinking about the multiplicities of a contemporary woman’s life (as such, it found a companion with the Prada show in Milan, where Miuccia Prada asserted that ‘as a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself’). So there was some typically brilliant tailoring (Burton is known for her prowess in the medium, and has recently brought over her tailoring team from Alexander McQueen), though also more vivid expressions of style – a dress, hanging from razor-thin straps, in bright yellow leather; shimmering leopard spots that burst into tassels; silk T-shirts that had been refashioned by Stephen Jones into headpieces – as well as oversized riffs on carpenter jeans, off-the-shoulder bombers, and high-collared white shirts. ‘I wanted to make it feel very personal,’ said Burton. ‘Each woman is her own person, each silhouette is her own character.’ Jack Moss

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe lets the clothes do the talking. The A/W 2026 collection was accompanied by show notes that came to two single sentences: ‘The Art of Assemblage Couture explores form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional notions of dressmaking. Through the direct presentation of raw materials, this approach expresses the surrounding social environment.’ This succinct summary belied a frenzy of ideas, which played out over one of the most entertaining shows of the week.

Classic couture silhouettes were fashioned from a mish-mash of consumer goods and mass-produced garments. The opening look, worn by Irina Shayk, comprised a gown in a 1950s prom style, constructed from gloves, with a mesh flounce. A puff-sleeved dress, with a squared neckline and a central slit that showed a silver interior, appeared to be made from a gold Mylar blanket – its creased folds still visible, like it had just been ripped from its packet. Another dress used kitschily patterned curtains, pinch pleats and all, for its full, trained skirt, while its bodice was made from – what else? – scrap number plates.

So far, so Watanabe, but this season offered more in the way of spectacle than just unconventional materials. In a more choreographed display than usual, Watanabe called in the services of Poland-born movement director Pat Boguslawski. He directed a languid yet melodramatic routine for Watanabe’s models, who threw garments onto chairs with tango-inspired passion, and turned their heads with the kind of simpering doe-eyed expressiveness of silent movie starlets. This reference was reinforced through Eugene Souleiman’s hair design, sculpted curls slicked to the foreheads and cheeks in the manner of Josephine Baker, and glam make-up by Isamaya Ffrench – winged, heavy-lashed and sometimes tear-streaked eyes. India Jarvis

Celine

It hasn’t taken long for Michael Rider to define a signature look at Celine: a preppy, uptown-inflected uniform that feels like a vision of Parisian style through American eyes (Rider had worked at Celine previously, under Phoebe Philo, though more recently headed up US label Polo Ralph Lauren). And it has worked: his collections thus far have felt like you could wear them off the runway and straight onto the street, full of clever riffs on quotidian pieces that will no doubt be much copied by lesser brands (they have also been full of great accessories, from abundant charm bracelets to colourful handbags and slipper-like loafers). For A/W 2026, Rider continued his upward trajectory with a show held at the Institut de France amid a series of beautiful modernist speakers in wood and metal, presenting a collection that favoured perennial style over ephemeral trends. ‘Celine is a style: a mix of old and new that feels urgent and dreamy,’ said Rider. ‘Making the things we all dream of finding and wearing.’ And in among this ready-to-wear wardrobe (in the truest sense), flourishes of the playful and the romantic emerged, from enormous sequins and flashes of animal print to feathered headpieces and bold punctuations of colour. ‘Putting on clothes, a look, can change the day – [it can] change how we walk and feel,’ said Rider. ‘I love that.’ Jack Moss

Hermès

Staged on a runway of moss and soil (strangely, a trend of the week, later seen at Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton), Nadège Vanhée’s latest outing for Hermès saw her conjure what she called a ‘liminal realm’ between dawn and dusk, earth and space. It lent the collection an alien, otherworldly feel: models emerged from glowing orbs and looped around the Garde Républicaine show space on an inky runway, which also inspired the clothing’s palette of deep blues, greys and black. Mashing up the equestrian codes that remain at the heart of Hermès – here, sliced-away jodhpurs-cum-cycling shorts, dressage blazers and knee-high leather boots – with lean, futuristic silhouettes, it was a clever hybrid of the past, present and future, a liminal realm of Vanhée’s own. Ostrich and leather jump suits, with contrasting knit sleeves, were the season’s show pieces – the result of the house’s superlative leather atelier, they straddled sex appeal and function – while visible zips added an almost sci-fi feel, running down the front of dresses or slicing across the chest of a jacket. Prints came via AM Cassandre, an art deco artist, and saw clouds intersected by a geometric structure – a reflection of Vanhée’s own juxtapositions between the graphic and the elemental. Jack Moss

