The Spanish fashion house Loewe was founded in Madrid in 1846, ‘before the telephone, before the light bulb, before we walked on the moon’, as actor Antonio Banderas reminds us in a playful animated film released this week.

The occasion for the short is the house’s 180th anniversary, for which celebrations began earlier this year with the release of the ‘Amazona 180’ bag (a redux of the original 1960s ‘Amazona’ handbag) and continue this week with the release of a new Talia Chetrit-shot campaign starring actors Julia Garner, Sissy Spacek, Salma Abu Deif and Kara Wai, as well as model Giselle, a member of K-pop girl group Aespa, and artist Kara Walker. Meanwhile, Banderas, who was born in Málaga, Spain, provides the voiceover to the accompanying illustrated film.

Loewe marks 180 years in business

Each of the campaign stars brandishes one of Loewe’s memorable handbags, from the ‘Flamenco’ (a version of which was first launched in the 1980s) and the ‘Puzzle’ (2015, under former creative director Jonathan Anderson), to the new ‘Amazona 180’, which is the hero bag of current co-creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who held their acclaimed debut show last September.

Leather, of course, is at the heart of the Loewe tale: it began as a collective of leatherworkers in the Spanish capital in 1846, making it the second-oldest luxury house in the world, after Hermès, which was founded in 1837. In 1872, the collective was united under German merchant Enrique Loewe Roessberg, taking his name; later landmarks include being appointed supplier to the Spanish crown in 1905, and the establishment of the Loewe Foundation in 1988, which safeguards poetry, dance and art (the annual Loewe Craft Prize falls under the umbrella). Notable creative directors have included Narciso Rodriguez, Stuart Vevers and Jonathan Anderson, the last leaving for Dior in 2025 after an 11-year tenure.

Alongside the campaign and a special capsule collection – spanning leather goods and ready-to-wear, its pieces feature a lion motif, a reference to the meaning of ‘Loewe’ in German – Loewe has also opened up its photographic archive, allowing a rarely seen glimpse at its midcentury store design and furnishings, alongside lookbooks, catalogues and campaigns.

Explore the images below.

At Wallpaper*, we champion the design-led, forward-thinking and impeccably executed. We’re always on the lookout for compelling creations – from objects and accessories to jewellery, fashion and tech – and aim to bring you pieces that subvert, surprise and delight.

In The Design Drop, we highlight the most striking objects to land in a given month. Think of it as a wish list for the design-discerning: browse, admire – and, if tempted, acquire.

Read on to discover May's standout pieces from our favourite brands and studios.

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

Prada opera gloves (above left)

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

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

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

Celine sunglasses

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

Givenchy’s ‘Boudoir’ mules

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

Chanel’s resin necklace

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

Fendi’s ‘Lui’ bag

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

Dior’s ‘Lady Dior by Sheila Hicks’ bag

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

Limited-edition Hermès lipsticks

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

Bottega Veneta’s ‘Baby Veneta’ bag

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

Mulberry denim hat

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

Louis Vuitton’s summer scents

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

Loro Piana’s ‘Just Bag’

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

Fashion/set assistant: Alice Heluin-Afchain

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There was an air of excitement in Singapore this evening (12 May 2026) as the Loewe Foundation announced South Korean artist and ceramicist Jongjin Park as the winner of its annual Craft Prize at a ceremony in the National Gallery.

Park, whose slumped seat-like form was selected for its ‘sculptural presence’ and ‘ability to confound expectations of what ceramics can be’, receives the silver trophy and a €50,000 prize, while two special mentions, Baba Tree Master Weavers with Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and Italian jewellery designer Graziano Visintin, each receive €5,000.

For the 30 finalists, hailing from 19 countries and regions, just making it to this point in the competition is a dream come true: they were each chosen from a staggeringly large pool of 5,100 entrants – up from 4,600 last year – by a panel of 12 experts, who convened for two days in Madrid to create the shortlist.

