‘Most of my shirts as a child were handmade by my Aunt Iris, who worked as a seamstress in a shirt factory in Peckham,’ remembers the London-based multidisciplinary artist Harris Elliott, who in 2025 was awarded an OBE for services to arts and cultural diversity.

The shirt is central to the first chapter of Elliott’s latest project, titled ‘Le Parlour’, a reimagining of the traditional ‘social salon’, which began in 16th-century Italy and flourished in France and England in the centuries that followed. Entering the central London space, which across the summer will be used as a listening bar, artist showcase, conversation spot and marketplace to purchase one-off collectables, guests will be greeted with a warren of stitched-together vintage white shirts, evoking marketplace tarpaulins.

Inside Harris Elliott’s London social salon, ‘Le Parlour’

‘As a child I regularly visited markets with my mum [and] they held a lot of wonder – the colours, the rhyming slang of the stall holders, the different groups of people that came together was all fascinating,’ Elliott tells Wallpaper*. ‘As an adult, whichever city around the world that I visit, I always seek out the local marketplaces; that’s where the heartbeat of every city is.’

The initial reference for the project – which will transform through various ‘chapters’ over the coming months – was the ‘front room’, a modern equivalent of the parlour where traditional salons were held. ‘At the start of the year I wanted to create an artistic environment for gathering that was influenced by food and play,’ he says. ’Using my home as a reference meant I could lean into personal narratives – I had myriad cultural stories to draw upon.’ Listening to music was one such memory: in Le Parlour, a two-metre-high mirrored panel sound system is encased in a frame-like ‘house’, while Elliott’s personal family photo album is displayed, museum-like, on a plinth, ‘referencing the idea that this space is an extension of my home’.

Running from late July until December 2026 at The Casbah on Little Portland Street, Elliott hopes that ‘Le Parlour’ exists not only as an installation, but as a place for ‘people of all walks of life to gather in an intimate artistic setting, encouraging [them] to play games, engage with art, design, and often framed around food and drink’. A series of one-off pieces will also be available to purchase, including a T-shirt made in collaboration with artist Ayo Banton, tote bags crafted from the vintage white shirts used in the installation, as well as a ‘Russian doll’ miniature version of the ‘house’ which features as part of the space.

After the initial opening in late July, the space will evolve into a new installation, ‘Design for Sound’, in September, which will see hundreds of vintage record sleeves, collected in West Africa, decorating the walls. From this point, the sound system will be in action, while a planned series of ‘moments’ will invite groups from the world of ‘sound and music to dance, drink and share conversations’. In October, ‘Le Parlour’ will metamorphose once again, turning into a showcase for the work of emerging Ghanaian textile and visual artist Ofe Amponsah, whose works – using a traditional tufting technique – are inspired by Kubolor, a figure from Ghanaian folklore.

Elliott, who is at turns an artist, curator and creative director, rose to prominence with his work styling some of Britain’s best-known bands and artists, among them Damon Albarn, Kasabian and Noel Gallagher. It would lead to the 2014 curation of ‘Return of the Rudeboy’ at Somerset House, a portraiture project with photographer Dean Chalkley, and ‘The Missing Thread: Untold Stories of Black British Fashion’, also at Somerset House in 2023. He is also the founder of Le Tings, a design studio which draws inspiration from the marketplaces of the African diaspora and his own African and Caribbean heritage.

With ‘Le Parlour’ – perhaps his most ambitious project yet – Elliott seeks to foster new intimacy, creating a web of connections that encompasses both longstanding collaborators and those new to the artist’s world. ‘It’s based on an invitation – an invitation to explore different narratives and to encourage the possibilities of future ideas,’ he says. ‘I want people to feel at home.’

Le Parlour is open from July to December 2026 at The Casbah, 20 Little Portland Street, London W1W 8BS.

Stay tuned to @harriselliottstudio for more information on Le Parlour’s programming.

This September, the fashion world will return from summer break to a four-week schedule of back-to-back runway shows, as the S/S 2027 edition of womenswear fashion month will make its usual stops in New York, London, Milan and Paris (with a brief stopover in Copenhagen in early August). Taking place twice-yearly, the womenswear ready-to-wear shows are the most-watched on the fashion calendar, with runway presentations from the industry’s major players, alongside the requisite coterie of celebrities on the front row.

If last September was defined by its debuts (15 creative directors began their tenures in total, including Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel), one year on, this season looks to be one of subtler shifts, most notably to the schedules themselves. McQueen will return to its birthplace of London; Thom Browne will show once again in its own home city of New York, having presented recent collections in Milan and San Francisco; Prada will now open Milan Fashion Week, shifting from its historic Thursday afternoon spot, while Louis Vuitton will reclaim its position as Paris Fashion Week’s glittering finale – and with it, draw fashion month to a close.

That said, there will be a scattering of debuts: the talented Henry Zankov will show his first collection for Diane Von Furstenberg on the opening morning of New York Fashion Week, while Christopher Kane will make his runway return as creative director of Mulberry, a hire which was met with universal approval when it was announced in March (the closure of Kane’s much-loved eponymous label in 2023 left a hole in the London Fashion Week calendar).

Here, as the schedules for New York, London, Milan and Paris are released, we break down the moments to look out for in each city.

New York Fashion Week (September 10–September 15)

New York Fashion Week will begin on the morning of September 10 with Henry Zankov’s debut show for Diane Von Furstenberg. The St Petersburg-born designer, who moved to the United States as a child, has won plaudits – including a CFDA Award – for his unconventional knitwear, presented under the eponymous label Zankov. Last season’s front-loaded approach continues for S/S 2027: Tory Burch will also show on September 10, Michael Kors, Proenza Schouler and Calvin Klein Collection on September 11, and Khaite on September 12.

Elsewhere, America-born, London-based designer Conner Ives will make his debut on the New York Fashion Week schedule (he usually shows as part of London Fashion Week), COS will once again show in New York (the Scandinavian brand shows in the city every other season), and Rachel Scott will show her sophomore collection for Proenza Schouler after an acclaimed debut (later in the week, she will host a runway show for her own label, Diotima, on September 14). Look out too for the latest collection from young Parsons graduate Zane Li – his eponymous label LII has fast become one of our New York Fashion Week highlights.

London Fashion Week (17–21 September, 2026)

London Fashion Week continues to evolve under the leadership of Laura Weir, the recently appointed CEO who has promised to ‘reaffirm London's position as the global home of creativity and a catalyst for innovation, opportunity and growth’. This season, she has delivered with two major headliners: McQueen will make its return to London under creative director Seán McGirr, showcasing the house’s S/S 2027 men’s and womenswear collections the evening of September 20 (the brand usually shows as part of Paris Fashion Week), while Mulberry will host its first runway show since 2017, also on September 20, heralding the arrival of new creative director Christopher Kane. Burberry will round out the trio, showing in its usual Monday evening spot on September 21.

Elsewhere, expect a high-profile show from H&M (last year, the fashion behemoth had the week’s starriest model casting), the return of buzzy womenswear label KNWLS (last September, the brand showed in Milan), and shows from the likes of Erdem, Simone Rocha, Aaron Esh, Chopova Lowena and Roksanda. In terms of new talent – for which the city has long been known – look out for the latest edition of Lulu Kennedy’s talent incubator Fashion East on September 18, and the on-schedule debut of A Letter, the London-based womenswear label by designers Matt Empringham and Freddy Coomes, formerly of Loewe and JW Anderson respectively.

‘This season marks an exciting moment for London Fashion Week, with the return of leading British brands alongside an exceptional new generation of creative talent,’ says Weir. ‘The schedule reflects the confidence and momentum of British fashion today, bringing together established houses, emerging designers and industry partners on a platform that continues to shape global fashion.’

Milan Fashion Week (22–28 September, 2026)

Milan Fashion Week begins with a notable schedule shift: opening proceedings at 2pm on September 22 is Prada, a house which has historically shown on the Thursday afternoon. Some have speculated this might be to do with the arrival of Vogue World – the starry annual runway show from the magazine – which will take place on the evening of night one, after earlier iterations in Los Angeles, Paris, London and New York.

Elsewhere, the schedule is largely business as usual: notable moments will include Demna and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s sophomore shows for Gucci and Fendi respectively (September 25 and September 23), Simone Bellotti’s latest outing at Jil Sander (September 23), and Bottega Veneta, where Louise Trotter will continue to forge her vision for the Italian house (September 26). Rounding out Milan Fashion Week are runway shows from the city’s stalwart designers, among them Marni, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo and Giorgio Armani, among others.

Paris Fashion Week (September 28–October 6, 2026)

Despite some scheduling shifts, Paris Fashion Week remains the longest – and most tightly packed – of the various cities, clocking in at nine days and a staggering 68 runway shows. The shows to look out for include Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel (now a year into their tenures, their shows are still guaranteed to generate much of the week’s buzz); Maison Margiela (creative director Glenn Martens skipped last season to show in China); Celine (Michael Rider’s vision of Parisian insouciance has already won him a legion of devotees); as well as Hermès, Acne Studios, Givenchy, Victoria Beckham, Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons and The Row, which will all no doubt remain highlights.

Towards the latter half of the week, expect some shifts to the usual schedule: Miu Miu will now show on Sunday afternoon, rather than the usual Tuesday, while Louis Vuitton will return to its place as fashion month’s closing act, with the Parisian house showing on the evening of October 6. A duo of debuts will round out the schedule: Courrèges’s new artistic director Drew Henry will show on September 30, while Carven’s Kai Nesselrath will show on October 1.

Summer is in full swing, which (if you've been having a good time this season) means that, chances are, your skin is already in need of some intensive recovery after days spent in the sun; you have hair breakage from chlorine and saltwater; and you need a sunscreen top-up.

If that’s the case, not to worry. We’ve tried and tested all the launches of the season so far and have edited them down to the best. From haircare to skincare, here are the summer beauty products to pack in your suitcase.

La Bonne Brosse x Roseanna’s Hairbrushes

Fara Homidi's Blonzer Compact

Katya’s Hair Claws

Vintner's Daughter's Active Treatment Essence

Dr Barbara Sturm’s Everything Hydrogel

Loewe’s Pistachio Candle

Emma Lewisham's Sunceutical SPF

The idea of movement has been at the beating heart of Issey Miyake since the eponymous designer began the house in Tokyo in 1970. His signature pleating technique would come to encapsulate this feeling of dynamism: able to be folded entirely flat, on the body the plissé garments came to life, creating vivid silhouettes that transformed with movement, from bouncing ‘flying saucers’ built into dresses to complex origami folds and twists. ‘The body, the fabric covering it and a comfortable relationship between the two,’ is how the late designer, who passed away in 2022, described the nexus of his life’s work.

It is a design philosophy which has been embraced by Satoshi Kondo, the designer behind Issey Miyake’s womenswear line, in his acclaimed collections for the Japanese house since his tenure began in 2019. Indeed, his debut collection as artistic director, for S/S 2020, saw models twist, twirl and leap across the runway in an expression of uninhibited joy that has long defined the Issey Miyake brand. ‘I wanted to express the joy of wearing clothes, and the joy of movement,’ he said at the time, and his ensuing runway shows have often featured moments of contemporary dance or performance art.

In 2025, Kondo embarked on a new project, collaborating with French dancer and choreographer Némo Flouret on the costumes for his new contemporary ballet, Derniers Feux (Last Light). It is not the first time Kondo and Flouret have collaborated; for Issey Miyake’s S/S 2024 and A/W 2025 womenswear shows, Flouret created a series of ‘dynamic performances’ which unfolded on the runway, ‘capturing the spirit of each collection’s theme,’ as the brand describes.

Derniers Feux, which premiered at the 79th Festival d’Avignon last summer and is now touring internationally, including performances at Paris’ Grand Palais in June, marks the pair’s most extensive collaboration yet. Kondo, who says he is drawn to the ‘in-depth engagement with the human body’ and ‘rigorous physicality’ of Flouret’s work, created a series of vibrant costumes which draw on the vivid use of colour and technical construction that define his collections at Issey Miyake. Indeed, despite the collaboration being under Kondo’s name, several of the garments and fabrics are reminiscent of those used in recent womenswear collections for the brand.

These include colourful knitted sweaters with circular ‘peep holes’ and trousers with extra hanging ‘legs’, while other pieces are used as part of the show’s set. ‘The sheer vibrancy I felt in Derniers Feux – the choreography, the scenography, the fireworks, and of course the performers themselves – was the source of my inspiration,’ says Kondo. ‘In designing and making the costumes, my hope was to create something that intimately complements, if not elevates, the experience of Derniers Feux.’

Flouret describes Derniers Feux as ‘a reverie on the ephemeral and the immaterial’, which is loosely themed around the idea of dancers creating a show – ‘a nascent utopia carried by ten performers trying to give shape together to a world after the world’. Taking place largely on a scaffold structure, the highly physical work builds up to a pyrotechnical firework display, a climax of delayed gratification which is teased throughout the performance.

‘I wanted to work with fireworks, the images they convey, and the tension surrounding them: the fear of danger, the emotion and joy they evoke, that fleeting moment of eternity, that ephemerality,’ said Flouret at the work’s premiere last year. ‘The ten performers dance, play music, and assemble and dismantle the set. They are all technicians, performers, and spectators. They are constantly in motion. Dance is so central that we almost forget it: it is a way of life, the glue that binds together the images that appear and disappear.’

‘There is this sense of physicality – something sensuous – that I find apparent in Flouret’s work,’ says Kondo. ‘I see this project as an integration of our joint creativity, where I was able to immerse myself in the world Flouret created.’

The next performances of Derniers Feux will take place in Charleroi, Belgium on 18 and 19 September 2026.

charleroi-danse.be

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discover the full shoot below.

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

Every few months, a new ingredient comes to prominence, amid claims that it will cure the ills caused by modern living: matcha for sustained energy, protein for appetite control, peptides for hormone regulation, CBD for anxiety, and so on. Yet, what if the most effective all-in-one method for achieving all the above has been under our noses for thousands of years?

That was what María Cobar asked herself after she was introduced to cacao – the raw, minimally processed bean (the same that chocolate comes from) that has been prized since ancient times for its nutritional and mood-enhancing benefits.

‘The scientific name for cacao is Theobroma cacao, literally "Food of God”, because of its ability to generate physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing,’ says Cobar. ‘In Mexico, there are all these legends about how the gods stole the cacao tree because it was only meant for the gods, but it was given as a gift to humans so they could focus on the arts and be fully nourished. Now, a thousand years later, people are finally getting it.’

With her brand, María Cacao, Cobar is hoping to help as many people as possible get it by hand-crafting ceremonial strength cacao blocks and flavoured cacao pods (like chocolate candy but with cacao) in her Mexico City store. Of course, cacao has been popular in certain circles for years, with cacao ceremonies, rooted in the tradition of Aztec and Mayan traditions, practised around the world, and plenty of wellness retailers selling the product, albeit often an over-processed, questionably sourced version of the ingredient.

For Cobar, starting her own cacao business was a way to bring cacao to a wider audience, while respecting its heritage and supporting local businesses, with an all-female team working daily to craft every cacao product by hand. There is also a family of farmers working to care for and harvest the cacao trees in the Mexican state of Tabasco.

‘In Mexico we say it's vigorizante – it pumps your veins,’ says Cobar. ‘When Hernán Cortés came to Mexico, he wrote a letter to Carlos V in Spain saying, “These people drink this very strange seed that they use as currency, and just a single dose of this beverage can sustain a soldier in battle for an entire day because it's so nourishing”. Then it was taken to Europe and transformed into milk chocolate. In Mexico, cacao wasn't accessible to everyone; it was a divine food, always present in ceremonies: weddings, funerals, all kinds of rituals.'

But the beneficial qualities of cacao have largely been lost to time following the Spanish conquest of the Americas. ‘Cacao became a sweet treat that, in modern times, even became something that carried shame – it’ll give you spots, it’ll make you gain weight, it’s bad for you. [There is] this whole taboo around chocolate, when actually, at its core, it's so healthy; we just changed it into something unhealthy by processing it.’

When unprocessed, cacao is one of the most nutritionally dense foods in the world, with more antioxidants than blueberries and containing a compound that can aid weight loss, phenylethylamine (the same molecule your brain releases when you fall in love). It also contains anandamide, which activates the same receptors in the brain that produce cannabinoids for relaxation (it is known as the ‘bliss molecule’).

María Cacao just opened up its first storefront in Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighbourhood, where customers can purchase its cacao products and taste a full cacao menu in a candlelit space. The products are also now available to purchase in London thanks to Vickie Biggs, who retails the cacao blocks and flavoured cacao pods from The Dream Of, an east London holistic healing studio that is a Wallpaper* favourite. Together, Biggs and Cobar are working to get cacao retailed in more locations around the UK, and to make ‘people realise that cacao is not only for wellness obsessives’, says Cobar. ‘Hopefully, one day, [it will be] the norm to enter spaces where instead of having wine or coffee, you’re having cacao, and [we’ll see] what conversations arise from this heart-opening medicine.’

At The Dream Of, Biggs has converted many of her clients – who include Yasmin Sewell, founder of Vyrao; make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench; and Alex Brownsell, hairstylist and founder of Bleach London – to replace their morning coffee with cacao. ‘I tried María’s cacao, and I've tried hundreds [of examples], and was immediately blown away; I knew I needed it in the shop,’ says Biggs.

‘As cacao becomes more popular, and I do think it will eventually be the new matcha, there's a real responsibility around how it's sourced and who profits from it. There's been a big influx of white-owned cacao brands. For me, people with platforms must support those who are genuinely connected to where cacao is from. Maria being Mexican, having a fully female Mexican team, working closely with farmers in Tabasco – that matters enormously. The product literally comes from that place of care and connection. You can taste it.’

mariacacao.mx

Michael Rider’s debut collection for Celine, shown last summer in Paris, was a joyful ode to the magic of everyday clothing. ‘[Pieces] that become a part of the wearer’s life, that may capture a moment in time but also speak to years and years of gestures and occasions and change of the past, the present and the future, of memories, of usefulness and of fantasy, of life really,’ said the Washington DC-born designer, who marries a preppy flair – Rider was at Polo Ralph Lauren before being appointed at Celine – with the bourgeois stylings for which the Parisian house is known.

A pair of leather shoes, evoking the soft, supple and ultra-flat construction of jazz shoes, seemed to capture this dichotomy of fantasy and reality: they conjured at once the undone glamour of the rehearsal room, and something more quotidien, like the simple childhood plimsolls you once wore to school. Since then, iterations have come in vivid red, yellow, and white, alongside mock croc embossed leather and soft suede – as well as a pre-scuffed pair that appeared as part of Rider’s first dedicated menswear show this June in Paris.

The best jazz, dance and ballet-inspired shoes

Though Rider is not the only designer to have embraced the style, which captures a feeling of levity – after all, jazz and ballet shoes were originally designed for leaping and pirouetting across the stage. Versions have also appeared at Loewe, Proenza Schouler, Gucci and Miu Miu, while Repetto – which began life as a ballet shoe manufacturer in 1947 – has had something of a resurgence, particularly the ‘Zizi’, a soft leather lace-up which was beloved by Mick Jagger and Jane Birkin in the 1970s.

Here, selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are nine dance, jazz and ballet-inspired shoes to uplift your wardrobe this summer.

Aries’ ‘No Problemo’ slogan – emblazoned on the London-based label’s sweaters, T-shirts and caps – has become so ubiquitous in streetwear circles that in 2024 it became its own entity, remaining under the control of creative director Sofia Prantera but operating as its own independent sub-label. (Prantera founded Aries in 2012 alongside Fergus Purcell, the lauded graphic designer who also created the ‘No Problemo’ logo, alongside the Palace ‘Penrose’ triangle.)

The initial launch, in early 2024, was titled ‘Area 001’ – a nod to one of the brand’s inspirations, extraterrestrial life (namely, the more kitschy graphics you might find around the likes of Area 54 in the United States, with a cartoon alien head appearing in the brand’s logo and as a motif on its clothing). ‘Drawing on ideas of extraterrestrial life, hidden knowledge, and outsider perspectives, the brand uses these references as metaphors for belonging, curiosity, inclusivity and exploration,’ Prantera described at the time.

Now, these references inform its first collaboration with American footwear behemoth Converse, launching tomorrow (21 July 2026). Taking the Chuck 70 as its canvas – a contemporary version of the original Converse Chuck Taylor, which dates back to the 1930s – the collaboration comprises a low and a high-top style, the former in white, the latter in black. In a nod to the collection’s inspirations – ‘1970s science fiction, UFO folklore and coming-of-age cinema’ – the low top features a luminous green stripe around the classic rubber sole, while both pairs have ‘Believe’ alongside a psychedelic swirl on the shoe’s tread.

No Problemo cites the films Stand by Me, The Outsiders and Back to the Future for the collaborative sneakers, which also feature both Converse and No Problemo branding, including a version of the Converse All Star Patch with an alien’s head at its centre. The shape of the alien logo is replicated in the shape of custom metal eyelets, while laces are imprinted with ‘I Want to Believe’, a nod to the poster in Fox Mulder’s basement office in The X-Files.

