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

‘I wanted to do something else with my life. So we started the foundation to be about arts and crafts, and [to] show the importance of craftsmanship – things that are made with your hand, heart and brain. We have named our first presentation “The Only True Protest is Beauty”, a [line] from the activist Phil Ochs, who wrote [it] during the Vietnam War. It resonated with me. But we dropped the first part – “In such ugly times” – I think we are reminded enough,’ says Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten, who exited his eponymous label in 2024. ‘I hope the show helps you think about the importance of beauty.’

The scope and scale of the show, which animates the Palazzo Pisani Moretta – home of the recently opened Fondazione Dries Van Noten – is beguiling, emotionally rich and often mind-boggling. Amid the grand stucco reception rooms, chambers (one in which Joséphine de Beauharnais, Empress of the French, slept), and up to a dressing room fitted with chinoiserie marquetry cabinets, one embarks on an expedition into the most exquisite forms of craft.

Located on the Grand Canal, the palazzo, in all its rococo splendour, offers up a generous and very well-kept environment for Van Noten’s endeavour, which he founded with partner Patrick Vangheluwe on purchasing the palazzo from the Sammartini family in 2025. He worked with Geert Bruloot on the curatorship and with a cohort of young Venetian writers and designers on the texts and graphics. The interventions surprise and make you think at every turn – from the brutal salvaged-metal and dust sculpture by Peter Buggenhout The Blind Leading the Blind that looms at the entrance to a virtuoso theatrical chess set meticulously made in stone, gold beadwork and silk embroidery entitled Le Violiniste. The artist, 23-year-old Joseph Arzoumanov, integrated AI to programme a robotic arm that moves the pieces.

The exhibition is curated in chapters starting with ‘Light and Darkness’, featuring architectural silhouettes by Comme des Garçons and Christian Lacroix – the latter Van Noten’s dear friend, with whom he collaborated on an acclaimed joint S/S 2020 collection. The juxtaposition is emotional, with Rei Kawakubo’s bizarre masses facing Lacroix’s romanticism. Indeed, there are 14 Comme des Garçons designs and some incredible Lacroix gowns situated throughout. The artefacts tease in their boldness and in their intricacy, and one starts to question the push and pull of beauty, the fight for its making and the wonder in its realisation.

Giant portrait photos of sleeping youth, on street corners or in urban cityscapes, by Steven Shearer, create intense encounters, while microscopically beautiful ceramics, like the hybrid botanical forms by Kaori Kurihara in the ‘Nature Morte’ salon, embrace the wild corners of the imagination. ‘Bending Light’ is devoted to glasswork where original 18th-century carafes and goblets make friends with Murano-made wonky chandeliers by Alexander Kirkeby that suggest there’s delight in imperfection.

How is beauty created? Lionel Jadot makes sculptural forms from found wood, baskets and beads that are majestic despite the humble salvaged origins. ‘I use creativity to transform leftovers – I re-use and often don’t know where the piece is going,’ says the Belgian artist. Beauty often finds its expression in nature and in flora that will inevitably fade and droop. In the salon ‘Language of Flowers’ is the work of maker Lilla Tabasso. Her delicate glass sculptures of flowers and grass are ‘planted’ in earth chunks as if encountered on a rewilded patch. The pieces are offset by luminous geometric totems by Ettore Sottsass. There are vanitas motifs throughout, from skull jewellery by Venetian brand Codognato to a gilded porcelain ‘brain’ by Katsuyo Aoki.

The ‘True Protest’ in this show is profound, with Van Noten and Bruloort traversing myriad expressions to engage with mankind’s ongoing quest to capture the fleeting, transitory nature of beauty itself.

READ: Dries Van Noten on why he's building a new home for craft in Venice

‘The Only True Protest Is Beauty’ runs until 4 October 2026 at Fondazione Dries Van Noten, Venice, fondazionedriesvannoten.org

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

‘It was not like a pop group coming together and singing the same song. All six of them had different solo careers in mind,’ notes Geert Bruloot, one of three curators working on a new exhibition, opening at MoMu in Antwerp at the end of March, which will celebrate 40 years of the sextet of Belgian designers known as the Antwerp Six.

Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee all trained. at the fashion department of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in the early 1980s. Their differing approaches, aesthetics and career paths, as well their unique legacy as a group contextualised within a broader fashion history framework, makes for a fascinating, complicated and ultimately visually arresting tale.

The Antwerp Six at MoMu Antwerp

It’s a narrative that MoMu’s director Kaat Debo (and fellow curator alongside Romy Cockx) had wanted to unravel at the museum for some time; the Six and Martin Margiela, who graduated from the Royal Academy around the same time, put Belgian fashion on the international map. Debo says she is particularly grateful that all six designers gave the exhibition proposal their blessing while agreeing to in-depth interviews and offering access to their individual archives. Visitors can expect to see around 80 silhouettes in the show, alongside personal objects, sketches, ephemera and video; each designer has been involved in the way their own work will be presented. It is a major milestone: in the four decades since the group was given the Antwerp Six moniker, this is the first major survey of their work collectively

‘As the designers often say, the Antwerp Six is both a blessing and a curse,’ notes Debo. ‘They realise how influential the name and concept is, but it can be frustrating because, for 40 years, in every interview, there is always at least one question about the Antwerp Six – and it was never a brand. They never collaborated or made collections or campaigns together.’

Bruloot, who, with partner Eddy Michiels, opened Antwerp’s avant-garde shoe boutique Coccodrillo (the first to sell Margiela’s ‘Tabi’ split-toe boot) in 1983, as well as Louis, a store dedicated to Belgian fashion, in 1986, says the myth of the Six is particularly extraordinary given that after they left the Royal Academy, they were technically only the Six for around three years before establishing their own distinct careers.

The story begins with a journey that the designers took in a rented van to London to show their work at the 1986 British Designer Show at Olympia (only Demeulemeester did not travel; she was pregnant at the time). Instigated by Bruloot, it is now considered legendary: with their somewhat complicated- sounding names and then-radical designs, the group made flyers – Bruloot is convinced this was Yee’s idea – that read ‘Come See The Six Belgian Designers’ to encourage attention. It worked. Orders from Barney’s New York – the store every designer wanted to sell to at the time – were placed, and their group identity cemented, even if the details of who christened them the Antwerp Six remain sketchy.

One of the first exercises in bringing this exhibition to life was to assemble the designers together – a relatively rare occurrence – to explore their personal recollections and histories, none of which neatly aligned. ‘It had been quite a long time since they had all seen each other, but you could see the six students sitting at the table, teasing each other and sharing memories,’ says Debo. It seems particularly poignant given that, in November last year, Yee lost her battle with cancer.

Her enthusiasm for the exhibition remained undimmed, says Bruloot. ‘I had been working on it with her these past few years, even until a few days before she died. She was an extraordinary person, a very creative person. She could make fashion out of anything.’ An early adopter of upcycling and with a strong personal style, which is often considered to have inspired early Margiela collections, Yee’s career output ranged from theatre costume design to painting and collage alongside her sustainable ready-to-wear label, MY Collection, launched in 2021.

Despite their varying design vocabularies and career twists and turns – whether it was Bikkembergs’ canny coupling of fashion and sportswear, Van Saene’s experiments with art and sculpture, Demeulemeester’s darkly poetic aesthetic, Van Noten’s unique understanding of print and colour, or Van Beirendonck’s disruptively playful and political runway collections – the group’s legacy of individualism is in stark contrast to the current culture of high fashion as mainstream entertainment. Regardless of whether they still own their namesake brands, Bruloot says ‘they didn’t want to be part of the fashion jet set. Or to be linked to a big house. They wanted to remain free.’

The exhibition will consider how much fashion has changed over the past 40 years, as well as offering insights into the various factors that set the stage for the Six to flourish. The early 1980s were a particularly inspiring period in fashion internationally, including the rise of avant-garde Japanese design, such as Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons – Bruloot distinctly recalls members of the group driving to Paris to visit the brand’s early stores – alongside a thriving fashion scene in London, led by the likes of Vivienne Westwood and BodyMap.

Meanwhile, a growing community in Antwerp, centred around the likes of underground disco Cinderella’s Ballroom, stores including Van Saene’s Beauties & Heroes, and art galleries such as Wide White Space, reflected a shifting mindset among young creatives. Running in tandem were a series of government initiatives, including television campaigns, such as ‘Fashion, this is Belgium’; the Golden Spindle contest for emerging designers, judged by the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier; and funding that allowed members of the Six to visit Tokyo. ‘I think it was there they learned that fashion is more than making clothes,’ says Debo. ‘They learned that you have to create a world. And you have to present your world. If there’s one thing that binds all six of them, it’s that they have such strong signatures, which originated from gut feeling, not commercial strategies.’

Debo hopes the exhibition will be a catalyst to think about how to nurture new talent and consider what fashion is now. ‘Is it sort of marketing? Do we sell a name, a logo? What is the value of it?’ she says. ‘The Six did their own thing alongside these huge fashion groups of the 1990s. They showed how creative people can lift the reputation of an entire city and present it as a place for experimentation, innovation and connection. They are respected as artists, as creatives, but also as people who did it their own way.’

‘The Antwerp Six’ is on show from 28 March 2026- 17 January 2027 at MoMu, Antwerp, momu.be

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

When Wallpaper* interviewed Dries Van Noten in 2022 about his upcoming perfume line, he compared the scents to olives: ‘The first one makes you go, “Ooh, what is this?” But after that, you always like it. I think you have to learn to appreciate things, and sometimes you have to learn to appreciate my vision of beauty.’

And while he’s right that the unusual combinations of the Dries Van Noten scents –pomelo and leather; pepper and rose; liquorice and tobacco – make them distinctive, they hardly make them divisive. This is especially true of Soie Malaquais, which, since it launched as part of the core range of ten gender-neutral Dries Van Noten perfumes, has quickly cemented itself as the emblematic fragrance of the house.

Soie Malaquais is a blend of silk notes and chestnut that melds to the body like a second skin, with a slightly balsamic sweetness, warm cacao and a touch of rose. In the words of the nose behind it, Marie Salamagne, it ‘has a magnetic tension’ that draws people in and takes on new dimensions throughout the day – the kind of scent that, when you have it on, keeps you reflexively smelling your wrist from morning to night.

According to Salamagne, the key to Soie Malaquais' success is that it 'embodies everything that defines the Dries Van Noten universe: contrast, sophistication, and emotional depth. It brings together elements that don’t typically coexist – the warmth of chestnut, the luminosity of silky florals, the richness of dark notes – yet feels completely seamless.’

Now, Dries van Noten is celebrating Soie Malaquais with a series of sculptures and limited-edition bottles designed by Dutch ceramic artist Bouke de Vries. Based in London, de Vries is best known for transforming porcelain fragments into unified works, and his collaboration with Van Noten sees him apply that same process to the ceramic blue and white base of the original Soie Malaquais bottle.

‘It was really the blue and white of the bottle that my ideas were based on,’ says de Vries. ‘There is an obvious resonance with my work because of the use of blue and white ceramics. Working with fragrance was a way to add an extra, evocative dimension to a three-dimensional sculpture that was already an evolution of many two-dimensional patterns and, like a perfume, is built from different notes – [just like] my work.’

The new collection includes five one-of-a-kind bottles that see the Soie Malaquais porcelain base shattered and reconstituted as flowers, buttons, fans, and other shapes. De Vries has also created complementary sculptures of tulips and roses rising from shards of the same blue and white porcelain. While these creations are highly exclusive – only ten are in existence – a special edition Soie Malaquais with a gold-veined base is slightly more accessible, with 100 bottles available to purchase from Dries Van Noten boutiques.

For de Vries, the message behind all of these creations is the same: to transform what is broken into a treasure and, like Van Noten, find beauty in unexpected places. As the artist explains it himself, for this collaboration, he 'imagined the object in a suspended moment of drama, its ceramic shell shattered, while suggesting that fragments can be coaxed back into a form even more rare and singular than before'.

An installation by Bouke de Vries marking the collaboration is on view until 12 March 2026 at Dries Van Noten’s Galerie Quai Malaquais, Paris

Regular editions of Soie Malaquais are available from Dries Van Noten, £275 per 100ml

On 14 January, the first runway shows of the A/W 2026 menswear season take place at Florence’s Pitti Uomo, heralding the start of a fashion month that will also make stops in Milan and Paris in the coming weeks (the menswear fair’s guest designers Shinayakozuka and Hed Mayner both show on Pitti Uomo’s first evening). While the schedule is certainly quieter than the blockbuster womenswear shows in September – over 15 creative directors made their debuts at fashion’s major houses across the season – there will still be plenty of notable moments, including Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore menswear collection for Dior (it will be intriguing to see him hone his vision now he’s settled) and the swan song of Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe, who is leaving after a near-four-decade-long tenure.

In anticipation, ahead of the season’s start this evening, we asked the Wallpaper* style teams about the moments they are looking forward to this Men’s Fashion Month.

‘There will be plenty of standout moments across fashion month: I’m always excited to see what’s next at Prada, and Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore menswear show for Dior will no doubt be a highlight (it’s been exciting seeing his first collection end up in stores this month). But this season I’m going to relish the quieter moments, too: like Setchu in Milan, where Satoshi Kuwata – who is based locally but was born in Kyoto, Japan – will hold his second runway show on the city’s fashion schedule. His considered approach, which melds a background on Savile Row with design flourishes drawn from his native Japan, always makes for an intriguing show. As an aside, I loved his first-ever fragrances, launched late last year: named after times of the day, they reimagine his personal rituals as scents, from morning ‘genmaicha’ green tea to ‘Friday 2AM Tatami’, inspired by the scent of Japanese sleeping mats. I’ll be sure to be wearing mine on show day.’

‘After the near-overwhelming number of debuts at womenswear this past September, I am relishing the relative calm of menswear: the somewhat reduced schedule, particularly in Milan, means there is more time to digest what we are seeing (the various appointments and presentations also allow an opportunity to view things up close). As for the highlights, in Milan it will always be Prada: for me, there's not quite another show like it – the clarity of vision that Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have honed across their partnership has led to collections which again and again set the tone for the season ahead (and, thanks to OMA’s always-transporting show sets, they come with plenty of spectacle).

‘In Paris, I look forward – like Jason – to Jonathan Anderson’s second menswear show for Dior, which promises even more theatre, though I am also excited to see the latest offerings from Willy Chavarria (the American designer will continue to show in Paris this season), Kiko Kostadinov, IM Men and Rick Owens, all showing across the week. There will be a poignant goodbye, too: on Saturday (17 January), Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe, will step away from her role after almost four decades (I spent a memorable day in Paris interviewing her for the March 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*). Shifting the show to the evening spot, it will be a no-doubt fitting send-off for a record-breaking career (she is the longest-serving creative director of a fashion house) defined by both critical and commercial success. We’ll be raising a glass.’

‘This men’s season I’m most excited for Pitti Uomo, which I’m attending for Wallpaper* for the very first time. Kicking off fashion month, the biannual menswear fair is staged within Florence’s stately 14th-century Fortezza da Basso, where countless brands – including Herno, Caruso and Brunello Cucinelli – will present their collections. The latter hosted its famous dinner last night, and I was excited to witness the decadent spread first-hand.

‘As for the shows, Paris-based Hed Mayner is in the spotlight with the headline guest designer slot, staging his presentation in a midcentury building close to Santa Maria Novella station on Wednesday evening. His show will be followed by two rising Japanese talents: Shinya Kozuka, known for his painterly collections, and Soshi Otsuki, the winner of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers in 2025. A strong Japanese presence at the fair continues through tangential events during the week, including the first official Sebiro Sanpo (suit walk) in Italy organised with fabric mill Vitale Barberis Canonico. The event originates in Tokyo, a financial hub and home to Japan’s “salarymen”, and sees hundreds of suit lovers gather to walk the streets in their finest tailoring.

‘As for the rest of the men’s shows, I’m always excited to see what Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada have been dreaming up together. Their show takes place on Sunday (18 January) in Milan in the vast Deposito building adjoining the brand’s namesake foundation in Milan – a space they’ll no doubt transform once again into another surprising, imaginative world.’

‘The menswear shows typically have less striking beauty moments than their womenswear counterparts – bar a slew of more avant-garde designers, from Rick Owens to Junya Watanabe, which will hopefully lend some intrigue – though the fresh and clean complexions that will likely be seen on the majority of runways feel fitting for the early weeks of the year (Prada, Dries Van Noten and Hermès always do this well, drawing from their own beauty lines). As someone who wears plenty of menswear, I'll be looking at the fashion, too: Dries Van Noten is a favourite (I loved Julian Klausner’s first menswear show last season, and I’m sure this one will strike a similar balance of the romantic and real), while Kiko Kostadinov is always interesting – after a brilliant co-ed show off-schedule at his London studio late last year (inspired by his dog, Dante), I’m excited to see what he has in store.’

What, at its essence, is a fashion boutique? It’s a space for brands to present their wares, yes – but in today’s luxury landscape, that definition feels insufficient. The most influential brands now prioritise universe-building as much as they do merchandising. Customers aren’t purchasing a garment so much as an aesthetic worldview – and the boutique becomes a tangible expression of that vision.

In 2025, this idea crystallised into a full-scale revival of fashion retail. A series of brands unveiled high-concept stores that treated fashion, art and design as a whole. JW Anderson has restyled its stores as design-driven marketplaces offering not just clothing but ceramics and other crafted objects. Extreme Cashmere introduced a boutique where the clothing nearly disappears into a domestic setting. A series of smaller stores have also emerged: like Jake’s, the Saturday-only store which sees Jake Burt, one half of London-based label Stefan Cooke, sell an ever-changing roster of weekly one-offs designed by him and his friends (pastry chef and model Louis Thompson provides the cakes).

Here, we are focusing on the store design itself: from Stone Island’s experiments with cutting-edge tech to stores-turned-galleries, these were the retail concepts that defined 2025 in fashion.

Acne Studios, Tokyo

Acne Studios’ new three-level Aoyama flagship blends minimalist architecture with playful textures. Designed by co-founder Jonny Johansson and Halleroed, the glass-lined, garage-like space is clad in pink granite and filled with vibrant furnishings by the likes of Max Lamb and Benoit Lalloz. The store remains faithful to Acne Studios’ Scandi roots, but nods to Japan through details like candy-bright ceramics by Takuro Kuwata.

READ: Step inside Acne Studios’ pink-hued Tokyo flagship: ‘fashion is supposed to be fun’

Miu Miu, London 

Miu Miu’s revamped New Bond Street store feels clean and contemporary, defined by an industrial metal grid floor, crisp lighting and bold yellow-green display cases. Upstairs, warmer touches – parquet, plush rugs and a sculptural wooden ceiling – add softness. Crucially, this space is conceived as more than a boutique; it functions as a cultural and social hub.

READ: Inside Miu Miu’s ‘proudly modern and minimal’ new London store

Longchamp, New York

The showstopper at Longchamp’s revamped New York flagship is the vivid green steel-ribbon staircase. Thomas Heatherwick returned to reimagine his 2004 design, shifting focus from theatricality to a warm ‘Parisian apartment’ feel. An opened-up upper floor, green carpeting, vintage furniture and eclectic art create a refined but lived-in atmosphere.

READ: Thomas Heatherwick revamps his New York flagship for Longchamp – 20 years after he first designed it

Extreme Cashmere, Amsterdam

At Extreme Cashmere’s Amsterdam store, opened in April, the display of garments is almost secondary to creating a home-like spirit. Plush carpets, a stainless-steel kitchen block, a ‘cashmere spa’ washing machine and curated objects encourage intimate, relaxed interaction with the brand’s sizeless, genderless pieces, which are displayed market-style.

READ: Extreme Cashmere reimagines retail with its new Amsterdam store: ‘You want to take your shoes off and stay’

Dries Van Noten, London

In March, Dries Van Noten ushered in a new era under creative director Julian Klausner, following the founder’s 2024 departure. A new London store on Hanover Square followed, housed in a former bank. The two-floor space showcases fashion and beauty amid artworks by Hockney, Man Ray and Tracey Emin, plus eclectic furniture, design pieces and a vinyl corner.

READ: Dries Van Noten’s new London store is an eclectic, art-filled haven

JW Anderson, London

Jonathan Anderson is slowly but surely steering JW Anderson towards a lifestyle focus, with stores now mixing in art, ceramics and homewares – from Akiko Hirai pieces to Charles Rennie Mackintosh stools. Gallery-style displays spotlight works by Mary Stephenson, Gwen John, Christina Kimeze, Robert Kulicke and more, underscoring a growing curatorial slant. In December, a Pimlico Road store – designed by Sanchez Benton – continued to hone this vision, seeing fashion, art and interiors converge.

READ: JW Anderson’s new London store is an inviting emporium of fashion, art and homeware

Saint Laurent, Paris

Saint Laurent’s recently opened Avenue Montaigne boutique offers a museum-like experience. Across three levels, muted rooms showcase not just garments, but furniture by Süe & Mare, Paul Poiret, Jean-Michel Frank, Charlotte Perriand and Josef Hoffmann, as well as works from the Pinault Collection, including art by Mark Bradford.

Stone Island, New York

Stone Island boldly stepped into the future with its SoHo flagship, embodying CEO Robert Triefus’ refreshed vision. Designed by AMO, the two-storey space showcases the brand’s ‘lab’ ethos of material innovation, featuring charred cork, stainless steel and immersive digital screens. A subterranean lounge with a DJ booth and bar completes the experience.

READ: With exclusive merch and a secret lounge, Stone Island’s New York flagship is all about discovery

Loewe, Paris

Loewe’s first ‘Casa Loewe’ on Avenue Montaigne evokes an art collector’s home. Colourful ceramic tiles meet marble, brass and concrete, illuminated by abundant natural light. The space is furnished with pieces by Gerrit Rietveld, George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi, which sit alongside Loewe leatherwork, rugs inspired by John Allen and an eclectic art collection spanning Franz Erhard Walther to Domingos Tótora.

Dior, Shanghai

Christian de Portzamparc’s House of Dior boutique in Beijing is a freestanding, five-storey flagship wrapped in sculptural white resin ‘petals’ and golden glass panels. Not only does this lantern-like behemoth blend couture and architecture, it also incorporates lifestyle – home to a restaurant from Anne-Sophie Pic, OMA-designed displays, VIP salons and art-filled interiors alongside floors of fashion.

READ: Inside Christian de Portzamparc’s showstopping House of Dior Beijing: ‘sculptural, structural, alive’

The word ‘retirement’ does not sit well with Dries van Noten. It’s over a year since the designer stepped back from his his eponymous label – a 38–year tenure that put Belgian design squarely on the fashion map and made him one of the most influential members of the Antwerp Six. 'I got very nervous when people would say, "you’ll have more time for your garden now",' he says, looking exasperated. ‘The garden for me was always a very good balance with fashion – you know because fashion is fast, but in the garden, you’re slowing down.’

Quite the opposite of going quietly into retirement, Van Noten is plotting an ambitious new chapter. The 67-year-old designer has spent 2025 laying the groundwork for his new role as a cultural custodian, with the opening of his own foundation in Venice – a non-profit institution devoted to celebrating, sustaining, and platforming endangered crafts.

Earlier this year, when it was revealed that Van Noten and his partner, Patrick Vangheluwe, had purchased a 15th century Venetian palazzo from the Sammartini family, it was known that it would be used for cultural purposes (honouring the former owners’ wish not to see it turned into another luxury hotel). Today he formally announces its true purpose: the Fondazione Dries Van Noten, opening in April 2026.

Sitting in a beautifully patinated eggshell-blue room inside the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, reflections from the Grand Canal dancing across the frescoed ceiling, Van Noten tells Wallpaper* that he was drawn to Venice as a place that ‘is not just a weekend destination, but a living city… there’s a lot of young people coming back now to Venice, and something is bubbling here.’ It's this sense of continual creative renewal that he hopes to tap into.

In a city built on craft – and now host to global events such as Homo Faber, Venice Glass Week and the Venice Biennale – the Fondazione will present exhibitions, residencies, talks and cross-disciplinary projects spanning everything from food to fashion. For Van Noten, a third generation of a family of tailors, craftsmanship is not a narrow or nostalgic category. ‘Craftsmanship, for me, is a lot of different things. It’s things that you do with your hands, yes, but also with your soul… Some people express themselves with their hands, some with their voice; cooking, glass, jewellery, fashion – even music. For me, food and wine are also part of that creative freedom.’

He is equally keen that the programme looks ahead, rather than backwards. ‘We’re not living in the 18th century. 3D printing, AI – they can also be tools for creativity. I want to open it all up.’

Architect Alberto Torsello is working with Van Noten on the palazzo’s restoration – mostly interventions that visitors will never see. Venice’s planning laws are notoriously slow and meticulous, so dramatic alterations are neither possible nor desired. As Van Noten points out, ‘The Palazzo is unique because it was redecorated [in Rococò style] by Chiara Pisani in the 1730s, and everything is still intact – an incredible ensemble of craftsmanship of that period. The last thing we want to do is put our stamp on it.’

Instead, the Fondazione’s more visible experimentation will unfold at its second site, Studio San Polo – a gallery-like, industrial space redesigned by architect Giulia Foscari. It will host the first presentation in April 2026 while restoration begins at the palazzo. Details of the April opening are not yet announced, though Van Noten says it will introduce the full breadth of the Fondazione’s programme.

The idea for a foundation, Van Noten reveals, has been quietly brewing over the past decade, around the time he began looking for a buyer for his business (which he eventually sold to conglomerate Puig in 2018). ‘I always knew I wanted to do something else in my life – fashion is very full on, you can’t do anything else. I wanted to give back, to show people the beauty of craftsmanship. And maybe young people will want to learn it, continue it, appreciate it.’ Creating something for the future generations is a key driver for him; he remembers fondly his talks with fashion students at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp: ‘I hope they learned something from me, but the truth is I learned even more from them.’