‘I think the result of being a finalist is that somebody acknowledges what you do and accepts it as being valid in a way,’ says Danish ceramicist and finalist Morten Løbner Espersen, whose cylindrical glazed stoneware vessel was informed by the Copenhagen cityscape. ‘It’s important to have this as an artist or craftsperson – a pat on your back, as if to say: “Just go on, you’re not far off.”’

In the museum, the works are displayed on brightly coloured plinths, ranging significantly in size and technique, from the imposing scale of Nobuyuki Tanaka’s glossy black lacquer hemp vessel to Adelene Koh’s intricate paper sculpture that employs an English style of bookbinding from the 18th and 19th century. The winners were decided by a panel of 14 judges – including design critic Deyan Sudjic, designer Patricia Urquiola, architect Frida Escobedo and Met Museum curator Abraham Thomas.

Loewe Craft Prize 2026 winner, Jongjin Park

Loewe creative directors Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough joined the Craft Prize jury for the first time this year, following the departure of Jonathan Anderson, the prize’s longtime champion and mastermind. ‘It was really interesting getting together with these jury members because they all come from such different backgrounds,’ McCollough said. ‘One person might be judging something based on the way it’s constructed, whereas another jury member might be looking more at the cultural significance of the work.’

However, despite these differing viewpoints, Park’s piece was a unanimous decision from the outset. ‘We were fascinated by the technique specifically,' said Hernandez. 'We had never seen this idea of porcelain and paper coming together – it’s such an odd, strange materiality.’

Made using an innovative slip casting technique that replicates the process of sedimentation, Park’s piece is built from folded, porcelain-slip-coated paper. After drying, the form is fired, burning away the paper layers and leaving a single ceramic body. Natural creases, compressions and shifts have been retained on the surface during shaping, creating a patchwork-like surface of shifting colour and texture.

Runners-up Baba Tree Master Weavers in collaboration with Álvaro Catalán de Ocón won the judges over with their ‘Fra Fra Tapestry #2’ – a monumental, communally woven elephant-grass textile that depicts overhead drone imagery of circular adobe housing in Ghana’s Gurunsi region.

Graziano Visintin’s geometric necklaces are made using a melting and moulding technique that can be traced back to the Ancient Egyptians. Minuscule metal sheets are folded, welded and partially decorated with niello before being melted into a clay pot with sulphur – a recipe used by Theophilus, a 12th-century Benedictine monk. Layered together with cubes constructed from thin gold sheets, the result is goldsmithing in its noblest form.

Loewe and craft: a love story

Craft has become something of a buzzword in the luxury sector, as brands clamour to talk about it in an effort to convey cultural clout. Following a Milan Design Week where every major brand, from fashion to tech to automotive, adopted craft as part of their marketing language, it’s easy to feel cynical about the intention.

At Loewe, however, the connection to craft runs deeper. ‘Loewe’s love story with craft is unquestionable,’ Sheila Loewe, who has been President of the Loewe Foundation since 2012, tells Wallpaper*. Founded in 1846 by her great-great-grandfather, the craftsman Enrique Loewe Roessberg, Loewe began its life as a specialised leather workshop in Madrid, producing high-quality leather goods such as purses, wallets and cigarette cases.

The foundation was set up in 1988, two years after LVMH bought the rights to international distribution – it acquired full control of Loewe in 1996. It wasn’t until 2016 that the Loewe Craft Prize came into existence under the brand’s former creative director and champion of craft, Jonathan Anderson.

‘I welcome it if it’s good for craft,’ Loewe says of the influx of luxury brands embracing the term. ‘If it is helping the craft world, I’m super happy – but not if it’s just to make profit off it.’

One of the aims of the Loewe Foundation is to broaden the reach of the prize by bringing it to cities where, the brand says, there is growing interest in contemporary craft, such as Singapore. ‘The next generation is very interested,’ finalist and Singaporean artist Adelene Koh told Wallpaper*. ‘But there’s a lack of mentorship. The general public are not very aware of contemporary craft.’ The Loewe Prize coming to Singapore, she adds, ‘is a very good opportunity for young Singaporeans to see that craft can belong within this landscape’.