An accompanying campaign is photographed at ‘Hackney Henge’, the name for a stone circle in the east London borough created by artist Paula Haughney in 1990 to replicate Stonehenge in Wiltshire (its actual name is ‘Nature’s Throne’, and was part of an urban renewal scheme of the Lee Valley during the 1990s). ‘A couple are abducted while wearing improvised tinfoil hats and gowns as a tongue-in-cheek reference to one of conspiracy culture's most recognisable symbols,’ reads the synopsis. ‘It’s a fitting metaphor for No Problemo's fascination with outsider narratives, hidden knowledge and alternative ways of seeing the world.’

No Problemo x Converse launches July 21, 2026.

noproblemo.world

Our Legacy has had an address on London’s Silver Place, a narrow alleyway in the city’s Soho neighbourhood, since 2014. Then, it marked the first outpost of the Swedish brand outside of its native country, and the choice of Soho, known for its after-dark denizens and hedonistic impulses, felt fitting: since Jockum Hallin, Cristopher Nying and Richardos Klarén founded the label in 2005, it has melded Scandinavian restraint with a countercultural energy.

Which is why, when it came to Our Legacy’s expansion – sales surpassed $50 million in 2025 and gained minority investment from Luxury Ventures, the investment arm of French luxury conglomerate LVMH – the brand chose full-scale renovation over a change of address. Opening this week, its new London flagship will occupy two connected storefronts, taking over 1-2 Silver Place.

Inside Our Legacy’s renovated London flagship

‘Expanding the story was something we needed for practical reasons, both to improve logistics and to create more room for a broader selection from our main collection,’ Cristopher Nying, creative director and co-founder, tells Wallpaper*. ‘We’ve always loved being on this street, and moving to a much larger space elsewhere didn’t feel right. Keeping the store intimate and close to our customers in London has always been important to us.’

Working with the Stockholm-based architectural agency Profan – Our Legacy’s longtime collaborator, founded by Anton Bogårdh, Disa Braunerhielm and Maximilian Olsson – the team have sought to capture the juxtaposition of rigour and rebelliousness that define the label. On the one hand, the space is what Nying describes as ‘clean and almost clinical, with a subtle laboratory-like feel’, as seen in planes of stainless steel and mirrors, undulating fibreglass and strip lighting, as one might find in an industrial setting.

On the other, there are elements designed to wear and take on a patina with time: namely, sets of curtains made by Stockholm-based Japanese textile artist Akane Moriyama, crafted from silk covered with beeswax, which will naturally ‘crease, age and evolve’. Elsewhere, birch and pine, used for flooring and staircases, were also chosen to degrade with wear (often, Our Legacy’s clothing is treated to appear already lived-in, with tears, frayed edges and pulled seams recurring motifs in the brand’s collections).

Artworks appear throughout the space, interrupting the otherwise minimal interiors: hidden deep within the store is Swedish artist Tobias Bradford’s ‘Nosedive’, a sculpture that depicts a bird nosediving into a metal fan, while a series of fan zines – many of them out of print – have been curated for the space, including those by BlackMass Publishing and the Swedish publication Jazz är farligt.

‘The store’s art and design reinforce the creative references that inform the brand, bringing elements of Sweden to the UK, and vice versa,’ says Nying, who also commissioned German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg to capture ‘nocturnal London’ in a new series which will be distributed as postcards to celebrate the store’s opening.

It is an important opening for Our Legacy in its continued expansion from niche label to global fashion player: the brand now has five dedicated retail stores and, as of 2025, over 350 worldwide stockists. ‘[The renovated store] reflects our commitment to continually investing in ourselves and refining how we execute our vision,’ Oliver Saunders, the brand’s commercial director, tells Wallpaper*. ‘London has been our second home for the past 12 years, and the UK remains one of our most important markets.’

‘Over that time, we’ve built a strong community around the store, and expanding the space is both a reinvestment in that community and a way of reinforcing our presence in a city that has played such an important role for Our Legacy,’ he continues. ‘It’s a celebration of everything we’ve built over the past 12 years, while creating a space for the next chapter.’

Our Legacy London, 1-2 Silver Place, London W1F, is open now.

ourlegacy.com

As seen in the August 2026 ‘Creative America at 250’ issue of Wallpaper*, we pay homage to seminal American graphics.

Few brands encapsulate notions of American freedom quite like Levi’s, the denimwear label which began in San Francisco in the mid-1850s during the height of the Californian gold rush.

It was originally founded as a wholesale dry goods company by Levi Strauss – an immigrant from Bavaria, Germany – and the entrepreneur soon identified a need for hard-wearing workwear for miners carving out the American frontier as the young country spread across the continent. In 1873, he invented the ‘waist overall’ alongside tailor Jacob Davis: crafted from indigo selvedge denim with metal rivets – placed at the ‘points of strain’ – they are what we now know as the ‘original blue jean’.

Anatomy of a Logo: Levi’s Two Horse Patch

The year 1873, when Strauss patented the design, appears stamped onto a leather patch on every pair of Levi’s jeans – part of an emblem first introduced in 1886. It is known as the ‘Two Horse Patch’ in reference to its protagonists: a duo of horses which are depicted pulling a pair of jeans in opposite two different directions without destroying them – a nod to Levi’s claims of hardiness and indestructibility (the pictorial design was used because of high levels of illiteracy in the American West; the idea was that people could go into stores and ask for ‘those pants with the two horses’).

And, though the brand’s logo has evolved – currently, a red ‘batwing’ with white typography, its shape reminiscent of the ‘Original Riveted’ banner on the 1886 logo – the ‘Two Horse Patch’ has endured, a symbol of what remains the United States’ definitive fashion export.

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Since Margaret Howell began her eponymous label in 1970, the designer has always favoured the timeless over ephemeral trends. ‘Consistency in authenticity’ is the brand’s tagline, and its continuing success, over half a century on, is a testament to Howell’s eye for creating a wardrobe that is built to last.

She applies this same philosophy to her collaborations, which have seen her unite with other companies with a similar ethos: she has worked with heritage outerwear brand Barbour, Japanese sportswear label Mizuno, and even Anglepoise, creating a version of its Type 75 task lamp, one of the most enduring British design objects of our century.

Introducing the Dr Martens X MHL 1461 shoe

A new collaboration, through her MHL line – a functional, workwear-inspired offshoot utilising tougher fabrications – sees Howell reimagine another design classic, Dr Martens’ 1461 shoe. First introduced in 1961, one year after the advent of its signature heavy boot, the 1461 was originally conceived as a hard-wearing work shoe (subsequently, it has been adopted by both fashion and subculture).

‘A Dr Martens lace-up shoe is timeless,’ asserts Howell. ‘It is also durable, well-made and suitable for a person of any age – much like our MHL collection.’

As such, Howell’s version of the 1461 is one of minimal intervention; instead of fully reimagining the style, she has added a padded heel collar and tab, unwaxed cotton laces, and a double-stitched toe cap. These subtle details, says Howell, were drawn from other work shoes she discovered in the Dr Martens archive.

Another focus is the construction, which takes place at the brand’s Made in England factory in Northamptonshire, the spiritual home of shoe manufacturing in the United Kingdom. Each pair is made from chrome-free leather from Leeds tannery CF Stead, grained and oiled to give richness to the brown and black leather (the shoe is available in two colourways). Softer to the touch than the classic 1461, Howell’s version is designed to patina and age over time.

‘[This collaboration] started with a deep respect for the way that Margaret and [her] team approach design,’ says Michael Ford, head of brand concepts and partnerships, Dr Martens. ‘With a respect for the past, but retold for today – which is the approach we have taken into this project – starting with our Iconic 1461 and reinterpreting it with details pulled directly out of our archive.’

Dr Martens x MHL 1461 shoe is available from 16 July 2026, at Margaret Howell’s website and stores, drmartens.com, as well as selected retailers, including END (below).

As seen in the August 2026 ‘Creative America at 250’ issue of Wallpaper*, we pay homage to seminal American graphics.

Calvin Klein’s sans-serif logo, first introduced by its namesake designer in 1968, is an exercise in simplicity and directness – a reflection of Klein’s approach to fashion, which would flourish in the 1990s (alongside designers like Helmut Lang and Miuccia Prada, his work would herald the new minimalism of the era).

And, while the logo has appeared on everything from fragrance bottles to T-shirts, it will be forever associated with the elastic waistband of the brand’s underwear – a genius stroke of marketing that saw men and women hitch down their jeans to reveal their brand allegiance. Under Klein, underwear became a status symbol – and with it, big business.

Their ubiquity was achieved through Klein’s evocative underwear campaigns, the first of which appeared on a Times Square billboard in 1982, featuring a colossal Bruce Weber-shot image of Olympic pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus clad in nothing but a pair of Calvin Klein white Y-fronts.

In 1992, it would be the turn of ‘Marky Mark’ Wahlberg and a young Kate Moss, who propelled the branded waistband to international fame with a Herb Ritts-shot campaign, controversial for the latter’s crotch grab and fierce feud between its young starlets (Klein said the pair ‘couldn’t stand each other’; Moss would later say that the high-profile shoot led to a mental breakdown).

Since then, the Calvin Klein waistline has been passed around Hollywood and beyond: memorable campaigns have featured everyone from footballer Freddie Ljungberg and model Naomi Campbell to Justin Bieber, Jeremy Allen White, and Bad Bunny.

And, more recently, the Italian designer Veronica Leoni – creative director of Calvin Klein Collection, the runway arm of the brand – reimagined the iconic waistband as part of her S/S 2026 collection, abstracted across the bridge of a pair of sunglasses, or woven into a ‘tweed’ dress. ‘It’s like an acknowledgement that Calvin Klein belongs, in a way, to everyone,’ she said at the time.

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

This past December, the German fashion e-retailer Mytheresa inaugurated its Maison Mytheresa concept with a Wes Anderson-esque ‘concierge’ in the historic ski resort, St Moritz. The ephemeral space, which ran throughout the ski season, was less store than private members’ club – a space for Mytheresa’s clients to gather for various activities, from styling sessions, talks and trunk shows to cookie-making classes (or simply indulge in Laurent-Perrier and Oona Caviar, who provided the refreshments). ‘An intimate escape into the Mytheresa lifestyle,’ the brand called it at the time.

Maison Mytheresa docks in the French Riviera

This summer, Mytheresa’s travels continued with the second iteration of Maison Mytheresa, taking over a mega-yacht on the French Riviera this June (after all, its top-spending clients likely winter in the mountains before heading to the Med for the summer months). Continuing a collaboration with Studio Boum – a London-based agency responsible for some of the fashion industry’s most memorable scenography – the yacht was reimagined as a private club, featuring vivid Mytheresa yellow parasols and sun loungers, branded life rings, fans and pool toys, as well as an edit of the retailer’s fashion offering scattered about the various rooms.

Like the first Maison Mytheresa, the two-week residency – which saw the yacht anchor at Saint-Tropez harbour and the Yacht Club de Monaco – featured a series of talks, trunk shows and parties, with involvement from brands including Missoni, Saman Amel, Roberto Cavalli and Aquazurra, among others.

‘Maison Mytheresa reflects our ambition to redefine luxury retail through unforgettable experiences that bring together fashion, culture and community,’ Mytheresa CEO Francis Belin tells Wallpaper*. ‘With this second edition, we are building on the success of our St Moritz edition, creating a travelling destination where clients can discover exceptional brands, connect with inspiring people and engage with Mytheresa in a way that feels personal, emotional and uniquely memorable.’

Elsewhere this summer, Mytheresa returns to the Hamptons with ‘Mytheresa Out East’, promising an escape from New York City with a customised Airstream that will travel around the East Coast locale, from now until August 6. The vintage trailer’s interior has been designed by Lulu and George, while guests attending the private shopping appointments on board will each get a floral display to take away in a Ginori 1735 vase.

mytheresa.com

As seen in the August 2026 ‘Creative America at 250’ issue of Wallpaper*, we pay homage to seminal American design classics.

‘Well, I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.’ This was the reaction of Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, when he first saw what would become the Nike ‘Swoosh’ – a tick-shaped emblem conceived by Carolyn Davidson to adorn the fledgling sportswear label’s footwear.

Davidson, who was then a design student at Portland State University, was paid $35 for the commission, billing the company $2 per hour for 17.5 hours of work. So the story goes, Knight was visiting the university when he overheard Davidson telling a friend she needed money for an oil painting class; over the coming months, she would create graphs and spreadsheets for the young label, before being drafted to create a logo similar to the stripes on other sporting brands’ footwear (Onitsuka Tiger, which was based in Japan and created running shoes, was one early competitor).

Its signature elongated silhouette, which Davidson tested by holding tissue paper cut into early iterations of the design against the brand’s prototype shoes, was conceived to express a feeling of speed and agility – as if it was being viewed dashing past at speed. (Other commentators have posited its shape also evokes the wings of the ancient Greek goddess Nike, from whom the brand takes its name.)

And dash it did. In 1972, one year after Davidson submitted the original design, two of the top American finishers at the Boston Marathon crossed the line wearing Nike shoes marked with the design, and the Swoosh – which has appeared in various iterations, some with the italicised Nike logo attached – has been on the feet of countless champions on track, field, stadium and court ever since, an emblem of achievement which traverses both professional and amateur sport.

Davidson, who was eventually rewarded for her work with stocks in the company and a diamond ring engraved with the Swoosh motif, says she has enjoyed a life ‘under the radar’. ‘When I see the Swoosh on TV, and I turn on a game, and both teams are in Nike, I just get a good feeling,’ she said in 2011, which marked the emblem’s 40th anniversary. ‘Or if I turn a corner and run into a billboard, or if I watch the Olympics – I mean, it's just a good feeling inside.’

Now, the logo is one of the most recognised in the world, adorning not just footwear but a multitude of apparel, and reimagined over the past five decades – including a version bearing Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ tagline, another masterful piece of marketing. Nike’s various collaborators have also played with the Swoosh: most memorably, the late American multi-hyphenate designer Virgil Abloh, himself an expert in branding.

The Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative directed created a childlike, hand-drawn version of the motif, which was printed onto T-shirts (‘Logo’ was written above it, in Abloh’s typically irreverent style), while his various footwear collaborations with Nike featured the Swoosh impossibly blown up or attached using Frankenstinian stitching (a demonstration of his three per cent rule, which argued seminal design classics could be shifted completely in meaning with just the tiniest of changes).

‘It did grow on me,’ Knight would later admit. ‘What we wanted it to stand for was speed, which it did and still does. But now it means much more than that.’

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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

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

Dior

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

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

Schiaparelli

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

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

Chanel

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

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

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

Giorgio Armani Privé

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

Standing Ground

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

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

Jean Paul Gaultier

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

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

Balenciaga

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

From a distance, the new Alaïa store in the heart of Miami’s design district looks to be painted a warm pastel pink. A closer look reveals that the exterior and many surfaces inside are clad in diminutive mosaic tiles, creating unexpectedly intricate textures. The choice is both a nod to Miami’s art deco history and entirely fitting for the brand, given how Azzedine Alaïa built a legacy for his namesake house of creating clothes that appear effortlessly sensual, belying their often complex, sculptural constructions.

Inside Alaïa’s serene new store in Miami’s design district

‘We wanted to create a dialogue between the identity of Alaïa and the character of Miami,’ says Ruxandra Halleröd of Swedish design studio Halleroed, who worked with the maison on the store. This Miami opening marks the fifth collaboration between Halleroed and Alaïa, which has involved working closely with former creative director Pieter Mulier. ‘From the beginning, we had many conversations about Azzedine Alaïa’s legacy and what we felt was truly archetypal for the brand,’ says Halleröd. ‘One of the ideas we developed was translating the femininity of Alaïa’s clothing into architecture in a restrained, minimal way. This resulted in a language of soft, curved forms combined with sharp rectangular geometries, creating a tension between the two.’

In the Miami store, this language unfolds in pale pink throughout, a nod to one of Alaïa’s signature shades. (In other stores by Halleroed, recognisably Alaïa design elements like laser-cut patterns are referenced in repeating circular features.) Contrasting with the soft hue, metallic and leather textures appear intermittently. The store is arranged over different levels, with areas dedicated variously to footwear, accessories, and ready-to-wear – the last defined by abundant mirrors and softly bright lighting, creating an airy yet intimate space. As in other outposts, the late Mr Alaïa’s reverence for design is reflected in a collection of exceptional furniture in the new Miami store. The selection brings together both vintage and modern pieces, by the likes of Reinhard Müller, Philippe Starck and Ron Arad, and was curated by interior designer Martin Brûlé.

Elsewhere, bespoke planters created by renowned botanist and longtime Alaïa collaborator Patrick Blanc add greenery to the interior and exterior. ‘For us, Miami is also defined by its lush tropical vegetation,’ says Halleröd, ‘so we integrated abundant planting into the architecture itself, allowing it to become part of the spatial experience rather than simply decoration.’ As well as being a link to the city, Blanc’s work is something of an Alaïa signature too: one of his ‘vertical gardens’ covers a large wall in the courtyard of the house’s sprawling flagship on rue de Marignan in Paris.

‘What we find most special is the way the architecture feels almost alive,’ says Halleröd of the Miami store. ‘Curved forms seem to grow organically out of the ground, the columns and the façade, becoming display elements, seating and oversized planters.’ The overall effect encapsulates Alaïa: a meeting of tradition and modernity, where unconventional design codes abound, the sensual is prioritised, and apparent simplicity is the result of complex consideration. The result ‘creates a fluid relationship between architecture, furniture and landscape, making the entire space feel like one continuous sculptural composition’.

The new store is at 171 NE 39th St, Miami

In 2024, when Acne Studios collaborated with French perfume house Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle to create its first-ever fragrance, the aim was simple: to distil Acne's creative language – avant-garde, cheeky and casually cool – into a bottle.

The result was a suitably unconventional fragrance that blended aldehydes (the synthetic compounds that give perfumes a clean, metallic quality) with a gourmand heart of rose, peach, and vanilla, and a deep sandalwood-and-musk base. It is a fresh, almost laundry-like scent with a delicate, slightly sweet edge; or, as the brand describes it, ‘a neoclassical perfume with an irreverent twist; at once vibrant and comforting, magnetic and radical’.

Now, Acne Studios and Frédéric Malle are expanding their olfactory offering with a bath and body collection meant to be worn in conjunction with the fragrance, amplifying the original scent (which was already celebrated among perfume aficionados for its potent sillage). The Body Wash is a silky lather that leaves a delicate perfume in its wake, while the Body Milk is formulated with hydrating shea butter and natural oils to likewise leave skin baby-soft and lightly perfumed.

For perfumer Suzy Le Helley, creating the Acne Studios par Frédéric Malle perfume and its companion bath collection was an exercise in pushing herself as a perfumer and the industry at large. ‘This perfume is, for me, one of the first aldehydic gourmand fine fragrances on the market, and that is something I am very proud of,’ she says. ‘It is also very unique in terms of performance: it is very long-lasting, very powerful, and has a strong sillage.’

To develop the final scent, Le Helley worked closely with both Frédéric Malle and Acne's Jonny Johansson, both titans in their respective fields, to come up with a product that blended the subversive, niche style of both brands. ‘What I enjoyed most was the freedom and trust that were given to me by both Frédéric Malle and Jonny Johansson,’ says Le Helley. ‘This project allowed me to explore new facets of my creativity, pushing me to experiment and take risks.

‘I wanted it to create a unique comfort zone. It is, first of all, a fragrance for yourself, but we worked carefully on the technical aspects of the perfume, its strength, and its longevity. People who smell it on you should also be transported into your luxurious cocoon of comfort – like a beautiful Acne Studios scarf.’

The invitation for Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore haute couture show was a tiny book-shaped charm, threaded onto a silver necklace. On its cover, it read ‘Once Upon a Time’; inside, a sprouting bean was etched, evoking the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. By the time guests arrived at the Grand Palais yesterday morning, that magical bean had grown: around the edges of the space, enormous creeping vines had been erected as part of the show set, while vases and mirrors were sized up, Borrowers-style, for a giant.

Happily ever after: Matthieu Blazy’s haute couture fairy tale at Chanel

Blazy said the collection began with the discovery of a leather-bound book of fairy tales, Les Fées, Contes des Contes (Fairies, Tales of Tales), owned by the house’s founding couturier, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. Paired with a version of the house’s tweed suit, crafted from sheer mousseline, the book accessorised the show’s opening look, held in the model's hand. ‘I started to wonder, was Gabrielle Chanel’s life a fairy tale?’ said the Belgian designer, who began at the house in 2025. ‘I asked myself if, together with the haute couture ateliers, we could make garments that tell stories like a book.’

From this starting point, Blazy presented an A/W 2026 couture collection of wit and whimsy, where small details – like a row of buttons that moved from ugly duckling to swan – conjured childhood memories. The heel of a shoe was a golden egg; garments were adorned with fluttering butterflies and blooming flowers; while others appeared to be made from straw, evoking an altogether more contemporary fairytale, The Wizard of Oz. Throughout it all, these richly embellished looks were contrasted with moments of ethereal lightness: a series of liquefied gowns, with Romanesque drapes, recalled Gabrielle Chanel’s pioneering work in jersey; others came in delicate organza or guipure lace, a fabric that recurred throughout.