Comme des Garçons

A strong Comme des Garçons collection saw Rei Kawakubo find solace in her favoured colour, black, which – save for a brief interlude in bright, candy pink – made up the majority of the A/W 2026 collection. And, while recent collections have seen Kawakubo grapple with tumultuous world affairs, the choice of the colour was not necessarily to represent grief or mourning – instead, the Japanese designer said it captured the expansiveness of the creative process. ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ she said in a typically brief statement issued to the press. ‘It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the universe and the black hole.’ Indeed, the use of a single colour allowed Kawakubo’s typically provocative forms to come to the fore: this season, pillow-like constructions draped in semi-sheer black tulle, undulating pile-ups of shirred ruffles and tassels, or saucer-shaped protusions that looped around the upper body. Like any Comme collection, it was a Rorschach test – revelling in the unfamiliar, Kawakubo always challenges you to draw your own conclusions. Jack Moss

Balenciaga

Of all the creative directors at the nascent stages of new tenures, Pierpaolo Piccioli might have one of the steepest mountains to climb at Balenciaga. In the 16 years he spent at Valentino, prior to taking this new position in the spring of 2025, he demonstrated a Cristóbal Balenciaga-worthy approach to dressmaking that prioritised proportion and colour. But while Piccioli was sending out breathtaking confections of ballooning silk taffeta at Valentino, Balenciaga the brand was being injected with a new edge, at the hand of Vetements-founder Demna, whose zeitgeist-defining designs were laced with subversion and irony. How to bring the grandeur and romance that are Piccioli’s calling cards, without alienating the new demographic of customers who flocked to the brand under Demna?

For this season, his second collection, Piccioli pinned his hopes on a collaboration with Sam Levinson – the creator of Euphoria, the teen drama responsible for making internationally recognised stars out of its cast, which includes Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer. Audiences at the Balenciaga A/W 2026 show were treated to a preview of clips from the HBO show’s third series (airing publicly in April), which played on screens across the venue; its interplay of light and dark was found running through the collection, which Piccioli had titled ‘ClairObscur’. The collection itself was a largely black affair, in light-catching high-gloss fabrics, punctuated by the occasional neon-toned print that harkened to Euphoria's colour-saturated visual style. If Euphoria – boundary-pushing, youth-orientated, and ever so slightly contentious – feels more spiritually within Demna’s wheelhouse than Piccioli’s, the High Renaissance references (‘ClairObscur’ is a play on clair-obscur or chiaroscuro, the artistic style beloved by Mannerist painters, which manifests as dramatically contrasting tones to create intense depth) brought proceedings firmly back into Piccioli’s world. India Jarvis

READ: Balenciaga taps Euphoria’s Sam Levinson for A/W 2026

Jean Paul Gaultier

After the shock factor of his debut last season – one which divided both critics and online commentators with its barely-there silhouettes and trompe l’oeil prints of nude bodies – Dutch designer Duran Lantink seemed to hit his stride this season, using his eye for the surreal and the sculptural to create a disruptive cast of archetypes, from the raver to the cowboy. Marlene Dietrich (or, more specifically, a treasured mesh T-shirt printed with the filmstar that Lantink had found in a vintage shop) was one figure on the moodboard, inspiring the clever opening tailoring, which came with jutting folds and sculpted lapels, while also being printed on a dress installed with dry ice (a nod to her favoured vice – cigarettes). The designer said she was a master in subverting tropes: ‘dominant, sexy and graceful, the ultimate hybrid’ – a mood that informed the shape-shifting collection. Tailoring metamorphosed into tech-y sportswear, trompe-l’oeil bodysuits of artist’s dummies were overlaid with lingerie, and puffer jackets became bodysuits. ‘It’s a spirit that suits the house of Gaultier, a place where the world is perpetually turned upside down,’ said Lantink via press notes. ‘Feminine and masculine, inside out, vintage and new, underwear as outerwear, technical and tailored all at once.’ Jack Moss

Chanel

Matthieu Blazy said that his sophomore ready-to-wear collection began with a quote from house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. ‘Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.’ It seemed an apt description for Blazy’s own vision for Chanel thus far, one which elevates the quotidien through expressive acts of craft, and finds joy in both the functional and the glamorous. These are special clothes, no doubt (as anyone who has had the chance to see them up close can attest), though they are designed to be worn, not simply exalted. As such, he will no doubt be satisfied by the busy shop floors earlier this week as his debut collection landed (it was an ongoing fashion-week talking point), and more so to see those purchases worn by attendees to the show on Monday evening (and not just by the usual high-spending customers, but editors and stylists alike).