If anything prepared him for this new role, it was his life in fashion – particularly curatorial projects such as the Inspirations exhibition he curated at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2015. It was there – where he brought together historical garments, Balenciaga pieces, artworks from Damien Hirst to Van Dyck, films, objects – that the breadth of his creative world became clear: ‘As a fashion designer you are surrounded by set designers, craftsmen, people working in music, lighting, decor. You’re spoiled – you can do so many different things.’

The timing of the Fondazione also overlaps with a cultural pivot toward slower, more elemental ways of living and making. Van Noten traces the shift through food. ‘Ten years ago, a good restaurant was three stars, twelve waiters, and a wine list of fifty pages. Now luxury is when the chef decides what you eat, natural wine, homegrown food. The same is happening with objects – beauty can be in everyday things, in a dish or a glass you use daily.’

It’s a sentiment echoed elsewhere in the industry – Scottish gallery Bard’s recent Bardware show being one example – and it underpins Van Noten’s wish to bring craft back to ground level. He wants the Fondazione to remove craft from the lofty pedestal and place it into people’s hands, showing that it can be woven into the fabric of everyday life.

And is this, ultimately, about legacy? Van Noten pauses. ‘Maybe yes, but that’s not the purpose. It’s not about my name on a building. I just felt too young to retire and work only in my garden – please don’t do that to me,’ he laughs. ‘I think I still can do something that makes sense. We can’t be too ambitious and say we’re going to change everything. But if we can help shift the mentality a little bit… that would be fantastic.’

As for fashion, he insists he doesn’t miss it. ‘Not really,’ he says, smiling. ‘The fashion, I think we had a lot of it. And I think we’ve found the perfect replacement.’

fondazionedriesvannoten.org

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, when it comes to fashion, the basics are the hardest to master. Chief among them: the white T-shirt.

The white tee is the quintessential element of the capsule wardrobe. It adapts to nearly any aesthetic: it can be dressed up or down, layered or worn solo, accessorised or left plain, and is a year-round essential, equally useful under shirts, jumpers and jackets when the temperature falls.

Wallpaper’s fashion and creative director Jason Hughes and fashion features editor Jack Moss are united in their devotion to the white tee. ‘It’s the foundation of almost every outfit I wear,’ says Jason, who is rarely seen without a flash of white peeking from beneath a sweater or shirt. For Jack, the white T-shirt is ‘probably the garment [he wears] most’, again, usually layered under a shirt or sweater. As for me, I favour a pared-back, Scandinavian aesthetic, for which the white tee is indispensable. Pair with low-rise jeans, tailored trousers, a silk skirt… the options are almost endless.

What makes the perfect white T-shirt?

This elusive garment avoids extremes: not too tight at the neck, shoulders or waist – but not tunic-loose. The sweet spot? A slightly dropped shoulder and a relaxed silhouette. As for length, aim for hip level – just long enough to flatter the form without skewing proportions.

‘Because a T-shirt is so simple, its shape really matters,’ says Jack, who gravitates toward looser, boxier fits, adding, ‘it has to have a high crew neck’. Loose and boxy is a good rule of thumb for women, too; a too-snug tee will bunch at the waist and pull at the hips. If you want a smooth silhouette, don’t be afraid to go oversized. Acne Studios, COS and Arket all do models that fit the bill.

The best white T-shirts are substantial but breathable, with a GSM which offers structure and longevity. Jason’s go-to is a heavyweight crew-neck from US utility brand Pro Club. Jack also leans toward heavier cottons, swearing by classics like Gildan and Fruit of the Loom, but lately he’s been enjoying Extreme Cashmere’s cotton-cashmere blend (‘it falls really nicely’, he says, thanks to the softness of the superfine knit).

The best white T-shirts, according to Wallpaper*

Classic white T-shirts

Cult white T-shirts

Luxury white T-shirts

Sustainably-minded white T-shirts

Everyday white T-shirts

The fashion industry is in a moment of historic change: over the course of the S/S 2026 season of shows, no fewer than 14 creative directors have presented their debut collections at some of the world’s best-known brands, a seismic shake-up which will no doubt reshape the style landscape for several years to come (add to that a number of sophomore collections from designers who debuted last season and you really do have a new chapter in fashion).

And, while there were a handful of debuts in New York and Milan, Paris saw opening gambits from some major players: most notably that of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, which took place yesterday evening, a debut that has had fervent anticipation since the former Bottega Veneta designer’s appointment was announced in December (he presented a joyous collection which looked towards Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s ideas of ‘modernity and freedom’). Elsewhere, Jonathan Anderson presented his first womenswear collection for Dior on Wednesday, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez debuted their vision for Loewe on Friday, and Pierpaolo Piccioli and Duran Lantink also made high-profile debuts at Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier respectively.

Here, in our round-up of the standout shows of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2026 – reported from the French capital – we unpack these debuts, alongside a slew of other runway shows that took place across the week, from the blockbuster (Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent) to the avant-garde (Junya Watanabe, Rick Owens).

Kiko Kostadinov

The closing Tuesday of Paris Fashion Week had just a handful of shows from designers who work on a smaller scale – a welcome gear-shift after the sensory overload of a week of blockbuster debuts and fervent online chatter. In an all-white gallery on the sunlit upper floor of the Palais de Tokyo, sisters Laura and Deanna Fanning presented their latest collection for Kiko Kostadinov, a London-based label which has established a close-knit community of followers (many were in attendance today). Known for an avant-garde approach to pattern-cutting and colour combinations – garments have an almost futurist feel – this season the Australian sisters, who helm the brand’s womens line said they wanted to ‘look inwards’.‘ ‘It is not just the clothes we made that matter, but how we made them,’ they said. ‘[We wanted to] return to the practices that defined our beginnings in fashion: [an] exploration of material, composition, proportion, and construction.’

As such, the collection took on a feeling of experimentation and collage, with elements that recalled traditional quilting, folk attire and workwear mixed up in the sisters’ typically offbeat style, while a series of bold three-dimensional chestpieces were more sculpture than clothing. One inspiration was the work of American artist Christina Ramberg and her female figures, ‘hulking bodies with stiff brassieres, jagged corsetry, and backcombed bangs,’ as they described, having been struck by her work on a recent trip to Berlin. ‘We push ourselves to design audaciously, think dynamically and abstractly,’ they said. ‘Even in the most uncertain times, we strive to find a silver lining: a freedom of body and mind.’

Chanel

It was the most anticipated moment of fashion month, the subject of fervent speculation and hearsay, a noise which was momentarily hushed yesterday evening as guests walked into the Grand Palais for Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut. Inside, the French-Belgian designer had conjured a solar system: a series of enormous glowing planets hung from the ceiling, while a black runway recalled the boundless stretch of the universe. In its scale, it recalled the show sets of Karl Lagerfeld, a statement from Blazy – who previously was at Bottega Veneta – that despite the weight of this debut, he wasn’t afraid of going big. In fact, as he told Business of Fashion prior to the show, he saw this as a one-time shot: how many times do you get to debut with Chanel? ‘We can go two ways. Either we do a clean, modern, by the codes, by the book Chanel show, and it’s a first step. Or we do this show as if it were our last,’ he said. ‘I took the last option. Let’s do a show as if it was the last one.’

Inspired by the feeling of ‘modernity and freedom’ which infused house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s designs, the show began with a men’s suit and shirt – the jacket a recreation of Blazy’s own blazer (‘I only changed the buttons and added a chain’), the shirt made by Parisian shirtmaker Charvet, in a rare collaboration. He had become fascinated with the couturier’s relationship with the English polo player Boy Capel, who Blazy called her ‘most significant other’ – here, he imagined Gabrielle Chanel wearing Capel’s clothing, something she purportedly did. The latter two chapters of the show were more expressive, and recalled the experimentations with materiality Blazy excelled at during his time at Bottega Veneta: tweed jackets were cleverly manipulated to appear as if they were frayed at their edges (’the worn familiarity of the truly chic, items feel passed down and utilised’), while gowns bloomed with appliqué flowers or dramatic flourishes of feathers, like that worn by the model Awar Odhiang.

Indeed, the Ethiopia-born, Canadian model seemed to encapsulate the collection’s joyous mood: at the end of the show, she twirled across the runway as the sounds Snap’s ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ boomed over the speakers. A grinning Blazy joined her for his final bow. ‘I just wanted to have fun,’ he said backstage. ‘Something beautiful and enjoyable – [that’s] what we have to propose in fashion.’ Jack Moss

Thom Browne

You’ve probably wondered what aliens might be like if they arrived on earth. If you asked Thom Browne, he’d say they’d wear 7-inch platform heels and have glittering green heads. Presented yesterday on the final day of the S/S 2026 season, the designer’s playful show offered a much-needed injection of fun to tired editors, staging a campy alien invasion in the centre of Paris. Starting off with silver extraterrestrial characters who handed out cards that read ‘We come in peace’, the collection that followed was soundtracked by ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ by The Carpenters.

The clothes themselves saw an over-the-top layering of Thom Browne signatures: assertive sport coats with shoulders twisted forward into sculptural shapes, drop-waist pleated skirts, and shrunken cricket sweaters cropped high on the torso. Bright, preppy palettes and stripes collided with sequinned tulle, while patchwork tweeds and flashes of metallic hardware shimmered ‘like signals from another planet’. It was both surreal and expertly tailored – as Browne’s wardrobe always is – a cosmic collision of classic Americana and otherworldly fantasy. As our fashion features editor Jack Moss noted, ‘it was impossible not to raise a smile.’ Orla Brennan

Miu Miu

In the mid-1980s, the German photographer Helga Paris spent time at a clothing factory in East Berlin, documenting its female workers in a series of black-and-white portraits. In the images, almost every woman wears an apron, or tabard; despite their function, they remain decorated with markers of femininity, from flowers and polka dots to ruffle trims. Paris’ photographs – as well as those of Dorothea Lange of women at work – provided the starting point of Miu Miu’s latest collection. Miuccia Prada said she had been thinking about ‘the importance of work. Its significance, its relevance and meaning.’ ‘We in fashion always talk about glamour or rich people, but we have to recognise that life is also very difficult,’ she said backstage. ‘And to me the apron contains the real difficult life and pain women in history, from factories to the home.’

Watched on by guests perched on rows of Formica tables in place of chairs or benches – they suggested the kitchen, or perhaps a worker’s canteen – this consideration of a woman at work led her to the apron, a garment writ with connotations. Versions spanned the resolutely utilitarian (like that in canvas, worn by actress Sandra Hüller to open the show), to the vaguely fetishistic (iterations came in leather or black taffeta, with French Maid-like ruffles), to those featuring floral prints, recalling cleaners and kitchen staff. A series of bejewelled versions, meanwhile, exalted and transformed the garment. ‘The apron is my favourite piece of clothing in general,’ said Mrs Prada backstage, which is no surprise. The uniform has always been a fascination for this designer: here, in this latest study, it was valorised – a recognition, said the designer, of the oftentimes invisible weight of women’s work. Jack Moss

Sacai

In the summer, Chitose Abe found a new home for Sacai – a brightly lit studio space in the 6th arrondissement, where Nicolas Ghesquière was based during his fabled tenure at Balenciaga in the 2000s. Sparking ideas of home and what it means to stay – and indeed, to leave – a place, her S/S 2026 collection arrived yesterday against ‘a backdrop of changing tides in fashion’ (the designer showed on the final day of a season of never-before-seen house-hopping, and the morning of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut). Away from the noise of it all, she turned her attention to ‘what is undeniably and irrefutably Sacai.’

A storyline of the brand’s signature hybridisations unfolded in tailored looks of beautifully exaggerated proportions, moving from formal black and white to shades that recalled the explosion of spring – earthy greens and pink florals. Taking the simple act of ‘up-turning’ garments to extremes, sculptural silhouettes emerged from cargo pant legs folded into voluminous skirts and tank tops turned up to form blouses; while elsewhere, ideas of falling and unravelling appeared in fringed tweeds and hoodies that morphed into ruffled dresses. Beautiful and quintessentially Sacai, it was, said the show notes, the designer’s ‘boldest expression of her vision’. With it, she seemed to say: I’m not going anywhere. Orla Brennan

Chloé

Gaby Aghion founded Chloé in 1952 as an antithesis to the unrestrained luxury of couture, finding its exclusivity out of step with the contemporary woman. ‘A thing of beauty and quality should be seen on women in the streets,’ she famously once said. At the risk of going against the principles of the house’s founder, Chemena Kamali’s S/S 2026 collection looked to the world of couture for inspiration, parsing its meticulous craftsmanship through the brand’s effortless, liberated codes. ‘I liked the idea of going back to what Gaby Aghion rejected without betraying the original DNA of the house,’ she said. ‘I wanted to explore what the idea of couture could mean in the Chloé context.’

Shown at the UNESCO headquarters, Kamali’s collection found its starting point in the first collections Aghion presented for Chloé nearly 70 years ago at Café Flore and Brasserie Lipp – silhouettes that drew on the resplendent femininity of couture without the formality of boning, padding or ornate decoration. Employing a similar sense of lightness, Kamali’s clothes took on an instinctive volume and movement, transforming humble fabrics like cotton poplin into elegant silhouettes through pleating, knotting and drapery. Breaking from the soft neutral palette associated with Chloé, bright florals plucked from the house’s archives brought an enlivened spirit to the collection, which translated the grandeur of couture into a wardrobe that, as Aghion would have it, one could imagine on real women in the street. The setting – a postmodern building that serves the public – was, said the designer, intentional: ‘UNESCO is a place that stands for open dialogue and exchange, freedom and openness,’ she said. ‘A place that honours creativity in all its forms.’ Orla Brennan

Jean Paul Gaultier

The buzzy Dutch Duran Lantink has made a name with collections which take the archetypal elements of a wardrobe and exaggerate their proportions to surreal effect. It made his eponymous label – currently on pause – one of Paris’ most talked-about, and indeed critically lauded, labels, the winner of the Karl Lagerfeld award at the 2024 LVMH Prize (though not without some controversy: a pair of bouncing fake breasts worn by a male model at his A/W 2025 show proved divisive).

For his debut collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, held in the bunker-like basement of the Musée du Quai Branly on Sunday afternoon, Lantink brought this playful approach to the Gaultier archive, undertaking what he called a ‘Duranification’ of the house and its signatures. The conical bra was exaggerated into cushion-like protrusions which jutted outwards from the body; the sailor’s hat was blown up to become a hem of a top, while trompe l’oeil prints gave the illusion that the model was completely nude.

Lantink said he had been inspired by the younger Jean Paul Gaultier ‘Junior’ line, which ran from 1988-1994, and – while generally eschewing the moodboard in favour of working intuitively – photographs from Amsterdam nightclub RoXY taken by Cleo Camper in 1988, a nightspot Gaultier himself had attended. ‘RoXY was sweaty, debaucherous, anarchic, stylish in the most careless way,’ said Duran – an apt description of the collection itself, which in its bold, unapologetic vision felt like a welcome jolt to the system. An emotional Gaultier, himself a master of the shock factor, seemed to approve. Jack Moss

Valentino

The show set for Alessandro Michele’s latest Valentino show was, by the designer’s standards at least, relatively minimal. Centred around a square-shaped black runway, interest came from a series of lights which whizzed and swirled across the ceiling – a symbolic representation of a swarm of fireflies, the glowing insect from which this S/S 2026 collection took its name. A voiceover at the start of the show explained their relevance: Michele had begun this collection by looking towards a 1941 letter sent by Pier Paolo Pasolini to a childhood friend in which he talks about the magic of seeing fireflies in the forest. ‘We envied them because they loved each other, because they longed for each other through amorous flights and lights,’ it read. For Michele, as the voiceover (read by Pamela Anderson) continued, these ‘erratic luminescences bursting with life’ represented ‘the ability to resist the darkest night’ – namely, the rise of fascism and the onset of World War II.

Such an evocation was a clear allusion to our current tremulous era of political discontent, which Michele likened to an onset of ‘darkness’. He said that fashion is an unlikely but ‘precious ally’ in such moments – a reminder of ‘beauty that resists standardisation’, something resolutely human that connects us to the body. Clothing this season was a little more stripped back than the past two collections for the house, though still came with gestures of glamour: voluminous blouses were worn with gathered velvet skirts, sinuous gowns came in bold jewel tones or were sheer and adorned with crystals, while the bow continued to be a motif, appearing on the necks of blouses or the hem of a skirt. At the end of the show, the colourful coterie of models gathered on the runway, gazing upwards to the swirling lights above – it made for a cinematic tableau, a reminder of Michele’s ability to draw emotion with his runway shows, which are always directed with a showman’s flourish. Jack Moss

Akris

American abstract art is having a moment at Paris Fashion Week. For their Loewe debut, duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez drew upon the work of Ellsworth Kelly, using a 1989 masterpiece by the artist as a symbol of the ‘optimism and spirit’ they hope to bring to the Spanish house. Yesterday, in the Grand Verrièr space at the Palais de Tokyo, designer Albert Kriemler looked to the work of Oklahoma-born Leon Polk Smith for his latest Akris collection, using the vivid, hard-edged style of Smith’s paintings as a starting point for a collection rooted in ‘sensuality and intuition’. Unlike McCollough and Hernandez, however, Kriemler is no stranger to the brand he leads – the Swiss designer took over duties at Akris from his parents in 1980 (the brand was founded by his grandmother over a century ago, in 1922).

Kriemler first encountered Smith’s painting ‘Seven Involvements in One’ at Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich in 2023, describing the work as a ‘free-standing object full of pulse and offbeat bravado’. Beyond the obvious parallels in the collection’s bright colour palette, Kriemler says he was most inspired by the idea of paring clothes back to their essence. As such, classically elegant shirting and sweeping skirts appeared in shades of red, orange and yellow, while structure emerged through the properties of the materials themselves: trapezoid gowns crafted from embroidered couture-level fabrications, draped fringe knits, sharp cotton suiting and horsehair accessories. ‘Smith once said he thought of his work as the opposite of minimal,’ said the designer. ‘I can relate to that. [Akris] is not about looking minimal; it’s about being essential. It's about using form and fabric to bring a person to light.’ Orla Brennan

Celine

‘I thought it would be nice on a Sunday if we get out of the city and to a park,’ said the American designer Michael Rider of his decision to show in Parc de Saint-Cloud, a bucolic estate just outside of Paris which was once the grounds of chateau owned by Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (the building no longer remains, having been bombed during the Franco-Prussian War). The journey was worth it: here, in the fresh midday air, Rider presented a collection of clarity and focus, which he said was a ‘continuation’ of his debut for the house, a resort show held this past July during Haute Couture Week. With that collection, he cleverly synthesised elements of Hedi Slimane and Phoebe Philo’s tenures at the house (he previously worked there under the latter), with his own vision of French style – a little preppy, modern but timeless (his previous role at Polo Ralph Lauren was also an influence). ‘[I] did not want there to be a sense of erasure. There was a foundation to build on. That to me felt modern, it felt ethical, it felt strong,’ he said at the time.

Here, for men and women, the idea of a full wardrobe continued: there was brilliant tailoring, widened at the shoulder and long in the body (iterations came in bourgeois navy blazers and tuxedo jackets), volumnious trench coats with colourful foulard-print linings, and dresses which shifted between flared minis in 1960s floral prints, and billowing twisted gowns, the latter a pitch to the Philo woman. Elements of preppiness continued, like colour-blocked silk rugby shirts for men (though could equally be shared by women), or crisp white shirts and chinos. Trousers were cut both baggy and wide, or super-skinny (a nod, perhaps, to Slimane’s most well-known silhouette). In another designer’s hands, this kind of wide-ranging collection could fall flat, but Rider already seems to have honed in on what makes a shopper tick. ‘We were thinking about what Celine is and what it isn’t,’ he said. ‘About things that last, and things that are just a moment. And about how clothes, shoes, and all of it become a part of the memories we make wearing them.’ Jack Moss

Balenciaga

At Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli established himself as one of fashion’s best-loved designers with straight-from-the-heart collections, defined by an expressive use of colour and a generosity of silhouette. No wonder, then, that his first show for Balenciaga last night – taking the reins of the Parisian house from Demna – was titled ‘Heartbeat.’ Teased with a show invite in the form of a cassette tape which played the sound of a beating heart, the mood at the Kering HQ on Rue de Sevres was buoyant, with a starry front row of longtime muses, including Anne Hathaway, as well as some newer fans gathered to witness his debut (notably, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, in a rare public appearance).

Though there were no signs of nerves here: instead, the confident opening outing was an exercise in form and silhouette, with Piccioli translating archetypal Balenciaga couture garments – in particular, the trapeze-like line of the 1957 ‘Sack Dress’ – into resolutely modern pieces nonetheless infused with the mood of romance which has run through Piccioli’s oeuvre. The latter was expressed in moments of embellishment, whether the blooming floral appliqué across a hooded jacket, or flourishes of tassels and feathers. Colour was typically vivid, though a series of pieces in black leather – and the bug-eyed sunglasses worn throughout – felt a nod to the moodier aesthetic of his subversive predecessor (and a bid, no doubt, to retain that customer).

It ended with a standing ovation: this was another heartfelt collection from Piccioli – it’s the only way he knows how. ‘For every heartbeat there is a name, a moment, a gesture,’ he wrote in a letter distributed at the show. ‘This collection comes from that place of love and connection. It is as much mine as it is of those who lived it with me – in every way.’ Jack Moss

Vivienne Westwood

In 1998, Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler released a scent created in collaboration with master perfumer Martin Gras. Inspired by the heavy, antique perfumes of Versailles, the couple named it Boudoir. Shown in the Ikebana room of L’Institut de France, Kronthaler’s S/S 2026 collection for the house shared the same name. ‘It’s all about a private, secret space without non-stop distraction,’ he said after the show. ‘It’s this space where you are nearest to yourself, where truth lies.’

The collection that followed made for a particularly sensual display from the eccentric Austrian designer, who has designed in Westwood’s memory since her passing in 2021. Starting by looking at designs of decadent antique bedroom drapes, this season an attention to fabrics recalled the deep romance of Italy – where Kronthaler spent much of the summer – mixing the brand’s cult patterns with brocade lace you’d find in typical Italian markets, embroideries left in drawers of Sicilian villas, and punched leather that appeared worn and ‘lived in’.

Silhouettes, meanwhile, were typically esoteric: waist-cinching bodices, bunched and chaotically draped hemlines, and off-kilter tailoring rooted in Westwood’s subversive codes. It was a love letter to Milan, where the designer lives; to London, the brand’s spiritual home; and to Paris, where Westwood had long presented its shows. Kronthaler’s final message came through the show’s soundtrack. ‘We are living in a world of great change; therefore, I’ve chosen the last movement of Jupiter by Mozart as the music,’ he said. ‘It’s a sound that foresees the future in the most hopeful way.‘ Orla Brennan

Junya Watanabe

Set to a soundtrack configured by Brian Eno, Junya Watanabe’s S/S 2026 display felt more like a piece of theatre than a runway show. Models moved down the runway showing cards that explained their looks to the audience – designs that weren’t ordinary clothes, but that used ordinary clothes to shape their surreal forms. Piles of red high heels made the shoulders of a black cascading gown, layers of shirts on hangers formed a tent-like dress that looked like the model had tumbled through a dry cleaner, and a series of black looks that closed the show used wire and soft inky jersey to create villainous silhouettes that clung and jutted from the body in geometric forms. As ever, it was a display that pushed the boundaries of what clothing can be, offering a moment to revel in Watanabe’s unbridled imagination amid a packed day of shows in the French capital. ‘I took a different approach to making clothes than before,’ said the designer in a statement. ‘By treating ready-made items – objects originally intended for specific purposes – as materials, I recontextualised them and explored forms that could never be achieved through conventional methods.’ It was, as the designer intended, ‘extraordinary art born from the everyday.’ Orla Brennan

Maison Margiela

In 1989, Martin Margiela hosted his S/S 1999 show in a derelict playground on the outskirts of Paris. Local children designed the invitations in crayon and marker; when the show began, they ran around models' feet or crouched, watching on from the front row. Back then, it was a revolution: far away from Paris’ gilded salons and ballrooms, it stripped away the artifice of the 1980s and altered what a fashion show could be. ‘I always thought fashion was a bit superficial, but this show changed everything for me,’ said Raf Simons, one of the several notable people who gathered that evening.

For his first ready-to-wear collection for Maison Margiela – Martin Margiela’s eponymous house, which he exited in 2009 – the Belgian creative director Glenn Martens seemed to have the 1989 show on his mind. Presenting at the Centquatre-Paris cultural centre in the north of the city, where he showed his debut Artisanal show for the house earlier this year, Martens drafted an orchestra of local children from Romilly-sur-Seine to provide a live soundtrack. Clad in Margiela suits in sizes too big, the miniature musicians (who prompted smiles from even the stoniest of the fashion crowd) proceeded on a whistlestop tour through classical music’s radio greats – from Mozart’s to Symphonie N°40 to Strauss’ Le Beau Danube bleu. While it might be hard to replicate the energy of that initial show, the happily unpolished performance captured some of the house’s DIY spirit.

The collection itself was a selection of ‘concepts and proposals for real life’ which drew heavily on the Maison Margiela archive. Models’ lips were pulled open with contraptions that gave the illusion that their mouths had been stitched open at each corner – a nod to the house’s signature branding – wearing a collection of deconstructed glamour, which largely drew on, and warped, tropes of eveningwear. Tuxedo jackets were worn with torn shirts beneath; a column gown was remade in leather, and the scooped line of a waistcoat informed the cut of the collection’s outerwear. Elsewhere, dresses were pieced together from an energetic collage of fabrics, from sequins to jewellery-like appliqué, while the collection’s closing gown looked to have been wrapped in red plastic bags – a typically Margiela flourish. Jack Moss

Hermès

Horseriding is part of the Hermès DNA, something that Nadège Vanhée embraced for her S/S 2026 outing for the house. Staged on a sand-covered runway, its surface strewn with tiny shards of shells, she said that this season’s collection had begun with an antique Camargue saddle she had discovered in the house’s archive. The famous white horses of Camargue, located in southern France, are known for living wild in herds on the marshes of the region, an unusually harsh environment for the animal which has made them a local attraction. Vanhée sought to channel this wild spirit with a collection she titled ‘Free Rein’, using the saddle’s construction to inform the silhouettes of the collection, while bra tops took their cue from harnesses. There was a bohemian inflection to looks here – Vanhée called Camargue France’s ‘Wild West’ – which came in the Hermès silk carré, twisted around the neck or becoming a ‘makeshift top’, as well as buckles, criss-crossing fastenings and traditional ‘boutis’ needlework. As ever, accessories were particularly seductive, from the practical – a brilliant riding boot with chevron quilting – to the tiniest of crescent-shaped handbags, with just enough room for a lipstick and house keys. Jack Moss

Alaïa

This season, Pieter Mulier was thinking about the rituals of uniform. Not the stiffness of army gear or the naivety of school dresses, but the idea of ‘clothes as machines for living’. As such, the collection he presented (shown as part of the official calendar, rather than during couture week) saw a sharpening of the wardrobe that has become a cult favourite – a uniform of its own sorts – to women around the world since he took over the house in 2021.