This, of course, was the work of the haute couture atelier, which is a fantasy factory of its own. Besides the construction of the garments themselves – which, by the time they are purchased by clients, will be fitted to their bodies, fairy godmother-style – this collection was a demonstration of the might of the house’s various craft métiers. Metalwork was a particular focus, not only in the various buttons – which also evoked characters like Puss in Boots – but the delicate chains which edged garments, some adorned with beads and charms (Blazy said he wanted it to appear like magpie has been at work). Other such details were hidden from view: keepsakes had been stitched into linings and pockets, a nod to the ‘private pleasures’ of haute couture.

Backstage, he asserted that Chanel was both a house of fantasy and function, and, amid the more embellished looks were some that were striking in their simplicity, like a structured tabard-style bodice and trousers, rendered in black, or the elongated black overcoat which followed. ‘[Gabrielle Chanel] climbed the ladder to find her golden goose, by making clothes for real women. Her clothes were never parodies. They were rooted in life,’ he said. ‘Chanel couture is not just about the big “wow”. Chanel couture is about the details.’

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

Jonathan Anderson looks to Lynda Benglis at Dior Couture

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

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

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

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

There is a certain phenomenon in fashion whereby no matter what theatrics might have appeared on the runway – bouncing crinolines, protrusions of taffeta, an avant-garde silhouette – when it comes to a creative director's final bow, they will usually appear to take it in a sweater and jeans. Few practise what they preach – or, put simply, wear what they design.

There are, of course, exceptions. One is Wallpaper* US400 honoree Thom Browne. For the past 25 years, he has forged a $500m brand in his own meticulous image. Every day, runway show or not, Browne wears a ‘shrunken’ grey flannel wool suit of his own design, nipped in at the body and cropped at the ankle, as if wearing one size too small. It is accessorised with a grey tie, sometimes worn with shorts and a cardigan, and completed with three-stripe socks and lace-up brogues.

It is the uniform he requires of his staff, too. Step inside the brand’s offices on West 35th Street in New York’s Garment District, and you will find an army of near-identically dressed workers in iterations of the singular look, which is distributed to new starters before their first day (the beginner's pack currently includes two grey wool suits, five white Oxford shirts, one grey wool tie and one white pocket square). Some allowances are made when it comes to summer (seersucker is acceptable), and weekends (navy can be worn from Friday to Sunday), though a series of guidelines dictates exactly how (shirts cannot be ironed, top buttons must remain undone, ties must be knotted tightly and tucked into the waistband).

It makes entering a Thom Browne event or runway show a little like performance art, something that the designer himself seems keenly aware of. One memorable presentation, held at the Pitti Uomo menswear fair in Florence back in 2009, saw him construct a surreal scene in which 40 male models – identically dressed in the Thom Browne uniform, with side-slicked hair and wire-rim glasses – populated 40 identical office desks and tapped away at their Olivetti ‘Lettera 32’ typewriters. (The designer has said the 1950s office is a perennial reference point, inspiring the design of his stores, which often feature midcentury furnishings, strip lighting and slatted blinds.) A similar scene took place at Milan Design Week in 2024, when Browne launched a bedding collaboration with Italian textile company Frette; this time, the cast of men and women donned suits and tucked themselves into identical single beds.

If it sounds megalomaniacal, Browne believes the opposite: that a uniform is liberatory, and not simply because it frees up your mind in the morning for other things than deciding what to wear on a given day (though, he argues, this is a definite benefit). ‘I think the person becomes more interesting when you're not so drawn to the clothes,’ he says during our interview at Claridge’s, his preferred address while staying in London. ‘We could all be wearing the same thing, but we look very different.’ As if to prove the point, Browne is flanked by two members of his communications team: though they all wear versions of the same thing, the three men occupy the uniform differently, their personal style still evident in a shock of peroxide blonde hair or an item of jewellery (Browne is the most classic of the trio, his close-cropped grey hair and angular features evoking the groomed 1950s businessman who still serves as his inspiration).

The dichotomy between sartorial belonging and personal expression is a large part of the success of Thom Browne, the designer believes, something proved by its surprisingly wide gamut of devotees. There are film directors (Celine Song, Barry Jenkins and Ryan Coogler all wear Thom Browne in their daily life); actors and musicians (Thom Browne has become a red-carpet mainstay; for the latest Met Gala, he dressed 12 people, making him the most represented designer at the ‘Oscars of Fashion’); and, perhaps most intriguingly for a brand that sways towards the avant-garde, basketballers and football players. In 2018, LeBron James organised custom Thom Browne suits for every member of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2018 NBA playoffs; the brand has been a mainstay of the ‘tunnel walk' phenomenon ever since.

‘You didn’t look at them and think: oh, they are all wearing the same thing,’ he says of reimagining the design for the players' towering proportions. ‘Together, they all looked so strong. Sometimes we don't realise how transformative the suit is until the person is wearing it. In a time when everything is not so tailored, not so constructed, you do feel the shift when you put it on. It's powerful.’

Growing up in Pennsylvania, Browne was not a rebellious dresser, nor did he gravitate towards a particular style tribe: in fact, he was more than happy to wear the school uniform of his Catholic school (his family is Irish-Italian in heritage). A competitive swimmer in childhood who would go on to swim with Notre Dame University’s Division I team, Browne had an all-American upbringing, something that filters into his work: Ivy League dress codes run through his collections, from the red, white and blue stripe grosgrain ribbon that he uses as branding in place of more overt logos, to his (oftentimes shrunken) riffs on preppy staples, including Oxford and polo shirts, cardigans, sweaters and striped ties. They are, in his collections, like the suit itself, delivered with a sense of humour, and often a hint of perversity: one memorable menswear show featured a series of Thom Browne jock straps, the sporting garment-turned-fetish item remade in Browne’s three-stripe webbing.

The shrunken suit, however, remains the nexus of his collections, abstracted into a series of fantastical forms, particularly in his womenswear, which has all the drama and savoir-faire of haute couture (he has shown on the couture schedule previously in Paris, the lofty pinnacle of French dressmaking). It has been flattened to its composite pattern pieces and attached to models as one might dress up a paper doll; adorned with dogs, lobsters or whales; worn with matching tutus or billowing skirts; or de- and reconstructed, as with an extraordinary show in 2024 held during Paris haute couture week, whereby the humble ecru muslin used to create tailoring toiles was transformed into a series of gowns and jackets blooming with appliqué flowers or adorned with gold beading (one jacket and skirt took 42 craftspeople 11,000 hours to complete).

Browne speaks of the invention of the shrunken silhouette in mythical fashion, something that arrived to him through intuition over logic (‘my father said that I was a dreamer – I was always in my head trying to create interesting things’). Arriving back on the East Coast from Los Angeles in 1997 (after graduating from Notre Dame, Browne would spend much of his twenties trying to be an actor in Hollywood), Browne initially worked as a salesman at the Giorgio Armani showroom before taking a job at Ralph Lauren offshoot Club Monaco on the design and merchandising team, despite a lack of formal training. In 2001, a line of five own-label suits were created in his one-bedroom apartment, drawing inspiration from vintage styles and strangely contracted in their proportions (he got the initial shape by tumble-drying vintage suits to shrink them; when actor Edward Norton, an early adopter, wore one for a public appearance, Browne remembers commentators quipping that he looked like he was going to middle school).

‘No one liked it,’ he says. ‘They didn’t understand it. It was a time when that look just wasn't in fashion.' But he persevered: by 2003, he had established a ready-to-wear line, and a year later, he staged his first New York Fashion Week show (help came from Miki Higasa, a former Comme des Garçons brand strategist who linked him up with buyers from major department stores). ‘It was exactly what I wanted for myself. I think in that passion, they saw that there was a reality to it.’

In 2005, David Bowie purchased an off-the-rack suit, wearing it for a performance at New York’s Radio City Music Hall days later. Over the next two decades – bolstered by a stint as creative director of Moncler's Gamme Bleu line from 2008-2017 – the Browne look filtered into the mainstream. To wear a Thom Browne suit became a status symbol: recognisable enough for those in-the-know (there is a certain intellectual cachet to his designs that makes him popular within artistic circles), but intriguing enough to pique the interest of the man on the street. In 2018, Italian luxury conglomerate Ermenegildo Zegna Group wanted in on the action: it purchased an 85 per cent share in the brand, leaving Browne with the remaining 15 per cent and full creative control (the group has since upped its share to 90 per cent).

Closer to home, another person Browne credits his success to is his husband, British fashion curator Andrew Bolton (he admits that much of his downtime is now spent with Bolton ‘watching mindless TV’ at home; they have plans to adopt a cat to join their beloved dachshund Hector, who inspired Browne's signature dog-shaped handbag). ‘Andrew is intimidating because of how much he knows about fashion,' says Browne. ‘We talk a lot. We don't always talk specifically about work, because we have to get away from it. But we do sometimes, and he's the only person that would ever make me change something.' Bolton is best known for curating the Costume Institute's annual spring exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the opening of which is heralded each year by the Met Gala, perhaps the fashion industry’s most-watched event.

Over the years, despite having long operated at the fringes, Browne is now firmly part of the establishment: in 2023, he was elected chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), succeeding Tom Ford. Part of that role, alongside representing American fashion on the world stage and overseeing the New York Fashion Week calendar, is shepherding younger designers towards the type of success he has enjoyed. ‘I think the most important thing is that they really want it, that they want to do it more than anything else in the world – it’s not going to happen overnight,’ he says. His own career has been one of perseverance: an unerring belief in what you have created, even when the world around you is yet to catch up with your vision. ‘Actually…,’ he pauses. ‘My advice for young designers is that what I say shouldn't matter. You need to look inside yourself and figure things out on your own.’

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

From fresh body soaps to hydrating skincare and tinted lip balms, the latest beauty launches are designed to be an easy addition to your summer routine.

Here, as selected by Wallpaper* beauty editor Mary Cleary, are the very best beauty launches of the summer so far – what they are, why we love them, and how to use them.

Summer ready soaps: Perfumer H bergamot bath collection

The sweet almond fragrance: Dior Paradise

The artful home fragrance: Le Labo incense

The fast-acting moisturisers: Rationale Radiance Duo

The technicolour hydrators: Dries Van Noten lip balms

The cream making waves: Mai Nami hair pudding

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

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

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

There will be debuts at Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier

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

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

As well as sophomore shows at Chanel and Dior

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

London label Standing Ground will join the schedule

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

Fendi will show in Rome

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

Olivier Theyskens will reveal his new label, Boloria

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

A landmark Maison Martin Margiela auction will take place

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

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

Juergen Teller’s portrait of Yves Saint Laurent, made in Paris in 2000 when the designer was in his mid-sixties, is a striking photograph. Furthermore, it speaks to the great fondness Saint Laurent maintained for the medium and its practitioners throughout his life.

‘He was interested in each new generation,’ asserts the photography historian Simon Baker, co-curator of the new exhibition, ‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’. ‘There are all these incredibly flattering images of him looking beautiful and elegant by people he loved, then Juergen comes along at a late part in his career and life… It’s so brave and wonderful as an older man. The image is iconic.’

‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’ at New York’s International Center of Photography

At the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, where the exhibition, which is organised in collaboration with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris and Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent, runs through 28 September 2026, Teller’s portrait is blown up to gigantic proportions and affixed to a bubblegum-pink wall. ‘It really makes me smile,’ says Baker. ‘I think it’s fantastic.’ Originally commissioned for 2025’s Rencontres d’Arles (an accompanying book, published by Phaidon, was released in September), the exhibition has been revised and now includes a more in-depth exploration of how New York, to which Saint Laurent first travelled in 1957, featured in the designer’s life. Baker, additionally, is joined by curators Nastasia Alberti and Clémentine Cuinet, deputy head of collections and head archivist and head of photography, respectively, at the Musée.

Separated into two parts – a more traditional white cube space and a second ‘cabinet of curiosities’-styled room – the ICP exhibition comprises nearly 300 photographs and archival objects from the 1950s through to the 2000s: portraits of Saint Laurent (such as Irving Penn’s photograph of the then 21-year-old, newly installed as the head of Dior), photographs of the collections – among them Helmut Newton’s standout shot of model Vibeke Knudsen in Le Smoking – as well as magazines, contact sheets, and personal Polaroids that detail how Saint Laurent engaged with the medium in both a personal and professional capacity (and how these intertwined). In a first for the Musée, there are no physical garments on display, a conscious decision to both honour the venue and explore the possibilities of the archives.

‘Yves Saint Laurent is, for sure, the most photographed fashion designer, in the sense that he identified himself very much with the brand,’ says Baker, highlighting one of the show’s core threads. ‘Even before he founded his own house, he worked with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, and then through his career he had long-term relationships with people like Helmut Newton, William Klein, Horst P Horst.’

‘He cared deeply about art and saw beauty in many things,’ adds Alberti, characterising the genesis of this relationship, which only became more prominent when Saint Laurent met and began working with Pierre Bergé, after which his likeness became properly integrated with the house. ‘The two together were absolute geniuses at marketing,’ Alberti observes, ‘really, really smart.’

Across the Atlantic, Saint Laurent was privy to what Baker describes as ‘the very best of the New York scene’ – indeed, in 1972 he sat for Andy Warhol, while Penn and Avedon were both based there. ‘New York is really, really important for the history of Yves Saint Laurent, because it is where he had his first exhibition at The Met, the retrospective in 1983,’ says Alberti. ‘It was the first time there was an exhibition about a living fashion designer; it had never happened before because fashion design was not seen as art.’ Organised by Diana Vreeland, who had become a consultant for the Costume Institute in 1971 following her dismissal from Vogue, the exhibition would attract almost a million visitors.

Perhaps most overwhelming, however, is how Saint Laurent shaped the way contemporary fashion houses operate, both with regard to adopting an in-house figurehead, and how visual media is employed. ‘Nowadays, almost all designers have behind-the-scenes photographers – Saint Laurent was doing that in the 1960s, so there’s a particular sense of photography being right there in the DNA of the house,’ says Baker. ‘We see Juergen Teller shooting for Marc Jacobs, Vivienne Sassen with Louis Vuitton, but Saint Laurent, again, was very pioneering in photographers having these intimate and extended relationships with brands. It’s impossible now, to imagine a major fashion house not having that attitude, and that integrated sense of photography. Saint Laurent was very early.’

‘Yves Saint Laurent and Photography’ is at the International Center of Photography in New York, until 28 September 2026

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

Paloma Wool was founded in 2014 by Paloma Lanna, and in its dozen years has steadily become something of a cult label. Having started primarily online, the Barcelona-based brand has gained fans globally, and in 2024 started showing its distinctive collections at Paris Fashion Week. After pop-up stores appearing regularly in various cities over the years, Paloma Wool is now establishing permanent spaces: last week, its store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles opened.

This is the brand’s fourth permanent location, after opening in New York, London and Barcelona. ‘Los Angeles has played a significant part in our story, so opening here felt like a natural evolution,’ says Lanna. ‘We had a temporary store on the same street two years ago, and from the very beginning, we felt at home in the neighbourhood. There was a real sense of comfort and belonging that made it difficult to imagine being anywhere else.’

Inside Paloma Wool’s Los Angeles store

The light-filled space was designed with longtime collaborator Max Milà, who has worked with Paloma Wool on other stores, each of which is a response to its unique setting rather than a replication of another. ‘This particular space immediately stood out because of its extraordinary natural light,’ says Lanna. ‘Depending on the time of day, the space feels and looks different, which brings a sense of movement and life to the experience. Even now, coming into the space each day feels like a genuine treat.’ The bright interior is stripped back, with its high ceilings exposed and white walls offering a contrast to lacquered black furnishings and metal fixtures, alongside bespoke lighting by Milà. It’s fitting for a brand whose pieces sit at the intersection of pretty and edgy, smart and relaxed. The overall effect echoes the DNA of Paloma Wool: pared-back yet featuring striking points of interest, and contemporary in a somehow timeless way.

The window of the Paloma Wool store on Barcelona’s Avenue Diagonal hosts installations by guest artists – most recently an intricate dollhouse by Petra Collins – and this tradition of creative collaboration continues at the LA store. For the opening, a video piece by Carlota Guerrero showed live feeds from the store fitting rooms and the footfall outside on a series of screens, blurring the line between the public and the private. ‘What happens inside is visible from the outside, and what happens outside becomes visible from within, creating a continuous exchange between the two worlds,’ explains Lanna. Referencing both Guerrero’s personal photography practice and LA’s celebrity culture, ‘Retail Theatre’ is an unexpected upheaval of traditional window displays. Fittingly, to celebrate the store’s opening, the piece has been ‘activated’ this week by a series of familiar faces, including Isabelle Albuquerque, Rachel Sennott and Chloe Cherry.

Paloma Wool’s physical spaces are important ways of connecting with its community; as Lanna says, making ‘our online project tangible’. ‘While digital platforms have been essential to our growth, there is something irreplaceable about meeting people in person, sharing experiences, and creating meaningful interactions around the work,’ she says.

The unique space offers not just a backdrop for exceptional and interesting clothes, but Paloma Wool’s multihyphenate interests and unique perspective. ‘I want the space to be somewhere people enjoy spending time, rather than simply passing through. Whether someone is visiting with friends or simply enjoying a day to themselves, I hope they leave feeling they have had a meaningful and enjoyable experience,’ Lanna says. ‘More than anything, I hope people feel at ease here and leave with the sense that they have spent time in a thoughtful, warm, and inviting place.’

Paloma Wool, 8410 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.

palomawool.com

Creating a make-up look is much like creating an outfit – you start with one element and build it out from there: lipstick or shoes; eyeshadow or jacket, etc. Yet the starting point for the world’s most famous living make-up artist, Pat McGrath (behind countless runway looks for major houses, from Louis Vuitton to Maison Margiela and Marc Jacobs, and founder of Pat McGrath Labs), is an unexpected one: the lip line.

‘Every look I have ever created on the Louis Vuitton runway begins with the lip line,’ says McGrath. ’It is where precision becomes art.’ No surprise, then, that her latest launch as creative director of Louis Vuitton Beauty is the LV Crayon, a lipliner that is shaped like the brand’s signature monogram flower and enhanced with peptides to smooth and plump lips.

Designed to be worn with the brand’s previous launches – the LV Rouge lipstick and LV Baume lip balm – the liners come in ten different shades, ranging from 190 Beige Atlas (a beige-brown inspired by the sun-warmed patina of an ancient map) to 896 Monogram Rouge (a deep bordeaux developed by blending a classic red with the brand’s signature monogram brown). Other notable shades in between include 193 Sépia Panorama, a deep, universal chocolate; 390 Pink Aurora, an electric magenta; and 490 Plum Comet, a rich purple with dark red undertones.

When it comes to wearing the pencil, McGrath recommends creating a look she calls ‘Blur Illusion’, which, she says is her ‘love letter to the lip. It is imperfect, it is romantic, and it is entirely addictive. Once you try it, there is no going back.’ To create, simply pair your preferred neutral lipstick with the corresponding liner drawn just beyond the natural lip line, then softly blur with a brush or finger at the edges to create a diffused finish. Another of her suggestions is combining one of the collection’s brown or nude liners with a pink gloss to create a classic 1990s lip, which McGrath calls ‘the greatest lip moment in history’.

No matter how it’s worn, the collection is, for McGrath, an extension of what she’s been doing with Louis Vuitton beauty since the beginning. ‘I have always believed that the most powerful tools in any make-up artist's kit are the ones that enhance without overpowering. The LV Crayon shades were built from that philosophy – the finest nudes and rosewoods, each one chosen with absolute precision, anchored by a fearless edit of iconic LV reds that bring the unexpected and deliver the drama.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton men’s creative director and polymath Pharrell Williams presented the brand’s S/S 2027 collection yesterday evening (23 June 2026), against scenography also designed by himself. The enormous construction – which stood at eight-metres high and over 37-metres wide – was conceived to look like a tidal wave, and featured real water provided by the Eau de Paris corporation, which manages the city’s aquatic network. Following the show, the water will be discharged into Paris’s famous sewer-system, in a closed circuit. Cascading into pools of water evocative of a beach, it gently misted guests who watched on in the still warm evening sunshine.

Pharrell Williams continues his run of bold sets for Louis Vuitton, with a larger-than-life tidal wave

The set concept echoed a collection inspired by international surfing communities, and, fittingly, stood in the open air under blue skies. The ground at Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris had been covered with fine sand for the occasion, and will later be repurposed for ‘beach’ volleyball on the campus, and was bisected by a boardwalk-style runway.