Preserving craft for the future

The threat of craft traditions disappearing and lack of opportunity for the next generation was a shared concern for many of the artists we spoke to from all corners of the globe. In the UK, Jobe Burns, whose monolithic ‘Laying Vessel’ sculpture – rusted steel on the outside and lacquered red within – was made in collaboration with craftsmen in a factory in Walsall, England that specialises in large industrial metal-forming.

‘It’s an industry that’s disappearing,’ he told us. ‘Which is partly why the vessel is lying down – it represents that exhaustion. The craftsmen I work with are all specialists, and they’re all in their forties or older. And now, their industries have been outsourced elsewhere.’

Through his work, Burns hopes to draw attention to their skill and expertise. 'My practice as a whole is really birthed from the notion of labour, I reference the tradesman in same way I reference artists,' he adds.

Similarly, Lagos-based Nigerian artist Fadekemi Ogunsanya uses an endangered Yoruba resist dyeing method known as adire eleko, where canvas starch made from yams is used to draw patterns onto fabric with a feather quill. The fabric is sent to Kano in Northern Nigeria where it is dyed in the centuries-old indigo dye pits of Kofar Mata before being embroidered and hand-beaded to accentuate the lines of the patterns.

‘Unfortunately, [the technique] is dying out,’ Ogunsanya told Wallpaper*. ‘Most of the time now it’s stencil or stamping patterns, no longer the freehand drawing. That’s why it’s really important to share knowledge and document and advance the craft.’

Others such as Soohyun Chou, whose bronze vessels are cast in 3D-printed moulds, see opportunities to push craft forward by incorporating new technology where appropriate. ‘I think new techniques are something we have to embrace,’ Chou said through a translator. ‘I want to bring the technique into my work, but as just a small portion of it.’

For Sheila Loewe, the Craft Prize is a chance to tell these stories to the world, giving artists and craftspeople a global platform. ‘Craft is about our cultural heritage,’ she says. ‘There are very important skills that have already been lost forever. When they are lost, it’s too late. At Loewe, we are all in love with craft, and we want to make it contagious.’

All 30 of the shortlisted works will be exhibited at National Gallery Singapore from 13 May until 14 June 2026.

Applications for the 2027 Loewe Craft Prize open in June 2026 and is open to anyone over 18 years of age working in a craft-based profession.

loewe.com

At Prada’s S/S 2026 menswear show, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons revealed the usually hidden windows of Fondazione Prada’s Deposito, where the house has held its runway shows since 2018. Flooding the space with natural light for the first time, the OMA-designed set – which featured a series of 1970s-inspired floral rugs across the hangar-like space’s concrete floor – was a reflection of the collection’s escapist mood. ‘This is the first time the Fondazione is completely bare, with the light coming in,’ said Simons backstage. ‘We want everything to be light, fresh and colourful. When we started working, it was the easiest collection I have ever done. It's very free.’

The best colourful outerwear to brighten spring days

Alongside vivid raffia hats, boldly adorned floral tabards and a series of bloomer-cum-cargo pant micro-shorts, were colourful mackintosh jackets – including one in vivid, pillarbox red that featured in the Wallpaper* March Style Issue as part of a digest of S/S 2026’s trends. ‘Outerwear eschewed the usual hues of grey, brown and black for bold colours that befit spring,’ we said of the season’s liberated mood, with such colourful overcoats making appearances at Auralee, Loewe, Dries Van Noten, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and Polo Ralph Lauren (the last captured another, but intertwining trend, that of preppiness – one also defined by a bold use of colour).