‘Reduced, sculptural’ and ‘precise’, it drew upon the essential glamour of the house’s namesake in a series of looks rendered with inventive attention to craft. Playing with extremes of luxury and simplicity, bold shades of humble cotton mixed with textures of python, leather, and silk, cut in womanly silhouettes that ergonomically wrapped around the body in shapes prioritising freedom of function. Amid these looks, which Mulier described as ‘uncompromising’, flourishes of decorative beauty appeared through intricate textures of macramé feathers, knitted pearls, and the movement of fringe. Accessories – a strong category for the house – were all sharp lines, from pointed chunky stilettos to skinny rectangular snakeskin-embossed handbags.

Shown at the Cartier Foundation on a digital screen floor that played footage of his model muses – reflected onto a mirrored ceiling – the clothes, as ever, displayed Mulier’s attention to what women want to wear, and his understanding of how his designs make them feel. As he wrote in the show’s notes, ‘there is a sense, always, of the woman’s body within – moving, alive’. Orla Brennan

Givenchy

Backstage after her sophomore show for Givenchy, creative director Sarah Burton said that for women, power dressing doesn’t always have to mean wearing a suit (although, in this confident second outing, there was plenty of brilliant tailoring, one of the former McQueen designer’s strengths). Why, she questioned, does power in fashion always have to be figured through traditionally menswear garments? Instead, she looked to find strength in what a note on attendees’ seats called ‘feminine archetypes’ – there were bra tops and bodysuits emblazoned with pearls, frilled mini dresses which flared out like tutus, and bold flourishes of jewellery, like a twisted metal and crystal bodysuit worn by model Vittoria Cerretti in a rare runway outing (Naomi Campbell, a longtime Sarah Burton muse, also walked the show, as did Kaia Gerber).

‘It started by peeling back the structure of tailoring to reveal skin and a sense of lightness and ease – and then exploring the female vocabulary of dress and undress,’ she explained. As such, other garments had a feeling of intuition – the designer said she was thinking about the idea of a woman taking a piece of fabric and wrapping it around her body – like a ‘bedsheet gown’ in rose-stitch satin, held closed by the model across the chest, or nets of tulle which appeared thrown on. Free of the weight of her debut, this expressive collection showed a designer now in full flow – a feeling of liberation which was felt in the clothes. Jack Moss

Victoria Beckham

Looking back at pictures of herself as a teenager, this season Victoria Beckham was thinking about how, ‘as we transition from girls into women, we search for our voice not only verbally but visually, too’. Choosing to show in the 17th-century Val-de-Grâce church in the center of Paris yesterday evening, her S/S 2026 collection was a love letter to the ‘coming-of-age wardrobe’ – the naïve fantasies, compositions, and accidents that shape how we learn to express ourselves through clothes.

The rewatching cult rite-of-passage films Romeo and Juliet and The Virgin Suicides led to a storyline of feathers that opened the show, which plumed from inky black scoop-necked minidresses and crisp white tank tops worn with tuxedo suit trousers. These looks moved to sprayed jersey top and dresses, which nodded to the girly glamour of Beckham’s own youth, while pastel negligees, camisoles and slip skirts in silky pinks and organza florals unmistakably evoked the wardrobes of Sofia Coppola’s Lisbon sisters. The youthful spontaneity of these looks were grounded in Beckham’s sharp, contemporary silhouettes – especially in her tailoring, which this season came in shades of Herringbone cotton that nodded to inherited pieces and tailored trousers suspended from georgette basques, winking at the teenage accident of tucking your top into tights.

Adolescence may have been the theme but Beckham’s wardrobe was still grown up, restrained and desirable in the way her clothes always are. The collection, said the show’s notes, was designed from the perspective of a mother to a teenage daughter, a celebration of ‘the pure joy of dressing inherent to the exceptional stage of girlhood.’ Orla Brennan

Issey Miyake

Recent seasons have seen Satoshi Kondo push the boundaries of what clothing can be. His experiments continued for S/S 2026, asking the question: ‘What if garments are conscious?’. As such, polo shirts and hoodies crept up the neck in strange, sculptural forms, like the model was in a perpetual shrug, while trousers and tops were inset with bulging pockets (through the semi-sheer fabric, you could see objects like pens and stacks of plastic mugs lurking inside). Other garments seemed to grow with extra sleeves, or were printed with slogans like ‘I am autonomous’ and ‘I am animated’, while bold expressions of print and texture – from tropical motifs to dresses adorned with leaf-like fronds of fabric – added a feeling of collage. It made for an enlivening, mood-elevating collection and continued a brilliant run from Kondo, who is readily embracing the house founder’s spirit of innovation and play. But more cleverly, it was also desirable: in amongst the more expressive pieces were his riffs on the everyday, from slouchy twisted shirting to layered dresses with stretch – you could see anyone in the Pompidou Centre showspace being seduced by them. Jack Moss

Loewe

The entrance to Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s debut show for Loewe, held in a specially constructed box in the grounds of Paris’ Parc Cité Internationale Universitaire on Friday morning, was hung with a 1989 work by Ellsworth Kelly. That work, Yellow Panel with Red Curve, and indeed the American artist’s wider oeuvre, provided what the pair called a ‘visual language’ with which to approach their tenure at the Spanish house (they take over from Jonathan Anderson, who is now at Loewe, having left Proenza Schouler, their own New York-based label founded in 2002).

‘Reduced, sometimes sculptural forms and elemental colour,’ is how they described both Kelly’s work and their own S/S 2026 collection, which was defined by graphic silhouettes and a bold use of colour – like a series of brightly hued hourglass mini dresses in moulded leather, Loewe’s signature material. Elsewhere, wardrobe staples were approached with what they called a ‘sensuality and fervour’ – from slouchy polos and windbreakers, to a cleverly textured fabric which gave the illusion of frayed denim.

‘[In Yellow Panel with Red Curve] lies a vibrancy and tactility that feels fundamental to the house,’ said the pair. ‘A chromatic intensity and sensuality that feels inherent to its Spanish roots, and ultimately an optimism and spirit that we deeply identify with. Hung within the show space, it operates as a starting point, a prelude of sorts, to what lies ahead.’ Jack Moss

Schiaparelli

When Daniel Roseberry presented his first ready-to-wear collection for Schiaparelli two years ago, the designer wrote in his S/S 2026 show notes, he would often hear, ‘This is ready-to-wear? I thought I was looking at couture.’ Once unsure what to make of such critiques, he now sees things differently. ‘What felt like a liability now feels like a strength. Why can’t fashion – even everyday fashion – be art?’ As such, his latest collection, shown last night at the Pompidou Centre, possessed all the unrestrained glamour and spectacle one might expect during couture week.

The designer looked to the house’s namesake Elsa for inspiration, exploring her love of ‘unexpected frictions’ in exaggerated-shouldered jackets cut with ‘tailleur rigour’, and texturally expressive gowns that captured a feeling of ‘hard chic’ – gauzy black chiffon dotted with bird-like polka dot feathers, shimmering gold chainmail torn to reveal skin beneath, and satin columns of deep crimson. Elsewhere, Roseberry drew from Elsa’s personal wardrobe, presenting a series of trompe l’oeil knits in loud triple-tone jacquards (‘shocking then, shocking now’ he joked), while the house’s flair for the surreal came in accessories made to ‘surprise and delight’, from gold metallic sandals to handbags inspired by Dalí’s melting clocks.

Both a celebration of Schiaparelli’s codes and the emotive experience of a runway show, Roseberry wanted the display to offer a moment of light amid the ‘cultural black hole’ of our times. ‘I read that while attendance to movies has plummeted in recent years, museum attendance has skyrocketed,’ he said. ‘It made perfect sense to me. Our phones are a slophouse of cheap thrills, with lifespans no longer than a few hours. That’s why I leapt at the opportunity to show at Centre Pompidou. Not because I wanted this collection to explicitly centre on the relationship between fashion and art, but because I felt, and feel, that going to a Schiaparelli show should feel like going to a museum: an experience equally inspirational, aspirational, and reassuring.’ Orla Brennan

Rick Owens

Just across the road from Rick Owens’ Palais de Tokyo showspace is the Palais Galliera, where the American designer’s career-spanning retrospective ‘Temple of Love’ continues until January. At his menswear show in June, which coincided with the opening, Owens said that the process of putting together the exhibition had inspired the collection: ‘a retrospective summons up thoughts of tenacity, peaking and decline, and I relished leaning into that,’ he said. As such, the theatrical presentation saw a troupe of models descending from an enormous scaffold structure erected in the Palais de Tokyo’s front pool and into the water below, before hauling themselves back up again – platform boots on and dripping wet – and triumphantly exiting the catwalk. Back then, I said that the display was ‘a symbolic gesture of Owens’ tenacity and staying power’, a testament to continuing, unwaveringly, on.

The exhibition’s presence continued to be felt at this season’s womenswear show, which saw models descend a vast staircase and into the water below – a similarly cinematic scene (both collections were titled ‘Temple’). ‘[The] exhibition tracks the pursuit of glamour and sleaze that I was looking for on Hollywood Boulevard, and eventually, improbably, ended up displaying in a Paris museum,’ he said in an email distributed to guests prior to the show. ‘I have always thought of what I do as a fascination with the denseness of European aesthetic sophistication seen through a filter of American bluntness.’ This idea of ‘glamour and bluntness’ ran through the collection: sinuous semi-sheer dresses, with criss-crossing exposed seams, were his subversion of the classic column gown, while sculptural twists of fabric protruded from the body, at once intuitive and elegant. Widened shoulders, elongated bomber jackets and spiky leather tassels, meanwhile, suggested a mood of protection. ‘Steely tenacity,’ Owens concluded. ‘Rough clothes for tough times.’ Jack Moss

Carven

How do the women of Paris dress when the weather turns warm? It’s a question British-born designer Mark Thomas asked himself in preparation for his debut collection as Carven’s new creative director, shown yesterday afternoon at the 85-year-old maison’s stately headquarters on the Champs-Élysées. Unlike many of this season’s appointments, Thomas is an in-house hire, designing under Louise Trotter before her move to Bottega Veneta earlier this year. Building on the wardrobe they established together – but dialling up the sensuality – Thomas’s women appeared in looks that held a distinctly Parisian air, elegant and effortlessly undone. Colours were ‘confident and calm’, taking inspiration from Madame Carven’s favourite flower – the orchid – offset by smoky shades of black and grey. A play between looseness and the body came in subtly layered looks that drew upon ideas of the bedroom – lacey nightgown dresses worn over basics, billowing strapless dresses that reminded of French bedlinens, and lightweight sporty jackets paired with delicate organza skirts that revealed lingerie beneath. Bringing the house’s history into the present, Thomas put his own spin on ‘esperanto’ – the graceful waistline contour detail that has been a house signature since the 50s – employing it in sportswear pieces designed to keep up ‘with the pace of city life’. Balancing deliberate lines with an insouciant kind of ease, it was a clean, clear and sensuous debut – a love letter to the women of the city, and the quiet power of the small but mighty maison he now leads. Orla Brennan

Rabanne

A bold use of colour and print has run throughout the S/S 2026 season so far, as have themes of freedom and escape. Yesterday afternoon, Rabanne designer Julien Dossena took it to another level. His kaleidoscopic summer outing was a heady melange of vivid sorbetto hues, graphic stripes, tropical motifs, floral appliqué and futuristic ‘car crash’ metallic ruffles – a nod to the Parisian house’s foundational material (founder Paco Rabanne loved the space-age sheen of the material; ‘he’s not a couturier, he’s a metal worker,’ Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel once cattily quipped).

Dossena said this season began with a consideration of the construction and shape of 1950s swimwear, a garment he said epitomised the era’s ‘sheen of optimism and a foreshadowing of disruptive change’ – one which the French designer linked with our current moment of turbulence and change. It lent the collection a mood of surreal escapism: the construction of those bathing suits inspired the cut of bra-tops and bustiers, layered under cut-out, chest-exposing jackets or adorned with spikes of fabric around their edges, while neoprene trousers – evocative of wetsuits – were rolled down as if after a day on the surf.

Accessories were equally expressive: a brilliant high-heeled sandal, teased by Dossena on Instagram prior to the show, sprouted with fronds of fern-like metal leaves, while enormous sunglasses evoked vintage goggles. Dossena said the collection was an expression of his ‘yearning for a hopeful horizon [with] a touch of surrealist shine’ amid the ‘tranquil and turbulent episodes of life’. In its no-holds-barred vision, it was impossible not to be seduced – or, perhaps more shocking still, feel optimistic. Jack Moss

Acne Studios

Transforming the inside of the 13th-century Gothic church Collège des Bernardins in Paris into a moody ‘cigar salon’, Acne Studios’ S/S 2026 collection was an exercise in balancing contrasts. Unveiled with a cast of protagonists chosen for their ‘strong, androgyne energy’, models wore looks that not only wilfully ignored the boundaries of mens- and womenswear, but that slashed and stitched evening glamour with the everyday. Lumberjack flannel was tucked into girlish lace slip skirts, cotton poplin was washed into soft dishevelment, and couturier’s lace was sliced and patchworked into contemporary body-hugging dresses. Elsewhere, the house’s denim and knitwear staples were reworked with tactile materiality and cut, so that straight-leg 1996 jeans were distressed and coated with latex, and chunky jumpers came with windowpane holes that exposed shirting beneath.

Together, it proposed a wardrobe where toughness and tenderness can co-exist. The collection’s story was reflected in the works of Brooklyn-based collage artist Pacifico Silano, whose gestural scenes made from vintage gay erotica were suspended throughout the wood-clad space. The show was soundtracked by Swedish pop icon Robyn, who stated she felt aligned with Acne Studios’ vision this season – the way it ‘questions and celebrates the typical idea of female identity’. Honouring the community of artists that has long surrounded the brand since it was co-founded by Jonny Johansson in 1996, the show also marked the beginning of Acne Studios’ anniversary celebrations. ‘Strong, playful, poised and most of all free, these women have been here all along,’ said the brand. ‘Only now, as Acne Studios advances towards its 30th year, they are leading us into the next chapters.’ Orla Brennan

READ: Acne Studios’ cigar salon runway set is decorated with Pacifico Silano’s homoerotic ‘objects of desire’

Dior

Jonathan Anderson’s debut womenswear show began with a short film by British documentary maker Adam Curtis.‘Do you dare enter the house of Dior?’ it began, before shuddering through archival footage from the house’s near-eight-decade-long history, intercut with clips from horror movies in Curtis’ dizzying, anxious style. And then – just like that – the screen turned a bright optic white and the room was illuminated, a symbolic gesture of Anderson shrugging off all that weight of history to begin anew. In the light, this was his clean slate. ‘Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, which is part of the collective imagination, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box,’ said Anderson via the collection notes. ‘Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.’

So here Anderson drew on Dior’s venerable archive not in whole but in fragment, refracting silhouettes through his typically inventive lens. The Tailleur Bar – the nipped-waist Bar suit which pioneered Christian Dior’s ‘new look’ – was shrunken in size, its full skirt swapped for a mini that grazed the upper thigh, while the cantilevered waistline of a 1952 La Cigale dress appeared to inspire sculpted trapeze dresses, or double-breasted overcoats which folded across their front. Anderson said he was thinking about the ‘tension’ between fantasy and reality, of dressing up and dressing down. As such, there was theatrical cornette-style headwear, face-covering trims of lace and hourglass dresses which descended into a melange of bows, but also denim skirts, shirts and jeans, slouchy suede handbags, and classic pointed pumps. Before the show, Anderson had said he wanted to bring new women into the house of Dior, something he was no doubt thinking of in the collection’s breadth.

It made for a statement-making collection which has already got everybody talking. That is what Anderson does best. The Northern Irish designer is well aware that to sell a handbag or a pair of shoes, one must also create a distinctive, surprising universe to surround them – here, he did so in a collection that was both audacious and intuitive. It is what he did so well at Loewe, transforming the formerly sleepy Spanish house into a megabrand that he taught the world to pronounce. Now, with the eyes of the world watching, he seeks to make similar magic. Or to go back to that clever opening film, Anderson not only dares to enter the house of Dior, but he wants to renovate it too. Jack Moss

READ: ‘Change is inevitable’: Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior womenswear collection recodes the house’s archive

Louis Vuitton

Though Nicolas Ghesquière has presented his collections numerous times at the Louvre across his tenure at Louis Vuitton – all the way back to his debut in 2014, which was held in the palace’s Cour Carrée – for S/S 2026, he chose the lesser-visited former summer apartments of Anne of Austria, Queen of France as his runway (in fact, the spaces are currently closed to public as they are in the midst of a renovation, opening again in 2027). Ghesquière said he had been thinking about the idea of intimacy, ‘the boundless freedom of the private sphere’.

In the opulent apartments, where Anne of Austria would once have roamed, Ghesquière presented a collection which reimagined hallmarks of ‘indoor’ dressing – swaddling robes, nightdresses, slippers – in imaginative style. As ever, it was an idiosyncratic melange of elements, traversing eras and styles – elongated pointed collars looked picked from a monarch’s wardrobe, while shaggy shearling collars, plissé ruffles and turbans suggested a louche 1970s glamour. Other elements seemed to recall domestic interiors: sweeping draped dresses could be read as curtains, while bows, tassels and opulent embroidered flowers evoked home furnishings.

As is Ghesquière’s skill, the borrowed elements were both recognisable and hard to place – his Vuitton woman is never restrained to a singular place or time. Instead, it was a testament, said Ghesquière, to the idea of individual style: ‘The ultimate luxury of dressing for oneself and revealing one’s true personality,’ he described. With this, it fits neatly into the season’s emerging theme: the idea of liberation through clothing, the freedom to dress as you please. Jack Moss

Lanvin

Last week, Lanvin announced ‘Lanvin Blue’, a new signature colour developed by creative director Peter Copping and M/M (Paris) – a nod to house founder Jeanne Lanvin’s favoured colour, a fixation that began with the skies of Fra Angelico’s frescoes (over the French couturier’s career, she would develop 23 shades of blue in her Nanterre dye factory). At yesterday afternoon’s runway show, blue provided a bold backdrop to Copping’s sophomore outing for the house, which evolved the 1920s-inflected vision of his debut earlier this year. This included Jeanne Lanvin’s signature robe de style dress of the era – a garment that drew on the wide, panniered gowns of the 18th century, loosened from restriction and dropped at the waistline to reflect the decade’s radically changing dress codes (a version also opened this season’s show, featuring a trim of bows around the neckline and a ruffled hem).

The use of blue is symbolic of Copping’s vision for the house, which is rooted in the Lanvin archive, and Jeanne Lanvin herself – after his first show in February, he described it as an ‘homage’ to the couturier... ‘I sought to project the essence of her wardrobe today while imagining it on a cast of modern characters,’ he said. It is a leap between centuries that feels particularly pertinent this year – 2025 marks 100 years of art deco, the movement with which Jeanne Lanvin is most associated (in 1925, Armand-Albert Rateau – a leading designer and furniture maker in the movement – designed a trio of blue-coloured rooms in her apartment, now on display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs).

Here, the era’s liberated spirit came in billowing silk blouses, diaphanous twisted dresses and draped headscarves, while surface decoration – in beading and sequins – recalled deco motifs. As we reach the mid-point of our own (perhaps not so) roaring twenties, the idea of freedom through clothing that Jean Lanvin sought feels more vital than ever – a parallel Copping cleverly struck in this sophomore show. Jack Moss

Courrèges

Nicolas di Felice’s mind was still on the beach – or, indeed, looking forward to next summer spent on one, the time when this collection will arrive in stores. Swapping his usual square-shaped runway for a circle (still conceived alongside artist Rémy Brière and Matière Noire, longtime collaborators), Di Felice imagined a ‘solar ascension’, designing a collection that was built around the heat of the sun on a summer’s day – specifically, from 21 degrees in the morning to 30 degrees in the heady warmth of the afternoon (in the showspace, this was imagined by the light changing from cool optic white to a warm, sunlit yellow).

Protection was a theme: the opening looks featured cleverly draped hats that shielded the models’ faces (the design was a reinterpretation of a piece from the house’s archive), while sculptural dresses took inspiration from sun visors. Skin-bearing looks provided a juxtaposition, with swimsuit-style bodysuits, mini dresses and tank tops featuring graphic cut-outs – a contemporary nod to the house founder’s space-age silhouettes. ‘Melting’ metal jewellery completed the look, which continued Di Felice’s astute reinterpretation of André Courrèges’ pioneering spirit. ‘As designers, it’s our duty to provide a unique point of view,’ Di Felice told Wallpaper* earlier this year. ‘It’s one of the many, many things I admire about André Courrèges: he wasn’t afraid of radical thinking.’ Jack Moss

Dries Van Noten

It was the day of sophomore shows: after Peter Copping’s at Lanvin, Julian Klausner swiftly followed with his own second womenswear collection for Dries Van Noten (between his debut and now, he also showed a widely acclaimed menswear show this past June). There were no signs of the tricky second album here – the Belgian designer is already honing a vision for the label that is undeniably ‘Dries’ (Klausner worked on the brand’s design team for some years before taking the role), but has its own feeling of freshness and play. An eclectic use of colour and print (longtime hallmarks of the Antwerp-based brand) continued to define the collection, which saw clashing motifs of flowers, stripes and polka dots slowly blown up in size as the show went on – all the way to the closing looks, where the patterns became bold abstracted forms. It felt an apt companion piece to the menswear show earlier this year, where stripes and sequins were used to similarly striking effect. ‘Approaching this collection, I had in mind the Dries Van Noten wardrobe that I always loved – traditional yet daring, the different layers of dressing up,’ he said back then. This collection delighted in a similarly audacious spirit – one laced with the romance and sensitivity which defined Dries Van Noten’s best collections. Jack Moss

Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney drafted Helen Mirren to serve as the opening act for her S/S 2026 show, which took place yesterday evening at the Pompidou Centre. Clad in a grey suit from the British label, Mirren read the lyrics of The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ – a song McCartney chose for its plea for unity (so the story goes, the song began life as an attempt by John Lennon to write a campaign song for LSD advocate Timothy Leary’s Governor of California run). Its central message, said McCartney (herself a longtime activist), felt particularly pertinent in turbulent political times – ‘Come together for humanity, animals and Mother Earth,’ was the designer’s own appeal to the gathered audience. In the collection, this was figured through typically innovative fabrications, free of animal cruelty and with meticulous sustainable credentials, from ‘Fevvers’ – a plant-based alternative to animal feathers – to Pure.Tech, the first ‘programmable’ fabric that ‘absorbs and neutralises pollutants including CO₂ and NOx’. The latter was applied to deconstructed denim, part of a collection which was built on the idea of juxtapositions: ‘masculine and feminine, grounded yet ethereal’. Wide-shouldered power tailoring – a redux of last season’s ‘Working Girl’ look – and baggy carpenter trousers represented the former, while sequined minis, froths of ruffles and body-wrapping gowns captured a contemporary femininity. Jack Moss

Earlier this month, the Q2 Lyst Index was released – the shopping app compiles the quarterly report through online searches and catalogued social-media data – seeing the Miu Miu boat shoe land at number four on the quarter’s hottest products (fellow top-tenners were a Skims white tank, Adidas sports shorts and the renaissance of the Isabelle Marant heeled sneaker). Miuccia Prada has long had a soothsayer-like quality – recent seasons have seen her sliced-away mini skirts, hanging bag charms, and ballet shoes achieve style ubiquity – and though the boat shoes were first shown in her S/S 2024 show for the Prada sister brand, it has taken a year for them to achieve true virality (Miu Miu released further iterations for Summer 2025).

The boat shoe’s appeal can be broken down by two prevailing trends: first, the rise of low-effort, off-duty footwear (The Row’s flip-flops or spa-style jelly shoes are examples, as is the rise of the Charvet slipper), second, the re-emergence of a preppy uniform (Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior Men collection featured cable-knit sweaters and schoolboy striped shirts, and a similar collegiate mood was struck at Michael Rider’s Celine debut earlier this summer). The boat shoe – traditionally designed to be worn on boats and yachts to prevent scuff marks on deck – has long straddled these two worlds, making it ripe for revival. And, while the Sebago or Sperry Topsiders remain the classical blueprint, fashion’s take on the style is altogether more eclectic – here, the Wallpaper* style team select ten of the best boat shoes of the season, from studded to slip-on, square-toed to two-tone.

Refillable beauty has revolutionised the industry, with the aim of reducing surplus packaging waste; only about nine per cent of that packaging would have been recycled, according to the British Beauty Council.

Here, across make-up, skincare, fragrance and haircare, Wallpaper* edits a selection of the best refillable beauty packaging designs that you’ll want to keep in pride of place on your vanity table or bathroom shelf, from the likes of Dries van Noten, Hermès, Noble Panacea, Perfumer H, Davines and more.

The best of refillable beauty design, edited by Wallpaper*

Refillable make-up

Refillable skincare

Refillable fragrance

Refillable haircare

This past March, in the gilded salons of Paris’ Opéra Garnier, Dries Van Noten marked a new chapter under creative director Julian Klausner, the successor to the Belgian house’s namesake founder, who departed the brand in 2024 after 38 years at the helm. A longtime member of the house’s design team, Klausner came with Van Noten’s blessing. ‘I went towards things I always loved,’ he said after the show, which saw Klausner imagine his protagonist dashing through the Opéra grabbing opulent swathes of fabric and wrapping them around her body. ‘Dries wanted me to feel the freedom of doing it alone.’