Ideas of renewal and regeneration extend beyond the perimeters of the show and its materials, with Louis Vuitton pledging support to Coral Gardeners as part of its sustainability roadmap, to further reef restoration efforts in French Polynesia – not only an important environmental campaign but one which will directly benefit communities who live and work in the South Pacific. World Surf League athletes will take part in monitoring the restoration efforts during the Tahiti Pro competition this August, giving the brand a vital opportunity to hear direct feedback on the project from those the most emotionally connected to it.

The wooden seating was reused from last season’s show, which took place around an architectural ‘hotel’ designed in collaboration with Tokyo-based Not a Hotel, set within the parkland of the Bois de Boulogne and named ‘Drophaus’ for the structure’s affinity with a droplet of water. Audacious set design has become a Williams signature during his tenure at the house, with the S/S 2026 edition even becoming the subject of a documentary, which charted his process of research in India all the way to the execution of a supersized version of Snakes and Ladders co-created by Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, at the Centre Pompidou.

louisvuitton.com

As the mercury rises this month, we’re expecting to see unprecedented temperatures at Paris Fashion Week Men’s, and, accordingly, brands including Dior and Rick Owens have moved their showtimes to earlier in the day for much needed respite from the afternoon heat. In addition to the prospect of early-morning outdoor events, or hopping from one air-conditioned show space to another, there are many fashion moments to look forward to: Saint Laurent will make its return to the the start of the schedule, showing on on day one, and there are menswear debuts to come from Meryll Rogge, Michael Rider at Celine, and Sarah Burton at Givenchy. In anticipation of Grace Wales Bonner’s Hermès debut next January, the brand has opted for a presentation this week, rather than the usual show, and Paris Fashion Week Men’s regulars from Lemaire to Comme des Garçons are also on the schedule.

Here, follow our real-time look at Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2027 – from behind-the-scenes glimpses to access to the shows, presentations and parties, alongside runway reviews – as seen through the eyes (and iPhones) of the Wallpaper* editors. Stay tuned.

Saint Laurent’s S/S 2027 show is staged amid Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156

The opening act of Paris Fashion Week Men’s is Saint Laurent, staged in the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection art gallery (the gallery has been a venue for the house’s runway shows for a number of seasons). For S/S 2027, it is backdropped by Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156, an installation which turns the space into a ‘landscape of fog’. ‘Nakaya does not depict fog; she sculpts it,’ writes Anne‑Marie Duguet of the Japanese artist in the exhibition catalogue, with the work on display to the public until 14 September 2026. JM

Saint Laurent opens Paris Fashion Week Men's with effortless seduction

Opening Paris Fashion Week this evening, Saint Laurent’s S/S 2027 menswear show was staged amid Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156, currently on display in the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of Bourse de Commerce – Pinault collection.

The collection itself had a mood of sensual ease: featherweight knits traced the line of the body, while arms were exposed in shrunken waistcoats and classic men’s underwear reimagined in leather. Typically broad shouldered tailoring – a signature of creative director Anthony Vaccarello – came with jewellery-like buttons, and the windbreaker returned, here in colourful technical taffeta. Closing the show was a series of looks in molten gold fabric.

Vaccarello said he was thinking about the idea of restraint as seduction, turning away from the constant need for drama and noise. ‘Nobody is trying to seduce you,’ he said via the collection notes. ‘What makes them seductive is that they do not need to. JM

Louis Vuitton brings the beach to Paris 

Continuing the run of bold sets which have come to define Pharrell Williams’ menswear shows for Louis Vuitton, tonight’s staging saw the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris transformed into an inner-city beach, complete with sand and a larger-than-life tidal wave cascading with water. Models emerged from a tubular structure at the centre of the swell, and walked down a wooden, boardwalk-style runway. IBJ

The Dior show invite is a disco ball

Under Jonathan Anderson’s tenure, Dior’s show invites have become collectible objects – from plates of porcelain eggs to miniature versions of the green metal chairs found in Paris’ Tuileries gardens. For his third menswear show, taking place this morning in Paris, the invitation is a black disco ball, delivered to attendees in a grey and white Dior box. JM

The Dior breakfast? Perfectly packaged strawberries 

Shifted from its usual afternoon slot to 9am this morning to protect guests from the heat, Jonathan Anderson’s latest show is taking place in the grounds of Musée Nissim de Camondo on Rue Monceau. Guests were welcomed into the museum’s gardens where personalised fans sat on each seat and strawberries were served in individual Dior boxes. JM

The story behind the Louis Vuitton set

Louis Vuitton men’s creative director and polymath Pharrell Williams presented the brand’s S/S 2027 collection last night, against scenography also designed by himself. The enormous construction – which stood at eight-metres high and over 37-metres wide – was conceived to look like a tidal wave, and featured real water provided by the Eau de Paris corporation, which manages the city’s aquatic network. IBJ

Continue reading here: Surf’s up! The story behind Pharrell Williams’ tidal wave set for Louis Vuitton

'Sampled and remixed' classics at Dior

This morning in the grounds of Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, Jonathan Anderson showed his latest menswear collection for Dior – a wardrobe of ‘sampled and remixed’ classics, ‘skewing conventions, juxtaposing ideas from different eras and replicating what already exists in unexpected ways,’ as the Northern Irish designer described.

The inspiration came from British musician, DJ and producer Fred again.., who provided the show’s custom soundtrack, featuring songs from KTNA, Mabe Fratti and Jamie T, alongside original vocals by Christine and the Queens.

Cue loosened up tuxedos (one transformed into a hybrid blouson, others came in ultralight fabrications printed to give the appearance of tailoring wool), shredded denim, shrunken ceremonial jackets and metallic ‘jeans’ and shorts, while accessories included colourful zig-zag totes, bow ties, and ‘disco ball’ boots. JM

Meryll Rogge debuts menswear

It’s a year of big debuts for Belgian designer Meryll Rogge, who unveiled her first collection at the helm of Marni in March, and today shows menswear under her own label for the first time. Taking a typically pragmatic approach, the S/S 2027 presentation, held at the ambassador for Belgium's Paris residence, celebrated ‘the wearer’s fundamental role in revealing the brand’s aesthetic, rooted in the everyday realities of fashion.’ So – how does a Meryll Rogge man style himself? Folded, piled, layered and assembled: bomber jackets, floral prints with contrasting collars, knit pieces paired with striped poplin bloomers. An eclectic embrace of masculine and feminine styles. IBJ

Acne Studios is here to dress the Personality Hire

Jonny Johansson was thinking about office hierarchies this season – not necessarily the explicitly understood pecking order, from C-Suite to intern, but the unspoken. ‘I have been studying people as far back as I can remember,’ the Acne Studios founder and creative director said, continuing: ‘Lately, I have been fascinated by individual expression at the office, which can function as a kind of everyday social experiment.’ Who commands the space versus who is in charge comes down to more than just title.

For today’s presentation, Acne Studios played upon the idea of disparate people with their own set of references and backgrounds coming together in one space, in ‘a scenario in which their personal uniforms coalesce like a master remix.’ At the more casual end there was denim (of course), paired with graphic T-shirts – some featuring trompe l’oeil ties – and sweaters which at first glance appear cable knit, but were actually ruched and crimped. There was a vintage-tinge in places, ice-cream shades, sporty blousons and Cuban heels. ‘The attire flourishes that would ordinarily denote age or status no longer apply in this office mash-up,’ the notes said. ‘From this constructed vision emerges a composite look in many forms – each one transcending the office walls and reclaimed as an attitude above all.’ IBJ

Solid Homme explores ‘the tension between the natural and the artificial’

Solid Homme took guests to the lab for their S/S 2027 presentation, in which models walked through a space filled with hydroponic chambers – terrariums where plants are grown in mineral-rich solutions rather than soil – a comment on humanity’s ‘hubristic ambition not simply to understand nature, but to reconstruct it.’

The collection itself was outdoorsy, but without being bucolic. Technical fabrics in hues of violet and canary yellow, perforated surfaces, and shapes inspired by field equipment (note: windbreakers and boonie hats). IBJ

The story behind the Dior soundtrack

Despite having produced songs for some of music’s biggest names – among them Charli XCX, Skepta and Ed Sheeran – the British musician Fred Again (stylised Fred again..) did not rise to prominence until the release of Actual Life, a three-volume series of mixtapes that served as an aural diary of the years 2020-2022.

This morning in Paris, Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson recruited Fred Again to soundtrack his S/S 2027 menswear show for Dior, his third men’s outing for the house so far (Anderson became creative director in 2025). JM

Continue reading here: Dior’s Jonathan Anderson on why he chose a historic Parisian museum for his Fred Again-soundtracked menswear show

Rick Owens gets wet 

Moved from its usual early afternoon slot to 10am, Rick Owens’ latest menswear show unfolded on the already sweltering forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo – the designer’s longtime venue of choice in the city. This morning, an enormous ramp had been erected across the forecourt’s front pool, from which fountains looped dramatically over the runway (and provided guests and models alike with a welcome spray of mist).

This season, the American designer said he was thinking about the idea of training: ‘We are all processing menace, some of us arm, some of us train,’ he wrote in his usual letter to attendees prior to the show. Central to this was a new collaboration with Adidas, seeing the sportswear behemoth’s Climacool sweatsuit reimagined in Owens’ singular style. This included a series of ‘inflatable’ looks, their billowing forms achieved by fans installed inside – ‘when worn with an ice vest, they create a personal air conditioning system,’ he elucidated. In close to 40 degree heat, they sounded tempting. JM

Sarah Burton’s debut menswear presentation for Givenchy

At home in Givenchy’s Paris headquarters on Avenue George V, Sarah Burton held her first menswear presentation as creative director of the house, which she joined in September 2024. The presentation comes off the back of a surprise campaign for the collection, which was photographed by Juergen Teller and released this week – starring talent including Don McCullin, Don Letts, and Danny Fox.

The collection was presented in dialogue with a triptych of works of British artist Rachel Whiteread, and elements of her treatment of surface and colour were interpreted through the garments, particularly in the butter-soft leather pieces, rugby shirts and wide-leg trousers, in solid blocks of pink or forest green with the gentlest of folds. Classic Burton-isms could be read through precisely tailored jackets with slightly nipped-waists and sharp shoulders, as well as in the painterly florals which appeared as both print and embroidered elements. ‘I wanted this to feel very personal and intimate, and to reflect the conversations that I have with the friends of the house,’ Burton said. IBJ

A closer look at Dior’s latest menswear collection

Details from Dior’s proposition for going out out dressing at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, show venue turned showroom: satin bow-ties, multi-colour zig-zags and oversize knits shot through with sparkles. IBJ

IM Men looks to bamboo for inspiration

Earlier this morning, IM Men – part of the Issey Miyake umbrella of brands – presented a S/S 2027 collection which looked to bamboo for inspiration. The initial inspiration came from a visit to Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs which drew them towards the institution’s collection of East Asian art – ‘misty bamboo forest landscapes in ink wash paintings and the intricate layering of branches and leaves created by the paper stencils used in katazome kimono dyeing,’ as the notes described. In the collection, this led to criss-crossing bamboo-style hats and chest pieces, while other pieces took the reference more lightly: like a series of dyed wash denim, designed to evoke the the traditional ink wash paintings, or a series of motifs by designer Rikako Nagashima, derived from images of the shadows cast by bamboo. JM

Julian Klausner continues to delight at Dries Van Noten

Despite the soaring temperatures inside the Paris Tennis Club – its greenhouse-like construction required ice lollies, water, hundreds of fans and two paramedics on standby to keep guests cool – Julian Klausner continued a thrilling run of collections at Dries Van Noten, with an ethereal S/S 2027 menswear offering that paid homage to the eponmyous house founder’s grasp of colour, print and embellishment (Klausner took over from Van Noten in 2025).

The idea of lightness was at the heart of this latest outing, with Klausner marrying diaphanous layers – sheer organza jackets, silk cargo pants, tabard tops left open to reveal the back, and the like – with sunset and sorbet hues (some matching the strawberry, violet and lemon lollies on offer prior to the show), and plenty of embellishment (clear paillettes, floral embroidery and feather headpieces added richness without weight). Footwear was also a highlight – the leopard-print lace-ups and beaded sandals elicited coos of approval from the longtime Dries fan who sat to my left. JM

Behind the scenes at Dries Van Noten

Wallpaper* went backstage to speak with Julian Klausner following the Dries Van Noten S/S 2027 show – watch here.

Junya Watanabe puts his riff on streetwear

This morning at Le Trianon in Montmartre, Junya Watanabe opened proceedings with a collection which put his distinctive riff on streetwear, collaborating with a slew of other brands – among them Kappa, Needles and New Balance. The sweatsuit was a recurring motif, with versions spanning classic Watanabe black and more vivid hues of yellow, green and burgundy, while signature elements of deconstruction – from shredded tweed jackets to back-front-jeans – were layered throughout. Bold, jewellery-like embellishment completed the look, from a multitude of chains to crystal brooches studding American sporting caps. JM

Studio Nicholson hosts its first-ever runway show

This afternoon, in the historic Hôtel d'Évreux on Paris’ Place Vendôme, Studio Nicholson founder Nick Wakeman hosted the first-ever runway show for her London-based label in its 16-year history. ‘I want the crowd to appreciate our journey and the brand’s provenance,’ Wakeman said of the choice. ‘I want people to see the clothes move; I like the idea that it’s live and not just another static image.’ Choosing an intimate, salon-style presentation, the collection was an evolution of the look Nicholson has honed since the brand’s founding: a minimalist, ‘no tricks’ approach where fabric quality is foremost and ‘clothes are believable and fit for purpose, but not boring,’ as she described. Comprising both men’s and womenswear, the result was a comprehensive wardrobe of Studio Nicholson classics – including the Sorte trouser, which has been in production for the last 16 years – alongside some new additions, like a fisherman’s-style jacket and boxy, safari shirt. JM

Hermès evokes the spirit of the Gaucho

Hermès’ design team looked to the folk figure of the Gaucho – the itinerant, wild horseman of the South American frontier – for today’s presentation (not the usual runway show, while the brand is between creative directors, with Grace Wales Bonner making her debut at the helm in January 2027). Gently tapering slacks were worn slightly high-waisted, bombacha style, and the classic Hermès silk scarf was styled with a nod to a rustic neckerchief. The palette was redolent of sedate, dusty plains – earthy browns and muted teal, with an occasional flash of lavender – but tempered with more playful prints of cacti and jumping fences. IBJ

Backstage with Willy Chavarria

Willy Chavarria tells Wallpaper* the story behind his S/S 2027 collection

‘This season there was a lot of conversation about how we find joy and levity in this time of chaos,’ says American designer Willy Chavarria of his S/S 2027 collection, shown yesterday in the dome of Paris’ Espace Niemeyer on a cast which included Bella Freud and Romeo Beckham.

In the latest of Wallpaper’s Ground Report series, we caught up with Chavarria at his studio before the show to discover the story behind the collection, which was titled Comunión. ‘There are two strong feelings in this collection,’ he says. ‘One is joy and colour, the other is shock and awe.’ JM

One hundred years of Lanvin menswear

It’s the centennial year of Lanvin’s menswear line, and the surrealist milieu of Lanvin’s eponymous founder was on creative director Peter Copping’s mind this season. The couturier's relationship to the artistic movement – which celebrated its own centennial in 2024 – was more subtle than her contemporary Elsa Schiparelli, but, according to the show notes for S/S 2027, she dressed members of the loose group of artists and poets including Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. This connection was communicated through discreet subversions of menswear classics: tailored trousers which pool around the ankle, a silk pyjama set modified for daytime, tasseled dress scarves styled with safari jackets. IBJ

Soshiotsuki debuts at Paris Fashion Week Men’s

‘A usually strict father allowing himself to loosen up, just slightly, while on holiday,’ was the central image of 2025 LVMH Prize winner Soshiotsuki’s debut Paris Fashion Week show – the atmosphere of a fantasy resort encouraging the patriarch to let go a little, to resist the impulse for perfection. This was told through a collection made from mostly original fabrics, manufactured in Japan, and constructed to give ‘the impression that gravity has naturally caused the garments to collapse’. IBJ

Backstage at Studio Nicholson

Yesterday afternoon, in the historic Hôtel d’Évreux on Paris’ Place Vendôme, Studio Nicholson founder Nick Wakeman hosted the first-ever runway show for her London-based label in its 16-year history.

Speaking to Wallpaper* for our Ground Report series, Wakeman said the collection was something of a ‘greatest hits… these are my codes, my design language’. Across both men’s and womenswear, it meant a comprehensive wardrobe of Studio Nicholson classics – including the Sorte trouser, which has been in production for the last 16 years – alongside some new additions, like a fisherman’s-style jacket and boxy safari shirt. JM

Wooyoungmi’s S/S 2027 collection was about dressing with joy

Opening the final Sunday of Paris Fashion Week Men’s, Madame Woo looked towards the Korean concept of ‘heung’ for her latest Wooyoungmi show – an expression which captures a mood of ‘joy, spontaneity and rhythm,’ as the Seoul-based designer described via the collection notes.

Cue a collection designed to lift the spirits: colourful hoodies were faded as if the wearer had been lying out all day in the sun, clashing patterns were mixed in a single look, and leather charms hung off belts, their shapes evoking gwaebul norigae pendants, historically worn with the hanbok as protective talismans. JM

At Celine, Michael Rider is creating the clothes he loves

Taking place at the Tennis Club de Paris this afternoon, Michael Rider hosted his first dedicated menswear show for Celine – a continuation of the American designer’s distinctive aesthetic at the house so far, one which melds Ivy League prep (Rider was at Polo Ralph Lauren before Celine; he is also an alumnus of Brown University) with a Parisian insouciance rooted in the house’s codes. Rather than a specific theme, Rider instead said he was simply developing the Celine man’s wardrobe: ‘[It’s about] enjoying what we do in the studio, and desiring it ourselves, all of it, the clothes and the characters.’ Cue a collection of eclecticism and ease: ballooning trousers, metallic leather jeans, colourful cummerbunds, and a multitude of low-pro shoes, sandals and sneakers featured as part of the highly desirable line-up. ‘[It’s about] building toward something bigger,’ he said. ‘Something with legs, and roots.’ JM

Sacai closes out the week

And with Sacai, Paris Fashion Week Men’s comes to a close. ‘The new classics’ offered just what it promised, colliding ‘the rigid, historically conservative codes of traditional tailoring with the vibrant, non-conservative energies of contemporary culture’. Voluminous panel pocketed suit trousers were juxtaposed with tie-dye rugby shirts, and a roomy tailored jacket was hybridised into a duffel with the addition of toggle-and-rope fastenings. Shown concurrently with womenswear, the collection also debuted the brand’s first collaboration with Birkenstock, new footwear which comes from ‘layering and exchanging elements across archival styles.’ IBJ

Thom Browne is a designer who is expected to present the unexpected. The challenge he poses to conventional fashion tropes, and the response that it provokes, has made him one of the most intriguing designers of his generation – not to be second guessed nor underestimated.

That said, ‘A Bug’s Life’ was not on anyone’s bingo card as a reference for his S/S 2027 menswear collection.

The designer watched the 1998 Disney animation on a recent flight from Milan (where his collections are finessed) to New York (where he calls home) and was left enthralled by the story of Flik, an inventive ant who enlists an army of circus bugs to help him defeat the group of grasshoppers who keep stealing their food.

Thom Browne on his Milan Fashion Week show

At his show on Monday afternoon, in the courtyard of the Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan, where 400 seersucker flowerpots had been arranged to create, ‘Thom’s Garden’, it played out in the depiction of bumblebees, leapfrogs, ants, and dragonflies embroidered and appliqued across his signature summer seersucker.

‘I thought it was a charming story to play with and reference for these times that we are living in,’ Browne said with a smile backstage after the show.

The outing was the designer’s much-anticipated return to the Milan menswear schedule for the first time since 2008 and comes as he marks the 25th anniversary of his eponymous label this year. It seemed to have put the designer in both a reflective and inventive mood.

‘For spring, I wanted to focus on why you come to Thom Browne and reinforce the things I’ve been doing for the past twenty years in new ways,’ he told Wallpaper* before the show. ‘You see [it] through really strong tailoring and fabric development but done lighter for summer in poplins for shirting and various weights of tailoring including half and unlined jackets, sheer fabrics and Swiss dot.’

His idea, he continued, was about ‘trying to push people to think differently about tailoring but all rooted in that same original idea behind the grey suit. An evolution but never a change.’

Here, the East-coast American preppy look he is famous for was delivered in soft focus with patchwork and intarsia techniques playing out over the lightest layers of unlined and half-lined outerwear, shirting, and pleated shorts and skirts. Meanwhile, the brand’s signature tri-colour grosgrain tipping was intentionally distressed to represent ‘the seasonal cycles and generations of life these garments will see’.

Realised in Browne’s customary grey and white palette infused with lemon curd, cornflower, and sorbet pink, each outfit in the collection was conceived to be worn as a total look as well as broken down into singular elements, said Browne. ‘There’s a lot in the collection that you can make your own.’

It was a collection that – as ever – offered the wearer respite from rigidity, both in movement and mandate. As he told one reporter after the show, ‘I’ve been putting men in skirts for the last 25 years. I love men seeing collections and clothing differently and not being so strict about the rules of menswear.’