Spanning both mens and womenswear, these colourful jackets, overcoats, windbreakers, anoraks and macs make the perfect transitional outerwear – their unrestrained palette the perfect match for spring’s brighter (but oftentimes cool, and sometimes unpredictable) days. After all, on the crest of summer, it is a time to embrace hope and renewal in both life and wardrobe. Our picks of spring’s best colourful outerwear – each light enough for warmer days – are a good place to start.

At Wallpaper*, we champion the design-led, forward-thinking and impeccably executed. We’re always on the lookout for compelling creations – from objects and accessories to jewellery, fashion and tech – and aim to bring you pieces that subvert, surprise and delight.

In The Design Drop, we highlight the most striking objects to land that month. Think of it as a wish list for the design-discerning: browse, admire – and, if tempted, acquire.

Read on to discover April's standout pieces from our favourite brands and studios.

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

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

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

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

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

An unconventional approach to botanicals, from herbs to mushrooms, tomatoes to oregano, is the defining feature of Loewe’s extensive range of perfumes and home fragrances, a signature that is ‘part-Victorian botanical garden [and] part-apothecary, a mix is both scientific and sentimental,’ as the brand’s former creative director Jonathan Anderson told us back in 2020. Now under the stewardship of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, Loewe is still building off this unique approach to fragrances, most recently with Aire Sutileza Elixir Eau de Parfum.

Like a botanist with his greenhouse, Loewe categorizes its extensive range of its fragrances within families that possess certain unifying, natural traits. The Agua family, for instance, is inspired by light refracting off flowing water. The Solo family contains scents that harmonize opposites, like night and day are harmonised during sunset, while 001 is a family of fragrances inspired by the early morning. Aire Sutileza Elixir is part of the Aire family which – as the name suggests – draws inspiration from the revitalising, cleansing feeling of a fresh breeze. It is also part of the Elixir family, a new family within the fragrance families that reinterprets classic fragrances from the portfolio with a high concentration of essential oils to create fragrances far more potent than their predecessors.

The original Aire Sutileza launched in 2017 with a blend of pear top notes, middle notes of creamy white flowers like lily-of-the-valley and magnolia, and a musk base. The result is one of the brand's most popular fragrances, a light, slightly sweet scent that smells almost like a cloud, bottled. The new interpretation retains the pear notes, while turning up the dial on its floral and musky qualities. Bergamot and lemon give it that fresh air quality, while the addition of Spanish rockrose, Loewe perfume’s signature accord, lends it a complex, resinous quality.

‘With this new Elixir, I wanted to amplify the luminosity of Aire Sutileza by illuminating its fruity facets with fleur d’oranger, creating a more radiant and blooming opening,’ in-house perfumer Nuria Cruelles tells Wallpaper*. ‘In contrast, soft musks bring warmth, comfort and a sense of elevation. The result is a fragrance that feels both luminous and enveloping, a more refined and sophisticated expression of Aire Sutileza.’

It comes in the block-shaped glass flask that is a signature of the Loewe fragrances, but with a translucent gradient of leaf green to echo the fresh, nature-influenced quality of the fragrance itself. It’s a launch that signals a continuation of defining features of the line that have made it a crowd favourite, but imbued with a new energy to keep it interesting moving forward.

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Springtime, at least in the United Kingdom, is a season of unpredictability – for every bright, blue-skied day, when the restorative heat of summer feels tantalisingly close, is one of gloomy grey and drizzle. And sometimes, the weather can ricochet between the two in a single day, making getting dressed in the morning a Groundhog Day-like conundrum.

The answer, of course, is layers – spring is a time for the clever addition and removal of sweaters, vests and long-sleeve T-shirts throughout the course of a given day (take advice from Prada’s S/S 2026 runway show, where models walked the runway four times each, discarding layers as they went). Though it is perhaps the outermost layer which is your most important decision: the weighty and enveloping wool coats of winter can begin to feel constraining, while it's not quite warm enough yet to go sweater-only.