Now, the brand’s new chapter continues to unfold in London with the opening of a new store on Hanover Square in Mayfair. Taking over a former bank – and once the London residence of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the 18th-century French diplomat and statesman – the 270 sq m space is an eclectic, art-filled haven where shoppers can find the house’s menswear, womenswear and accessories collections, as well as olfactory and beauty. (Van Noten continues to lead the beauty line, for which he draws inspiration from his 55-acre garden in Lier, just outside of Antwerp.)

Inside Dries Van Noten’s new London store

Spread across two floors – a ground level dedicated to the womenswear collections and a more intimate basement space focusing on the men’s collection – the store is interspersed with an array of artworks, design objects and furniture (during his near-four-decades at the brand, Van Noten forged close links with the art world, as well as noting inspiration from figures spanning John Everett Millais, Elizabeth Peyton, Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, among others). The brand says the idea is to have a space for ‘discovery’, imagining shoppers traversing the store as they might in an art gallery.

Art highlights of the unique collection include a pair of David Hockney lithographs from 1979, ‘Celia Weary’ and ‘Celia - Elegant’, depicting fashion designer and muse Celia Birtwell; a Man Ray etching ‘La Main Bleue’ (1971); Tracey Emin’s ‘Be Faithful to Your Dreams (1999), an embroidered cotton handkerchief, and a Vladimir Slavov ‘Labia’ chandelier, alongside works by Gilbert Jackson, William Waterhouse and Mario Schifano. As for furniture, the space features Ron Arad’s ‘Rover P6’ chairs from the 1980s, Jules and André Leleu’s La Ligne L Series ‘President’ desk, and an antique Chinese paravent.

The store is completed by a ‘Vinyl Corner’, a rotating selection of vintage and contemporary vinyl – a nod, the brand says, to its long-standing relationship with music, having produced some of fashion’s most memorable runway soundtracks.

Dries Van Noten London store opens today (10 April 2025), 21 Hanover Square, London W1S 1JW.

driesvannoten.com

Drawing on an eclectic roster of references, high jewellery this year unites historical techniques with rainbows of precious stones. Whether cutting sharp geometrical silhouettes or undulating forms, a bold high jewellery accoutrement calls for statement clothes. Clashing patterns, oversized collars and billowing tops - here are the best partners for a very special collection.

A version of this article appears in the April 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

As seen in the March Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographer Luca Strano and stylist Nicola Neri capture the mood of undone elegance that ran through the S/S 2025 menswear collections with a series of collaged and layered-up looks – a proposition for translating the runway into the everyday.

Titled ‘Cut and Paste’, the photo series offers lessons in embracing fashion’s new mood of eclecticism – a throughline of the S/S 2025 season – whether doubling up on jersey vests or shirts for a subversive twist on basics, leaving buttons undone to expose slices of skin, or tying-up the arms of a sweater for playful new proportions.

Cut and paste: how to wear the S/S 2025 menswear collections

Other garments come with layering built in, whether the trim of lace that emerges from beneath an otherwise quotidien grey sweater from JW Anderson, or a trompe l’oeil belt on a pair of Prada trousers (co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons describe their S/S 2025 collection as one where nothing is quite what it seems).

Elsewhere, a diaphonous sheer top by Dries Van Noten is worn over an Hermès blazer – a satisfyingly strange take on eveningwear – while T-shirts and jackets hang from the waistband of trousers to surreal effect. Meanwhile accessories – from colourful lace masks to colourful nylon sneakers and metal brooches – contribute to the season’s uninhibited mood.

Explore the looks below.

Model: Owen Ruppersburg at Milk Management. Casting: Svea Casting. Set design: Harry Stayt. Grooming: Lachlan Mackie. Photography assistants: Elliott Gunn, Luca Viopelle. Fashion assistant: Sophie Bell. Set design assistant: Marko Ilic. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The fashion show has a tendency to be prescriptive. It tells its viewer what to wear, and often how. It proposes a certain silhouette – the hiking up of a hemline, the shift from the slender-cut to the oversized – or garment, which then becomes an object of desire. Often, these runway shows are filtered through a particular theme, which might be esoteric or universal; the next season, the designer will evolve that vision or reject it. And so the cycle goes on.

At Prada’s latest womenswear show, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons offered an alternative. In recent seasons, the co-creative directors have seemed to feel increasingly constricted by strict thematics. Instead, their shows together have become meditations on more abstract themes such as time or youth, which are open to interpretation. Even when they have elucidated a theme – a recent menswear show clashed corporate attire with outdoor wear – there was a feeling that they were seeking something more intangible, a sense of style that defies categorisation. ‘We try to make the best out of our work, to make beautiful things, for today,’ said Miuccia Prada, simply, in 2023. ‘That may sound banal, but it is the truth.’

S/S 2025 heralds a new era of fashion eclecticism

The S/S 2025 show, which was staged among snaking benches covered in sheets of raw-edge grey satin, operated more like an open-ended invitation: who do you want to be today? ‘Infinite options proffer infinite opportunities,’ said the house. These options comprised 49 entirely different looks to choose from; a collage of elements with barely a garment or idea repeated. There was no discernible diktat on silhouette, fabric or colour. Instead, it was an electrifying melange of ideas: 1960s swing coats in trompe l’oeil fur, luminous nylon windbreakers, satin gowns reminiscent of midcentury haute couture, bug-like sunglasses-cum-hats, BDSM hooks as adornment on leather belts, glimmering Space Age silver skirts dotted with huge round eyelets. The list went on.

Miuccia Prada called it ‘a Prada for every individual’. Simons concurred. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ he said. ‘That reflects an idea of transformation – through your practice, actions or the clothes you wear. They’re all means to express a message about your personal strength. They can transform your perception of yourself.’

The pair said it was, in part, a reaction to the internet algorithm, evoking the feeling of an infinite scroll; an onslaught of information designed to mine our dopamine-fuelled desires. Miuccia Prada said it wasn’t necessarily a ‘critique’ of the technology, though she asserted it can silo us into ways of thinking and dressing. ‘[Everyone] sees their own version of the present; their own reality curated for them,’ she said. Because, despite the illusion of endless choice, the effect of an algorithm is more likely to smooth and homogenise: after hours of scrolling, everything eventually begins to look the same.

‘An incredible amount of information is collected on us all today. Everything you like is recorded by an algorithm. This is our proposal for an alternative,’ concluded Miuccia Prada. These were clothes to reassert your authority over what you wear; a riposte to the ‘derivative and the expected’.

As is so often the case with a Prada show, the collection would set the tone for a season whereby designers embraced the eclectic and advocated individual style, albeit in a multiplicity of ways. It led to collections that were infinitely richer in construction; more colour; more adornment; a certain nostalgia. Like at Prada, designers offered invitations: who do you want to be when you put on these clothes? How will you wear them? Will you mix or match?

It provides both a challenge and an opportunity for the wearer. By and large, designers rejected the swaddling safety of quiet luxury, and the reassurance of uniform dressing. It’s easy to put on an expensive sweater and jeans to walk out of the door in the morning; to wear a piece from Anthony Vaccarello’s opulent S/S 2025 collection for Saint Laurent – its flourishes of brocade and lace inspired by the heady rush of Yves Saint Laurent’s 1970s oeuvre – is an altogether bolder proposition. The same goes for the strange and seductive clashes of colour and print at Dries Van Noten, or the dishevelled glamour of a Numeroventuno collection inspired by the rebellious female subjects of Austrian photographer Karlheinz Weinberger.

‘I took their creative spirit, which, in my opinion, came from their urge to put different fads and fashions together,’ said creative director Alessandro Dell’Acqua. ‘They reinvented themselves day after day.’

Bolder still are the riotous creations of Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbrø at Paris label All-In, which offers a playful ode to the perennial party girl (ruffles, sequins and a purposeful dishevelment are de rigueur). This season, the pair took inspiration from Melanie Griffiths’ character Tess McGill from 1980s romcom Working Girl, a figure who uses clothing to transform herself. Staged against the backdrop of a late-evening Parisian sky, it was a collection that conjured up the thrill of flicking through a fashion magazine as a teenager (indeed, All-In began life as a magazine).

At Louis Vuitton, models pounded a raised runway in looks that also evoked 1980s abundance, albeit with Nicolas Ghesquière’s futuristic, postmodern sheen. He has always been a master of eclectic style, and is steadfast in his rejection of thematics or trends, instead ricocheting between centuries and place, the real and the imagined. There might be a gulf between the might of a house like Louis Vuitton and the wildness of All-In, but the resulting collections were rooted in the same feeling of self-expression, a no-holds-barred approach.

These were the highlights of the season. So too was Matthieu Blazy’s latest collection for Bottega Veneta, which would also be his last (in December, he was announced as the new artistic director of Chanel). For S/S 2025, he thought about the ‘primal’ moment of a child dressing up in a parent’s clothing, seeing oversized shapes meet illustrated animals, tasselled wigs and a pile-up of floral appliqué. It’s not a stretch to say the unbridled joy of the collection helped him secure what is arguably fashion’s top job. And, with close to a dozen new creative directors beginning their tenure in 2025 – from Sarah Burton at Givenchy to Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford – the challenge is for designers to be equally fearless in their conviction. To stoke desire, clothes have to say something again. There will likely be reward in risk.

Here, we have imagined similar acts of transformation and invention; the feeling of stepping through a door in the boldest of looks. It is an ode to personal style, an invitation to get dressed up again. Take inspiration from these pages, or don’t. Search out the new or reinvent the old. Express yourself. Who do you want to be today? The options are infinite.

Model: Katlin Aas at Supreme Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set build: London Art Makers.. Hair: Masayoshi Fujita at Of Substance Agency using Oribe. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Victoria Beckham. Beauty. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Pleasing. Digi tech: John Cronin. Photography assistant: Charlotte Ellis. Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Set and production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Unboxing beauty products on Boxing Day? Well, metaphorically speaking, why not?

Here, we take a look back at the pages of Wallpaper* from the past year, reflecting on the make-up, perfume, tools and accessories that defined our 2024.

Unboxing beauty products from 2024, as seen on the pages of Wallpaper*

Chanel lipstick in Wallpaper* February 2024: The Design Awards Issue

In the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, we presented a design award to the Chanel ‘31 Le Rouge lipstick’. The lipstick comes in several shades and textures, all created to be housed in a glass case crafted by Japanese artisans and designed by Sylvie Legastelois.

Read the full article here.

MyBlend led mask in Wallpaper* March 2024: The Style Issue

For the first Wallpaper* Style Issue of the year in March 2024, we turned the spotlight on the MyBlend ‘myLedmask’, with its uniquely contoured design slightly reminiscent of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In.

Read the full article here.

Acne Studios x Frédéric Malle perfume in Wallpaper* April 2024: Global Interiors

We spoke with the creative director of Acne Studios Jonny Johansson, fragrance legend Frédéric Malle and emerging nose Suzy Le Helley about their collaborative work on ‘Acne Studios par Frédéric Malle’ eau de parfum, previewed in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper*.

Read the full article here.

Bottega Veneta scented candle in Wallpaper* June 2024: The Travel Issue

Bottega Veneta launched scented candles earlier this year, with three different fragrances available in red, yellow and green lava glaze ceramic pots. We captured the brand’s ‘Redstone’ candle on the pages of Wallpaper* June 2024, which contains notes of plum nectar, tobacco and cedarwood.

Read the full article here.

Rimowa vanity case in Wallpaper* June 2024: The Travel Issue

Rimowa's vanity case also made its debut in Wallpaper* June 2024, our annual travel issue. A reimagined 1970s design from the Rimowa archives, the case is robust enough to contain a multitude of products and tools without fear of damage whilst on the move.

Read the full article here.

Fendi perfumes in Wallpaper* July 2024: The Design Directory

In 2024, Fendi created seven exclusive perfumes, inspired by the personalities and memories of close members of the Fendi family. The collection, which we included in the July issue of Wallpaper*, features refillable glass bottles evoking the vocabulary of Roman architecture.

Read the full article here.

Calvin Klein CK One perfume in Wallpaper* August 2024: The USA 100

The August 2024 issue of Wallpaper* was dedicated US creatives, with an accompanying portfolio shot by Inez and Vinoodh. In addition, we looked at 12 American design icons, including Calvin Klein’s ‘CK One’ eau de toilette. First released in 1994, the fragrance remains a best seller to this day.

Read the full article here.

Solid soap in Wallpaper* September 2024: The Style Issue

For Wallpaper* September 2024, the year’s second issue dedicated to style, we celebrated the pleasures of solid soap, including bars from the likes of Aesop, Celine, Diptyque, Hermès and Sisley.

Read the full article here.

Celine Beauté lipstick in Wallpaper* October 2024: Guest Editors

Celine launched its first-ever beauty line in October 2024, Celine Beauté. Designed by Hedi Slimane, who has since left the house in the hands of his successor Michael Rider, the ‘Le Rouge Celine’ lipstick in a shade of red called 'Rouge Triomphe’ made its Wallpaper* premiere in the same monthly issue.

Read the full article here.

Hermès eye and lip pencils in Wallpaper* November 2024: The Art Issue

Hermès’ ‘Trait d’Hermès’ eye and lip pencils were designed by Pierre Hardy and Gregoris Pyrpylis, the house’s creative director of beauty, to evoke a playful stationary set. We captured the collection’s kaleidoscopic colour palette in Wallpaper* November 2024.

Read the full article here.

Bottega Veneta perfume in Wallpaper* November 2024: The Art Issue

Bottega Veneta’s fragrance collection by Matthieu Blazy (now succeeded by Louise Trotter after his appointment as creative director at Chanel) includes five scents inspired by Venice, with bottles blown in Murano glass. Above, is the brand’s ‘Come With Me’ eau de parfum, as featured in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper*.

Read the full article here.

Dior perfumes in Wallpaper* December 2024: The Entertaining Issue

In 2024, Francis Kurkdjian, the creative director of Dior Parfums took five fragrances from the house’s ‘La Collection Privée’, reinterpreting their notes in ‘Esprit de Parfum’, a new scent range featured on the pages of Wallpaper’s December Entertaining Issue.

Read the full article here.

Dries Van Noten lipsticks in Wallpaper* December 2024: The Entertaining Issue

After taking a final bow on the runway earlier in the year, for the December 2024 issue of Wallpaper* we caught up with Dries Van Noten about his next steps, which include growing the beauty and fragrance arm of his eponymous brand (and spending more time in his beloved garden).

Read the full article here.

Beauty and fashion are close bedfellows. But in 2024, this relationship got even cosier, with a litany of turbocharged crossovers between the two disciplines.

The year began with Pat McGrath’s viral porcelain doll make-up for John Galliano’s tenure-defining Maison Margiela Artisanal S/S 2024 show. Later, during September’s S/S 2025 show season, Olivier Rousteing welcomed the much-anticipated Balmain Beauty. (As well as releasing a line of perfumes called ‘Les Éternels’, the Balmain runway collection included clothes and accessories directly referencing the fragrance bottles, alongside yet-to-be-released products such as lipsticks and eyeshadows).

In October, Celine debuted its first-ever beauty line, with a red lipstick called ‘Rouge Celine’, designed by Hedi Slimane. (Slimane announced his departure from the house soon after). During the same month, Matthieu Blazy unveiled a collection of Bottega Veneta fragrances in Murano glass bottles. Last week (12 December 2024) it was revealed that Blazy would be stepping down from Bottega Veneta and into the role of creative director at Chanel. The day before that, news broke that John Galliano would be exiting Maison Margiela.

If one is to believe fashion’s rumour mill, there are more major changes yet to come in the new year. But if the past 12 months have taught us anything, beauty is going to be a huge part of whatever these changes may be. Here, Wallpaper* takes a closer look at a selection of key fashion-meets-beauty moments, which set the tone for 2025 and beyond.

How 2024 brought beauty and fashion closer than ever before

Beauty on the runway, from Maison Margiela to Marc Jacobs

Even if you still haven’t seen the videos of Maison Margiela Artisanal S/S 2024, where John Galliano’s cast of models (including the likes of Gwendoline Christie) staggered beneath the arches of the Pont Alexandre III in Paris, dressed as dolls plucked straight from Émile Zola’s demi-monde, you’ll have seen the make-up. Or, perhaps the endless reproductions of it across Instagram and TikTok at least. After all, almost immediately after the Pat McGrath-created look appeared on the runway, the internet was ablaze with beauty creators trying to decode the secret formula to the waxen, porcelain skin.

The hubbub around the look reached such a fever pitch that McGrath eventually weighed in herself, sharing the lengthy list of products – including a dizzy combination of peeling masques layered and dried directly on the skin with a hairdryer – that it took to achieve. (Ever the savvy entrepreneur, though, Dame Pat also revealed that her empire-scale beauty business, Pat McGrath Labs, is in the process of developing an all-in-one product for fans eager to get the look).

If there’s another fashion figure who won big in the beauty stakes this year, it would have to be Marc Jacobs, who collaborated with McGrath on a limited edition ‘MatteTrance’ lipstick to mark the 40th anniversary of the American design’s namesake brand.

On the runway, however, it was the S/S 2024 40th anniversary Marc Jacobs show, held in March, which saw the likes of Alex Consani and Kaia Gerber transformed into living dolls (a key theme this year, it would seem).

Strutting out from beneath large-scale Robert Therrien sculptures, their clumped eye make-up by Diane Kendal was offset with hectic 1960s-esque bouffants from Duffy. The label’s second show of the year for A/W 2024, which took place in July, pushed the all-pervasive doll theme yet further, with models sporting cartoonish overblown pastel eyelid covers, sewn from fabrics and trimmed with spidery faux lashes.

Beauty-inspired collections, from Balmain to Abra

But runway beauty went the extra mile in 2024, with collections even taking direct inspiration from beauty products themselves.

At Balmain, Olivier Rousteing used the house’s S/S 2025 show, staged in September, as an opportunity to toast a new line of perfumes called ‘Les Éternels’ and tease yet-to-be-released Balmain Beauty products. Flacon-shaped clutches, trompe l’oeil lipstick heels and eyeshadow palette pochettes figured alongside dresses embroidered with depictions of scarlet tinted lips and lacquered nails. (In 2022, Balmain partnered with Estée Lauder to bring Balmain Beauty to life. William P. Lauder, grandson of Estée and chairman of executive chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies, watched the collection unfold from the front row).

Elsewhere, independent label Abra leaned into beauty-inspired design for its A/W 2024 show, presented over Paris Fashion Week in February. The brand was founded in 2019 by Abraham Ortūno Perez, who has worked with Jonathan Anderson on footwear for both JW Anderson and Loewe. In particular, Perez is responsible for the former’s giant chain mules and the latter's surrealist sandals for S/S 2022, which included heels in hyper-realistic broken eggs, bars of soap and bottles of nail polish.

For the Abra collection in question, make-up brushes were transformed into necklaces, while lipsticks and mini eyeshadow palettes became earrings and brooches. There was also an oversized white T-shirt dress, which appeared as though the model had wiped her hands on it after applying foundation.

Beauty launches, from Celine to Bottega Veneta

2024 was as much about what landed on shop floors as what we saw on the runways, with the year bringing a glut of beauty launches from brands and houses.

One of the most memorable is Celine’s first-ever make-up product, ‘Le Rouge Celine’, a classic satin-finish scarlet hue that comes in an exquisite gold case, developed under the direction of Hedi Slimane. The entire cosmetics line, Celine Beauté, is set to continue under his successor Michael Rider, with more products such as eyeliner, eye pencils and more coming next year.

Elsewhere, Victoria Beckham’s booming beauty empire expanded further, with a collaboration with Augustinus Bader on a concealer pen, which contains the science-led skincare brand’s patented TFC8 technology. Augustinus Bader, which was founded by its namesake biomedical scientist and CEO Charles Rosier, is no stranger to fashion partnerships, having previously teamed up with the likes of Haider Ackermann. (On another note, Ackermann joined Tom Ford in September 2024, drumming up intrigue around the direction the French-Colombian designer will take its revered fragrance and beauty line, which recently put out a lipstick campaign starring Angelina Jolie).

Victoria Beckham Beauty debuted ‘21:50 Rêverie’ – a scent inspired by a twilight dinner she and her husband David once had in the Javan rainforest – by perfuming the designer’s S/S 2025 show space with it. (This wasn't the only time that scent was seen on the runway this year, with Burberry perfuming its A/W 2024 show space with ‘Ivy’ by Perfumer H).

Acolytes of Matthieu Blazy’s Bottega Veneta were blessed with scented candles in volcano-glazed pots and five perfumes including ‘Come With Me’ and ‘Acqua Sale’, all inspired by Venice, the ultra-luxe label’s home city. Each was housed in glass bottles that echoed the texture of handblown Murano and perched on a miniature Verde Saint Denis marble plinth.

Beauty and fashion in 2025, from Dries Van Noten to Miu Miu

Keeping track of the developing relationship between the worlds of fashion and beauty in 2024 was truly a head-spinning task. This year also saw Dries van Noten take a final bow as creative director of his brand, after almost a decade at its helm. (On 9 December, it was revealed that Julian Klausner would succeed him).

However, Van Noten will continue to work on its beauty and fragrance division, stoking excitement around how its offering could develop. As the designer told Wallpaper* in the December 2024 issue: ‘My life changed quite a lot this year,’ he says. ‘It’s an exciting time. We had some storms, with big trees falling over, so there is more work to do in the garden and some thinking to be done.’

Perhaps the launch to look out for next year, though, is the arrival of Miu Miu beauty. Launching by way of a licencing agreement with L’Oréal, the new line expands the Prada Group’s beauty foothold, which was first established in 2023 with Prada Beauty, under the creative direction of Lyndsey Alexander.

It is also worth keeping an eye on Chanel. Although beauty and fragrance will not be under new creative director Matthieu Blazy’s direct purview, it will nonetheless be interesting to see how his creative vision informs and interacts with this vital and storied branch of the French house.

This past June, Dries Van Noten presented his final runway show for his eponymous label, with a glimmering silver foil runway and enormous disco ball – which appeared at the end of the finale – punctuating the end of a 38-year-long career in fashion. ‘I love my job, I love doing fashion shows, and sharing fashion with people,’ he said at the time. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on. My sense of this moment is how it is not only mine, but ours, always.’

Now, after a womenswear show this past September created by an in-house team, Dries Van Noten the label has announced the designer’s successor, ending months of speculation. Promoting from the inside, it is Julian Klausner, a longtime member of the Dries Van Noten design team, who will take over as creative director. The move suggests a smooth transition, with Dries Van Noten – which is known for rich fabrications, a broad use of colour, and an oftentimes unconventional evocation of beauty – likely continuing to build on the distinct aesthetic honed by its namesake designer.

Indeed the owners of Dries Van Noten, Spanish luxury goods conglomerate Puig, said his appointment was a ‘natural connection between the past and the future’. Meanwhile Van Noten, who is still overseeing his namesake beauty line, said he has ‘complete confidence in Julian’s creativity and vision... He is not only a talented designer but also a clear choice to take over after my departure. His deep understanding of the brand and its values will ensure a seamless transition and a bright future.’

Klausner, who is 33 years old, hails from Belgium, the home of the label. He is a graduate of the country’s La Cambre art school, based in Brussels, and began his career at Maison Margiela before shifting to Dries Van Noten in 2018, working on the brand’s womenswear collections. ‘The last thing I want to do is imitate Dries,’ says Klausner in a short film revealed on the brand’s website today. ‘I want to push it forward and do something new out of it.’

Marc Puig, chief executive of Puig, says that ‘Julian’s understanding of the brand’s heritage, forged through his years with Dries, makes him uniquely suited for this role,’ adding that ‘his deep knowledge of the brand’s values has been cultivated over time, allowing for a thoughtful transfer of creative vision that both preserves Dries’ essence and pushes it forward.’

It looks set to be a busy coming week for fashion, with the successor to Virginie Viard at Chanel reported to be announced in the coming days. As for Klausner, he will present his first collection for Dries Van Noten this March in Paris.

driesvannoten.com

For Dries Van Noten, 2024 has been a year to remember.

In March, the Belgian designer announced his imminent retirement from fashion. Having risen to prominence during the 1980s as part of the Antwerp Six (a collective of graduates from the city’s Royal Academy, including Walter Van Beirendonck and Ann Demeulemeester), almost four decades on, he took his final bow on a runway, shimmering with silver leaf, during June’s S/S 2025 menswear shows in Paris. ‘I want to shift my focus to all the things I never had time for,’ he said at the time. ‘I’m sad, but at the same time, happy.’

Dries Van Noten: why the designer is growing his beauty line

Famously, one of Van Noten’s greatest pleasures is his 55-acre garden, in the grounds of the Palladian-style home he shares with his partner in Lier, near Antwerp. The garden – and the botanical world in particular – has provided him with boundless inspiration for his signature use of colour, print and texture. So when he launched Dries Van Noten Beauty in 2021 with a set of lipsticks and fragrances harnessing all nature has to offer, it felt like an organic move.

Perhaps, the beauty line’s intrinsic connection with the plants and flowers growing in his Van Noten’s garden has informed his decision to continue in an advisory role for this arm of the business, after stepping back from his position as the brand’s creative director and CEO. ‘At the beginning, I saw my garden as kind of an escape,’ he says. ‘But then I started to realise that escape is something that’s part of me. The garden balances me as a human being. In fashion, you try to control everything. But in the garden, you have to obey nature. It helps me to stay humble.’

Dries Van Noten Beauty is also built around the idea of ‘impossible combinations’ (a theme celebrated by Wallpaper* in the December 2023 issue) whether it’s the luscious reds and pinks of the lipstick collection punctuated with shades of deep violet and beige-toned nude, or the blend of notes found in its scents. Four of the most recent compositions include Bitter Splash, which marries tart grapefruit with powdery iris and vetiver; Vanille Camouflage, where resinous galbanum balances out the creamy sweetness of bourbon pods; Camomile Satin, containing soothing camomile and vanilla; and Crazy Basil – with notes of cedarwood – which Van Noten describes as ‘putting your nose in a pot of basil’.