Shortly after the grand finale bridal look – crafted from Swiss dot tailoring, trimmed in his tipping, and wrapped in pearl-embellished tulle – closed the show, Browne himself emerged to take his bow wearing a frog headpiece-cum helmet. In Thom’s garden, anything grows.

At the Fondazione Adolfo Pini in Milan, Church’s S/S 2027 collection begins with the slipper. In the first room of the apartment, beside a Gio Ponti fireplace, are light and technical shoes – designed for crossing from room to street, made from soft suede, nappa leather, with thin leather soles and California construction, made inside out, stitched, then turned. The ‘Villa’ series is one of three product families – alongside ‘Townhouse’ and ‘Cottage’ – showcased as part of Church’s presentation, ‘The Residence’, and catering to the warmer months.

Additionally, on the gilt-tooled leather of an old writing bureau sits the ‘Shannon’, one of the house’s icons reinterpreted for the season in a new leather: a green so deep it is nearly black, painted onto undyed crust, by hand, in three or four coats, each left to dry a day, until the colour seems to swirl in the leather like oil. A painter's palette hangs on the wall above.

‘The different families of the collection all have a reference to a domestic way of living,’ said a Church's representative during the presentation. ‘So we felt an apartment, another domestic environment, was particularly fitting [as a showcase].’

‘Villa’ takes the collection towards vacation and softness; ‘Cottage’ sits between town and countryside; ‘Townhouse’ returns to formal construction with sharper leather work.

Inside ‘The Residence’, Church's S/S 2027 show in a Milanese painter's house

The ‘Townhouse’ family features Goodyear-welted shoes with a closed-channel sole stitch and a darkened, hand-finished sole. The ‘Tayport’ derby, in a polished fumé leather, holds a marked depth of colour. The ‘Taunton’ loafer, in Ocean Calf, takes a softer line, while on the ‘Thirsk’ brogue, the wingtip is drawn only in perforation and stitching, with no cuts made into the leather.

The ‘Cottage’ series, in a lighter construction, shapes only the lining and leaves the upper leather free; the welt is laid over it, so the leather runs between welt and sole and the shoe stays supple. It runs to a ‘Chukka’ boot and a ‘Derby’, and an ‘Oxford’ with concealed elastic that is worn laced or slipped on.

‘Villa’ turns to evenings and holidays, drawing from the slipper, as mentioned. A moccasin among the designs carries a hand stitch worked over the edge, resembling rope.

The exhibition space is conceived as a domestic setting, the collection comfortably placed across the rooms of the Fondazione Adolfo Pini, which occupies the piano nobile of a former private house in Milan's Garibaldi district, close to Brera. It was once the home and studio of the painter Renzo Bongiovanni Radice, who worked here until his death in 1970. Its parquet floors, coffered ceilings, family furniture and paintings remain; the apartment was last refurbished at the end of 2025, conservatively – much of what visitors see still is original. A square courtyard opens onto a columned portico, and a staircase rises to the piano nobile, where more than 40 of Bongiovanni Radice’s paintings hang among the family's furniture and ceramics, retained as ‘a living gallery’, as the foundation calls it.

At the centre of the main room, Church’s set out a material library – the leathers and components that a shoe is built from – shown with the makers at work. Church's has made shoes in Northampton, UK, since 1873, and was among the first to set them on separate left and right lasts; its Goodyear-welted shoes, the making of which runs to some 250 operations across about eight weeks, can be unpicked and resoled for years.

Also on display were pieces from the brand’s archive, as part of a project called Church’s Chapters, an attempt to show less-expected parts of its history. Church’s is often understood through men’s classic footwear, and the selection in Milan widened that picture: women’s shoes from 1900, white boots and loafers from the 1970s, advertising material from across decades, and an 1887 red book made from blotting paper, gifted to clients for New Year.

church-footwear.com

Milan Fashion Week Men’s unfolded in the midst of a Europe-wide heatwave, with sweltering temperatures being the subject of conversation du jour (and, with thermometers hitting 40 degrees in Paris later this week, this looks to be a topic that will define fashion month). In some ways, it provides an appropriate backdrop for the summer collections: after all, this is the climate for which these clothes were defined. And there was an escapist mood that permeated the collections: Dolce & Gabbana conjured a Sicilian vacation (an all-white linen finale looked particularly apt for the conditions), while Paul Smith’s undone tailoring was inspired by a photograph of his grandfather on holiday, his suit trousers rolled up so he could paddle in the water. Meanwhile, at Ralph Lauren – a label which has become ubiquitous among show attendees this season, particularly the Polo line – mined the moment with a joyful collection that embraced colour and print, filled with clever styling moments.

Elsewhere, there were standout shows from Prada – Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons reworked menswear’s fundamentals, including the denim jean, for a collection that they called ‘an exercise in clarity’ – while at Setchu, Satoshi Kondon, one of menswear’s most intriguing designers, drew inspiration from a recent fishing trip to Gabon. Meanwhile, Thom Browne brought his characteristic wit and whimsy to Milan (he hasn't shown in Italy since 2008), and Giorgio Armani closed out proceedings with a collection that drew on sun-soaked Mediterranean markets and their eclectic wares.

Ralph Lauren

‘Even classic boundaries are there to be pushed,’ proposed the statement for the combined showings of Polo and Ralph Lauren Purple Label collections. As such, the rarified world of country club sports that Ralph Lauren has almost come to symbolise was tempered with something more easy-going and less restricted – there were classic double-breasted blazers, of course, but also lettermans made from top-stitched college flags in vivid primary colours, or lived-in, sun-faded indigo zip-up bombers. Patchworking, one of the great American traditions, was a recurring theme, lending a cosy expressiveness to proceedings. Silk scarves were worn knotted around the throat or draped over the shoulders, but also around the waist, a casual take on a cummerbund. And berets and paint-splattered pants signified something a little rebellious, even beatnik, about the season’s man – perhaps not as squeaky-clean as he may first appear.

On the ground in Milan, Wallpaper’s fashion and beauty director Jack Moss observed that the brand has become the uniform of choice for the style set, describing the preppy look as ‘ubiquitous’ throughout guests’ wardrobes. If American collegiate style is having a moment, Ralph Lauren’s mallet-wielding, horseback polo player is still leading the charge. IBJ

Dolce & Gabbana

The Italian island of Sicily has been a perennial inspiration for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, as well as the spiritual home of their eponymous house (the former was born in Polizzi Generosa, a small town outside of Palermo, and memories of this time continue to shape the pair’s collections). Next month, they will show their latest Alta Moda collection in the ancient seaside resort of Taormina – Dolce & Gabbana’s equivalent to haute couture – and this latest men’s collection was something of a precursor. Titled ‘Vacanze Siciliane’ (‘Sicilian Vacation’), the Metropol showspace was backdropped with a film showing Taormina’s Isola Bella through the course of a summer’s day, while prior to the show’s start, models milled about the runway as if wandering to the beach in the morning, or back at night (think: robes, swim briefs, open linen shirts and the like). The rest of the collection mined this easygoing, escapist mood, filled with plenty of Dolce & Gabbana signatures, from broderie anglais shirt-and-short sets, evoking Sicilian table linens, to citrus prints, breezy loose-weave knits, and a multitude of jewellery-like embellishment (a pair of crystal-adorned jeans was a highlight). The show ended with models emerging onto the runway en masse in white linen – a summertime wardrobe that looked particularly appealing in the sweltering Milanese heat. JM

Setchu

As temperatures in Milan soared this week, there can’t have been a single guest in attendance whose mind wasn’t on water, in some way. At Setchu, Satoshi Kuwata’s love for fishing was the starting point for this season’s collection – played out across 17 genderless looks. Oversize nets, worn draped across the body or woven into the garments themselves, were constructed from leather cords tied in sophisticated Japanese square knots, and ‘[paid] tribute to the abundant fishing grounds found in the waters off Gabon’, where Kuwata had journeyed to in the past.

Elsewhere, asymmetry and cavity openings, and the Geta shoes worn throughout, placed the collection firmly back in Japan. One standout garment was a stiff coat with zip fastenings, cut in matting reminiscent of Tatami, and a looser cotton trench revealed construction details such as interior hems and tacking. IBJ

Paul Smith

Paul Smith

Sir Paul Smith will turn 80 in July 2026. As a way of marking this red-letter year, thoughts at his namesake brand have turned to celebrating the man’s personal relationship to tailoring. The story began in childhood, with Smith recalling ‘his grandfather standing knee-deep in the sea, dressed in a full suit and tie with rolled-up trousers’, a laissez-faire attitude to dress that would go on to inform Smith’s decades-long career as one of the suit’s biggest champions, during which time he embraced a softer, lighter interpretation of the classic set.

The effect of these recollections was a gorgeously undone affair: cuffs turned up and sleeves rolled, ties unknotted, shirts unbuttoned. There was a fluidity to the fabric, mouliné seersucker and printed silk habutai, left unlined, and a gentleness to the palette of off-whites, creamy grey, pistachio and butter. Playful knits and pewter-cast charms of sailboats and seashells evoked rose-tinted memories of childhood and a carefree, never-ending summer. IBJ

Prada

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons called their latest menswear collection ‘an exercise in clarity’, beginning with a handful of foundational garments – jeans, the denim jacket, the blazer, the leather blouson and the T-shirt, each ‘striking in their pragmatism… a framework for ceaseless possibility and reinterpretation.’ In a preview, Simons likened the process of this season to creating a ‘pasta al pomodoro’ – a dish in the canon of Italian greats despite being made from only the simplest of ingredients. ‘Everything looks simple, but it is not,’ said the designers. ‘The ambition was to do something new with “nothing” – against exaggeration, against complex material. Against useless design. There is nothing that [we] hate more in this period than useless foundation. This nothingness is very precise – to do this is far more difficult to achieve.’

In practice, this meant iterations of these garments in new fabrics and proportions: jeans were reconstructed in brightly hued leather, tailoring wool, or a sheer fabric which revealed the garment’s construction beneath, while the season’s super-skinny silhouette (which ran throughout) was described by the pair as ‘highly controlled’. Accessories, bar some half-and-half hybrid sunglasses, largely focused on the waist: supersized belts were hung with colourful leather and nylon pouches, leaving models hands free, while foulard-style scarves were wrapped around the midriff.

Together, it made for a sharp, precise collection from the pair, in their 13th co-designed runway show – Prada distilled to its essence. ‘In this collection, there is a break, with conventions of luxury,’ they continued. ‘This was conscious – [it is] a shift in attitude. Changing materials, reconsidering proportions. The new silhouette is fundamental. There was something compelling about reiteration, about this focus. It is about being extremely decisive and precise.’ JM

READ: Prada’s latest menswear collection strips things back: ‘It’s against useless design’

Thom Browne

A neoclassical Milanese courtyard filled with 400 seersucker plant pots (replete with fabricated flowers) could have, in lesser hands than those of American designer Thom Browne, very easily stolen the show, but, happily, this role was left to his final look: a bride. He wore the brand’s typically slim-cut short suit underneath – in purest white, described as ‘a bright column of light at midday’ – and a train of voluminous tulle cascading from the shoulders on top, finished with a jaunty, veiled boater. A self-assured statement from Browne, who called the collection ‘an evolution of his core identity’.

Elsewhere, there was a distinctly Edwardian feel to proceedings – through a combination of low-V-necked cricket jumpers, straw boater hats, sharp shoulder jackets and deck-chair stripes. Suitably for the long-garden-party atmosphere of the era, embellishments took the form of bumblebees and dragonflies. IBJ

Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani chose the courtyard of Palazzo Orsini, the historic headquarters of the house and the former private residence of the late eponymous designer, to host its latest menswear show – a shift from the usual purpose-built showspace in the building’s basement. In the warm early evening (Giorgio Armani-branded facial sprays and fans were distributed to guests in light of the current Europe-wide heatwave), models circulated the historic courtyard, which had been transformed with woven mats and Moroccan-style stools to reflect the collection’s inspirations: a ‘Mediterranean market… an imagined space, bathed in intense sunlight, where light softens surfaces.’ It was a very Armani-esque starting point for a collection – the late designer often channelled a mood of sultry escapism, particularly in his summer outings – figuring here in typically louche tailoring, safari jackets and gilets, and open-weave knits in a palette of earthy desert tones and blues evocative of sea and sky. Alongside the menswear collection, designed by Giorgio Armani’s longtime collaborator Leo Dell’Orco, Silvana Armani – Mr Armani’s niece – presented a Cruise 2027 collection, which followed a similar tact: albeit with flourishes of glamour, like a closing series of looks that were rich in embellishment. JM

For Victoria Beckham, creating a beauty line has never been just about producing some of the industry’s most acclaimed cosmetics, but about giving a platform to beauty in various forms.

This mission is clearly realised in the brand’s consistent support of artists, showcasing their talent and partnering on collaborations that draw inspiration from Victoria Beckham Beauty products. Most recently, the brand celebrated the launch of its newest product, the Blush Stylus, by teaming up with the sculptor and ceramic artist Phoebe Collings-James to create a one-of-a-kind artwork inspired by the intuitive nature of the product. Over four interlocking ceramic panels, Collings-James richly textured surfaces covered in sweeping circles and etched markings that document the movement of her hand. In this way, the artwork is a clever artistic expression of the Blush Stylus – a thin pen-like stick with a rounded bullet tip designed to easily and noticeably create a flush of colour on the face.

‘Following Phoebe's work over the past year has been a true source of inspiration,’ says Victoria Beckham in an exclusive statement to Wallpaper*. ‘Clay as a material resonated so deeply with Blush Stylus, with the shades taking their names from painting techniques. There's something so intimate about the way she works: the way her hand remains visible on the surface, the way the material remembers pressure, gesture and transformation. That felt completely aligned with what Blush Stylus is about – playful gestures and emotional traces, coming together through texture, colour and form. It feels like a conversation.’

The sentiment is echoed by Collings-James themselves. ‘That colour tonality of Blush Stylus – that range from deep reds through to pinks – was where it began for me, they say. ‘It connected directly to the iron-rich red clay I work with, and to the tin-pink glazes I developed especially for this project. The free, swooping gesture of the Blush Stylus also found its way in, becoming a direct influence on the mark-making across the clay's surface.’

For Beckham, seeing the final product confirmed why she has aligned her brand with artists and makers from the very beginning. ‘Art has always been close to my heart, in so many shapes and forms,’ she says. ‘Beauty is about identity and self-expression – and I find that absolutely central to Phoebe's practice. The way her work balances softness alongside fractured textures, fluidity next to exposed clay, embracing unpredictability as part of the final composition. Working with Phoebe allowed us to bring that philosophy to life in a way that goes far beyond a product. It became something greater.’

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons called their latest menswear collection, shown yesterday afternoon at Milan Fashion Week, ‘an exercise in clarity’. The runway was made from clear Perspex; underneath, row upon row of strip lighting, as if models were striding along an enormous light box, like those used by photographers to spot imperfections in their negatives.

Prior to the show, the designers said that they were putting menswear’s fundamental garments under their own scrutiny: most notably, the denim jean, a piece of clothing so ubiquitous that it is still being worn despite Milan’s close-to-40-degree heat. Others were the T-shirt (also ubiquitous, including being worn by Mrs Prada herself, underneath a duster coat), the denim jacket, the blazer and the leather blouson. They called them ‘striking in their pragmatism… a framework for ceaseless possibility and reinterpretation.’

Prada S/S 2027 men’s: ‘It’s against useless design’

Such interrogations have been at the heart of the pair’s collaboration, which is now in its 13th season (Simons joined Mrs Prada as co-creative director in 2020). Largely eschewing the stricter themes which once defined a Prada collection, they prefer to work through intuition. ‘We worked instinctively, we know what we don’t want to do, and we know that we have to refresh, go forward, do many things,’ they said in a joint statement. ‘But with a lot of knowledge of fashion. Everything looks simple, but it is not.’

The show was opened by Australian model and longtime Prada muse Julia Nobis (a handful of women walked the show this season, a reflection of the unisex nature of the collection), who wore a matching cream pair of jeans and a denim jacket, with a navy blazer on top. Prior to the show, Simons likened this mix of sartorial ingredients to a ‘pasta pomodoro’ – a dish of ultimate simplicity (he wore a version for his runway bow).

From there, the look was reworked: ‘jeans’ came in brightly hued leather, wool, or a sheer material that revealed the garment’s construction beneath, blazers in Prince of Wales check or pinstripe. The look was skinny throughout – the designers described it as a ‘highly controlled silhouette’ – while accessories largely centred around the waist, from super-wide belts that were hung with nylon and leather pouches, to patterned foulard-style silk scarves, tied around the midriff.

‘The ambition was to do something new with nothing – against exaggeration, against complex material. Against useless design,’ the pair said. ‘There is nothing that [we] hate more in this period than useless design – this collection expresses this concept. And this nothingness is very precise – to do this is far more difficult to achieve.’

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

The second stop on the menswear calendar after Pitti Uomo, Milan Fashion Week Men’s has long been rooted in Italy’s rich sartorial history – reinterpreted season after season by its blockbuster roster of designers and houses, which includes Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Tod’s and Brioni. They will all show collections for the S/S 2027 edition of Milan Fashion Week Men’s, which is taking place this weekend in the style capital.

But Milan also draws names from beyond Italy’s borders – this edition sees the return of two legendary menswear designers, Paul Smith and Ralph Lauren, who will show S/S 2027 collections in their respective Milanese headquarters this weekend (Smith, who turns 80 next month, has shown for a number of seasons in Italy, while Lauren returned his menswear to Milan last season for the first time in 20 years). Elsewhere, a handful of newer names add energy – like the acclaimed Japan-born, Italy-based Satoshi Kuwata of Setchu, and Saul Nash, who is based in London but chooses to show in Milan – though the city is still light on fresher talent (its schedule is relatively sedate in comparison to Paris, which follows).

Also joining Milan Fashion Week Men’s this season is Thom Browne, who is making his debut in the city – expect a typically theatrical offering from the American designer, who will show on Monday afternoon at Palazzo Serbelloni.

Here, follow our real-time look at Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2027 – from behind-the-scenes glimpses to access to the shows, presentations and parties, alongside runway reviews – as seen through the eyes (and iPhones) of the Wallpaper* editors. Stay tuned.

Ralph Lauren is having a moment

Polo Ralph Lauren’s Pony motif has already proved ubiquitous this Men’s Fashion Month as guests adopt the American powerhouse’s Ivy League stylings through their personal wardrobes (in part helped by the embrace of preppy dress codes at other buzzy brands like Celine and Dior in recent seasons).

This evening at the Palazzo Ralph Lauren in Milan on the first evening of the city’s fashion week, its eponymous designer capitalised on the moment with an expansive and eclectic S/S 2027 runway show comprising both the Polo and Ralph Lauren Purple Label collections – designed to outfit the wearer through his various summertime pursuits.

‘When I began designing menswear, my inspiration came from the ease and traditions of collegiate style,’ Lauren wrote in a letter to attendees. ‘These collections are inspired by that spirit. It was about character and camaraderie.’ JM

Umit Benan is creating some of Milan’s best menswer

Some of the most compelling collections in Milan are often found off the runway: case in point, the Stuttgart-born, Milan-based designer Umit Benan’s S/S 2027 offering, presented in his airy headquarters on Via Bigli (the brand’s beautiful Martin Brûlé-designed store across the road is also well worth a visit; today, it turned into an impromptu flower shop). Crafted from superlative fabrics – this season, silk and linen mixes, lightweight suede and superfine cashmere – Benan reimagines quotidian garments in luxurious style, though the effect is never overwrought (encapsulating this was a pair of silk pyjamas designed to be worn like tailoring). Most striking, though, was the palette: alongside his usual grounding hues of brown, tan, beige and navy were enlivening shots of pink, banana yellow and sky blue. JM

Dunhill S/S 2027 calls to mind ‘generations of Englishmen’

During the presentation at Villa Mozart this morning, creative director Simon Holloway described the Dunhill S/S 2027 collection to Wallpaper* as: ‘a bit of a love letter to the blue blazer’. The letter itself might have been composed by any number of debonair gentlemen – Roger Moore, Lucian Freud, Lord Snowdon – who were on Holloway’s mind this season, as he furthered his ‘character study of British masculine identity’. The ‘blue blazer’ was interpreted as a sports coat in worsted cashmere panama, woven in Huddersfield; as a double-faced reefer coat made from rare Escorial wool; or reimagined in vivid aquamarine in addition to the traditional navy.