Staged amid a series of vast primary-coloured cranes – Blazy is, after all, still in the process of constructing his Chanel – the designer’s A/W 2026 collection was a brilliant and comprehensive exercise in wardrobing, which, to borrow Coco Chanel’s categorisation spanned the ‘caterpillar’ (roomy blazers, tweeds reformulated into lumberjack-style overshirts, simple jersey dresses), but also the ‘butterfly’. The latter came in an extraordinary stream of lustrous, colour-sturated looks at the end of the show, loaded with embellishment – appliqué flowers, lace and beads – and matched with models’ pastel-coloured or metallic hair. Over the 78 looks, there was a multitude of iterations of the Chanel woman, and the accessories to match (from gleaming metallic court shorts, to squashy crescent-shaped bags that recalled croissants). ‘Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ said Blazy. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’ Jack Moss

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière staged his A/W 2026 collection for Louis Vuitton amid a show set by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, seeing rolling green hills – like those found in pastoral landscapes – abstracted into a series of sharp, futuristic peaks. The collection itself had a similar rationale, drawing inspiration from nature – ‘mountains, forests, plains’, and the clothing traditionally used to live among such elemental landscapes – and reimagining them through a series of Ghesquière’s typically idiosyncratic, time-travelling silhouettes. The idea of expedition seemed a throughline – supersized-wide-shouldered jackets, shearling hats and furry-hooded duffel coats seemed primed for protection, while bags hung on leather staffs like bindles – though there was a ceremonial feel to garments, which recalled traditional rural dress (though, in Ghesquière style, they were mashed up in such a way that the references were hard to place). ‘It is not an escape from our realities, but an echo of them,’ said Ghesquière of the vivid collection, which also featured the ‘urban pastoral’ works of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. ‘[It is] a new folklore, for the future.’ Jack Moss

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada has long interrogated a woman’s place in the world: how they move through it, and a wardrobe that feels reflective of their needs. For A/W 2026, she was thinking about the ‘smallness of the body’ – not in its physical proportions, but in opposition with the vastness of the world around us. It feels like a response to our current era of overload: the runway at Palais d’Iéna was covered in a layer of soil and moss, a reminder that beyond the pomp and ceremony of luxury fashion, we are simply humans living in communion with the earth (as a seatmate commented, perhaps this was her instruction to ‘touch grass’). ‘I am obsessed with the smallness of the body – in a human sense, the contrast between ourselves, our bodies and the vastness of that which surrounds us,’ she said. ‘Who we are, and the scale and magnitude of what we have to face. This collection is not about fragility – there is a confidence, and a strength. But always about a confrontation between a human and the expansiveness of the world.’

As such, the collection segued between moments of strength and intimacy: for the former, enveloping trapper hats, hiking shoes and sporty shearling-lined parkas, for the latter, slip dresses, satin shoes and bejewelled embellishment. There felt something of the 1990s to it: not only in the more minimal looks, which intersected the middle of the show, but in that contrast between glamour and utility (a parka over a mini dress; a studded handbag; a block heel), and also the appearance of Chloë Sevigny, a longtime house muse who first walked for Miu Miu in 1996. She was joined by a coterie of ‘individuals’ on the runway, from models Gemma Ward and Kristen McMenamy to the actress Gillian Anderson, who closed the show. Jack Moss

READ: Miu Miu’s all-star cast for A/W 2026 featured Gillian Anderson and Chloë Sevigny

All change! So could be the motto of the S/S 2026 season, which heralded the arrival of 15 new creative directors at fashion’s major houses – from Dior to Chanel.

It led to a sweeping feeling of freshness and renewal that would define the season, one that Wallpaper* captures in a new series of images by photographer Nicole Maria Winkler and Wallpaper* fashion & creative director Jason Hughes.

S/S 2026’s standount looks in the fitting room

Originally featured in our March 2026 Style Issue, they capture model Valerija Kelava dressing up in a series of S/S 2026’s standout looks – whether the rising Belgian design Julie Kegels’ collaged layers (she said she wanted the collection to feel like it had a life of its own) or a sweeping white gown from Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior collection, delicately edged with flowers.

The setting is a surreal imagining of a fitting room by set designer Kim Harding, Winkler’s longtime collaborator. Within it, we explore the transformative power of a new season of looks. Keep scrolling to shop the story.