When asked to choose a favourite flower from his garden, he says: ‘In summer, it’s the purple cyclamen, which flowers under the beech trees. I think it’s magical because it’s the last sign of summer. In December, I love the witch hazels, which are fantastic because they’re the tiniest flowers with the most delicate perfume. Next, you have the hellebores, before the first daffodils in early spring. Then in May, the peonies and roses. For me, it’s about the entire cycle of the seasons.’

The nurture of flowers and plants requires patience. ‘My life changed quite a lot this year,’ he says. ‘It’s an exciting time. We had some storms, with big trees falling over, so there is more work to do in the garden and some thinking to be done.’ And it would seem that Van Noten is approaching this new chapter in his life almost as he does his garden. ‘The quality has to be there, from the packaging to sustainability,’ he says. ‘But the good thing is we have time.’

A version of this article appears in the December 2024 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

driesvannoten.com

As seen in the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* – a reflection on a season defined by tactility, texture and touch – 12 of A/W 2024’s defining men’s and womenswear moments, from scrunched-up Miu Miu gloves and decadent Ferragamo feathers to seductive leather ties and cocooning balaclavas.

Soft touch (top left)

Enveloping textures, the pleasure of clothing on the skin: this season is all about tactility. Cue a melange of furry, fuzzy, soft-to-the-touch textures – whether the teddy-bear feel of a Dries Van Noten bag or the fluffy finish of a Carven skirt.

Match point (top right)

This season saw designers explore the co-ordinating accessory, albeit in an unexpected manner – at Gucci, the tone of a leather glove met that of a handbag, part of Sabato De Sarno’s ongoing investigation of colour and texture.

Parallel lines

The stripe is one of Missoni’s enduring motifs, often appearing in vivid colour combinations. Designer Filippo Grazioli paid homage to the pattern in playful style, like with these shaggy knit stripes, which adorn an elongated overcoat.

Glossed over

Slick, high-shine textures lent this season’s menswear a futuristic sheen. At Jil Sander, lustrous crackled-leather overcoats appeared as part of a collection that designers Lucie and Luke Meier described as an ‘immersive capsule, smooth and embracing’.

Back out

At Prada’s womenswear show, the backs of tailored jackets were sliced away, as if to expose their lining, appearing as part of a collection that saw co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons excavate historical silhouettes.

Hands on

At Miu Miu’s show, rolled-up sleeves and heavy, worn-leather gloves suggested a woman at work. Indeed, gloves – largely oversized and scrunched up – appeared throughout the collections, with iterations at The Row, Marni and Balenciaga.

Tied up

The tie was reimagined by a gamut of designers. At Prada, it formed part of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ riff on the corporate uniform, while at Bottega Veneta, ties were cut from leather in Matthieu Blazy’s typically seductive style.

Fine feather

A fascination with old Hollywood glamour permeated Maximilian Davis’ collections for Ferragamo. Flourishes of feathers sprouted from necklines or heeled pumps – an ode, said Davis, to the liberatory dress codes of the 1920s.

Slim chance

Menswear designers provided a long and lean riposte to the oversized silhouette that has dominated recent seasons. Silvia Venturini Fendi was one such voice, presenting slim, straight-cut tailoring, inspired by the contrast between ‘town and country’.

Hood times

The idea of protection featured prominently, with designers creating silhouettes that wrapped and enveloped. At Issey Miyake, balaclavas appeared as part of a collection that saw Satoshi Kondo explore the instinctual ‘act of clothing the human body’.

Second skin

This season’s slick boots offer up a glamorous way of protecting the body as the temperature drops. Such is the case with this pair by Daniel Lee, whose latest collection for Burberry is inspired by the ‘heritage of the British outdoors’.

Buckle up

A defined waistline added a nostalgic elegance to the season’s menswear silhouette, whether in nipped-waist tailoring, tie-fastening overcoats or eye-catching belts, like those at Prada, which were perhaps A/W 2024’s most covetable accessory.

Models: Jimai Hoth at PRM Agency, Mohammed Banze at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kei Yoshino at Bryant Artists. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at Saint Luke using Chanel Fall-Winter 2024 Make-up Collection and No.1 de Chanel Skincare. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Kure Bazaar. Photography assistants: Callum Su, Joshua Hippolyte.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

September, so said legendary American Vogue editor Candy Pratts, is the January of fashion. Following a brief summer break after the conclusions of menswear and haute couture – which took place over June and July – Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 arrives in New York next week on September 6 2024, with subsequent stops in London, Milan and Paris. Think of it as a new fashion term.

The schedule is now set, with a few surprises along the way. Among them, the news that Pieter Mulier will show his next Alaïa collection in the city on September 6, heralding the start of fashion month. It is over four decades since the house’s eponymous founder, Azzedine Alaïa, first showed in the American city, when he presented a collection in September 1982 to an audience which included Andy Warhol and Paloma Picasso. No doubt Mulier – who has garnered plenty of high-profile devotees of his own – will draw a similarly starry crowd. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren will show the day prior with a special show in the Hamptons on September 5. London-based label Cos has also announced a return to New York, having shown last season in Rome.

Elsewhere, it will no doubt be the season of debuts: chief among them is the much-anticipated arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Eyes will also be on Givenchy, Chanel and Dries Van Noten which – at the time of writing – are each without creative directors.

Here, everything Wallpaper* knows about Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: what to expect

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 (6 – 11 September 2024)

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 will begin – unofficially – on September 5, as American fashion behemoth (and member of the Wallpaper* USA 400) Ralph Lauren presents his latest collection in an exclusive show in the Hamptons, the beachside Long Island locale which has long played host to the rich and famous. ’The Hamptons is more than a place,’ said Lauren in a statement. ’It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that drew artists here decades ago. It has been home, my refuge and always an inspiration.’

The day afterwards, Pieter Mulier will show his latest Alaïa collection in New York, four decades after Azzedine Alaïa first showed in the city in 1982. It will be his second time showing outside of Paris – an intimate show at the designer’s brutalist home in Antwerp, Belgium took place in 2023 – and will no doubt be one of the highlights of the schedule. ’A city close to Pieter Mulier’s heart and the maison’s,’ said Alaïa on Instagram. It will be accompanied by ‘a series of exclusive moments’ which will take place in the city from 6–8 September. Meanwhile Cos – which last season showed at Corsie Sistine in Rome – will return to New York with a show on September 10 in Brooklyn. ‘New York is a dynamic city with so much character – it’s a place of inspiration, full of interesting and creative people,’ says the brand’s design director Karin Gustafson. Another new arrival is Off-White, who under creative director Ib Kamara will swap Paris for New York, showing on the afternoon of Sunday 16 (the title of the show is ‘Duty Free' and will take place at Brooklyn Bridge Park). Nanushka will also debut at the week, showing on the afternoon of September 7.

Elsewhere, expect a continuation of the Tory Burch renaissance as the designer presents her S/S 2025 collection on the evening of Monday 17, while New York stalwarts Coach, Michael Kors and Carolina Herrera will all show during the week. Wallpaper* USA 400 members Willy Chavarria and Peter Do, the latter showing his third collection for Helmut Lang, will round out the schedule, alongside rising names Zankov and Diotima. Tommy Hilfiger has also confirmed a spot on the week’s schedule, having initially been absent. He will show his latest collection at 6.30pm on Sunday 16.

London Fashion Week S/S 2025 (12 – 17 September 2024)

Beginning slightly earlier this season to avoid a clash with Milan Fashion Week (which starts this season on September 17), London Fashion Week will continue its 40th birthday celebrations with a packed schedule comprising the usual slew of energetic, emerging labels amid a smattering of more well-established names. Of the latter, Burberry will remain the chief draw for international editors visiting the city – Daniel Lee will show his fourth runway collection for the British label – while JW Anderson will present another agenda-setting collection on Sunday morning, his usual slot.

Other names showing this season are Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Erdem, Ahluwalia and Aaron Esh, alongside a new edition of London-based incubator Fashion East (participants are yet to be announced). Watch out for Derrick – Luke Derrick’s burgeoning London-based label had plenty of buzz last season for its sleek, contemporary riff on men’s tailoring – and Nensi Dojaka, who returns to the schedule after a hiatus. Feben will also return to London, having shown last season with the support of Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Look out too for the rebirth of Kent & Curwen, with the British label having been purchased by Chinese golf brand Biem.L.Fdlkk Garment in 2023.

London Fashion Week will also have a new home this season, the central Newgen space moving from Old Selfridges Hotel back to 180 Strand.

Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025 (17 – 23 September 2024)

Milan Fashion Week will run a day longer this season, part of a re-jigging of the fashion month schedule led by Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ’I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said the organisation’s president Carlo Capasa. ’[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

As such, the week will begin with Fendi on September 17, the Roman house presenting its S/S 2025 collection at 3pm (this time, the show will take place on a Tuesday, as opposed to its usual Wednesday). Elsewhere, expect a continuation of Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ set which it revealed as its menswear show in June (the house’s womenswear sets usually riff on their menswear predecessors ), alongside similarly blockbuster shows from Gucci, Versace, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Bottega Veneta.

Absent from this season’s schedule is Tom Ford – after the departure of creative director Peter Hawkings earlier this month – and Giorgio Armani, the latter showing in New York off-schedule in October. Also currently absent are MSGM and Blumarine (David Koma will show his debut as creative director next season), while Central Saint Martins graduate Susan Fang will show with the support of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday morning.

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025 (23 September – October 1 2024)

No doubt the biggest moment of Paris Fashion Week will be the arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will present his first runway show this September (the ex-Gucci creative director’s first collection for the house, titled ’Avant les Débuts’ was revealed in a surprise lookbook drop this past June). ‘It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a maison de couture that has the word “beauty” carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace,’ said Michele in a statement issued after his appointment in March 2024. He will show on the afternoon of Sunday 29.

A number of other houses – among them Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Chanel – are currently without creative directors. Givenchy is absent from the schedule (the new creative director will likely debut in February 2025), Dries Van Noten is slated to show on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 (it will be the first show since the eponymous creative director exited in June), and Chanel will retain its usual spot on the morning of Tuesday 1 October. An otherwise busy schedule – as has become the norm for the city – will include shows from Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens, Dior, Saint Laurent, Hermès and more. Balenciaga, meanwhile, will show on the evening of Monday 30, shifting from Sunday morning.

In other news, Paris label Coperni will host its S/S 2025 show on October 1, 2024 at the so-called happiest place on earth – Disneyland Paris. Founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer have said the collection will blend ‘magic with reality, paying tribute to the beloved Walt Disney Animation Studios movies of our childhood’. Meanwhile Ganni, the stalwart of Copenhagen Fashion Week, will shift to Paris this season, following the appointment of Laura du Rusquec, previously of Balenciaga, as CEO this past April.

Stay tuned for more from Women’s Fashion Month S/S 2025.

A freewheeling mood took over this season‘s menswear shows, seeing designers embrace the ‘irrational’ and the eccentric with colourful, experimental collections which in the heat of Florence, Milan and Paris captured summer’s uplifting energy. Indeed, designers from Rick Owens to Rei Kawakubo, Sabato De Sarno to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, spoke of a shift towards hope and optimism, albeit tentative. ’I want to hope for some light, even if very small,’ said Kawakubo, while Owens called his hundreds-strong runway cast his ’white satin army of love’. Meanwhile, the looming Paris Olympics – and its message of global unity and personal tenacity – was unavoidable, seeing preparations transform the city as a backdrop to both the menswear and haute couture shows which followed.

After the shift in recent seasons towards quiet, understated luxury – and the undeniably safe collections this often yielded – it felt like a refreshing re-emergence of men’s fashion month, which thanks to blockbuster shows from the likes of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton is shaking off any suggestion of its demise. Here, we unpack the S/S 2025 menswear shows – from ’irrational’ clothing to couture-level craft and eclectic new takes on tailoring.

Nothing was what it seemed

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal.’ So began a Prada collection which saw Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons urge the viewer to look closer, ‘to question the actuality of what we perceive, to reconsider, to look at things closer’. Staged amid a ‘fairytale ravescape’ – whereby models emerged from a vertiginous white cabin, which before the show had been blaring techno music – this was a collection of illusions, from belts that were in-set into trousers to trompe l’oeil Breton striped T-shirts, or trousers which appeared to be made from tailoring wool but were actually printed cotton. Elsewhere, shirts under sweaters or cardigans were constructed as a singular garment. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was disorientating fashion, for disorientating times, where even the appearance of reality is no guarantee (just prior to men’s fashion month, Meta introduced a label for Instagram and Facebook which tagged images that had been ‘made with AI’). And trompe l’oeil would appear throughout the season: at Acne Studios, denim was adorned with plastic chains, stacks of belts or printed rips and tears, while at Loewe, what looked like a cable-knit sweater was actually hand-painted fabric. ‘Things are not what they seem,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Designers embraced the ‘irrational’

Indeed, earlier in the month in Milan, the Northern Irish designer presented an equally illusory collection for his eponymous label JW Anderson. ‘Irrational clothing’, he described, noting that he was inspired by the free association of hypnotherapy (‘Inhale. Exhale. Are you feeling dreamy? Maybe a little delirious?’ read the accompanying notes). It made for a typically idiosyncratic outing – from enormous knitted house coats to Guinness-adorned knits and protrusions of coloured fabrics – which in part drew its liberated mood from viewing young people at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

This desire was echoed across the season, as menswear designers eschewed any notion of ’quiet luxury’. Martine Rose, who showed for the first time in Milan this season, adorned her stomping cast with prosthetic noses and tangled wigs, while at Rick Owens – undoubtedly a highlight of the season – the designer staged a Hollywood epic on the forecourt of Palais de Tokyo. There, his hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ marched out in an arresting array of looks, from monastic hooded gowns and laddered jersey bodysuits to sculptural capes made from tarnished gold Japanese denim (‘megacrust’ is how Owens playfully described the technique). The showstopping spectacle was a celebration of fashion’s liberatory spirit, one which Owens likened to escaping his hometown of Porterville, California and running away to Hollywood. ‘[It was] the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to to find my people, [the] weirdos and freaks.’

Craft was couture level

At a preview for his latest Dior Men collection – which was inspired by the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – Kim Jones noted a growing desire from his consumers to have something entirely one-of-a-kind. ’People want something that nobody else has got,’ he said. It was part of the reason he introduced his first dedicated couture collection for men last season and, while his S/S 2025 show in Paris did not have any official couture pieces – he has said he will create a couture collection only once each year – one particular jacket took over 600 hours of hand-embroidery to complete. A similar veneration of craft came at Loewe, where intricate tabard-style tops were crafted from woven metal or delicate shards of shell, an echo of the extraordinary 'caviar' beaded pieces from his A/W 2024 womenswear collection where each of the thousands of tiny beads were embroidered by hand. Equally seductive was the simplicity of Norbert Stumpfl’s latest Brioni collection, shown in the serene gardens of Milan’s 18th-century Palazzo Borromeo d'Adda. There, his ongoing quest for lightness – a signature of his tenure at the Italian house – was formulated in the collection’s fabrications, which spanned featherweight wools, supple perforated leather and airy vicuña knits. Most spectacular, though, was the eveningwear, where one double-breasted dinner jacket was embroidered with 10,000 baguette beads, each one hand-knotted in silk thread.

But there was still a slice of reality, too

If the enthusiasm for ‘quiet luxury’ has tempered in recent months, there nonetheless remained an appetite for the particular pleasure of real clothes – perhaps best epitomised in Paris by Auralee, Ryota Iwai’s Tokyo-based label which celebrates ten years in business this year. In its relative normality – there were no tricks here, just sweaters, jeans, and the like – it was impossibly desirable, the type of collection which makes you want to throw out your entire wardrobe and start again. It is down to Iwai’s exacting but uncomplicated approach, where tactile, meticulously sourced fabrics (Peruvian Alpaca, Mongolian cashmere, New Zealand wool, Indian cotton) meet a sensitive, considered palette (this season: pale green, red, buttercup yellow) which makes it anything but boring. ‘People put a lot of pressure onto their clothing, perhaps hoping to make a huge statement but I’m more interested in how smaller changes can highlight something about the wearer,’ Iwai told Wallpaper* prior to the show.

There is nothing normal about Hermès – and yet, despite Veronique Nichanian’s dedication to painstaking craft and truly luxurious fabrications, her collections end up feeling entirely effortless, and even thrown on. This season, she said she wanted to evoke ’a sweet summer’, and as ever there were plenty of real-world clothes here: breezy Oxford shirts, blouson jackets and bowling-style knits – in a palette of blues and pale pink – would fit into any man’s wardrobe. The same goes for Dries Van Noten, who has made a career of instilling the quotidian with a louche romance. His final show – earlier this year Van Noten announced he would be leaving his namesake label after 38 years – was a celebration of this, presenting a final collection which captured the designer’s distinct eye for colour and tactility. For this, he will be missed. ’This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ he said. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on.’

The suit is still ripe for reinvention

Each season, it feels like there is a diktat on the suit: it is double- or single-breasted, narrow or full, cropped at the ankle or pinched at the waist (as such, it often deemed emblematic of the season’s mood). For S/S 2025, though, there was little consensus, except that the suit remains ripe for reinvention, as designers across the board riffed on the garment in differing and distinctive ways. At Loewe, the show opened with razor-sharp black tailoring, evocative of the uniforms of security guards or gallery attendants. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision,’ said the designer, who noted inspiration from the ‘singular’ creative vision of figures like Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, whose work populated the show space. But there was illusion at play here, too: the fabric, a woven silk mohair, was designed to hold its shape with an almost-spongey finish. ‘These are things [that] are incredibly difficult to do but that which when you see them it feels effortless,’ he said.

There was experimentation of a different kind at Junya Watanabe, where the Japanese designer’s paean to denim included classic wool tailoring spliced with the fabric for an intriguing hybrid. Meanwhile at fellow Japanese label Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo’s Homme Plus collection contained plenty of tailoring cut in the designer’s cerebral manner, whether sliced-apart tailored jackets adorned with ruffle-like collars, or those out of which flashes of vividly coloured lining emerged. Colours were equally vivid at Issey Miyake Homme Plissé, where double-breasted blazers, waistcoats and ties were crafted from the brand’s signature lightweight knife pleats in crisp shades of green, orange and blue. Entirely crease-resistant, and undeniably easy in their roomy, stretchy silhouettes, they will prove a useful companion next summer. And, for the brave, so too will Gucci’s super-abbreviated tailored short shorts, part of a youthful S/S 2025 collection which creative director Sabato De Sarno said was inspired by the ’freedom, energy [and] community’ of surfing.

Sportswear was given an Olympics boost

Even for the most sports-averse, it was near-impossible to avoid the looming summer of sporting events ahead on menswear’s European tour – whether the Euros (which Emporio Armani hosted screenings of in both Milan and Paris), or the Olympics. The latter, taking place in Paris later this month, felt particularly prescient, not least because Parisian luxury goods conglomerate LVMH is one of the event’s principal sponsors. Unsurprisingly, then, Pharrell Williams evoked the Olympic spirit at his third menswear show at Louis Vuitton, which was held at Maison l’Unesco and made a plea for global unity and community (in fact, if you squinted, you could see the Olympic rings adorning the Eiffel Tower in the distance). ‘[It is] the celebration of human athletic prowess,’ said the designer, who featured several football kits adorned with ‘LVFC’. Meanwhile, at Wales Bonner, the British designer continued her successful collaboration with Adidas Originals, which here featured a shimmering sequinned version of the brand’s Samba sneaker, alongside slouchy basketball shorts and hoodies, striped polos and – most memorably – a pair of three-stripe swim trunks. And at Gucci, Sabato De Sarno’s surfing inspirations made for a collection of sleek, graphic menswear in sporty, luminous tones – including one of the season’s most covetable accessories: sunglasses on fluoro straps, worn like chokers around the neck.

As the dust settles on Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 – which concluded in Paris last week after previous stops in London, Florence and Milan – we revisit the season’s showstopping runway sets, which spanned the surreal, the transporting, and the serene.

From a ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Prada to the enormous cats that populated the runway at Dior Men – a collaboration with South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – we pick S/S 2025’s best sets and showspaces, which backdropped the month’s defining collections.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: the best runway sets

Dior Men’s giant cats, inspired by the work of ceramicist Hylton Nel

The inspiration for Kim Jones’ S/S 2025 collection for Dior Men was the works of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ While Nel’s naive motifs featured across the collection, a series of his cat sculptures were blown up by Jones to populate the Val-de-Grâce showspace in a celebration of what the British designer described as Nel’s ‘homespun monumentalism’.

Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito

On arrival at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito space – where Prada’s runway shows are held each season – guests were transported to what the house described as a ‘fairytale ravescape’ complete with a white cabin, door ajar, out of which techno music blared. As the show began, models emerged from the structure and down onto the runway wearing a collection that co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described as ‘capturing a spirit of freedom, of youthful optimism and energy’. ‘We wanted to create clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves,’ they elaborated. ‘There is a sense of spontaneity and optimism to these clothes - they reflect instinctive but deliberate choices, freedom.’

Zegna’s field of linen in Milan

This season, Zegna recreated a field of linen in a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Milan just a short drive from the city’s Linate airport. Doubling as the runway set for the house’s S/S 2025 show, each blade of ‘linen’ was created from lightweight strips of metals that moved gently as the models walked. Creative director Alessandro Sartori – whose summer collection used the fabric in a multitude of iterations and weights – said he wanted to evoke the feeling that nature was invading the industrial space. ‘Linen is a wonderful medium,’ said Sartori. ‘Not only [is it] traceable and true to our commitment to sustainability, but it is also as malleable and sensual as the idea of summer dressing we are prompting.’

A celebration of ‘artistic freedom’ and independence at Loewe

Taking place at Paris’ Garde Republicaine, Loewe’s stark white showspace doubled as an art gallery of sorts, seeing works from Paul Thek (a collection of miniature metal mice), Carlo Scarpa (an easel from the 1990s), Peter Hujar (a photograph of a single high-heeled shoe) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (a chair and coat hook, the latter draped with a red boa) populate the runway. Meanwhile, a vintage copy of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation lay open on the floor. Described by the house as ‘an exercise in curatorial subjectivity and narrative association’, each artist was chosen for their ‘fierce adherence to independence and artistic freedom’. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Gucci’s celebration of design at Milan’s Triennale

This season, Gucci creative director Sabato de Sarno chose the atrium of Milan’s Triennale museum – the city’s temple to design – to host his sophomore menswear show for the Italian house. While the Giovanni Muzio-designed space was unchanged for the show, ’a testament to our deep appreciation for its intrinsic essence’, a series of specially constructed green lacquered stools lined the museum’s corridors. They were dedicated to architect Gae Aulenti, the subject of an exhibition at the institution which runs until January 2025.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s windswept dandelions

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was titled ‘Up, Up, and Away’, its breezy, lightweight garments inspired by the wind: ‘the phenomena caused by wind, crafts and designs that react to wind, and forms that embody wind,’ described the Japanese brand. The showspace, constructed in the courtyard of Paris’ Mobilier National reflected the collection’s mood, seeing dandelion-like structures by Vincent de Belleval shudder gently in the breeze.

A silver runway for Dries Van Noten’s runway finale

Dries Van Noten transported guests to St Denis, a suburb on Paris’ northern outskirts, for his final show as creative director of his eponymous brand (earlier this year, the Belgian designer announced he would be stepping away from the label after 38 years). Staged in a vast warehouse transformed for the event – which was attended by well-wishers including designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Ann Demeulemeester and Stephen Jones – a runway made of silver leaf ran the length of the space. As models from the label’s past and present walked, shards of the foil hovered in the air, reflecting the S/S 2025 collection’s celebration of the fleeting and the ephemeral.

A Louis Vuitton takeover of UNESCO celebrating ‘global unity’

The rooftop of Maison l’Unesco in Paris was temporarily transformed into the show space for Pharrell Williams’ latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection. While the grass-covered runway was checkered to recall the house’s Damier motif – which has become a hallmark of Williams’ collections so far – the show centred around Erik Reitzel’s ‘Symbolic Globe’, which depicts the world as a vast, interlinked spherical grid. It was part of Williams’ plea for global unity with a collection designed to celebrate connection and community. ‘Activating the maison’s mind-expanding travel gene, the collection illustrates the degrees of similarities which bind us across the globe,’ Williams said via the collection’s notes.

Just before eight o’clock yesterday evening (22 June 2024) a flurry of black cars made their way out of Paris towards the northern suburb of St Denis, where a vast former factory had been transformed for Dries Van Noten’s final runway collection. Earlier this year, the Belgian designer – first known for being part of the avant-garde Antwerp Six which rose to prominence in the early 1990s – announced he would be stepping away from his label after 38 years at the helm.

Entering the space, an enormous cube-like structure flickered through clips from Van Noten’s 128 previous runway shows (the final collection would be his 129th), alongside clips of the designer working with his atelier and team. Around it milled the show’s guests, each there to pay homage to the designer’s acclaimed career. They included fellow Antwerp Six designers Ann Demeulemeester and Walter Van Beirendonck, former Valentino designer Pierpaolo Piccioli, Hermès’ Véronique Nichanian, American designer Thom Browne, and milliner Stephen Jones, among others.

Inside Dries Van Noten’s last runway show

In the second room – revealed with the opening of a floor-to-ceiling black curtain – was a long, silver foil runway. It was here that Van Noten would stage his last runway show, drafting models past and present to wear the collection’s 70 looks. ‘[Some of these models] have been with us since the earliest shows, like family; their presence marking the passage of time,’ said Van Noten. They included Hannelore Knuts, Kirsten Owens, Malgosia Bela, Debra Shaw, Malick Bodian, Jonas Gloer and Alain Gossuin, who opened the show, their footsteps causing the foil to drift away from the runway in delicate floating shards.