A timeless, cinematic quality was lent by details like an archival Art Deco table lighter adorned with playing-card motifs, 1980s-inspired superfine kid mohair, and silk dupioni evening suits ‘woven on antique looms dating to the 1960s’. IBJ

Church’s takes over the Fondazione Adolfo Pini

It is rare to find yourself at a location during Milan Fashion Week which has not before been used to host a runway show or presentation – such was the case this morning at Church’s, seeing the British shoemaker present its S/S 2027 collection in the Fondazione Adolfo Pini on Corso Garibaldi. Once the home and studio of Italian painter Renzo Bongiovanni Radice, the 19th-century building houses artworks and furnishings from his collection, providing a serene setting for the collection, as well as pieces from the Church’s archive (their oldest shoe, and first catalogue, were on display). Highlights including a new slouchy slipper in various shades of suede and leather – perfect for padding the halls of Milanese residences like these. JM

Caruso conjures the spirit of Irving Penn

The singular visual world of Irving Penn provided the inspiration for Caruso’s S/S 2027 presentation at Grand Hotel et de Milan this morning. Within a set built from mirrors, echoing the clean lines and corners Penn used as backdrops for his portraiture, the collection palette was anchored in greyscale, punctuated by fruity shades and floral prints (Penn was, afterall, one of the greatest photographers of food and flowers of all time).

The brand’s mission statement for the season was to define ‘a man who constructs his presence through proportion, detail, and quality,’ and accordingly, offered up pared back tailoring essentials, with an emphasis on materiality and a defined silhouette. IBJ

Dolce & Gabbana goes on a Sicilian holiday

The island of Sicily has been a perennial inspiration for Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce, with next month’s Alta Moda show – the house’s equivalent to haute couture – taking place in the ancient seaside town of Taormina (Dolce was born on the Italian island, and it has become something of a spiritual home for the brand). This season’s menswear show once again looked towards the locale for a collection titled ‘Vacanze Siciliana’ (‘Sicilian Holiday’): backdropped by a film of Taormina’s Isola Bella from dawn to dusk, models wandered into the runway as if returning from a day at the beach, some clad in robes and branded trunks, others swimming shorts, linen shirts, vests and silk pyjamas. Elsewhere, house signatures returned – from broderie anglais short sets to citrus prints, as well as plenty of surface embellishment, like jeans adorned with crystal jewels. It feels like a sweet spot for the label to drill into a high summer mood – after all, come August, its customers are likely to be found island-hopping in the Med. JM

Variations on a theme at Brioni

The collection on display today at Palazzo del Senato was just one version of what Brioni’s customers will be able to purchase for the S/S 2027 season – personalisation and customisation being at the heart of this summer’s offering. ‘Elevating the brand’s bespoke excellence to new levels of exclusivity,’ Brioni’s intention with this collection, titled Brioni Maestria, was to balance established customs of tailoring with the whims of self-expression. Thus we saw a refined edit of elegant suiting which can be made one’s own with variations in – in addition to the fabric itself – buttons, linings, combinations, and technical specifications. IBJ

Paul Smith finds joy in the suit

Paul Smith is a lifelong wearer of suits: after his S/S 2027 runway show yesterday, held at his Milanese headquarters, the British designer said that he has worn tailoring almost every day of his adult life, even in the height of pandemic lockdowns while stuck at home. Seeing the suit as something liberatory, rather than restricting, the brilliant summer collection saw him look into his Nottingham archive for inspiration (the facility houses over 5,000 garments), honing in on styles from the 1980s where silhouettes were loosened up as a riposte to the ‘uniform and rigid’ tailoring of the decades prior. Another inspiration was a photograph of his grandfather on holiday wearing a suit in the sea, trousers rolled up to the ankle, and this sense of impromptu ease permeated the collection – shirts were unbuttoned, cuffs of suits and shirts pulled up, and ties undone – while charm-like jewellery featured pewter shells, boats and pennies, evoking keepsakes from a trip to the beach. JM

At MSGM, Massimo Giorgetti goes back to his roots

Massimo Giorgetti chose Ordet – a contemporary art gallery in Milan’s Città Studito neighbourhood – to present a vivid S/S 2027 collection for MSGM, honing in on the original spirit of the Milanese label, which he founded in 2009. Namely: a vivid use of colour and print (neon paisleys; a multitude of stripes, often layered in a single look), as well as a broad range of clashing references, from tweed two-sets to studded western jackets. Artworks by Los Angeles and London-based artist P. Staff accompanied the presentation – the trippy video installation explored themes of ‘dreaming, excitement, inebriation and exhaustion’ – while later in the evening, the designer hosted dinner at Ligurian restaurant U Barba, a nod to the region where Giorgetti owns a seaside home. JM

Prada lights up for S/S 2027

Each season, the Deposito space in Fondazione Prada is transformed by OMA for the house’s fashion shows, an over-25-year-long collaboration which has redefined runway architecture. This season, a vast Perspex floor has been installed in the hangar-like space; underneath, a series of glowing strip lights (matching clear Perspex benches provide the show’s seating). It echoes the invitation for the show: a Prada-branded light stick, like those you might wield at a pop concert (albeit it in sleek, minimal style). What does it all mean? The show starts shortly… JM

Prada strips it back

‘An exercise in clarity,’ is how Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described their S/S 2027 menswear collection, which was presented on a clear Perspex runway at Fondazione Prada this afternoon.

Opening with model Julia Nobis, the collection was about a ‘highly controlled silhouette,’ which largely drew on the shape of jeans and jean jackets, reimagined in different fabrications – from brightly hued leather to a sheer material that revealed the construction beneath. The T-shirt was also revisited in elongated proportions, while accessories included bags which hung off belt loops, or silk scarves tied around the waist.

‘The ambition was to do something new with "nothing" against exaggeration, against complex material. Against useless design,’ the designers said. ‘The new silhouette is fundamental. There was something compelling about reiteration, about this focus.’ JM

Canali’s transcontinental spice route

Alessio Lillocci took spice as his theme for Canali’s S/S 2027 presentation – the plants themselves, with their heady fragrances and colours, but also the routes they have historically been traded upon. Pulling from regions from South Asia, East Africa, and the Mediterranean, the collection unfolded in shades of cardamom, sesame and star anise, and was conceived with layering in mind; like flavours in a dish, or the way an intrepid traveller might adjust his apparel to suit the climate and culture he finds himself in. IBJ

‘It’s against useless design’: Read our full review of the Prada show

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons called their latest menswear collection, shown yesterday afternoon at Milan Fashion Week, ‘an exercise in clarity’. The runway was made from clear Perspex; underneath, row upon row of strip lighting, as if models were striding along an enormous light box, like those used by photographers to spot imperfections in their negatives.

Prior to the show, the designers said that they were putting menswear’s fundamental garments under their own scrutiny: most notably, the denim jean, a piece of clothing so ubiquitous that it is still being worn despite Milan’s close-to-40-degree heat. Others were the T-shirt (also ubiquitous, including being worn by Mrs Prada herself, underneath a duster coat), the denim jacket, the blazer and the leather blouson. They called them ‘striking in their pragmatism… a framework for ceaseless possibility and reinterpretation.’

Continue reding here: Prada’s latest menswear collection strips things back: ‘It’s against useless design’

The essence of summer at Brunello Cucinelli

Capturing the mood of a sweltering week, Brunello Cucinelli’s S/S 2027 presentation at their Milan HQ featured sun-bleached cable knit sweaters, and dusty shades of apricot, peach blossom, vanilla, aqua green, and powder. The effect was a feeling of clothes which have already lived a life: beautifully imperfect, time-worn, loved (and slightly heat-exhausted). IBJ

Thom Browne's show set featured 400 seersucker plant pots

Four-hundred plant pots, covered in the Thom Browne signature seersucker and filled with fabricated tall-stem roses, punctuated the gravel courtyard at Palazzo Serbelloni this afternoon – marking the brand’s return to Italy for the first time since 2008. The pots were ‘arranged in a grid, reflecting the symmetry in the neoclassical porticoes’, in front of which guests sheltered from the sun under black umbrellas. IBJ

Thom Browne brings his magic to Milan

Set amid 400 seersucker flowerpots in the courtyard of Palazzo Serbelloni, Thom Browne brought his signature wit and whimsy to Milan Fashion Week with his first Italian show since 2008.

A typically theatrical outing, models donned beekeeper-style hats and wore versions of Thom Browne’s signature tailoring – here largely cut from summer seersucker – adorned with bugs and flowers. It ended with a ‘bride’ in a white suit and tulle cape, before Browne took the runway for a final bow in a frog-shaped headpiece.

‘I’m always trying to push people to think differently about tailoring, but all rooted in that original idea behind the grey suit,’ the American designer told Wallpaper*. ‘An evolution but never a change.’ JM

Up close at the Prada showroom

A closer look at Prada’s precise and focused offering for the season, ‘an antidote to complication,’ where clean colour and clever fabrication won out over extraneous embellishment. The most perfect versions of menswear staples. IBJ

Giorgio Armani hosts a Mediterranean market

Breaking with tradition, Giorgio Armani showed its latest collection in the courtyard of Palazzo Orisini – the historic headquarters of the house and the former private residence of the late eponymous designer – instead of the usual purpose-built showspace in the building’s basement. It was reflective of the collection’s mood: titled ‘Mediterranean Market’, the open-air space was covered in rattan mats and Moroccan-style seating, while the collection drew on Mediterranean codes of dress, seeing louche tailoring, safari-style jackets and gilets, and open-weave knits in earthy desert tones and blues that evoked of sea and sky. Alongside the menswear collection, designed by longtime Giorgio Armani collaborator Leo Dell’Orco, Silvana Armani – Mr Armani’s niece – presented a Cruise 2027 collection, which mined similar codes, albeit with flourishes of glamour, like a closing series of looks rich in surface embellishment. After the show, the doors opened to the Brera residence’s bucolic gardens for an impromptu party. JM

The Florentine trade fair Pitti Uomo, which takes place twice a year in the Tuscan city, has long heralded the start of Men’s Fashion Month – the first stop for international press and buyers before they head onwards to the ensuing fashion weeks in Milan and Paris. Revolving around the Fortezza da Basso, a 16th-century fort turned exhibition centre where international brands gather to show their latest collections each season (this year, there were 740 exhibitors from 30 countries), there is also a vibrant guest program, with designers like Raf Simons, Giorgio Armani, Grace Wales Bonner, Martine Rose and Jonathan Anderson hosting one-off shows across the city (typically these skew towards the grand and the dramatic, from the Boboli Gardens at dusk to Florence‘s various palazzos, museums and theatres).

For its 110th edition, amid throngs of tourists and soaring temperatures (they tipped 36 degrees on a sweltering Thursday afternoon), the menswear world nonetheless turned out in force – albeit largely eschewing the usual three-piece tailored uniform that once defined the fair (the most ardent of those were known as the ‘Pitti Peacocks’, named so for their flamboyant, Crayola-hued suiting). This season, attendees largely went for comfort: oversized T-shirts, Ralph Lauren polos, and colourful shirts tied around the waist were all ubiquitous, allowing them to roam freely across what proved a relatively busy schedule, both in and out of the fair – most notably, guest designers Simone Rocha (the Irish designer chose the occasion to host her first ever menswear show), and DSM Kei Ninomiya, a brand led by the eponymous Japanese designer for Comme des Garçons concept store, Dover Street Market. Both provided intriguing takes on contemporary menswear: a the former, an exploration of ‘tender masculinity’, the latter, a group of brooding punks (albeit with poseys of flowers in their hair). Alongside, there were events from Gucci, Margaret Howell and Brunello Cucinelli – the latter a longtime fixture of the fair, beginning proceedings each season with a sprawling dinner on night one.

‘Navigating the future: this is the message and the objective guiding the construction of the upcoming cycle of fashion fairs,’ said Ivano Cauli, the recently appointed CEO of Pitti Immagine, of the fair, which continues to draw guests despite a tricky climate for global retail. ‘In a historical moment defined by complex geopolitical shifts and an ever-evolving global scenario, the physical fair in Florence confirms itself as the most vital compass for welcoming and guiding the dialogue between supply and demand. We open the doors of the Fortezza da Basso to a high-level international community of buyers and press and curate for them an immersive journey into innovation, demonstrating that creative synergy is the primary engine of growth for companies and for the sector.’

Here, we pick out some of the standout moments from Pitti Uomo 110, which concluded yesterday evening (18 June 2026).

Brunello Cucinelli opens menswear month with a Florentine dinner

There is always a first-day-back-at-school feel to Brunello Cucinelli’s twice-yearly dinners at Pitti Uomo: held on the first evening of the fair, they have come to mark the start of Men’s Fashion Month. This season, the dinner took place in the cloisters of the 14th-century Santa Maria Novella church, where long tables had been erected on the lawns and guests – including Paul Anthony Kelly, who plays John F Kennedy Jr in Ryan Murphy’s Love Story – were serenaded by the trill of a live jazz band (an as-usual generous spread from the Umbrian designer included his famous paccheri tomato pasta, scooped from enormous metal pans straight onto guests’ plates). The day after, we viewed his S/S 2027 collection at the Fortezza da Basso – where the main Pitti Uomo fair is held each season – which saw Cucinelli embrace a mood of eclecticism, in part inspired by a William Shakespeare quote, ‘Thought is Free’ (the designer imagined his protagonist for the season as ‘free-thinking and individual’). Highlights included a series of rainbow-hued cable-knit sweaters, their unique, sun-faded look created the use of resin in the dyeing process (it also makes each one entirely unique), while tailoring came in crisp blue denim.

Simone Rocha channels ‘tender masculinity’ as Pitti Uomo’s guest designer

Irish designer Simone Rocha chose Pitti Uomo to present her first dedicated menswear collection on Thursday evening, following a long line of notable designers – among them Grace Wales Bonner, Giorgio Armani and Raf Simons – who have served as the fair’s guest designer. Speaking to Wallpaper* prior to the show she said she relished the chance to hone in on her menswear offering, which she has previously shown via lookbook or as part of her womenswear show in London. ‘Splitting the collections up rather than showing them together has really changed the way I’ve thought about menswear,’ she said. ‘It’s been great to give it this undivided attention to detail, because menswear is so much more detail-orientated than womenswear anyway. There’s really nowhere to hide with it.’

‘What I love the most in design is contrast, or tension,’ she continued. ‘Just as I’m always trying to conjure a femininity that’s not too sweet, with menswear I am drawn to the more tender aspects of masculinity. I’m trying to peel back the layers and see what sensitivity and poetry is available to play with.’ Taking place on the stage of Florence’s Teatro della Pergola, it led the designer to subvert the classic menswear wardrobe with moments of sweetness – from boas crafted from organza feathers to cornflower-blue adornment, while delicate aprons and pinafores also featured. One inspiration, she said, was the Merchant Ivory film of E.M. Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’. ‘There’s so much whimsy, and rebellion, and innocence in that story. It’s set in a different time but touches on so much contemporary feeling.’

READ: Simone Rocha on her first-ever menswear show: ‘I’m drawn to the more tender aspects of masculinity’

Herno continues to forge its men’s wardrobe

Recent seasons have seen Italian fashion house Herno, best known for its signature outerwear (it pioneered a way of treating cotton with castor oil to make it waterproof in the late 1940s), expand its offering towards a comprehensive wardrobe for men and women across categories. The brand, which remains one of Pitti Uomo’s banner names, revealed its S/S 2027 collection at the fair, drawing on idea of travel for inspiration (‘an elegance designed for different places, seasons, and cities’). It meant the introduction of ‘Herno Flight’, a new collection of lightweight pieces designed for packing – most of the pieces are constructed from crease-proof fabrics (from stretch wool to technical materials), while functional details include elements like passport-sized pockets. To coincide, Herno has also developed a cabin-sized trolley, made in collaboration with FPM Milano, with logo-embossed leather handles.

Palazzo Gucci enters a new era under Demna

Palazzo Gucci, which has formerly been known as the Gucci Museo and the Gucci Garden, is the house’s spiritual home: occupying a 14th-century Palazzo in the city where Guccio Gucci founded the label in 1921, it originally served as the Florence headquarters and archive of the brand before becoming a museum in 2011 (the year Gucci turned 90). This month, under new creative director Demna, Palazzo Gucci has undergone a reinvention, with the installation of a new immersive exhibition titled ‘Gucci Storia’. Telling the story of Gucci in the Georgian designer’s unexpected style – from custom-made tapestries first shown at Fuorisalone to a gleaming white archive of some of the house’s more surprising objects – the display culminates in a futuristic oracle designed to offer visitors a glimpse of their future (Gucci-style, naturally). Also on the premises, Gucci Osteria – curated by three-Michelin-star chef Massimo Bottura – welcomes a new executive chef, the Japan-born Takahiko Kondo.

READ: Palazzo Gucci in Florence enters a bold new chapter under Demna

DSM Kei Ninomiya gets punk

Japanese designer Kei Ninomiya is part of the Comme des Garçons roster, showing his eponymous line, Noir Kei Ninomiya, each season during womenswear in Paris (he is known for an avant-garde approach defined by intriguing fabrications and sculptural silhouettes). In 2025, Dover Street Market, the concept store founded by Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo and her partner, Adrian Joffe, enlisted Ninomiya to helm an in-house line, DSM Kei Ninomiya. Running with the tagline ‘untitled, untethered, undefined’, it was described at the time of its launch as ‘more accessible and thematic, and for all ages and genders’, with early pieces having a merch-like sensibility. One of this season’s guest designers, the show took place in the courtyard of the former convent Sant’Orsola, with Ninomiya’s brooding protagonist for the season embracing punk attire – from safety pin and chain adornments to tartan kilts and leather biker jackets – albeit with a sense of whimsy and play, like the towering spiked hair crested with colourful posies of flowers.

Margaret Howell reveals a collaboration with Dr Martens

Margaret Howell opened her Florence store in 2015 during Pitti Uomo; in the years since, the British designer has often hosted events during the fair (the address is a nod towards her longstanding ties with Italian manufacturers and craftspeople). This season, she used the event to reveal a collaboration between MHL (a diffusion line which is often rooted in workwear silhouettes) and footwear brand Dr Martens, comprising a reinterpretation of 1461 shoe work shoe, which was first launched in 1961 (as such it marks its 65th birthday this year). Howell’s version is made from chrome-free leather by C.F. Stead, a Leeds-based tannery (it is designed to patina over time) and constructed in Dr Martens’ Made in England factory in Northamptonshire. In limited-edition numbers, they will be available in black and brown on July 16 2026 – our eyes are on the latter.

Polimoda fashion school celebrates 40 years

The Italian fashion school Polimoda was founded in 1986 through a collaboration between the Italian government and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, making this year’s graduate show – which takes place during the summer edition of Pitti Uomo each year – a celebration of the institution’s 40th anniversary. The backdrop for the show was the school’s recently opened Manifattura Campus, a sprawling 10,000 sq m facility housed in a former cigar factory in the north-west of the city. This year, Lucie and Luke Meier – the former creative directors of Jil Sander, who met at the school 25 years ago – joined directors Massimiliano Giornetti and An Vandevorst in mentoring this year’s graduating class. There were 20 collections from 20 designers in total, with eclectic references spanning the cinematic (David Lynch and Pier Paolo Pasolini were both cited as inspirations) and the personal, with themes of identity, heritage and belonging running through the energetic show.

It’s 9am on a Sunday morning on Sunset Boulevard and Next Health clinic is busy. A man sits in a hyperbaric chamber, still on his laptop, while pressurised oxygen is pumped into his body. He’s doing a 90-day challenge – one hyperbaric chamber a day for 90 days to track his mental and physical health. Nearby, two young men in track suits, jaded from the night before, fast-track detox shots into their veins in the IV Lounge. They are among the many ‘health tourists’ who come to LA for treatments and innovations they can’t find at home. Think on-the-spot diagnostics, such as brain, liver and heart scans, grip-strength checks, toxin screenings that look for microplastics, IV therapy, and genetic and blood testing.

Near the IV station, a red-light-therapy face mask, which resembles a Venetian carnival mask before it’s been decorated, sits next to a tray of brain-health booster shots and electrolytes. Also nearby are the infrared LED bed, infrared sauna, cryotherapy cabin, VISIA Skin Analysis, InBody Scan and – in its own private room – LA’s hottest treatment yet, the Ammortal Chamber. It may sound like Frankenstein’s favourite hangout, but this space-age boudoir offers red-light therapy and guided meditation alongside four other ‘modalities’ with the aim of improving heart rate variability and mental clarity. ‘It’s great for time-pressured individuals who want relief from an adrenaline-fuelled day,’ explains Next Health co-founder Dr Darshan Shah.

The tech-meets-wellness longevity boom

When Shah opened Next Health in West Hollywood a decade ago, he pioneered concepts such as ‘optimisation,’ ‘longevity’ and ‘biomarkers’ and this personalised and proactive approach to health is now mainstream. ‘A lot of people are doing self-experimentation with how treatments affect their biological age and it’s great to be doing N-of-1 [single-subject] experiments in a medical setting,' Shah adds.

As tech innovations accelerated, other concierge-led longevity clinics followed. Remedy Place opened on The Strip in 2019 offering cryotherapy chambers, ice baths and sauna alongside lymphatic drainage and a VO2 lounge and now has sister sites in New York and Boston. 10X Health, which opened in Beverly Hills in 2021, is in 46 countries including the UK and UAE, and signature treatments include genetic testing and a Superhuman Protocol – a 40-minute session involving electromagnetic pulses, red-light therapy and an oxygen mask (Kylie and Kendall Jenner have the beds in their homes). There’s no shortage of celebrities eager to endorse dream tickets to wellness, youth and vitality.