Model: Valerija Kelava at Oui Management. Casting: Esther Boiteux at EB Agency. Hair: Moe Mukai using Oribe. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at Saint Luke using Byredo. Set design: Kim Harding Studio. Digi tech: Anna-Sophia John. Photography assistants: Josh Rea, Elliot Humbles. Set design assistant: Austeja Gokaite. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Production assistant: Danielle Quigley.

A version of this story appears in the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + now. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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The Tuileries Gardens in Paris, first constructed by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564 and later renovated in 1664 by Louis XIV in its formal French style, has long proved fertile ground for the wandering flâneur seeking artistic inspiration and enlightenment – from Édouard Manet to Oscar Wilde; Claude Debussy to Victor Hugo.

And this afternoon, Jonathan Anderson – the Northern Irish designer and creative director of Dior – was the latest creative mind to be seduced by the gardens’ charms, using the Tuileries to stage his A/W 2026 womenswear collection for the Parisian powerhouse. In bright spring sunshine, the show set had been erected around one of the park’s lily-pad strewn ponds (here, those water-lilies were clever imitations); across its centre ran a contemporary imagining of the Tuileries’ tree-lined Grand Allée, a site of promenade since the gardens opened to the public in 1667.

A walk in the park: Dior A/W 2026 by Jonathan Anderson

Indeed, Anderson said this was a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’ in such public settings, a preoccupation of Louis XIV and the aristocracy of his reign. He also invoked the poet Charles Baudelaire, and his 1857 poem À une passante (To a Passer By), in which the narrator observes a mourning woman in a Paris flea market. Struck by what he sees as her innate nobility and ‘majestic’ grief in a ‘lightning flash’ of a moment before she disappears into the crowd, it would immortalise the figure of the flâneur – a detached but voracious observer of the changing city that critic Walter Benjamin said epitomised the modern 19th-century experience.

Anderson, who began the role as sole creative director of the house in June of last year, could also be deemed something of a flâneur: in one viral video posted to social media, he is captured by an anonymous observer wandering the banks of the Seine alone, smoking a cigarette, while recent Instagram posts have seen him capture quotidian moments observed while traversing his adopted city, like the stacks of love-heart padlocks attached onto the poles of a bridge, or the ducks which wander the Tuileries gardens. Though if a flâneur is someone who knows the city intimately (as Benjamin argued in The Arcades Project), Anderson was keen to assert that he retains an outsider’s eye.

‘I will always feel like a tourist in Paris,’ he told designer and podcaster Bella Freud in a conversation which aired before the show’s start. ‘But sometimes being a tourist is quite good, because you see the thing, you kind of edit.’ ‘I suppose it’s a way of finding the things that attach you to a city,’ she added, to his agreement. ‘Especially Paris, it's so grand, it's so composed.’

The idea of the pleasure garden – one which Anderson said also had very British connotations, too – lay at the root of the collection, the idea of dressing up to enter the thrum of city life (indeed, as he noted, in 1667, when the Tuileries opened, there were strict dress codes as to what you could wear inside). ‘A walk through the park becomes a performance,’ was the tagline to the A/W 2026 collection, conjuring a ‘panoply of Parisians... each dressed to play a part, whether mundane or spectacular.’

It made for a collection of eclectic elements; a modern riff on the 19th-century promenade. Several pieces found their roots in historical dress: ruffled Belle Époque gowns were abbreviated into mini skirts replete with bouncing trains (these millefeuilles of frills and ruffles returned throughout, including beneath a flared riff on the house’s Bar Jacket); regal brocade jackets came with peplum hems and rows of fabric-covered buttons; while a pair of dramatic lace gowns had a feeling of deconstruction, as if torn and destroyed by time (indeed, their edges were left frayed).

Others were a play on Parisian bourgeois tropes: scarves were slung across fabrics which mimicked heritage tweed, blazers were adorned with big gold buttons, and shearling jackets were reimagined with wiggly, wave-like hems. But there was a satisfying levity, too, even prettiness – flowers bloomed from dresses, jeans were adorned with crystals, and the polka dot became a defining motif. Even last season’s shrunken Bar Jacket was loosened up: here, an iteration of the Dior classic came in oversized proportions, and was worn with voluminous matching pants.

It felt like a designer gaining confidence in his position, one no doubt bolstered by the overwhelmingly positive critical reception to his first couture show in January. There, he favoured a similarly freewheeling approach: ‘I think the idea of designing things is to make people want something they didn’t want,’ he said at the time. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt at Dior, it’s just about putting ideas out [there].’

Anderson is a designer who has always excelled best when working intuitively and without restriction; here, the collection was created, from start to finish, in under a month. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ he said. ’Now I feel free to release it from that.’

Stay tuned to our live coverage from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026 here.