The passing of time – perhaps inevitably – was the central theme of the collection, with Van Noten drawing inspiration from the work of Belgian conceptual artist Edith Dekyndt. Though her oeuvre is wide, much of her work centres on transforming everyday objects by exposing them to water, chemicals or air over time, a process she often documents in photographs and film. As such, Van Noten spoke of a desire to make pieces feel lived in – fabrics included softly worn herringbone, linen and cotton drill – while techniques like Japanese suminagashi, a type of marbling, were evoked to celebrate processes which take time and patience.

‘Before a piece of clothing is worn, it is encoded with stories. When design comes from a personal place, every detail and decision is meaningful,’ he said via the collection’s accompanying notes. ‘[This collection] is a continuum of connection, encompassing ideas developed from classical to innovative; attesting to craft and colour; and ultimately, providing a relaxed yet elegant way of dressing. Clothes that move through life with us, carrying us forward.’

Of the collection’s silhouette, Van Noten drew on classic sartorial pieces, like the tuxedo jacket, which here was elongated to the ankle – an expression of the designer’s louche, romantic line. Other pieces showed a mastery of texture and colour, from the plasticky candy wrapper-like fabrics, which made up billowing parkas and shirts, to the molten metallics used across the collection’s final looks. The palette shifted from grey, ecru, navy and black towards richly expressive shades of burgundy, pink, peach, lime green and turquoise.

The show ended with an ebullient standing ovation as Van Noten walked out to take his final bow. And, though emotion was high, the mood was celebratory, epitomised by the reveal of a giant disco ball as the designer exited the runway to the euphoric sounds of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. After the show, the party went on into the night.

‘This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ said Van Noten. ‘I think about how Marcelo Mastroianni once spoke of a paradoxical “Nostalgia del futuro,” beyond the lost paradises imagined by Proust, and how we continue to pursue our dreams knowing that, at some point, we can look back on them with love.’

‘I love my job, I love doing fashion shows, and sharing fashion with people,’ he continued. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on. My sense of this moment is how it is not only mine, but ours, always.’

Discover more from Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025.

driesvannoten.com

After stops in London, Florence and Milan, Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025 marked the final destination of this season’s menswear tour, with notable moments including the last collection from Dries Van Noten as creative director of his eponymous label. Presented on Saturday evening (22 June 2024) on Paris’ outskirts, the Belgian designer closed the curtain on 38 years with a runway show which drafted models past and present to celebrate an acclaimed career.

Elsewhere, Rick Owens returned to Palais de Tokyo having shown in his own Paris home last season (on the gallery’s forecourt, he staged his version of a Hollywood epic), while at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson populated the runway with works from Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar, Susan Sontag and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. After the show, Anderson said he was inspired by the singularity of each artist’s vision. Hermès’ Véronique Nichanian, Dior Men’s Kim Jones and Louis Vuitton’s Pharrell Williams also showed their latest collections at the week, the latter making a plea for global unity with a blockbuster show at Maison de l’UNESCO.

Here, Wallpaper* picks the highlights from Paris Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2025

Wooyoungmi

Last season, Madame Woo imagined what Seoul might look like through an outsider’s eye; this season, she was inspired by the concept of the ’ABK’ (‘American Born Korean’), the children of immigrants from South Korea who straddle two cultures. Here, the designer said she was looking at the ABK as a particular archetype, one which ‘[embodies] the wardrobes of American lifestyle… the laid-back cool of California and Hawaii, the sporty prep of the Ivy League, the casual country energy of the Western heartland.’ All these elements were in evidence in the collection – varsity jackets, baseball-style trousers and Wooyoungmi-emblazoned sports tops all appeared – filtered through the brand’s playful, eclectic lens, which is inspired by Seoul street style (looks were layered or clashed elements, from collegiate uniforms and the business suit to surfwear). Elsewhere, homespun elements, like hand-painted calligraphy and ‘bojagi’ shirts – the latter constructed using traditional South Korean knot-tying techniques – made it what Madame Woo described ‘as most artisanal to date… a conversation between the past and the future; the hand-spun and the technological.’

Dries Van Noten

Earlier this year, Belgian designer Dries Van Noten announced that he would be leaving his eponymous label after a nearly four-decade-long career. His final show, held yesterday evening (23 June 2024), saw wellwishers travel to the Parisian suburb of St Denis, where a vast industrial warehouse had been transformed for the show. In the first room, guests – including designers Stephen Jones, Glenn Martens, Ann Demeulemeester and Pierpaolo Piccioli – mingled around a cube-like screen showing highlights from Van Noten’s career, while in the second, a silver-foil runway ran the length of the space. It was there that the designer staged his final outing, drafting models past and present to walk the show, ‘some who have been with us since the earliest shows, like family; their presence marking the passage of time’. These included Hannelore Knuts, Kirsten Owens, Malgosia Bela, Debra Shaw, Malick Bodian and Jonas Gloer, among others.

Indeed, this was a collection, said Van Noten, about time and its effects. The Belgian artist Edith Dekyndt was one of the season‘s inspirations; in her work, everyday objects are transformed by being exposed to water, chemicals or air, a process she often documents on film. Here, Van Noten’s fabrics were purposely lived-in – like softly worn English herringbone, cotton drill and Irish linen – while other pieces were inspired by suminagashi, a Japanese marbling process which dates back a millennia (here, it became flower and leaf motifs across garments). Of the silhouette, he talked about a ‘contemporary elegance’, instilling traditional tailoring with his unique brand of louche romance (the show’s final look was a perfectly cut tuxedo jacket, elongated to the model’s ankles). A series of pieces in candy-wrapper sheer fabrics – in shades of pink, lime green and turquoise – showed his mastery of colour and texture. It ended with a roaring standing ovation as the designer took his bow, before a curtain fell and an enormous disco ball appeared.

‘This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ he said. ‘I love my job, I love doing fashion shows, and sharing fashion with people. Creating is about leaving something that lives on. My sense of this moment is how it is not only mine, but ours, always.’

‘It is not a grand finale’: read our full report of Dries Van Noten’s final show.

Hermès

As Paris’ longest-running creative director – she has been in the role for over three decades and counting – a large part of Véronique Nichanian’s success is her ability to make even the most painstaking feats of craft look entirely effortless. Such was the case with her S/S 2025 collection, shown at Paris’ Palais d'Iéna yesterday afternoon and backdropped by floor-to-ceiling screens depicting gently rippling blue waters. They suggested a transporting mood: via the collection notes, Nichanian spoke of a desire to evoke a ‘a sweet summer… [where] clothing casts reflections into the transparency of water.’ As such, in a largely blue colour palette – enlivened with shots of pink and foiled metallics – Nichanian conjured pieces which were seductively lightweight, from breezy Oxford shirts and patterned blousons, to tank tops, near-sheer tailored jackets and short-sleeved bowling-style knits. Meanwhile, versions of the house‘s L'Instruction du Roy print – taken from one of the house‘s signature carré silk scarves – extended from garments to the models’ skin, via a series of transferable tattoos. Ever-appealing accessories included criss-crossing calfskin sandals, glimmering palladium-finish jewellery, and versions of the house’s roomy Haut à Courroies bag in denim canvas and Togo calfskin, making for perhaps the season’s most desirable travel bag.

Loewe

Jonathan Anderson’s latest outing at Loewe saw the Garde Républicaine showspace temporarily transformed into an art gallery of sorts: dotted around the stark white runway were works by Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar (whose photograph of a high-heeled shoe was the collection’s invite), and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, while a copy of Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’ lay open as if in the middle of being read. After the show, Anderson explained each was an artist he admired for their distinct point of view. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ he said, noting that they led him towards a collection of ‘hypnotic’ precision, led by instinct. ‘It’s about knowing when to pull back, or when to push it,’ he continued. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision.’ Of the Hujar photograph, he said he was thinking about ‘what a collection would be if it was that.’

As such, the collection began with sharply defined black tailoring – evocative, perhaps, of the uniform of an art gallery attendant – though elongated feather headpieces, some gilded, shifted the looks somewhere else. Draped silk tops, which read ‘Loewe’, were meant to evoke the labels in clothing blown up in size, while other pieces looked like one thing but were actually another, like ‘cable knit’ tops and shorts made from hand-painted fabrics (‘things are not what they seem,’ said Anderson). Meanwhile a couture-level use of craft – an echo of the extraordinary beaded garments from his last womenswear collection – informed tabard-style tops, their shimmering surfaces made from pieces of shell or links of metal. Elongated dress shoes were another esoteric play on silhouette from the designer, which he said he extended ‘centimetre by centimetre’ to ‘work out what was enough to make it look believable’. Together, the effect was arresting, beautiful, and – much like Anderson’s winning streak of recent collections at both JW Anderson and Loewe – utterly singular.

Dior Men

The ‘homespun monumentalism’ of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel was the starting point of Kim Jones’ latest collection for Dior. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones said before the show. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ Backdropped by a series of blown-up versions of Nel’s distinctive cat sculptures which lined the runway, Nel’s expressive motifs – whether hand-drawn dogs, birds, flowers or trees – appeared as trinket-like buttons and badges across the collection, or as intarsia knits or embroidery. The colour palette, meanwhile, was inspired by trips to Nel’s art-filled homes in Calitzdorp, South Africa. ‘He’s lived in two houses in the same town for years and years,’ says Jones. ‘[There is] this huge sky. That was what really drew me to the colour palette, the blues and the pinks when you are there at different times of the day.’ Other pieces looked towards the Dior archive – long a source of inspiration for Jones – including an unrealised jacket sketched by Yves Saint Laurent during his tenure at the house; here, it became a white ceramic collar. ‘It a celebration of work and an expression of who somebody is and what they achieve through work,’ said Jones. ‘That legacy and continuity through time.’

Read our interview with Kim Jones on his collaboration with Hylton Nel.

Hed Mayner

Hed Mayner remains one of Paris’ most intriguing designers, creating collections in a distinct vocabulary which is often rooted in a play on proportion. This season, though, the designer spoke about going against ‘his instinct to intricately cut new patterns and cocoon the body in wide shoulders and spacious pants’, choosing instead to focus on the way that fabric – and the way it is treated, whether coated, bonded or layered – can create its own silhouettes when worn on the body. As such, there was a greater focus on texture this season, whether the shine of coated cotton (some forming abstract motifs across enormous T-shirts), fabrics that were purposely creased or distressed, or the sharpness of classic poplins and blue denim. Mayner likened the mix to a ‘Coke can shaken and waiting to burst’, and the grinding soundtrack – at one point diverting to soaring strings – lent the feeling that there was new energy this season. Also revealed was the latest part of an ongoing collaboration with Reebok, featuring a version of the sportswear brand’s Blacktop sneaker in a nostalgic, 1980s-inspired palette the designer said was ‘pitched somewhere between cross training and basketball’.

Junya Watanabe

‘I have used denim and patchwork a lot in my past collections, but this time I tried to go further in my exploration to find new discoveries,’ described Junya Watanabe of his S/S 2025 menswear collection in a typically brief statement issued by the Japanese designer. Titled ‘Dress Up Denim’ and presented on a sharp triangle of red carpet, Watanabe looked this season towards the tropes of eveningwear, beginning with a series of tuxedos constructed from a patchwork of checkered, pinstripe and tartan fabrics (accessorised, Junya-style, with earring-adorned sunglasses and slashes of coloured lipstick). Elsewhere, these same jackets were reimagined in varying shades of denim, worn with ripped and distressed jeans which pooled at the ankle, while the sartorial mood was matched in black-and-white brogues created in collaboration with Tricker’s. Completing the collection was a series of hybrid garments, from a sliced-up wool blazer-cum-denim jacket to band T-shirts – Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Scorpions all featured – inset with billowing baroque silk scarves.

Rick Owens

Rick Owens proved his mastery of spectacle by staging a Hollywood epic on the monolithic forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo. Amid plumes of smoke, out marched his hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ which comprised old friends, students and underground icons like Allanah Starr. Descending the gallery’s famed staircase and looping around its central body of water, they emerged in groups of the same white outfit – whether featherweight monastic gowns or layers of jersey which appeared torn across its surface – some wielding enormous scaffold-like structures and flags. ‘This season is named “Hollywood” after the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to,’ said Owens. ‘I always reference the lost Hollywood of pre-colour black-and-white biblical epics, mixing art deco, lurid sin and redeeming morality.’ It marked a departure from the relative intimacy of last season, whereby Owens opened up his Paris home to show the collection. ‘I felt bad about making attendance so restricted, so this time around I wanted to welcome everyone,’ he said. ‘Expressing our individuality is great but sometimes expressing our unity and reliance on each other is a good thing to remember too.’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

With a collection titled ‘Up, Up, and Away’, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake was inspired by the wind: ‘the phenomena caused by wind, crafts and designs that react to wind, and forms that embody wind’, the Japanese brand said in a statement. As such, the Vincent de Belleval-designed show set in the courtyard of Paris’ Mobilier National comprised a field of enormous mechanical dandelions, which swung gently from side to side as models wove their way across the space. The inspiration point lent the clothing a feeling of breezy lightness, with silhouettes drawn from kites, parachutes and waves for ‘garments that come to life as soon as the air is in motion’. A series of layered looks in scarf-like checks felt a continuation of the instinctual mood of last season, while satisfying shots of searing yellow, red and soft blue continued Homme Plissé’s near-unparalleled use of colour.

Wales Bonner

‘The idea of being by the water,’ said Grace Wales Bonner of her latest collection, which saw the London-based designer conjure the ‘nighttime vibrance of cities by the sea’ in her usual transporting style. As such, looks teetered between beachside attire – notably, pairs of swim trunks and short shorts, the former part of her ongoing collaboration with Adidas – and an insouciant glamour, here recalled in louche tuxedo tailoring (created alongside Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard), glimmering footwear, and sinuous, body-skimming silhouettes, some adorned with firework-like splashes of beaded embroidery. Other pieces had a nautical air (striped jersey tops, netted detailing, a white blouson jacket and matching shorts), while a greater exploration of print this season – a welcome new layer of richness to the Wales Bonner universe – was inspired by Trinidadian textile artist Althea McNish. Moving to London in 1950, she would become a key member of the Caribbean Artist Movement and a force of midcentury print design, creating motifs for Christian Dior and Liberty. ‘The prints featured in the collection resound with McNish’s creative freedom,’ said Wales Bonner via the collection notes.

Lemaire

Lemaire’s latest show was held at the brand’s headquarters on Paris’ Place des Vosges, the inner sanctum of the label opened up to the world for the first time last season (inside, each collection is conceived and designed). It makes for the perfect vantage point to view Christophe Lemaire and working partner Sarah Linh-Tran’s collections, which are best seen up close. It also speaks to the mood of intimacy the pair capture in their men’s and womenswear collections (both lines featured in the show) which eschew ephemeral trends in favour of creating pieces to accompany the wearer through the coming years, or indeed decades, of their lives. To do so requires an innate understanding of how clothing feels on the body, and how the wrong choices – or even the most minuscule wrong cut or seam – can affect our mood, posture and day. Here, the thematic thread was the clash of the rugged and the delicate, where sinuous and layered looks – some recalling undergarments – met tough cotton drill and leather, or stricter workwear-inspired silhouettes.

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams’ third collection as menswear creative director of Louis Vuitton saw the American multi-hyphenate make a plea for global unity and connection at Paris’ Maison de l'Unesco. On a grass-covered runway that stretched across the building’s rooftop, the show centred around the Erik Reitzel-conceived ‘Symbolic Globe’, which was designed in 1995 to represent the web of worldwide connections that Unesco represents. Here, Williams imagined Louis Vuitton as such a connective force with a collection designed to ‘illustrate the degrees of similarities which bind us across the globe’, defined by the slogan ‘le monde est à vous’ (‘the world is yours’), which appeared on the backs of shirts worn both on the runway and by the event’s staff. The look itself was one of ‘global dandy’, Williams described, taking inspiration from archetypal figures associated with crossing borders, from the pilot to the diplomat. Other pieces looked towards traditional workwear and sportswear, including a football kit emblazoned with ‘LVRS United’ (Williams noted that the game was another unifying force), while the palette was designed to represent a wide gamut of skin tones.

Read our full report of the Pharrell Williams’ S/S 2025 Louis Vuitton men’s show.

Auralee

Despite celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Tuesday evening (18 June 2024) marked Auralee’s sophomore show in Paris, having debuted on the schedule last season. Founded and designed by Ryota Iwai, it is a sign of the way the Tokyo-based label has steadily amped up its European presence in recent months, introducing a whole new swathe of consumers to Iwai’s sensitive riffs on the quotidian wardrobe, defined by impeccably sourced fabrics, unexpected colour, and a pervasive sense of ease. This season, he imagined his cast of men and women wandering through a verdant park in ‘relaxed, loose’ combinations which spanned plays on officewear to summertime shorts and chinos (after the show the models lined up in the lush gardens of 51 rue de l'Université). Seductive shots of colour ran throughout – pale green, red, buttercup yellow – which met classic blue denim, beige and khaki. In the humid Paris evening, it made for a wardrobe you wanted to take and wear right off the runway.

Read our interview with Ryota Iwai on ten years of Auralee.

Dries Van Noten’s beauty and fragrance line debuted in 2022. Since then, the brand has unlocked several ‘strange’ and ‘impossible combinations’ in make-up and perfume via unusual colour palettes (found in products such as violet-hued and grey-toned matte lipsticks which recently came to life on models in the Dries Van Noten A/W 2024 show) and scent profiles in Cannabis Patchouli, conceived by Van Noten and nose Nicolas Bonneville.

‘In Dries’ world, antagonistic elements are combined to create surprise. [Cannabis Patchouli] is like a light and dark olfactive pattern of fresh green leaves of clary sage aromatics rubbing against the woody leaves of patchouli,’ Bonneville says.

Dries Van Noten’s Mystic Moss fragrance captures the essence of spring

It was Cannabis Patchouli that sparked Dries Van Noten’s imagination for his latest spring scent, Mystic Moss. An obsessive gardener, the Belgian designer lives in a neoclassical house on a 55-acre park in the countryside just outside of Antwerp, his sprawling garden of hundreds of species of plants and flowers often forming the inspiration behind his collections.

‘The idea for this new fragrance, Mystic Moss, stemmed from my love for Cannabis Patchouli, a personal favourite, which started with Nicolas’ generous gift of a patchouli plant for my garden in 2022,’ the designer tells Wallpaper*. ‘I expressed my interest in creating a fresher version of it. Given my deep appreciation for botanicals and nature, exploring a fresher interpretation of the original scent felt natural.’

‘To me, spring holds a special place as my favourite season,’ Van Noten continues. ‘It signifies the arrival of early blooming flowers, including roses, the emergence of buds, and fresh growth breaking through the cold, barren ground. Spring embodies the essence of rebirth and awakening.’

This sentiment is captured in Mystic Moss, which forms an olfactory triptych with two other citrussy Eau de Toilettes in the Dries Van Noten beauty range: the floral Orange Smoke, which combines orange blossom with incense, and the amber Sur Ma Peau, with notes of bergamot and mandarin. Mystic Moss can also be identified by the freshness of mandarin. However, this time the aroma is much more savoury, with clary sage, oakmoss, and fleur de sel (an ingredient used in perfumery derived from the crust of salt on the surface of seawater as it evaporates).

As with all Dries Van Noten perfume bottles, Mystic Moss reflects ‘the sensory journey of the scent itself’. ‘They reflect the duplicity of each fragrance,’ says Van Noten. ‘In the case of Mystic Moss, the transition from the clarity and crispness of green notes to the deep richness of earthy tones inspired the colour scheme for the bottle.

‘I approach perfumery with a similar mindset as fashion,’ the designer concludes. ‘The input from the noses is extremely interesting and very educational. I call it a creative ping-pong, where ideas flow freely, dreams are shared, and even the wildest concepts are entertained with curiosity and enthusiasm. It’s been an incredibly enriching journey.’

Mystic Moss by Dries Van Noten, £190, is available exclusively at Selfridges
and driesvannoten.com

Belgian designer Dries Van Noten – a member of the famed 1990s fashion movement the Antwerp Six – has announced today that he is to step down from his eponymous label this coming June, after 38 years as creative director. 

Van Noten will show his final collection – S/S 2025 menswear – this coming June in Paris, marking his official exit from the label. The following womenswear collection, presented in September 2024, will be overseen by an in-house design team. Puig, the Spanish luxury goods conglomerate which owns the brand, has said that a search for a successor is already underway.

Dries Van Noten to leave his namesake label

‘Now I want to shift my focus to the things that I never had time for,’ the designer wrote in a letter which accompanied the announcement. ‘I’m sad, but in the same time happy, to let you know that I will step down at the end of June. I have been preparing for this moment for a while, and I feel like it’s time to leave room for a new generation of talents to bring their vision to the brand.’

Born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1958, Van Noten enrolled to the fashion design course of Antwerp’s Royal Academy aged 18 (fashion – or clothing at least – was in his blood, hailing from three generations of tailors who worked in the city). Under course director Linda Loppa, he would meet the other members of what would become known the ’Antwerp Six’ – Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee – a group of designers who studied at the school from 1980-81 and would later travel to London en masse in 1986 to show their collections at London Fashion Week.

There, purportedly because the reporters could not pronounce their individual names, they were deemed the ’Antwerp Six’, a name which stuck. Though each had a distinct aesthetic, they largely caught attention for collections which provided a riposte to the outré 1980s fashion of the era, favouring a DIY, deconstructionist approach which nonetheless referenced the rich history of Flemish craft. It would provide a precursor to the moody aesthetic of the 1990s, and pave the way for later Belgian designers, like Martin Margiela and Raf Simons.

The trip to London would also mark the start of Van Noten’s own label, which began with menswear and later saw the addition of womenswear (he began showing menswear officially in Paris in 1991; womenswear was added in 1993). Defined by rich fabrications, an astute use of colour and emotive presentations – all infused with the energy of subculture and a seductive, underlying strangeness – Van Noten would become one of contemporary fashion’s most lauded designers.

In 2008, he won the International Designer of the Year at the CFDA Awards; later, he would be awarded France’s ‘Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ (he would show in Paris throughout his career) and the Culture Award from The Province of Antwerp. Van Noten’s expansive career would see him celebrate a 50th fashion show in 2004 and a 100th fashion show in 2017 (a year later, in 2018, Puig became the majority holder), as well as a monograph and retrospective exhibition, ’Inspirations’, which both launched in 2014. Memorably, he would collaborate with Christian Lacroix on a joint S/S 2020 collection.

Van Noten saw his work as a continuing search for beauty, in part inspired by the colours and seasonal fluctuations of his beloved garden in his Antwerp home. ’The idea of beauty is supremely subjective and very personal,’ he says. ‘Time also plays a role when our view on what is beautiful to us evolves. A flower, a building or a garment can be a thing of wonder for one while leaving another completely indifferent. What was beautiful to us even recently may be ugly today. Luckily, all designers have their own eye on and language of beauty.’

The final chapter of his tenure at the brand was the addition of a beauty line, which was launched in 2022. Comprising rich, evocative fragrances and colour-saturated lipsticks (in equally colourful packaging), Van Noten likened to the experience of eating olives for the first time. ‘The first one makes you go, “Ooh, what is this?”’ he said. ‘But after that you always like it. I think you have to learn to appreciate things, and sometimes you have to learn to appreciate my vision of beauty.’ 

’Last but not least, my heartfelt appreciation to everybody who loves what we do,’ today’s announcement concluded. ’Seeing our clothes out in the world, knowing they have a place in your life has fulfilled me beyond words. I am sure of this: the Dries Van Noten future looks bright’

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A mood of escape and discovery permeated the S/S 2024 collections, with designers looking to journeys real and imagined to inspire their summertime offerings. Here, taken from the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, we select 12 objects and looks that capture the freewheeling mood of the season – whether Matthieu Blazy’s around-the-world odyssey at Bottega Veneta, Hermès’ beach-primed fisherman’s sandals, or Jonathan Anderson’s crystal-adorned sunglasses at Loewe. 

In fashion: the best of S/S 2024

Wander lust: Ferragamo (top left)

Maximilian Davis’ collection for Ferragamo was rooted in an imagined exchange between his Caribbean roots and the house’s Italian heritage, epitomised by these vertiginous sandals, elevated on a sculptural sole and laced with coloured rocks.

Enquire at ferragamo.com

Globe trotter: Bottega Veneta (top right)

Describing it as an ‘odyssey’, Matthieu Blazy’s show for Bottega Veneta saw models march across a tiled world map, sporting huge woven leather beach bags, stacked with clothing and rolled-up newspapers, as if wandering back from a day at the beach.

Enquire at bottegaveneta.com

Fluid forms: Dior Men

Elements of femininity – think shrunken, crystal-embellished cardigans, feather-and flower-adorned hats, and pearls – pervaded Kim Jones’ Dior menswear, inspired by previous Dior creative directors, from Yves Saint Laurent to Gianfranco Ferré.

Available at dior.com

Craft union: Prada

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ collection for Prada was one of material richness and intrigue, from floating translucent gowns to tasselled skirts in-set with eyelets. ‘We try to make the best out of our work, to make beautiful things for today,’ says Prada.

Enquire at prada.com

Great lengths: Dries Van Noten

There was an elongated line to this season’s menswear silhouette, which suggested a mood of ease and movement. This tabard by Dries Van Noten, with its subtle, 1970s-tinged print, formed part of a collection that encapsulates a ‘disrupted elegance’.

Available from driesvannoten.com

Big picture: Chanel

Chanel’s Virginie Viard looked to the French town of Hyères for inspiration, with her ensuing collection embodying the Riviera locale’s easy creative spirit. Camera-like quilted bags, complete with lenses, hung from models as if to capture the views.

Enquire at chanel.com

Track record: Wales Bonner

Inspired by Ethiopian and Kenyan marathon runners, Grace Wales Bonner’s ode to ‘long journeys and life missions’ was marked by a use of complex crafts in everything from woven zebra-print tops to macramé dresses adorned with Ghanaian glass beads.

Enquire at walesbonner.net

Action packed: Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada continued to explore notions of contemporary beauty for Miu Miu with a collection punctuated by sporty swimwear that crept above the waistline (as if clothes had been slung on after a morning in the surf ) and hiking-style sandals.