And what starts in LA has a ripple effect; in 1998 Barry’s Bootcamp was founded in West Hollywood and now operates in 15 countries. Celebrity facialist Ole Henriksen debuted his signature facial on Sunset and concierge-driven longevity clinics are all over the world. (In London, pioneers are spas such as Surrenne and Six Senses London and walk-in clinics such as REVIV and Get a Drip. )

‘Most people (at the clinics) are dabbling with wearables like Whoop and Oura, and they also have devices like bioimpedance scales and continuous glucose monitors at home,' explains Shah. 'We live in an incredible age where we have great data about our bodies and what's going on inside. We should be doing all the right things at the right time.’

But isn’t doing all the right things at the right time a bit… stressful? Tracking and biohacking can be non-stop and exhausting, and often, they fuel health anxiety rather than alleviating it. 'Data anxiety is a real thing, but it's also similar to saying “knowing how much gas I have in the tank gives me anxiety, so I don't want to have a dashboard built in”,’ says Shah. ‘If we turn a blind eye to this data, we can go years, if not decades, suffering from chronic health issues and not even know it until it's too late. If the data gives you anxiety, you don't have to look at it yourself. You can have a medical professional look at it.’

Enter new health spaces, such as Unbound in London; part-café, part-clinic, it combines blood, strength, fitness and recovery testing with an analysis of physical and mental health alongside a buzzy cafe and strong community.

Desert wellness – escape the city

Integratron, Homestead Valley

Nowhere do physical and spiritual health have a better chance to flourish than under the vast skies of the Californian desert. Here, other-worldly landscapes offer an exceptional dose of nature – and some wild imaginings. In 1957, after a ‘visit from aliens from Venus’, late aeronautical engineer and desert dweller George Van Tassel created a dome-shaped ‘Integratron’ to facilitate longevity, time travel and communication with outer space. The 38ft-tall cupola is a masterstroke in acoustics, mathematics and engineering and a metaphysical destination offering sell-out sound baths.

The Spa at Séc-he, Palm Springs

The Spa at Séc-he in Palm Springs is another unmissable stop on any SoCal desert wellness trip. Built on the site where, 12,000 years ago, the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians discovered mineral springs gushing out of the earth at 25 gallons per minute, the spa opened in 2023 and offers a special ‘Taking of the Waters’ ritual. Guests wallow solo in a hot tub for 15 minutes while the skin absorbs a healthy dose of sodium, sulphur, magnesium and more. High-tech add-ons such as electromagnetic blankets, salt rooms and cryotherapy chambers create a spa that is a mix of ancient and modern (Séc-he means ‘the sound of soft boiling water' in Cahuilla).

Spa City, Desert Hot Springs

It may not have the glamour of Palm Springs, but across the Coachella Valley, Desert Hot Springs has plentiful mineral waters too. These gush out of the earth at 132°F (56°C) from one well, and cold, fresh and drinkable from another – hence the area was dubbed Miracle Hill. The San Andreas Fault runs right through Desert Hot Springs, and the waters are rich in more than 30 minerals, among them bicarbonate, said to improve circulation to the extremities and relieve hypertension; chloride, which eases arthritis, rheumatic disorders and post-operative pain; magnesium for smoother skin and better sleep; sodium to diminish swelling, joint pain and aid lymphatic system; and potassium to improve skin health.

Midcentury architecture frames the scene at many of the waters, at Sagewater Desert Hot Springs Spa and Miracle Manor, which also features two Cube Rooms built by LA architect Michael Rotondi to designs by Albert Frey.

It’s all a far cry from 1941, when visitors to the Desert Hot Springs’ first bathhouse would have to sleep in their cars. In recent years the town has suffered an image problem, but two large spa developments have signed contracts on Miracle Hill, and with organisations such as Miracle Hill Spas Association hosting events, visitors are coming back. Look carefully and you can see the LA ripple effect, stirring on the waters.

Rooms at The Sun Rose West Hollywood start from £316/ €366 per night

Rooms at Montage Laguna Beach start from £1,212/ €1,401 per night

Rooms at Thompson Palm Springs start from £200/ €232 per night

For further information, head to VisitCalifornia.com 

‘Splitting the collections up rather than showing them together has really changed the way I’ve thought about menswear. It’s been great to give it this undivided attention to detail, because menswear is so much more detail-orientated than womenswear anyway. There’s really nowhere to hide with it.’ This is Simone Rocha talking, over video call the week before her first standalone menswear collection was unveiled at Pitti Uomo. In March it was announced that Rocha was to be the guest designer at the historic Florentine fair, following in the footsteps of Giorgio Armani, Raf Simons, Craig Green and more. This evening (18 June 2026), it finally happened.

Menswear has been a part of Rocha’s offering since 2022, but until now, shown in conjunction with her celebrated womenswear designs, which are rooted in a romantic yet oftentimes dark femininity, with references to folklore and her family’s mixed heritage. How would this interplay translate in a fully realised menswear collection?

Simone Rocha at Pitti Uomo S/S 2027

‘What I love the most in design is contrast, or tension,’ Rocha tells Wallpaper*. ‘Just as I’m always trying to conjure a femininity that’s not too sweet, with menswear I am drawn to the more tender aspects of masculinity. I’m trying to peel back the layers and see what sensitivity and poetry is available to play with.’ This has resulted in subversions of classic men’s shapes: a two-button jacket with classic break, which has the back scooped out and a tie fastening that echoes the strap of a waistcoat, but also calls to mind apron strings. The ubiquitous cotton poplin shirt is translated into broderie anglais, and an embroidered jacquard motif is engineered into a Fair Isle knit. Traditional underwear like long-johns, gingham boxer-shorts, and dress socks is not concealed, but worn on full display.

Speaking of how her Chinese and Irish family heritage finds its way into her work, Rocha shares that her maternal grandfather was in her mind throughout the creation of this collection. ‘He was a pharmacist in the Irish midlands, and because he was the pharmacist he was also the person who had the darkroom – everyone in town would take their pictures to him to develop, and he was also an incredible photographer himself. He had an amazing eye for composition. But it’s interesting to me that, because he was always behind the camera, there are very few photos of him. So the idea of being viewed versus being the viewer is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.’

This theme was furthered by the show’s venue – the Teatro Della Pergola, supposed to be Italy’s oldest opera house. Rocha has made opulent show locations something of a calling card, with previous outings at the restored Victorian theatre of Alexandra Palace, the official lord mayor’s residence at Mansion House, and even The Old Bailey. ‘I’m very sensitive to where I show,’ she says. ‘I see it as an extension of the collection. I think the Teatro might actually be too romantic to use for a women’s show, but for men’s it’s perfect. Behind the stage is this window to the outside, which is pretty unusual in a theatre, and so you have this wonderful shaft of light coming in and hitting the stage. It’s that bright light of Florence that I remember from visits to the city as a child.’

The Tuscan capital has infiltrated the collection in other ways too. ‘I am a Merchant Ivory obsessive!’ Rocha enthuses – explaining the cornflower motif that appears throughout the collection, a nod to the blossoms that appear in the 1985 adaptation of EM Forster’s A Room With A View, set in turn-of-the-century Florence. ‘There’s so much whimsy, and rebellion, and innocence in that story. It’s set in a different time but touches on so much contemporary feeling.’ Would actor Julian Sands’ unconventional, free-spirited George Emerson have been a Simone Rocha boy? It’s a nice thought.

When Louise Trotter presented her debut collection as creative director of Bottega Veneta in September 2025, the British designer said that working at the Italian house was like being ‘in a candy box’. It was a reference to Bottega Veneta’s superlative history of craft: founded in 1966 in Vicenza, Italy, it was built on leatherwork – specifically, intrecciato, its signature technique, which sees two strands of leather woven together in a process that takes hours of handcraft.

‘The language of Bottega Veneta is intrecciato. And it is a metaphor,’ Trotter said at the time of her debut. ‘It is two different strips woven together that become stronger – the two things make a stronger whole. Collaboration and connectivity run throughout this house and its history, from its beginnings to what it is now. It’s about different places, different people, male and female – individual parts and stories intertwined to make a stronger whole.’

Intrecciato features across a selection of five handbags that are the protagonists of a new photographic series, ‘Il Mio’ – Trotter’s proposition for the handbags that will define the months ahead (though, of course, these are objects designed to last years – even decades – in a person’s wardrobe). Photographed by Drew Vickers as a series of portraits that capture the intimacy between owner and handbag (il mio translates here as ‘what belongs to me’), the first major handbag campaign under Trotter’s tenure imagines the bags as a ‘companion for life’ – ‘collected, cherished, and passed between generations’.

The five handbags are rooted in the Bottega Veneta archive, and not simply thanks to their intrecciato construction. Several of the designs reimagine existing styles in miniature – there is the ‘Mini Andiamo’, a compact version of the cult ‘Andiamo’, which saw previous creative director Matthieu Blazy revive a metal knot emblem from the 1970s; the ‘Small Campana’, a miniature tote which was introduced for spring 2024; and the ‘Small Barbara Tote’, a smaller version of the supple shopper which was one of Trotter’s first handbag designs.

The others are the ‘Small Lauren 1980’ pouch, named after Lauren Bacall (the actress is a perennial Bottega Veneta muse after her character Michelle Stratton carried the style in the 1980 film American Gigolo), and the ‘Madison’, a bag named after the first Bottega Veneta store on New York’s Madison Avenue, which reimagines classic flap front, chain-handle styles in intrecciato.

Models Chu Wong, Selena Forrest and Sihana Shalaj feature in the accompanying photo series, which reflects Trotter’s vision for the Italian house – one of ‘sensuality and brutalism’, a juxtaposition that she relates to Milan, where she now lives and works. ‘I started with this idea of brutalism and sensuality,’ she said after her A/W 2026 show at the Bottega Veneta headquarters in central Milan. ‘Because for me it really sums up the feeling that I have: Milan is this very brutalist city, with a sensuality that’s a little hidden.

Prior to Demna’s first runway show for Gucci, held in Milan in February of last year, the Georgian designer posted a letter to Instagram outlining his vision for the Italian house. It documented the search for what he called the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’, a trip that took him to its native Florence (the house was founded in the Tuscan city in 1921) and to the vaunted galleries of the Uffizi Museum, where viewing Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in person for the first time led to a revelation.

‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘The beauty in it was unconditional; it was absolute. It made me realise how deeply the Italian Renaissance shaped everything I understand about art, about proportion, about desire, and about beauty. When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci. In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

Inside Gucci Palazzo in Florence

Palazzo Gucci – which has previously been known as the Gucci Museo and the Gucci Garden – occupies Palazzo della Mercanzia, built in the 14th century as a place where merchants could resolve disputes through local tribunals. In the early 2000s, it became Gucci’s headquarters and archives in the city; in 2001, to mark the house’s 90th anniversary, it became the Gucci Museo. In 2018, under creative director Alessandro Michele, the project expanded, transforming into the Gucci Garden – an immersive installation curated by Maria Luisa Frisa – which also housed Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, a restaurant by the three-Michelin-star Italian chef.

The importance of the address to the house (though it is not where Gucci was founded, it is often seen as its spiritual home) has made it a priority for the early part of Demna’s tenure, seeing it reopen this month as Palazzo Gucci with its inaugural exhibition titled ‘Gucci Storia’. Like the set for his first runway show, which was a marble-clad simulacrum of a historic art gallery, complete with hand-crafted recreations of classical statuary, Demna says that the display is based on the ‘idea of a museum of museums, a sequence of spaces in which distinctive worlds converge’.

At the heart of this is a series of tapestries, first shown as part of Fuorisalone in Milan earlier this year, which depict the house’s 105-year history – from founder Guccio Gucci’s time at London’s Savoy Hotel as a bellboy to the ensuing tenures of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, and even Demna himself. ‘Gucci’s history in the 105 years since it was founded is filled with ups and downs. It has such a colourful past with lot of stories to tell,’ Demna told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘You see all the different eras of Gucci represented in these scenes, either literally or symbolically. The good times, the bad times, the drama; and the scenes are super elaborate; there are lots of symbolic details that tie back to Gucci’s codes.’

Other rooms include a gallery-like display of Catherine Opie images from his debut La Famiglia collection (he showed the S/S 2026 collection via lookbook the season before his runway debut); the ‘Archivio’, which displays objects from Gucci’s history as one might find curiosities in a ‘natural history museum’; a cinema, showing various short films from his tenure so far; alongside spaces dedicated photography, manufacturing, and more playful immersive scenes, like a digital ‘oracle’, promising to tell guests ‘as much about the house as themselves’.

Alongside Gucci Storia, the Gucci Osteria restaurant enters a new era: still overseen by Massimo Bottura, former executive chef Karime López has departed to pursue her own projects, and her former co-executive chef, Takahiko Kondo, has taken over. Born in Japan, Kondo’s menu is inspired by ‘personal memories, travels, and shared creativity’ (he spent 17 years at Bottura’s three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana in Modena before taking the Gucci Osteria role). Expect riffs on Italian classics in inventive style: these include Bottura’s famous Journey to Modena, a veal and pork tortellini in 24-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano sauce.

Gucci Storia is on view at Palazzo Gucci, Florence, now. Piazza della Signoria 10, 50122 Florence, Italy.

gucci.com

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

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

Simone Rocha will be Pitti Uomo’s guest star

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

Two menswear greats will return to Milan

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

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

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

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

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

All eyes will be on Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Men

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

Sarah Burton will reveal her vision for Givenchy menswear

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

At Celine, Michael Rider will host a dedicated menswear show

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

London label Studio Nicholson will make its runway debut

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

Chanel No.5’s influence has been so profound, its name so classic, that even those who have no interest in beauty know exactly what it is. But No.5 is only a fraction of Chanel’s fragrance story, and in order to shine a spotlight on the rest of it, the house has just reintroduced 11 scents from its Les Exclusifs de Chanel collection, including No.5, in a new, luxuriously concentrated form – Les Extraits de Chanel. With the reinvention of the product range, its packaging, and in-store services, the house tells the story of Gabrielle Chanel’s impact on perfumery to a new audience.

Les Extraits de Chanel

Les Extraits de Chanel is a celebration of Gabrielle Chanel’s revolutionary approach to fragrance, with each scent in the collection offering insight into her equally unconventional life. Take, for instance, Coromandel, a fragrance inspired by Gabrielle’s passion for Chinese lacquered folding ‘Coromandel’ screens, which she scattered around her apartment to create a dark, labyrinthine environment. To evoke that same atmosphere, the Coromandel perfume blends patchouli with balsamic resins, deep red rose, and white chocolate notes to create a warm, seductive, and slightly gourmand scent that evolves drastically as it is worn.

On a lighter note, 1957 is a scent designed to commemorate Gabrielle’s trip to America to receive the Neiman Marcus Award for services in the field of fashion. An olfactory love story between France and America, it blends white musk (popular in 1990s American fragrances) with iris (historically used in Versailles to scent gloves and wigs).

Also notable is our personal favourite, Cuir de Russie, a fragrance crafted in the 1920s by the same perfumer as No.5. Inspired by Russian soldiers' boots and Gabrielle’s brief affair with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, it features a tar-like smokiness, leather, and a hint of mud for a scent that is refined but also slightly dirty.

All the fragrances within Les Extraits de Chanel are crafted with the highest-quality perfume extracts in the industry, and it is one of the last fragrance ranges existing today that has been crafted entirely by hand. It begins in Chanel’s own fields in Grasse, France, where each flower is harvested by hand for the best quality. They are then processed within an hour of picking, to retain the highest concentration of their scent, and it’s this proximity between flower and formula that makes Les Extraits de Chanel uniquely dense, with olfactory profiles that are impossible to find in any other perfume.

The packaging of the fragrances is designed to echo the luxury of the formulas inside. Each bottle is sealed using a 19th-century process known as baudruchage, which consists of applying a fine membrane of baudruche (a rubber-like substance) over the neck of the bottle, and securing it with two pieces of lacquered black cotton thread, ensuring the closure remains airtight and protecting the fragrance from oxidation. Each bottle comes with a set of scissors, specially designed to cut the strings that seal it.

The fragrances also come with a glass applicator tool that is dipped into the bottle and then used to blot the scent on the wrist, rather than the user applying it as a traditional spray. In all these ways, Les Extraits de Chanel is designed to carry on the tradition Gabrielle Chanel started: offering a unique take on perfumery, executed to the most exacting standards.

This week, Hermès opens the doors to its new London Maison at 166 New Bond Street, one of the largest in its network, alongside Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, Madison Avenue in New York, Ginza in Tokyo, Dosan Park in Seoul and Maison Shanghai.

The new location, comprising six Grade II listed buildings, 165, 166, 167 New Bond Street, 16 Grafton Street and 22 and 23 Albermarle Street, was built in 1769 by leading neoclassical architects of the mid-Georgian period, Sir Robert Taylor and RJ Worley. The site boasts a total of 2000 sq m of space, spread over five floors and made up of five staircases, four elevators, two roof terraces and 55 rooms, each with a distinctive design scheme.

A tour of Hermès Maison Bond Street

New ornamentation, colour and decor, much sourced in the United Kingdom and commissioned from British craftsmen and artists, includes panels of patinated copper, boiserie shaped in straw and horsehair marquetry, bespoke cloth wallcoverings, hand- finished walls and ceilings in powder pink mineral mortar, traditional wood panelling, Lancashire-made textured wall coverings, first developed in Victorian times, hexagonal patterned parquet in oak, reclaimed oak floors and geometrical carpeting created to reflect the cherrywood-panelled ceiling or patterned with a large English floral motif.

These one-of-a-kind custom finishes and details sit side by side with historic Georgian, Victoria and Edwardian elements, and the furnishing of the Maison is completed with more than 500 unique artworks, selected for this address by Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Hermès’ artistic director.

The ambitious interior project was entrusted to RDAI, Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure, under the artistic direction of Denis Montel, who we sat down to talk to about the site, working with listed buildings and the challenges of bringing everything together successfully under one raised roof.

Wallpaper*: How long ago did you start this project, and what was your first impression of the site?

Denis Montel: We started the project in 2021, so it’s five years, but my first visit was almost 10 years before [Hermès acquired the site in 2009]. My first impression then: [there was] a disconnect between rooms, a lack of verticality, and some of the existing spaces were in poor condition. I'm not referring to the shop that was designed by Foster & Partners in 2004 because it was correct, but all the other spaces we felt were going to be quite difficult to make work. But at the same time, it was really interesting to see that there are a lot of differences [between the buildings] and that was a starting point – for us to play with this huge amount of differences.

W*: How do you begin to create a singular interior scheme within buildings that contain Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian detailing?

DM: We were working on six buildings, they’re almost from the same period. The construction was nearly the same, but they have different styles, different heights. Most of the six buildings are not connected easily because there are steps, and each level is different. I think one of our first intentions was to play with the eccentricity of the English. Everything was eccentric. So instead of trying to harmonise, we took the opposite. We said, OK, we have six buildings; we have to give you an identity for each level and each building. We create a series of atmospheres. And it was also attached to the métiers [Hermès has 16 craft métiers]; they have their own kind of identity, but they can be in two, three, four or five different rooms. Each room is a little bit different.

W*: This is a Grade II listed building, how do you work around planning constraints perhaps limitations and parameters can help lead the scheme?

DM: It’s one part of the multiple parameters we have had to deal with, and instead of being a constraint, it was helpful working with Historic England and English Heritage, as well as the Hermès local team, who helped us deal with the constraints and parameters. It could be restrictive, because they were sometimes a bit difficult, but at the end of the day, it was really helpful. We had to keep all the chimneys, some materials, some mouldings, some ceilings, even though some are almost destroyed, others are in good condition. And once again, we use this parameter as a tool. You play with it.

W*: How do you begin the challenge of connecting 55 rooms, five staircases and four elevators?

DM: A difficult part of the project was making this work because there was a lack of verticality and connection. So we spent quite a bit of time with the local Hermès team to work on the layout, the horizontal layout, the vertical layout, to make sure each space is accessible by a lift or by stairs, as well as the best location for the different métiers in the buildings.

W*: You have used Scottish, English and Welsh materials and commissioned British artists and artisans for this project, why was that important?

DM: It's important because the context is really, really strong in this project. We are working in historical buildings; they are fundamentally British. And we love to play with context, and we try as much as we can to work with local materials and know-how. It's not 100 per cent British. I have to admit we also have beautiful French know-how, but it was logical for us to try to work with local know-how too.

W*: What is a ‘British’ interior according to the French?

DM: Eccentricity. Not only today, because even if you are looking at the 19th century, at the architecture of John Soane, or whatever, it’s bold, it’s eccentric. And what is interesting is that it's quite often a combination; the English will mix up modernity and classicism. On top of that, you can have many patterns, a sense of comfort and eclecticism. For us, we often laugh when we talk about the English carpet, because in France, a good carpet is one centimetre high, in England it is three. So there’s a sense of comfort. I can also say that compared to French interiors, there is a little bit of paradox in the English decoration: precise, but with imperfections.