Available at miumiu.com

In proportion: Burberry

Daniel Lee’s collection for Burberry paid homage to ‘lightness, sensuality, beauty and elegance’, largely through proportion: the house’s signature trench sported a newly dropped waistline, while tailored trousers were replaced with long shorts.

Enquire at burberry.com

Escape route: Hermès

A soft and sultry summer mood permeated Véronique Nichanian’s Hermès menswear collection, which featured translucent layers, woven rope beach bags and this elegant riff on the fisherman’s sandal, made for clambering through coves and rock pools.

Enquire at hermes.com

Crystal clear: Gucci

The shimmer of crystal heralded the arrival of Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, with the house’s new creative director using it to adorn babydoll dresses and chainmail bustier tops in a collection designed to capture the insouciant glamour of Italian street life.

Enquire at gucci.com

Tunnel vision: Loewe

For his menswear collection for Loewe, Jonathan Anderson set out to create a silhouette that felt as if the viewer were looking upwards at the wearer through a fisheye lens. These oversized crystal-studded sunglasses completed the vision.

Available from loewe.com at selfridges.com

A version of this article appears in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Models: Shuqi at The Milk Collective, Rex Rayner at Supa Model Management. Casting: Monica Domarke. Hair: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Philip B. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Giorgio Armani Beauty. Manicure: Ami Streets using Byredo. Photography assistants: James Donovan, Sarah Merrett. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Ady Huq. Digi tech: Al Habjan. Retouching: MGS Post.

January marks the beginning not only of a new year, but a new season in style – gone are the winter collections of last year, in are the S/S 2024 collections, and with them the promise of brighter days ahead.

As part of Wallpaper’s Design Awards 2024 issue, we select the winning men’s and womenswear collections of S/S 2024 – and their standout looks – which will define a season of dressing ahead. These span Sabato de Sarno’s sensual new vision for Gucci (the designer called it a ’story of richness and lust... of sweat, dancing and singing’, and is pictured top left), the eclectic oppositions of Dries Van Noten’s womenswear, and Maximilian Davis’ expertly reduced Ferragamo tailoring. 

Winning collections came too from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at Prada, where they reckoned with beauty and craft, the sinuous lines of Kim Jones’ Fendi, or Matthieu Blazy’s extraordinary riffs on the quotidien at Bottega Veneta (here encapsulated his version of a working man’s tie, recrafted in leather). Or Lucie and Luke Meier’s gently oversized men’s Jil Sander tailoring, adorned with glimmering crystal broaches (pictured top right). 

The various looks are captured by London-based photographer Daisy Walker, and styled by Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes. 

The standout looks of S/S 2024, selected by Wallpaper*

Courrèges

Dolce & Gabbana

Dries Van Noten

Acne Studios

Hermès

Wooyoungmi

Ferragamo

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

Givenchy

Alexander McQueen

Carven

Isabel Marant

Bottega Veneta

Miu Miu

Paul Smith

Fendi

Dior

Prada

Balenciaga

Marni

Valentino

Loewe 

Models: Kerolyn Soares at IMG, Aaron Shandel at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Adam Garland using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Winter Glow and No.1 de Chanel Red Camellia Exfoliating Mask. Interiors: Olly Mason. Set build: London Art Makers. Photography assistants: Chloe Yates, Zillah Rauter. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Samela Gjozi. Hair assistant: Annabella Hudgell. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Post-production: Lasso Studio. 

A version of this article appears in the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper* – dedicated to the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 – available in print from 4 January, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Wearing coloured eyeshadow can be a daunting prospect. But the only way to overcome any fear is to feel it, and do it anyway – and particularly when it comes down to make-up application, which is supposed to be a fun and freeing experience by nature.

Experimentation and practice here are key: approaching your face like a painter would a canvas, and testing out shades to see which suits your undertones are essential to the process of learning to pull off a bright and bold eye look. This can extend as far as layering lipsticks or smearing lip gloss onto eyelids, wetting a powder shadow to create a deeper and more vibrant finish to the product, blending eye tints to create a custom hue, or using opposite ends of the colour spectrum simultaneously on eyes and lips.

On the beauty pages of Wallpaper* 2023, this is the philosophy that was employed by three make-up artists: Peter Philips, creative and image director of Dior’s make-up line; Chanel’s UK beauty ambassador Marco Antonio; and the talents of Parisian make-up maestro Caroline Fenouil. Here, three looks to use as inspiration for your own daring makeup application, taking coloured eyeshadow into 2024 and beyond.

How to experiment with coloured eyeshadow, as seen in Wallpaper* 2023

Red

Marco Antonio went big on red for this look for the November 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, combining a glossy lip and dewy skin with a metallic garnet eye. The make-up artist made sure the base was fresh, letting freckles show through, so as not to overdo the final result. He also used Chanel’s Baume Essentiel glow stick in Transparent to highlight under the brow bone and high points of the face, before lining the eyes with a metallic red and brushing it up onto the lashes. Antonio combined Chanel’s 31 Le Rouge lipsticks in the shades Rouge Coromandel combined with the wetter-looking finish of the Rouge Beige colourway. For staying powder, always prime your eyelids and set the liner using a powder, unless you want to create an intentionally grungy, lived-in result that creases and shifts over time.

Blue

Dior make-up’s creative and image director Peter Philips launched an eye palette this year in the shade ‘Denim’, which includes azure, peacock, turquoise blue shimmer shadows And it’s this this is palette that was used here for this shoot with Charles Negre, published in the October 2023 issue of Wallpaper*. Slightly retro in feel, but neither pastiche or referential, this eye look works with the palette to blend and merge colours together, seamlessly diffusing the shadows to the outer peripheries of the brow bone and underneath the lower lid. Ground your look with smokey black liner and mascara: the products here include Diorshow Iconic Overcurl mascara in 090 and Diorshow On Stage Crayon eyeliner in 099.

Green

The look that Caroline Fenuil put together for this beauty editorial (published in the December 2023 issue of Wallpaper*) is not for the faint of heart. It celebrates the ‘strangeness’ of Dries Van Noten’s beauty range, as described by Van Noten himself. ‘I am a storyteller,’ he told Mary Cleary upon the launch of his make-up and fragrance line in 2022. My clothes make you feel certain associations and connections, because I work with all those contrasts, all those opposites.’ Fenuil cleverly played with this idea by teaming the brand’s Satin lipstick in Favorite Red with a metallic, slime-green eyeshadow, blended right up and outward, to create a contrasting and beautifully jarring make-up look befitting of Antwerpian design sensibilities.

Dries Van Noten Beauty has always embraced surprising combinations. As Van Noten told us when the brand launched in 2021, with lipsticks and fragrances that ‘can tell a different story. Because with my fashion collections, I am a storyteller. My clothes make you feel certain associations and connections, because I work with all those contrasts, all those opposites.’

The inspiration behind Dries Van Noten Beauty

So, for our December issue story, we took a note out of the Van Noten beauty playbook and mixed clashing colours with bold textures to create six riotous looks that tightrope between brashness and elegance. Paris-based photographer Eva Wang captured these ‘impossible combinations’ (including electric pink lipstick smeared on eyelids or a classic bordeaux-hued shade lined with a bright shock of shimmering gold) in her signature high-gloss style.

The playful ethos of Dries Van Noten Beauty extended to the makeup application, as seen in the lilac eyeshadow applied with a measured messiness beyond the lid, or lip colours that subtly peek outside of the lip line. The same goes for the fashion, by Wallpaper’s fashion firector Jason Hughes, where 1980s exuberance is channelled through a combination of lacquered Barbie-pink lips paired with a gold foil turtleneck, or a furry pastel pink coat contrasting with the texture of a slime green eye.

It’s jolie laide makeup at its very best or, as Van Noten himself puts it, ‘what is beautiful for me may be very ugly for you, and vice versa. Something that is considered by a lot of people as beautiful I think is boring. That’s why I like so much to work with contrasts. I like to have strangeness in my beauty.’

All make-up and clothing by Dries Van Noten, driesvannoten.com. Make-up is also available at Selfridges, selfridges.com.

Beauty & grooming editor: Mary Cleary. Fashion director: Jason Hughes. Models: Migoa Guol at Elite Paris, Julia Lamarque at Blow Models. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Make-up: Caroline Fenouil. Hair: Sayaka Otama at Walter Schupfer Management. Digital assistant: Tony at Dope Paris. Photography assistant: Fred Barlet. Make-up assistant: Shin Fenestre.

A version of this story appeared in the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 9 November, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

‘There’s so much beauty out there. Is there still something we can do?’ Dries Van Noten asked when we spoke to him last year, ahead of his beauty line debut. ‘For me, the answer was yes, we can tell a different story. Because with my fashion collections, I am a storyteller. My clothes make you feel certain associations and connections, because I work with all those contrasts, all those opposites.’ 

Now, Van Noten is translating that same storytelling ethos into his first-ever beauty store. In fact, part of what drew him to the space on Quai Malaquais was its storied past. Located along the Seine, directly across from the Louvre, the elegant red brick and limestone building was constructed in 1625 for the Prince of Transylvania. It was later sold off to a minister who – so the story goes – was having an affair with the then-queen of France and met her covertly using a secret tunnel between what is now the Dries store and the Louvre. Fast forward to the 1920s and the space became a groundbreaking gallery, showing the work of upstart artists like Chagall and Picasso. 

These stories are the first thing Van Noten tells me when I visit him at the store ahead of opening day, and they are clearly what has informed the space’s blended design of a classically French apartment and a showroom for objet d’art. ‘When we were redoing the store we really wanted to bring all the connotations back to classic Paris,’ Van Noten says. ‘With a kind of boudoir vibe and [elements like] alabaster throughout the space, which is specifically inspired by the city’s perfume stores in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.’ 

That ambience is created through a combination of antique and modern details: clean white walls and burnished gold display cases are surrounded by silk curtains and plush velvet settees. Elsewhere, a terrazzo marble floor is offset by a funky 1970s-esque chandelier made from Venetian glass. 

As with all Van Noten designs, every detail of the store has been meticulously considered. Plaster elements, like a wall hanging of a fragmented bust, are a reference to the art school behind the store, while a large tapestry from 1630 (Van Noten’s favourite feature) hangs against the back wall and depicts an infinity mirror effect of gardens framed by columns.

‘We bought it at an auction in Paris last year,’ Van Noten says. ‘Its design is inspired by the work of a Dutch-Belgian artist who was experimenting a lot with drawings and buildings where you change the perspective, which you see here with the columns.’ 

‘And one thing that I really like,’ he continues,‘ is that on both sides of the tapestry you have these columns, and when you go outside you also have columns on either side of the store, and then between this store and the men’s store outside you have another set of even bigger columns… so it feels like it belongs here.’ 

Although the store is relatively small, the space feels varied and expansive, in large part because it is divided into sections – one area focuses on the lipsticks, another the fragrance and, dividing them both, a display case featuring accessories. It is both impressive and welcoming, eschewing the cold and intimidating atmosphere of many other luxury shops.  

One other unique element of the space is a small, darkened gallery space tucked away towards the back of the store. With its low ceilings and black walls, this ‘archive room’ is a sombre and meditative chamber compared to the bright white and yellow space outside. Inside it is a rotating array of pieces from the Dries Van Noten archive which, in this museum-like context, can be appreciated as the precious objects they are. 

So what’s next for Dries Van Noten Beauty? ‘We are preparing some more launches in  2024,’ says Van Noten. ‘There are going to be a few more perfumes and some more beauty products – it will continue to be a range that grows. That’s also the idea of the store, that it is a place where we can meet and experiment, do things in the very special way we like to do it.’ 

driesvannoten.com

Dries Van Noten’s Los Angeles outpost – found on the city’s La Cienega Boulevard and the largest of all the Belgian designer’s stores – is split in half. Divided by a parking lot, on one side is ‘The Big House’, the store’s retail space that houses the brand’s men’s and women’s collections; on the other, ‘The Little House’, a 1950s-era bungalow made to host artists, designers and craftspeople that Van Noten wants to spotlight. He has previously called it a ‘creative lab’.

Spring 2023 sees the arrival of a new exhibition at The Little House, which cedes control to Alexander May, a multihyphenate creative director and curator who runs LA-based creative agency Sized. May has gathered a series of emerging and established artists for the exhibition, titled ‘Bond’ (29 April – 10 June 2023), which he says is in part a continuation of Sized Selects, a monthly curation of artworks, design objects and furniture from around the world for enthusiasts and collectors to purchase. Speaking to Wallpaper*, May describes a desire to be ‘both hyper-local and hyper-global’ with Sized Selects, calling it ‘a way to engage with our collectors as well as our community’.

‘Bond’ by Sized Selects at Dries Van Noten’s The Little House

May was invited to take part in the project by Jenny Le, Dries Van Noten’s retail director, who has been instrumental in establishing The Little House concept. Previously, it has hosted a surrealist tablescape from Nadia and Laila Gohar’s Gohar World, an exhibition of Peter Shire’s artworks titled ‘In A Hollywood Bungalow’, and a series of Misha Kahn’s colourful, bulbous sculptures in an installation titled ‘Watermelon Party’. ‘I was very excited, as I’ve always admired the brand,’ says May. ’I first felt really connected to Dries when I lived right around the corner from its men’s boutique in Paris. I always found the interiors to be incredibly inspiring and layered.’

May, who selected an array of international artists and designers for the exhibition, was looking for works that would interplay with the space; in part inspired by the Japanese art of ikebana, he says that ‘Bond’ explores the ‘tradition of arrangement and the art of placement’. ‘The curation for “Bond” was inspired by how we arrange objects, and the ways in which they live in various environments,’ says May. 

‘The tactile connections the materials make when they are placed in conversation with each other has always inspired me,’ he continues. ‘And, of course, the art of ikebana has a particular adjacency to the art of arrangement. The collaborators were chosen to represent the diversity in a collection that I felt would complement the Dries Van Noten aesthetic.’ May painted much of The Little House space black to ‘neutralise’ the interior architecture – ‘very much like a black-box theatre, I consider the colour to be an incredible backdrop for things to evolve and connect’, he says – and placed the objects around the various rooms in carefully considered displays (‘the harmony in placement’, as May describes).

The various works on display include those by Sophia Moreno-Bunge, Aso Rando and Dana Arbib, among others, and span vases, vessels, sculptures and images. Several of the works provide an interplay between the artificial and the natural – perhaps epitomised by Morengo-Bunge’s ceramic vessels on which vast palm fronds are balanced. ‘This positioning supports the questioning of form and function, which is something that I think about a lot,’ says May. 

‘Each work in “Bond” has a unique energy, but specifically I’m very excited about the opportunity to bring the work of Rando Aso to the United States for the first time,’ he continues, noting that the various pieces will be available for purchase on the Sized Selects website. ‘I’m really inspired by the texture and the materiality of his incredible Raku forms, which are unglazed and painted in fire and smoke.’

‘Bond’ runs at Dries Van Noten’s The Little House in Los Angeles until 10 June 2023.

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sized.ltd

Dries Van Noten likens smelling his perfume to eating olives. ‘The first one makes you go, “Ooh, what is this?”’ he says over Zoom from his Antwerp studio. ‘But after that you always like it. I think you have to learn to appreciate things, and sometimes you have to learn to appreciate my vision of beauty.’ 

That beauty can (and often should be) consciously attained rather than instantly perceived has been a defining feature of Van Noten’s work since he debuted his first fashion collection in 1986. The Belgian designer is a connoisseur of contradictions, with a matchless ability to synthesise sartorial opposites – slouchy streetwear silhouettes are blended with impeccably tailored couture; collections are influenced by the high-brow (he once based an entire season on Elizabeth Peyton’s painting, Democrats Are More Beautiful (after John Horowitz), 2011) and the mundane (prints made from iPhone photos taken by his team), while styles from disparate pasts (19th-century dandies, 1970s Glam Rock) are scavenged and reworked to create distinctly modern pieces. 

The story behind Dries Van Noten Beauty

The most crystalline expression of Van Noten’s penchant for ‘impossible combinations’ is inarguably his use of colour and pattern. He produces all of his own textiles (the portrait shown here was taken in his store room) and his particular brilliance as a designer lies in his ability to combine textures, patterns, and colours that would, to anyone else, seem inherently wrong. Take, for example, his latest S/S 2022 collection, which paired psychedelic silkscreened button-ups with flapper-esque fringe outfits of seafoam green, tangerine, and royal blue. 

The newly launched Dries Van Noten Beauty sees the designer translate his unique understanding of colour and texture into a new medium, and create a beauty line that stands apart from anything else in the industry. ‘There's so much beauty out there. Is there still something we can do?’ Van Noten asked himself before launching the line. ‘For me, the answer was yes, we can tell a different story. Because with my fashion collections, I am a storyteller. My clothes make you feel certain associations and connections, because I work with all those contrasts, all those opposites.’ 

As of now, the collection comprises perfumes, lipsticks, and companion accessories, including compact mirrors, combs, and pochettes. The fragrance collection features ten genderless scents, each created by a different perfumer and each its own unorthodox interpretation of traditional floral fragrances. Flowers have been an enduring source of inspiration for Van Noten, with his collections regularly featuring prints, colours and forms informed by his own gardening. Before the noses got to work on the fragrances, Van Noten invited them to explore the sprawling, bucolic garden he maintains on his 19th-century estate outside Antwerp.

‘I worked with the perfumes the same way I would work with my team when we’re working on our fashion collections,’ says the designer. ‘So the idea was really that I gave them quite a wide brief. I told them my story. I invited them to our house and our garden, to see how I work with plants, with flowers especially – I take risks by putting flowers together in strange ways.’ 

Roses are Van Noten’s favourite flower, and the two different rose perfumes within the fragrance collection are emblematic of his idiosyncratic approach to beauty. Rosa Carnivora, by perfumer Daphné Bugey, is a creamy blend of rose, vetiver, and patchouli, while Raving Rose, by perfumer Louise Turner, is a spicy take on the flower with a near startling infusion of pepper. The two fragrances ‘are kind of a kick in your face’, as Van Noten puts it. 

‘Something perfectly beautiful can also become boring,’ he continues. In many ways, these perfumes are an attempt to enliven the inherent beauty of flowers through surprising pairings. That approach is mirrored in the packaging of the bottles, which juxtapose patterns drawn directly from Van Noten’s print collection to visualise the essence of each fragrance. For example, Voodoo Chile is a cool blend of rosemary, patchouli, and cedarwood that comes in a cerulean blue glass bottle with a silver base engraved with herb leaves. Soie Malaquais, a blend of chestnut and silk accord, is contained in a dark burgundy bottle with a Delft blue pottery base. 

This two-tone packaging is repeated in the lipsticks, which are the first element of what will eventually become a fully fledged make-up range. The lipsticks include 15 satin shades, ten matte shades, five sheers and one transparent balm. For Van Noten, developing the lipstick shades was a natural extension of his experiments with colour and texture in clothing.

‘It's really about finding that balance between the brightness of colours, and of course, with my experience creating fabrics, I know very well how I can balance out those things. It was quite interesting to see the colours and discuss the density – if something has to be shinier or more matte, and how we could go with it.’ The resulting shades range from classics like the matte cherry Crafted Red, to bolder colours like the charred eggplant of Bohemian Scarlett or Barbie-esque Neon Pink, to the all-out unconventional shades of blue and green to be launched soon. 

Van Noten’s beauty collection is an intelligent reiteration of his iconic vision of beauty. One that is contradictory and compelling or, as Van Noten puts it, ‘what is beautiful for me may be very ugly for you, and vice versa. Something that is considered by a lot of people as beautiful I think is boring. That’s why I like so much to work with contrasts. I like to have strangeness in my beauty.’

INFORMATION

driesvannoten.com

‘It's basically in my parents garden,' laughs Meryll Rogge of the barn-come-studio south-west of Ghent, she's been operating her fledgling label from since that start of the Covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020. ‘This space was empty, so they kindly allowed me to live and work here.' 

It's fitting that Rogge has evolved her brand – which launched in Paris in February 2020, just before the world went into lockdown –  from an unconventional, domestic setting. Her designs, which focus on reinterpreting classic silhouettes and patterns, like tuxedo trousers and springtime daisy prints have a democratic design leaning and focus on ‘seeing the beauty in very mundane elements.' Rogge explains, ‘My 75 year old godmother pops by and loves all the pieces.'

Rogge's label may only be a year old, but the designer is a fashion industry veteran. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2008, she moved to New York, where she spent seven years working for Marc Jacobs. ‘We referred to his shows as being on Broadway because they were such a spectacle,' Rogge explains. ‘I still get starstruck when I see Marc.' Rogge then moved back to Antwerp, where she headed up womenswear for Dries Van Noten. ‘He really thinks about his customer,' Rogge says. ‘...making women feel beautiful and comfortable.'

The designer is captivated by a mundane sense of beauty, and the power of timeless vintage clothes which never lose their sense of style. ‘Pieces which evoke a sense of nostalgia, in a familiar and reassuring way,' she says. Her brand's A/W 2021 collection reinterprets classic pieces that will remain in your wardrobe forever, like tuxedo trousers cut to resemble tracksuit bottoms, a parka with a subtly A-line shape and ruffled shoulder details and a slip dress embroidered with pretty florals. ‘We've used the most banal daisy prints you've ever seen!' enthuses Rogge. ‘I love the idea of incorporating really recognisable elements.'

When Rogge launched her debut collection in Paris last year, she had over 70 appointments from retail buyers and press. However, she attributes to early success to the time afforded to her over the past year. ‘In the sense, we've been able to work here in our little closed environment without too many distractions,' she says. ‘And so we've been able to grow, in an almost hidden way.' 

INFORMATION

meryllrogge.com

‘Slowly something is mounting, some more desire and excitement,' Miuccia Prada said in her A/W 2021 post-show discussion with collaborator Raf Simons, and it's certainly true that there was an enthusiastic undercurrent running through many of the beauty looks in the A/W 2021 shows.

The season's helmet haircuts, body paint, face stickers, crayola colour palettes, goth extremism and other inventive takes on beauty, suggested a readiness to get playful, to experiment. Skincare and wellness dominated the conversation last year, but this season hints that there is ‘desire and excitement' around the return to a bolder makeup.

Below, we share some of the most memorable looks from the season to inspire your own cosmetic creativity.

Burberry 

One of the chief inspirations for Riccardo Tisci’s latest Burberry collection was the Arts and Crafts movement of early 19th century Britain, which saw artists like William Morris rebel against the rise of industrially produced goods in favour of handmade craft with wildlife motifs.
 
To translate this aesthetic into cosmetics, Burberry’s Global Beauty Director, Isamaya Ffrench, built on the hyper-minimalist makeup of last year’s show, maintaining the same high-polish skin and no-makeup makeup, but this time faces were scattered with delicate silver stars and face crystals. 

To complement the look, hair artist Jawara Wauchope created a series of military-style buzzcuts and gelled back styles so severe they looked almost as if they were painted on. 

Molly Goddard 

There’s always been a certain playfulness to Molly Goddard’s work, and that sensibility was complemented this season by Luke Hersheson’s whimsical hair, and colourful makeup by Miranda Joyce. Bundles of candy-floss hair were accompanied by crescent moons of neon-pink blush around the eyes and bright red lips.

The effect is like an artistic take on a child’s first experiments with their mother’s makeup cabinet. Hair blow-dried to the max and makeup applied freely and experimentally, without following any rules about where it should go. Its one of the many looks this season that suggests extravagant makeup and hair will be on-trend come autumn 2021.

Ahluwalia

The spraypainted prints of Priya Ahluwalia’s A/W 21 collection were reflected in the airbrushed steaks of colour that adorned models faces. London-based makeup artist Bari Khalique accented cheekbones, brow lines, and chins with strokes of iridescent blue for a painterly take on cosmetic colour application. 

Simone Rocha

Some of the most memorable hair looks of the season came courtesy of hairstylist Cyndia Harvey at Simone Rocha. Rocha was inspired the naivety of adolescence for this collection and Harvey’s long rows of plaits harked back to the uniform hairstyle of many school girls.

Yet, the formation of those braids into gravity-defining sculptures added an edginess to the delicacy, in a nod to Rocha’s signature blend of fragility and ferocity. That mixture was echoed in Lauren Parsons’ makeup, which features sweet, peachy lips and brown eyes that added a suggestion of sleepless nights. Ama Quashie nail art, featuring delicate flowers on a clear base, was a particularly delightful detail. 

Prada 

Within the first few seconds of Prada’s A/W 2021 digital show, the camera turns and follows the model through the OMA-designed set, showcasing her helmet of slicked-back hair. The extravagant minimalism of the look is the perfect foil for the exuberant textures, patterns, and colours that characterised Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest collection. While Pat McGrath's clean, barely perceptible makeup added an element of understatement. 

Salvatore Ferragamo 

The beginning of Paul Andrew’s A/W 2021 collection for Salvatore Ferragamo started off with beauty not all that different from the looks in many other shows this season – minimalist makeup paired with slicked-back hair. Yet, as the sci-fi inspired show film, continues shimmers of something different appears.

A model emerges from the white-lit tunnel, a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with splotches of silver paint around her lips, the same appears again, until by the end of the show, models emerged almost entirely covered in silver body paint that complemented a matching silver trench or a revealing chainmail gown.

Yohji Yamamoto

Spooky is probably the best word for describing the hair and makeup in Yohji Yamamoto’s latest A/W 2021 collection. The show’s mixture of 19th-century structures and contemporary streetwear influence was reflected in beauty looks which walked the line between Romantic-era ghoul and modern-day punk.

Long black mains were crimped and flipped into Edward Scissorhands-style disarray, bouffant hair-dos are deflated and tinged with streaks of grey, shorter updos were styled into elaborate braids or gelled upwards and dyed blue, red, and black.

The gothy-punk hairstyles were accompanied by exaggeratedly pale skin and blanched lips for a corpse-like pallor.

Christian Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri called her latest collection for Christian Dior ‘Disturbing Beauty' and it's true that there was a certain element of creepiness to the beauty looks Peter Philips and Guido Palau constructed for the show.

Philips' created a black smoky eye that was dark around the eye's corners and more lightly shaded across the crease for a withdrawn, eerie effect. Palau's hair emphasised the drama with a severe middle part or curtain of glossy bangs.

Dries Van Noten

It’s near impossible not to catch sight of the slightly smeared, vinyl lips in Dries Van Noten’s dance-filled A/W 2021 film. Ranging from rosy pink to brick red and deep berry, the punchy lips were emphasised by slicked back hair, minimal eye makeup, and the occasional bleached eyebrow.

Paired with free-flowing choreography and a Massive Attack soundtrack, the bold cosmetics of this collection offered some much-needed inspiration for the evenings of party makeup that, hopefully, aren’t too far away.

Dries Van Noten, the Antwerp-based fashion designer known for his exquisite prints and bold colors, harbors another talent: art curation. His eclectic universe, a sort of curation in itself, was celebrated in the exhibition Dries van Noten – Inspirations, held at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2014. There, a number of his favorite paintings, photographs, films and costumes from spanning periods, places and styles were gathered. 

Now, the designer has cut the ribbon on a new three day exhibition at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. The show is, according to him, ‘a dialogue' between art pieces from different eras and origins. Among three groups, the protagonist is a pair of Flemish paintings by the 17th century master Gérard De Lairesse, taken from Van Noten’s personal collection. In 2009 these three-metre-high masterpieces were transferred from the designer’s Antwerp headquarters to his Tokyo flagship.

For the store’s inauguration a decade ago, Noten wanted to find something to juxtapose with the baroque works which point to his Flemish origin. His light bulb moment came with commissioning Japanese artists to ‘interpret' the paintings. In spite of the dramatic Greek mythological scenes seen in De Lairesse’s work, interestingly, Tokyoite artists expressed themselves in an opposite manner. The result was an oil painting by Yuumi Domoto as well as a photograph by Mika Ninagawa, both coincidentally abstract and monochromatic. Eventually a pair of acrylic paintings of geometric motifs by Daisuke Ohba joined them. All of these art works, either contemporary or baroque, have been sharing the roof since then, and are also featured in the ‘Interpretations, Tokyo' show.

Now, the Store’s tenth anniversary sees new ‘interpretations' by three more artists: Masaho Anotani expresses the cycle of life and death and two sides of the same coin in two paintings. A pair of blood-coloured pieces by Naho Ishii focus on the epic side of a Greek odyssey. While Ataru Sato imagines the sequel to the story of Achilles in four pieces using different mediums.

For Van Noten, commissioning artwork for the exhibition meant a total ‘carte blanche' approach, with zero indications for size, style nor medium. After the exhibition, the pieces will be displayed at the Dries Van Noten Tokyo store. New decade, new curation.

INFORMATION

‘Interpretations, Tokyo’ is on view until 31 March. For more information, visit the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art website

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Mood board: In 2017, Dior & I director Reiner Holzemer released the documentary Dries, an intimate portrait of the Belgian designer, which offered a year-spanning look into his life, and included visits to the designer’s breathtaking home and surrounding 55-acre gardens in Lier. Horticulture is a hallmark of the designer, and for A/W 2019, Noten was inspired by a renowned quote from Gertrude Stein’s 1913 poem Sacred Emily, ‘A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose’. The sentence is used to highlight that the nature of something can be denoted by just its name itself. Straight-talking and non-whimsical prints of photographs of roses from Noten’s garden populated the collection, which was a symphony of sleek pinstripe silhouettes in rich charcoal, and 1940s and 1950s couture-inspired eveningwear, including gold sequin pencil skirts, metallic chiffon blouses layered over men’s suiting, floral print column gowns and fake fur neon stoles.

Best in show: Underground at the Palais de Tokyo, a long catwalk was plunged into darkness. As each model entered the space, lights in the ceiling flickered on one by one to reveal her silhouette. A sleek black double breasted trouser suit, paired with a sleeping bag-like stole was particularly powerful, while a satin skirt suit with a bold delphinium print was green-fingered glam.

Finishing touches: Noten’s footwear has always been a driving force of his business, his renowned sculptural heels a symbol of eclectic Belgian style. For A/W 2019, ankle boots had clumpy, colour platform soles and longer knee-high styles were imagined in sugary silk shades.

Mood board: As the war against plastic intensifies, the show invitations for A/W 2019 have been a soberer affair. Often a thickness of card or the gloss of a font will give away the mood of the season. Ahead of his Berluti debut, Kris Van Assche sent out blocks of wood. A loaf of bread wrapped in a white napkin gave the details of Simon Porte Jacquemus’s menswear show; Virgil Abloh sent a single white glove, studded in crystals for his Louis Vuitton spectacle. In classic, elegant style, Van Noten’s white gloss A5 card gave nothing – and everything – away. After the op-art opulence of the S/S 2019 show, featuring Verner Panton’s sunny clashing colours, A/W 2019 rooted itself in tailoring. Entitled ‘Nostalgia del futuro’, the clothes were said to be a new view on the suit for the next generation. With their cool normalcy, each season Van Noten’s work says something and nothing about the time in which they are made. They are neutrally classic. Handsome and polished. They are unpretentious.

Scene setting: The staging had a starkness that felt correct: a giant industrial hall with a modest lighting rig set-up in square formation. Models walked around the space in elegant, stress-free clothes. The soundtrack, made up of snippets of artists, musicians and luminaries, became an ode to the lushness of the internet. Taken from YouTube, the remixed conversations proved you only need a good editor to save you from information overload. Just as Van Noten does with his fashion.

Finishing touches: The shoulder was sharp but had an ease to it. Van Noten didn’t so much offer a radical new shift to suiting but gave it a subtle update. A narrow waist met a wide pleated leg. Quilted styles had a lightness. Van Noten’s seasonal prints were this time like fireworks – engineered tie-dye patterns over two-button tailoring and outerwear. More traditional techniques were applied to cotton separates and wide collar knits. Down-filled bags in pinstripe wools and cottons were worn matched to garments. §

Mood board: On the fashion week merry go round, there’s always a fair dose of pastiche. A designer’s nostalgic take on a decade, their interpretation of a location, or their take on a renowned woman’s wardrobe. The direction of Dries Van Noten’s S/S 2019 was refreshingly simple. In his show notes he claimed to offer ‘a personal view of today’ and did so with a collection of terrific pieces that we’d want to wear well into the future. There were a sublime balance of workwear and haute couture references here, like white pocket detail pants paired with a yellow sequinned blouse, white shirts with beaded and feathered details and trench coats gently pulled together with mountaineering cords. Outerwear carried under the arm or tied around the waist, plus pillowy clutch bags in plastic paillettes, brought an added nonchalance to the designs.

Best in show: Amongst the beautiful photo prints and inky blocks of colour on show, a black double-breasted trouser suit with a subtle frond of feathers at the shoulder, was spectacular. Elsewhere sarong-like skirts came with a gauzy beaded layer of tiny flowers, while a mackintosh was layered with a flapper-like cape of bright blue beads.

Finishing touches: Feathered heels, sandals with mountaineering rope ankle straps and sequinned clutch bags, all the Dries Van Noten women needs for today, and tomorrow too. §

Mood board: Dries Van Noten has operated proudly as an independent designer in his native Belgium for more than three decades. Early this month however, he sold a majority stake of his business to the Spanish-based group Puig and he will remain Chief Creative Officer. There was no obvious affect to his S/S 2019 show. The silhouette had a rigour that felt modern and confident. There were no discernible sports/streetwear references, no logos, no fugly trainers. Van Noten is still comfortably outside of the seasonal clatter. The shapes were all taken from workwear. Dialled down, they become canvases for seasonal play with print, colour and textile.

Best in show: Form versus function as utilitarian uniforms are subverted with unexpected textile. Oversized parkas, roomy coveralls and casual double-breasted tailoring come in easy cottons and linens and in high-shine, glossy nylon too. The look is unfussy. Models wore toned down accessories in pony skin. Sandals are in raffia and rubber – bumbags in high-shine nylon.

Team work: Van Noten unveiled a creative partnership with the estate of Danish architect and designer, Verner Panton, whose pop psychedelic interiors and furniture defined much of the Scandinavian design we love today. And he’s having a real moment. In Milan, Miuicca Prada and AMO reissued Panton’s ‘Inflatable Stool’ from the early 1960s, installing rows of them as the seating for her S/S 2019 show. Van Noten worked with Panton’s estate too and was granted permission to adapt some of his textile designs. The collection used photographic versions of Panton’s iconic works including the trippy Welle (Wave) pattern of undulating colours dating from the 1970s. Special labels sewn into the garments detail the collaboration, which is the estate’s – and fashion’s – first.

Scene setting: The Belgian designer held his A/W 2018 runway show inside the main hall of the historic Hôtel de Ville, a building brimming with Renaissance splendour, ornate guilding and enormous chandeliers. The location provided a distinct contrast to the concept of Outsider Art which inspired the collection, only enhanced by the organ solo of Deep Purple’s ‘Child in Time’, the prog rock soundtrack of the show.

Mood board: Noten was inspired by the spontaneity and freedom of Outsider Art, and his typically eclectic collection featured outerwear and trouser suits printed with inky biro print squiggles, skirts and overcoats embellished with fronds of colourful marabou and plastic streamers, and shaggy Afghan outerwear. It was a collection rich in satin and jacquard, lame and lurex, with richness and resplendence encouraged for A/W 2018.

Finishing touches: There was a touch of the nineties to the Matrix style sunglasses which offset the ostentation of the collection. Noten also looked to the sculpture of Dada artist Jean Tinguely, whose machine mobiles featured industrial parts and tools, like cogs and screwdrivers. Miniature mobiles dangled from the ears of models, their necks swathed in marabou and their partings lined with single ostrich feathers, dyed to reflect the colours seen in the collection.

Mood board: in a post Vetements world, the proliferation of the brand logo has become standard across the board: from smaller labels like Sunnei and MSGM to giants like Valentino who placed its abbreviated VLTN logo in bold style across a range of smart casuals for resort. From show to show, every label is submitting its own version of the ‘it thing’ namely either a theatrical down-jacket or an artful sneaker. Logos are big and boldfaced. This has created a curious terrain for the more cerebral designers, interested only in creating clothes for every day. Those who enjoy a certain anonymity in our very public world. Last season Van Noten cleverly reflected this hunger for branded clothes, choosing to place the logos of the mills and manufacturers onto jumpers – after all, they are the people who actually go on to produce what we want. Van Noten’s is one label that doesn’t want to wear you – you have to embody the clothes.

Best in show: A/W 2018 imagined a personal wardrobe built over time, mixing attitude, style and mood. A broderie anglais chino, a Lurex jumper, a hand-crafted knit. The traditional is worn under the technical. Prints for the season include a historic marbling technique seen lining antique books and papers, applied onto a series of nylon overcoats, and surrealist artworks by the American artist of record covers, Robert Beatty. An eye motif sat on the front of sweatshirts. There was fringing on cowboy shirts and studs on denim. Wide shearling collars flopped over shoulders on military trench coats.

Scene setting: Van Noten presented his 100th collection last March. A book carefully documenting each of the collections was published six months later and serves as a guidebook for the designer’s defining look. His name may not be spelt out over your chest, but his embroideries, bold prints always worn in multiples – the soft military references – tell you all you need to know. The A/W 2018 show was held in the former sorting office of the French Post Office and Customs and Excise. It opened with a wide-shoulder tailored coat you have probably seen before. Wide-leg trousers, embellished denim jackets and blousy cotton trench coats are mainstays of the Van Noten wardrobe. They were here in abundance. It’s exactly this sense of repetition, this consistency, that keeps people coming back.

Poster art: Loewe loves a poster-themed invitation, so for its S/S 2018 men’s presentation, the Madrid-based label opted for a fold-out of a model lounging by a pool at Salvador Dalí’s house in Cadaqués, Catalonia. The poster, part of the brand’s spring lookbook, was created in collaboration with graphic design studio and regular collaborators M/M Paris. Just like the windows of a home, it featured sleek rectangular cutouts. 

Home comforts: Designers were keeping house for S/S 2018, with a series of invitations revelling in domestic bliss. Anya Hindmarch’s came complete with a branded bar of soap, while Miu Miu’s was lined with a layer of sponge – what chicer tools for kitchen chores? More study-focused, Chalayan’s women’s invitation came complete with a pink Post-it note and JuunJ’s with a white collar. Dries Van Noten’s menswear invitation was printed with a retro office interior, boasting an old IBM computer.

True romance: In London, a host of show invitations nodded to nostalgia. Burberry’s featured an image by Dafydd Jones, of two students at the Magdalen Commemoration Ball at Oxford University in 1988, lying in formal clothing on the grass. Simone Rocha’s fold-out included two machine stitched-red figures with gothic trailing threads. Also otherworldly, the invitation to Thom Browne’s women’s show in Paris featured a card with a hand written poem speculating on the possibilities of dreams.

Feeling blue: The hue du jour during Paris men’s, blue accents were seen across the city’s invitations. At Louis Vuitton, an inky stripe completed the brand’s luggage-tag-inspired offering. At Yohji Yamamoto, a transparent black envelope encased a paper concertina printed with various global typescripts, which folded from a piece of sky blue card.

Box of tricks: Gucci presented its show attendees with a metal tin inspired by old pharmacy boxes. Its lid featured a mythical illustration taken from a German alchemical manuscript from the early 1700s, and opened to reveal a sheet of branded, chemist-inspired wrapping paper. Concealed inside? A thread holder, aromatic paper, five candles and a packet of matches. Talk about a hot ticket!

Bookworms: During the Paris womens’ shows, designers encouraged front rowers to engage in a spot of light reading or doodling. At Yohji Yamamoto, a yellow paged notepad was bound in plastic; at Hermès, guests were treated to a booklet listing the components of the brand’s 46 catwalk looks and a poem penned by Jarvis Cocker called ‘Hermès Colours’.

Orient express: Designers looked to Japan for their menswear show invitation inspirations. Take Paul Smith, which mailed guests a scaly plastic fish inscribed with Japanese typography. Or Emporio Armani, who printed an inky Oriental floral pattern onto its fabric-covered invitation. At Lanvin, guests kept themselves cool with a polka dot fan.

Band aid: Brands bought the entrance cues of music venues to the catwalk. From lanyards at Fendi and Versus, and barcoded tickets at Vetements, to sticky yellow wristbands at Marques’Almeida, we’d never felt more like we were with the band.

Hole in one: Designers brought cutouts to their catwalk invitations. Take the circular punches in Craig Green’s offering, evoking the hole motifs in his menswear designs, or the undulating curves in the Akris invitation, which nodded to a plywood sculpture by Alexander Girard (an inspiration behind the brand’s women’s collection). Or the circle cutout of a surreal horizon at Dirk Bikkembergs, and a viewfinder-like chink in the invitation for Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s debut for Chloé. Talk about making the cut!

Material world: Folds of fabrics acted as keepsake invitations. For Dries Van Noten’s women’s show and Luke and Lucie Meier’s debut at Jil Sander, the designers opted for subtle cream shades of fabric, printed with bold black typography. Marni’s women’s invitation featured a fold-out handkerchief finished with messy loops of thread, while Carven’s came with a pouting beaded fish. At Rick Owens’ women’s show, a scarf was printed with an illustration of a futurist sculpture by Thayaht, while at Tsatsas, the German accessories brand created a fabric invitation printed with an image of a rusty shipping liner.

Touch points: Textures were of top importance for S/S 2018, with Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani opting for invitations in sumptuous leather – a white calfskin envelope for the former’s women’s show, and a tan leather invitation for the latter’s men’s offering. At Marni’s menswear show, creative director Francesco Risso favoured a tactile invitation printed on corrugated cardboard.

Clear view: Brands both emerging and established opted for invitations encased in cellophane. Kiko Kostadinov used a press stud to fasten a white strip of paper inside a glossy sheer plastic envelope. For Prada’s men’s show, the brand enclosed a white cardboard sleeve for a ‘Draft Novel’ inside a clear tearable pouch.

Mood board: The fashion world is divided in two groups: those who like maximalist Dries and those who prefer it when he keeps it nice and minimal. Both of them get what they want on a regular basis but, on the whole, this one was for the over-the-top Dries lovers. This season, the Belgian designer went back to a world of decadent sequins, colour juxtapositions and louche layered foulards. This season's Dries girl is, as the brand states, 'Cocktails at five, addicted to fun, elegance and artifice'. Fittingly, she will wear nothing but the most decadent and chic – satin dresses, scarves nonchalantly pieced together, brocade trousers, transparent chiffon skirts with slits and bejewelled tops worn under slouchy, robe-like coats. And without a doubt, that style agrees with her. For all who yearn for minimal Dries, it is impossible to admit that the designer is always at his most brilliant when playing with lavishness.

Scene setting: After last season's escape to Bercy for his 100th show, this time it was back to Hôtel de Ville, the palace in the centre of Paris holding the mayor's offices. Etienne Russo, Dries' longtime friend and collaborator, knows the designer like no other, and decided the perfect setting for a decadent and  optimist collection would be this baroque building full of colour-blown frescoes, gilded furniture and exaggerated crystal chandeliers. Paris showgoers know the place well (Dries shows there regularly and recently Vivienne Westwood and Bouchra Jarrar for Lanvin took a liking to the venue). Nevertheless, its luxury 'à la française' never fails to impress.

Finishing touches: The accessories could be the highlight here– those chunky-heeled, brocade knee-high boots in golden shades, the casual slip-on sandals and the strass chandelier earrings were all irresistibly appealing. But it was the hair and make up that really got us going. No need for lipstick or eyeshadow here; when Dries says 'luxury' he really means it, and in terms of beauty that translates as crystals all over the eyes, the lips and even the hair. They were not big or too present, but just about enough to send a glittering spark across the catwalk. The audience were left wishing they had those almost as much as they wished for a foulard satin dresses.

‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, is nothing shy of monumental. Spanning nearly 3,000 sq m of prime space, it first unfolds as a rich, thematic journey throughout the two floors of permanent fashion galleries. Then, as though the second of two acts, visitors proceed towards the museum’s vast nave where the story begins anew, starting with the iconic bar suit from spring 1947, continuing as a chronological focus on the maison’s six designers, and ending with a magically staged ball attended by seven decades of show-stopping gowns.

Not since 1987 has there been a Christian Dior retrospective in Paris. Thirty years later, to mark the maison’s 70th anniversary, this one ranks as the largest yet. Curated by the museum’s director Olivier Gabet, and Florence Müller, who is based at the Denver Art Museum as the Avenir Foundation curator of textile art and fashion, it features upwards of 300 haute couture gowns, many from the museum’s own collection. But arguably even more staggering are all the peripheral objects: the loaned artworks from major institutions, a vast trove of archive materials from the brand’s Dior Heritage department, 700 accessories sorted as a meandering rainbow wall (dubbed ‘Colorama’), plus scores of magazine covers and editorial spreads that testify to how widely and consistently the Dior image has been diffused (Maison Christian Dior was involved in the show beyond financial support).

Rather than forcing one point of view above others, what becomes clear is that the designer’s original vision has been so incredibly respected, preserved and mythologised since his death just ten years after founding his label. Visitors need only glance at the three-storey wall filled silhouettes conceived by all the subsequent creative directors in addition to Dries Van Noten, Alber Elbaz, Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen, Pierre Cardin, Yohji Yamamoto and others to sense that his influence and artistic spirit has been kept alive.

Within the exhibition’s biographical gallery, just down from a striking portrait of the designer by artist Bernard Buffet, he appears on a Time magazine cover dated March 4,1957 holding a giant pair of scissors. In his book, Christian Dior and I, he referred to ‘a small bloodless revolution – made by the scissors rather than the sword – whose reverberations extend to all corners of the world.’ Now consider last year’s must-have ‘Dio(r)evolution’ t-shirt, which Müller happened to be wearing four days before the opening when she and Gabet met for our interview.

’His intention was not to be a revolutionary; he was seeing himself more as a reactionary. It was a reaction against the fashion of the war,’ she explained. ‘It was a reaction that became a revolution. But it was not his intention; I think he was more subtle than this.’

Is the show subtle? Not to the extent that the exceptional scenography, overseen by Nathalie Crinière, presents a steady stream of visually stimulating backdrops, from the illuminated outlines of the 30 Avenue Montaigne façade projected onto the museum walls (don’t miss the upper oval medallion with its highlight reel of runway shows), to the thousands of white flowers suspended from the ceiling in the room exploring the maison’s myriad floral-inspired dresses.

The ambiance in the nave becomes something of a dreamscape thanks to projections of the baroque paintings from the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, a simulated starry sky, and sparkling gold dust (Jean Cocteau famously noted how Mr Dior’s name was a near homophone with d’or, or gold). Here, in the presence of his glistening Junon and Venus gowns – along with at least two dozen others from Yves Saint Laurent through to Maria Grazia Chiuri – such overwhelming beauty successfully perpetuates the fashion fairytale.

But then to hear Gabet describe the selection process for the roughly 100 works of art placed throughout the exhibition is to also detect connections, surprises, and yes, subtleties that give the show added subtance. For while the paintings by Sterling Ruby and Agnes Martin adjacent to dresses by Raf Simons are obvious complements given his affinity for both artists; a torso of Nefertiti from the Louvre’s Egyptian department was only later discovered to exist as a photo in Galliano’s notebook. ‘It’s always when you are respectful to the artwork in the context of fashion that these beautiful and poetic things happen,’ Gabet suggested. ‘The point was not to be automatic but to always find the right and legitimate way.’

Mr Dior, after all, was a gallerist and art dealer before he became a designer; he revolved in creative circles with the likes of Salvador Dalí and Christian Bérard and mounted a surrealist show with his partner, Pierre Colle, in 1923. Chances are, he would have derived pleasure from seeing the modern maiden painted by Romaine Brooks in 1912, and a Fantin-Latour still life as juxtapositions to the floral dresses. Like other intimate vignettes in the show, it felt immune from any imposition of Dior, the mega-brand.

And it would be easy to declare the Colorama fixture the most apparent aspect of this with all the shoes, bags, hats, jewellery and perfume bottles. But Gabet sees it another way, rightfully pointing out how many of the objects represent collaborations with Stephen Jones, Roger Vivier, Swarovski (which developed the Aurora Borealis crystal for Mr Dior in 1956). ‘We are showing all the possibilities of the métiers d’art and craftsmanship technical virtuosity of the house of Dior.’

Incidentally, the exhibition includes an alcove where actual artisans will be stationed on a weekly basis to show off the savoir-faire before visitors’ eyes. That the show has debuted two days after Chiuri’s autumn/winter collection on Monday, is proof that the Dior story, for the first time filtered through a feminine voice, continues to play out beyond the museum walls in real time.

Gabet and Müller both pointed out that with this level of couture, the dresses didn’t simply slip onto the mannequins; they go through a meticulous process called mannequinage. ‘It’s a little industry by itself for the scale this show,’ said Gabet. Müller summed it up best: ‘You have to remember, he’s like a monument,’ she said. ‘You’ve entered into a legend.’

INFORMATION

‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ is on view until 7 January 2018. For more information, visit the Les Arts Décoratifs website

ADDRESS

Les Arts Décoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris

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Mood board: So many of the clothes that Dries Van Noten showed last season looked familiar to the eye. He even claimed that the long, double-breasted tailored coat that opened the show was an exact replica of one he had shown 20 years earlier! This felt like the crux of S/S 2018 too. The collection of beautiful separates was devoid of any specific theme or overtly political reference. They ushered in a sensible, pragmatic approach to dressing, which is something that Van Noten has been selling for decades. For the new season his roomy blazers, languid trench coats and wide leg trousers came in assorted artful colours from rust to olive and coffee to mushroom, aubergine and sage.

Scene setting: The setting for the show was the old headquarters for the famed leftist Paris daily Libération. The paper vacated its historic offices located in an old garage in 2015 where it had been since 1986. Stretching over eight floors around a spiral corridor, the roof terrace displayed a 360-degree view of the city. Van Noten sent the models across four floors and more than five rooms, each lined with old files and books. The soundtrack to the show was a mix of Miles Davis’ ponderous Visite du Vigile, Slug, and Galapagos by the Ghent-based five-man jazz band, STUFF.

Finishing touches: The devil is in the detail – Van Noten played on texture as matt was with sheen and the silhouette had an architectural drowsiness. There were hints of Americana too as zip up collar jackets featured floral yarn embroidery down the front and large prints of florals and fronds clashed with geometrics. 

Mood board: Dries Van Noten was in a nostalgic mood. Which is not something most designers can afford. But then again, Dries is unique. And he has reason to feel nostalgic: this season, the Belgian designer staged his 100th show. For the occasion, he delved into his own archives to unearth some of the best prints of his previous collections. Some of them were used whole, in the same fabrics as the originals, some of them mixed with others, some of them painted on with new patterns. The result, if easier, was a beautiful synopsis of all his career, featuring sublimely cut trousers and jackets, men's shoes, coats, scarves... In short, the reasons why we all keep going back to his brand season after season.

Best in show: It was more of a white jeans and derbies kind of season than a velvet-and-pearls one, but there was still something for the louchest of Van Noten's clients. Namely, the quilted velvet coats, which mostly came in rich colours (tarnished gold, tangerine and terracotta red will prove irresistible to hardcore Dries groupies) and unexpected print mixes. There were also one or two great (fake) furs in bottle green and purple. As for the rest, most of it was great basics, like crepe dresses and wide shouldered blazers (which, as the designer likes to remind, he did way before Vetements).

Team work: This season also marked the 25th anniversary of Dries Van Noten's ongoing collaboration with his colleague and friend Etienne Russo, the creative mastermind behind the Dior Homme and Moncler shows, among others, who has been organising Dries's shows from the very beginning. For the 100th show, he started the casting last October, calling some of the designer's favourite longtime models. Needless to say, they all found time in their busy schedules to be here yesterday. There was Nadja Auermann, Carolyn Murphy, Alek Wek, Erin O'Connor... They, as much as Dries, inspired a long standing ovation at the end of the show.