W*: What have been your favourite discoveries during the design and build process?

DM: We discovered during the demolition an amazing mosaic floor in one of the buildings, not in very good condition, but we restored it. So that was really nice to discover. And then, what we call the purple staircase, actually today it’s yellow, because when we visited the site, it was painted purple, so we call it the purple staircase, but we did some tests to see what the colour was behind that, and we found out that the original colour was yellow. So now it’s yellow again.

W*: In certain areas, the colour extends through more than one room. So how have you used colour to connect the spaces?

DM: We give a colour identity to each building and each level, and we change the colour level by level. And colour is attributed to each métier. So, if you have five rooms for a métier, it's going to be a range of blue, or a range of yellow, or a range of red, and that's the way we attribute the colour. There is no logic of association. Sometimes it might be a bit clashing, as you change from one colour to another, but it was intentional.

W*: Do you have a favourite part of the store?

DM: I love lots of places. But as an architect, I have to say I like what we achieved on the ground floor. The ground floor was the only blank canvas in the building and project. It was the only occasion to have real volumetric work; what we have done with the ceiling, starting from the vaults of the facade, with the effect of perspective. I like the way we had the opportunity really to create a space before talking about atmosphere and decoration.

Hermès Maison Bond Street, 166 New Bond Street, London, W1S 4RB

hermes.com

The latest addition to Hermès’ canon of leather accessories is the ‘Clou de Forge’ handbag, which first appeared as part of the house’s A/W 2026 womenswear show in March. Its name is taken from another enduring Hermès accessory: the ‘Clou de Forge’ bangle, a metal bracelet notable for its horseshoe-inspired shape.

It is a nod towards the Parisian house’s roots as a harness-maker in the early 19th century (equestrianism remains a perennial influence for Hermès’ designers and craftspeople, with everything from saddlery to horse blankets inspiring its 16 métiers).

Here, the bangle’s distinctive silhouette is abstracted to become the bag’s closure in contrasting gold and silver, providing a jewellery-like flourish to the otherwise reduced silhouette – a neat, flap-front design cut from structured box-calf leather, with a cross-body strap adjustable with horseshoe-shaped hardware.

The result is a handbag that traverses day and evening: a reflection of Nadège Vanhée’s A/W 2026 collection, which the French designer said was designed to capture the ‘liminal realm’ of twilight, when ‘colour turns nocturnal [and] life distils to its essence’.

And earlier this month, the French designer presented a ‘Chapter Two’ of the collection in Los Angeles, also featuring the ‘Clou de Forge’ handbag. ‘It’s this idea of having an open horizon; the promises of the beyond,’ she said of the show, which mined the romantic potential of sunrise and sunset.

A version of this article appears in the July 2026 Design Directory Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 4 June in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The world of fashion publishing has become increasingly rich in recent years, with encyclopaedic tomes (like Thames & Hudson’s superlative ‘Catwalk’ series) meeting the limited-edition and the self-published, alongside those conceived by the fashion world’s biggest brands (case in point: a new Valentino book photographed by Mark Borthwick, the type of brand ephemera which is sure to become a collector’s item).

And, while these summer releases might not all be suitable to cart to the beach (though a paperback edition of Robin Givhan’s brilliant Virgil Abloh biography definitely is), this line-up of books will provide plenty of material to while away lazy warm-weather days (and perhaps, more importantly, divert your eyes – if momentarily – from screens). And they also might provide some style inspiration: Ralph Lauren Catwalk, which collates the American designer’s runway shows, provides a lesson in the kind of preppy dressing currently having a comeback, while The Antwerp Six, telling the story of the renegade Belgian designers who changed the fashion landscape in the 1980s, is a perennial resource.

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* Style Team, the fashion books to add to your summer reading list.

Ralph Lauren Catwalk: The Complete Collections (Thames & Hudson)

It is safe to say that Ralph Lauren is having a moment: its Polo Ralph Lauren caps and shirts, recognisable for their leaping ‘Pony’ insignia, are as ubiquitous now as they were during their 1990s heyday (a revival of Ivy League dress codes at Jonathan Anderson’s Dior and Michael Rider’s Celine has helped). A new book from the American powerhouse, published by Thames & Hudson, provides a comprehensive mood board for how to construct the Ralph Lauren look by collating over 1,300 runway photographs from across the legendary designer’s career. Authored by Bridget Foley, it is part of Thames & Hudson's Catwalk series, which serves as a comprehensive ‘reference library’ on the runway shows of the world’s best-known brands, with previous iterations exploring the work of Dior, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, Vivienne Westwood and Versace, among others. ‘Each book is definitive and official,’ says the publisher’s editorial director for fashion, Adélia Sabatini. ‘A tome of accessible yet thorough research developed with unprecedented access to the houses’ archives.’

Ralph Lauren Catwalk: The Complete Collections by Bridget Foley, Thames & Hudson, available now.

The Antwerp Six (Hannibal Books)

The Antwerp Six, a radical group of designers who studied at the Belgian city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, are the subject of an ongoing exhibition at MoMu in Antwerp that charts their impact on fashion. ‘The Six did their own thing alongside these huge fashion groups of the 1990s,’ Kaat Debo, one of the exhibition’s curators, told Wallpaper*. ‘They showed how creative people can lift the reputation of an entire city and present it as a place for experimentation, innovation and connection.’ An accompanying book, edited by Debo, Geert Bruloot and Romy Cockx, and featuring contributions from Tim Blanks, Angelo Flaccavento and Eugene Rabkin, documents the early careers of the six designers – Walter Van Beirendonck, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee – and their propulsion into the spotlight. 40 years since they first travelled to London as a group and got the moniker, it is the deepest dive yet into the group – spanning over 400 pages, it is a definitive resource on one of fashion’s watershed moments.

The Antwerp Six, by Kaat Debo, Geert Bruloot and Romy Cockx Hannibal Books, available now.

Acne Paper Issue 21, Autoportrait (Acne Studios)

In 2001, after a seven-year hiatus, Acne Paper – the Acne Studios-published magazine – relaunched in a new book format. The latest issue, number 21, arrives this month and turns its lens on the Swedish brand as it marks its 30th anniversary: ‘We thought it would be interesting to turn our gaze towards Acne Studios for the first time [with this issue]. Historically, since we launched Acne Paper, the magazine has never been about the brand itself; rather, it became a cultural extension of the company,’ founding editor-in-chief Thomas Persson tells Wallpaper*. ‘Instead of simply looking back, we found it more exciting to reflect on the brand through an exploration of its creative identity as something alive, fluid, and continually reinventing itself. The idea of a self-portrait – or Autoportrait – seemed like a fitting title for the issue.’ As such, the book features a number of ‘self-portrait stories’ from those in Acne Studios’ creative community – including Jordan Hemingway, Guinevere van Seenus, Malick Bodian and Katerina Jebb – as well as a series of essays and a playful look inside the brand’s archive by photographer Casper Sejersen and stylist George Krakowiak.

Acne Paper Issue 21, Autoportrait, out 17 June 2026. Sign up to be notified here.

Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture (Penguin)

In June of last year, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robin Givhan – the former Washington Post senior critic-at-large – released her definitive biography of the late Off-White and Louis Vuitton designer Virgil Abloh (we extracted a chapter exploring the influence of architecture on his work). A gripping exploration of his pioneering influence (he was the first Black designer to head up a major fashion house) and proudly multi-hyphenate approach, which would reshape the industry, Givhan paints a beguiling portrait of a visionary in constant evolution. ‘Unlike many of his peers in the fashion industry, Abloh was at peace with the fact that everything he produced was not in its perfect form. It was, after all, a practice. Everything was a work in progress,’ she writes. This July, ‘Make it Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture ’ is released in a paperback edition, making for a handier companion for summer escapes.

Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture, by Robin Givhan, out in paperback

Making Faces Carlijn Jacobs (Carlijn Jacobs)

The Dutch photographer Carlijn Jacobs has become one of contemporary fashion’s most sought-after image-makers, capturing campaigns for the likes of Acne Studios, Giorgio Armani and Givenchy, and shooting for publications including Dazed, Vogue and M Le Magazine du Monde, among others (outside of fashion, she memorably photographed Beyoncé for the cover of the musician’s 2022 album, Renaissance). A recently released book sees Jacobs turn her lens to an altogether personal project: titled ‘Making Faces’, it captures a series of children with vividly painted faces, inspired by childhood memories of having her own face painted in her local pancake house. A collaborative project, the joyful images – which capture the transformative power of make-up – were created alongside stylist Robbie Spencer and make-up artist Yvonne Zonnenberg, while Christopher Simmonds oversaw the book’s design.

Making Faces Carlijn Jacobs, is available now.

Specula Mundi (Valentino)

A limited-edition book from Valentino, available only through the house’s stores, rather than a wider release, allows viewers a transporting glimpse behind-the-scenes of Alessandro Michele’s latest haute couture show in January (the memorable show saw guests view the extravagant looks through peep show-like booths reminiscent of the 18th-century Kaiserpanorama). The book is photographed by British photographer Mark Borthwick in his spare but saturated style (he rose to fame in the 1990s shooting avant-garde brands like Maison Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan and Comme des Garçons), capturing the various looks in motion. It makes for a transporting, visually rich tome, available in an edition of just 1,500 copies.

Specula Mundi, published by Valentino, is out now in selected Valentino stores.

The Stone Island compass is one of streetwear’s most enduring emblems, best known for appearing as a ‘badge’ on the left sleeve of the Italian label’s garments. Conceived by Stone Island founder Massimo Osti in 1982, the motif was drawn from the ‘wind rose’ compass on the pioneering designer’s own wooden sailboat and chosen as a symbol of ‘exploration and innovation’ (the brand remains best-known for its experiments in garment dyeing and fabric innovation).

In the decades since, the Stone Island badge has become a pledge of allegiance: from football stadiums to nightclubs, it has come to represent a countercultural impulse that has long run through the brand’s fanbase. It is why rare versions of the Compass – whether in denim, monochrome or mesh, or those made for specific occasions and anniversaries – can sell for hundreds of pounds on resale sites (Stone Island is known for its legion of devotees, certain of whom have an encyclopedic knowledge of the brand’s back catalogue).

Pledge your allegiance with the Stone Island Bunney pin

A new collaboration with London-based jewellery brand Bunney, though, provides perhaps the most precious iteration of the Compass yet – an 18ct-gold pin, evocative of the enamel football pins collected by fans to show their devotion to a particular team. Coinciding with the arrival of the FIFA World Cup 2026, which takes place across North America from 11 June (matches are split between the USA, Canada and Mexico), Stone Island says the badge celebrates its link with football culture.

Bunney, which was founded by Andrew Bunney in 2009 and creates fine jewellery in collaboration with craftspeople across England, has conceived the pin as a collectable object. There are five versions in total, with a different city debossed on each: London, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Toronto. Ten pins of each city are available, bar Los Angeles, for which there are 15. Measuring 18mm in diameter, they come in a display box and are hand-stamped with the Bunney logo and a hallmark of Birmingham, UK, where they were produced.

The Stone Island Bunney pins are available in selected Stone Island stores (New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Toronto), Dover Street Market London and Los Angeles, and Toronto’s Better Gift Shop.

stoneisland.com

In 1996, Jonny Johansson and a collective known as ACNE (then an acronym for ‘Ambition to Create Novel Expressions’) distributed 100 pairs of raw denim jeans – recognisable for their red top-stitching – to their community of creatives in Stockholm, Sweden. Thirty years on, Acne Studios, as it became known in 2006, has become Scandinavian fashion’s great success story, with outposts around the world and twice-yearly runway shows on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (Johansson continues to lead the brand as creative director).

A new issue of Acne Paper – itself in its 21st issue – marks this landmark with an ‘Autoportrait’ of the brand, conceived by founding editor-in-chief Thomas Persson alongside a group of international photographers, artists and writers, many of whom have worked with Acne Studios previously. Initially launched in 2005 as a biannual magazine (it would run until 2014, before being relaunched in 2021 in a new, book-like format), the pioneering publication shifted what an ‘in-house’ magazine could be – fiercely independent, Persson drafted the industry’s biggest names, from Jamie Hawkesworth to Paolo Roversi, to shoot its pages, with eclectic interviews encompassing subjects far outside of Acne Studios’ Stockholm bubble (each issue centres around a particular thematic prompt).

Acne Paper Issue 21: ‘Autoportrait’

It is why Persson calls Acne Studios Acne Paper’s ‘publisher’ – a nod to the independence from the brand he has in the role. ‘With Acne Paper, I have had creative freedom from day one,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘I think Jonny Johansson has always approached creativity as a conversation rather than a solitary act. It is not an autocratic process. For him, creation emerges through dialogue – between people, between creative disciplines, and between different ways of seeing the world. Once he has decided whom to work with, he leans into that dialogue and gives creative freedom. I have the same approach with the magazine.’

That said, in recognition of the landmark 30th anniversary, Persson says he thought it would be ‘interesting to turn our gaze towards Acne Studios for the first time’. ‘Historically, since we launched Acne Paper, the magazine has never been about the brand itself; rather, it became a cultural extension of the company,’ he elucidates. ‘Instead of simply looking back, we found it more exciting to reflect on the brand through an exploration of its creative identity as something alive, fluid, and continually reinventing itself. The idea of a self-portrait – or Autoportrait – seemed like a fitting title for the issue.’

For this self-portrait, Persson drafted a group of close collaborators of the brand – they might have photographed a previous campaign, for example – to channel their own vision of Acne Studios’ rebellious creative spirit (the brand is known for marrying a Scandinavian design sensibility with a bolder, countercultural impulse). These include ‘self-portrait’ stories by Jordan Hemingway, Guinevere van Seenus, Malick Bodian and Katerina Jebb, while photographer Casper Sejersen and stylist George Krakowiak have captured pieces from the Acne Studios archive. Interviews include friends of the brand – gallerist Sadie Coles, J Honey Dijon, designer Max Lamb, photographer Viviane Sassen, artist Robbie Barrat and actress Lena Endre.

‘For this particular issue, there were certain photographers we wanted to involve because of their history with Acne Studios, alongside others I had wanted to work with for some time,’ Persson says. ‘It was wonderful to have this combination of old and new friends participating. As a lover of history, two of my favourite pieces are Natasha Fraser’s fascinating history of the Palais-Royal in Paris – where Acne Studios opened its first store outside Scandinavia and which now houses the Acne Paper Gallery – and our interview with the distinguished Swedish actress Lena Endre about the playwright and painter August Strindberg.’

However, it is the cover image, taken by photographer Carlijn Jacobs and starring model Lulu Tenney, that Persson says encapsulates the mood of ‘Autoportrait’. ‘Carlijn had the brilliant idea of photographing Lulu as she danced with a paintbrush, almost becoming a paintbrush herself – in the spirit of Yves Klein, but in rainbow colours,’ he says. ‘Lulu is not wearing any fashion, and the images are a joyful expression of creative freedom, as well as a celebration of the synergy between art and fashion. In many ways, the image is symbolic of Acne Studios... with this issue we wanted [to represent its] creative identity as something alive, fluid, and continually reinventing itself.’

Acne Paper Issue 21 launches 17 June 2026 on acnestudios.com.

‘Almost everyone said some version of “it’s about time”,’ shares Youssef El Sayed, relaying the chorus of gratitude and recognition that new retail project Jihan received in its early stages. Dreamt up by photographer Mariam El Gendy (the project’s founder and creative director; El Sayed is director of business development), Jihan is unique in positioning itself as both shop and conversation: ‘a city-to-city narrative’ that considers the emerging relationships between commerce and culture, rooted in the language of African and West Asian design. ‘There’s this sense that you can spend years building careers through international brands and institutions, but still crave a space that feels closer to home. Not necessarily geographically, but culturally and morally,’ El Sayed continues.

While El Sayed and El Gendy began collaborating in a formal capacity at university in London, the duo unofficially started sharing ideas as pre-teens in Cairo, says El Sayed. Today they operate between London and Paris, where they’ve just launched the first Jihan pop-up store in Le Marais in the 3rd arrondissement (through 2 July 2026; an e-commerce site will follow later in the summer, and a London event is planned for autumn).

Named after El Gendy’s mother, her biggest cheerleader and first best friend – ‘Mariam’s mother is also a force of fashion and a legendary shopper,’ notes El Sayed – the Jihan moniker is additionally significant in that it channels the full scope of the project, translating as ‘the universe’ in Persian and Turkish. ‘In many ways that's what we're trying to build, a world where different people, stories, and objects can exist together,’ offers El Gendy.

Paris concept store Jihan is both a ‘shop and a conversation’

‘There has always been a very specific feeling when encountering work coming out of the region – a photograph, piece of music, or object – a sense of familiarity I can't quite explain,’ she adds, recalling the project’s initial emotional genesis. The decision to launch in Paris was largely centred around the pair’s established sense of community, while El Gendy’s personal relationship with the city was also informative: growing up, her father lived between Cairo and Paris. ‘It was my first encounter with art and fashion, and looking back it influenced me more than I realised.’

‘Jihan asks people to slow down, and the pace [in Paris] resonated with me,’ El Sayed adds. ‘There are layers to what we’re doing, and Paris feels like a city that still has patience for nuance.’

For the store opening, the pair collaborated with more friends, bringing in photographer Dexter Navy for a series of campaign images and working with designer and maker Adam Gobran on the shop’s metal displays. Presenting fashion, beauty, jewellery, accessories, and home and pantry goods, the initial line-up includes Super Yaya by Rym Beydoun, Paria Farzaneh, and Cynthia Merhej’s Renaissance Renaissance, as well as Diane V, Misaj, and Kaia Olive Oil. ‘Photography taught me the importance of context and storytelling, and that things we buy are connected to people, places, histories, and communities,’ says El Gendy. ‘From the beginning, I was interested in a store becoming a platform, nurturing people, stories, and creative practices.’ With Worldy Matters then, the project’s culture programme, the space will host a film screening with Shasha Movies and an interactive reading room with Hikma.

‘At its core Jihan is a framework for gathering people. As a creative strategist, I’ve spent years helping brands understand who they are, but what interests me more is who they exist for. Who are their people? What are they contributing?’ reflects El Sayed. ‘A lot of the places we come from are often represented through nostalgia or exotification – we wanted something contemporary and nuanced. Yes, it can be kitsch, it can be chic. But it can also be intellectually rigorous, experimental and deeply current.’

For El Gendy, connection has been paramount to the experience so far. ‘Reaching out to the very people whose work has inspired and shaped our own, and being met with warmth and excitement, has been really special,’ she shares. ‘[Jihan] existed only in our heads for years, so it’s incredibly emotional, and there are so many ideas we'd love to explore. A couple of days ago, Sayed and I were talking about how most of the projects we've worked on have had an ending, whereas this is only the beginning.’

Jihan is at 6 Rue Charles-François Dupuis in Le Marais, Paris, until 2 July 2026. An e-commerce store is slated to follow.

The house of Gucci is no stranger to the flare of the flashbulb: from princesses and first ladies to Hollywood ingenues and soccer stars, the Italian brand's clothing and emblematic accessories have long been immortalised by the glare of the paparazzi.

Current creative director Demna, who made his name at Parisian label Vetements before a ten-year tenure at Balenciaga, has no qualms about courting such attention: the Georgian designer's debut collection for the house, revealed in a short film starring actress Demi Moore last September, heralded (in his words) a ‘bold, unapologetically sexy' era for Gucci. Meanwhile, his first runway show, held a season later in Milan last February, saw models – from It-girl Emily Ratajkowski to rappers Fakemink and Nettspend – traverse a vast, marble-clad runway in the type of spectacle that recalled the high-voltage shows of the house under Tom Ford, who was creative director from 1994-2004. It ended with perhaps the most memorable (and the most photographed) moment of the A/W 2026 season: Kate Moss in a backless dress that revealed a double-G thong, recalling a Ford-designed G-string first shown on the runway in 1997.

Gucci’s Paparazzo bag is ready for its close up

It is little surprise, then, that one of Demna's new handbags – part of a wider ‘Generation Gucci' capsule collection, revealed in December last year – is titled the ‘Paparazzo', a nod to the slouchy styles wielded by LA starlets in the 1990s and 2000s. Indeed, the handbag mines codes from the house's various eras, from the emblematic green and black webbing – introduced in the 1950s, it was designed to recall that found on saddle girths – to the metal horse bit, a perennial Gucci motif that has appeared on everything from loafers to the waistband of a pair of jeans.

Designed to be slung under the arm (Demna's Gucci has an insouciant, morning-after-the-night-before mood), it comes in two sizes: a roomy medium or a carry-all large, and in soft suede or leather iterations, as well as Gucci's symbolic double-G monogram canvas. Completed with a Made in Italy luggage tag and cross-body strap, it captures both Gucci's synonymy with functional elegance (the house began life as a Florentine leather and luggage workshop) and Demna's unabashed new vision. ‘I want Gucci to become an adjective,' he says.

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A version of this article appears in the July 2026 Design Directory Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 4 June in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today