Step in the windbreaker, a surprisingly hardy – but usually lightweight – piece of outerwear which, as its name suggests, provides a barrier against the elements (they are often waterproof, too). And gone are the suggestions of the anorak or windbreaker being dowdy or dour: Saint Laurent featured bold-shouldered shell jackets as part of its S/S 2026 Fire Island-inspired menswear show, while iterations have appeared at Miu Miu, Loewe, The Row and Prada. Meanwhile the windbreaker’s typical funnel-neck construction has become a recurring outerwear trend in 2026, much down to Phoebe Philo’s embrace of the silhouette.

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* team, eight of the best windbreakers and anoraks for men and women – from perfect Prada pink to Scandinavian simplicity from Arket.

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

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

The standout show sets of fashion month A/W 2026

Burberry

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

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

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

Diesel

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

Marni

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

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

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

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

Gucci

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

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

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

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

Prada

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

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

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

Dior

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

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

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

Loewe

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

Chanel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

Acne Studios

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

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

Alaïa

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

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

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

Rabanne

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

Loewe

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

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

Issey Miyake

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

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

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

Lanvin

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

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

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

Givenchy

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

Junya Watanabe

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

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

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

Celine

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

Hermès

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

Comme des Garçons

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

Balenciaga

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

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

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

Jean Paul Gaultier

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

Chanel

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

Miu Miu

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

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

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

Once a year, the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize offers a reminder of what the human hand can do – and how far contemporary making can stretch tradition. Thirty finalists have been named for the 2026 edition, spanning ceramics, textiles, furniture, metalwork, lacquer and glass. The works will be shown at the National Gallery Singapore from 13 May – 14 June 2026, with the winner announced on 12 May.

The 2026 jury will be chaired by the Loewe Foundation president Sheila Loewe and includes leading figures from the design, architecture and museum worlds – Frida Escobedo, Deyan Sudjic and Patricia Urquiola are among them – with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez joining for the first time as Loewe’s creative directors.

Selected from more than 5,100 submissions from across 133 countries and regions – with the Republic of Korea the most represented, contributing six artists across disciplines – the shortlisted works sit between balance and rupture, pairing inherited techniques with contemporary intervention. What unites them is an extraordinary command of material: a level of skill that pushes the limits of what seems possible.

The Craft Prize was launched in 2016 by the Loewe Foundation as a tribute to the Spanish brand's beginnings as a collective craft workshop in 1846, and as a way to highlight the importance of craft in today’s culture. Any professional artisan aged over 18 can apply for the award, with the sole requirement that the submitted work combines an innovative application of the featured craft with an original artistic concept.

Among the compelling works is ‘Fra Fra Tapestry #2’ by Baba Tree Master Weavers × Álvaro Catalán de Ocón: a monumental, communally woven elephant-grass textile that translates overhead drone imagery of circular adobe housing in Ghana’s Gurunsi region into a graphic plan, then hands the 'interior' spaces back to the Ghanian weavers for pattern- and mark-making.

Among the UK contingent, Jobe Burns’ ‘Laying Vessel’ channels West Midlands manufacturing heritage via heavy metal-forming and chemical patination: a conical steel vessel with a lacquered red interior and rusted exterior reads like a 'human body after labour – emptied but alive, an image of both exhaustion and endurance'.

The shortlist is particularly strong in works that use structure to create optical effects. Taiwanese artist Chia-Chen Hsieh’s ‘Rhythm in Grid’ suspends thousands of ultra-thin bamboo strips inside a cubic frame to generate a rippling spherical pattern – a precise feat of tension and curvature that reframes bamboo craft as spatial drawing.

Nearby in spirit, Seoul-based Jongjin Park’s ‘Strata of Illusion’ builds a rectilinear seat from folded, porcelain-slip-coated paper: after firing, the paper burns away, leaving a warped ceramic mass that records collapse as part of its architecture.

More intimate in scale, Adelene Koh’s ‘Endless’ reimagines the concealed endband of a book as sculpture. Using traditional 18th-century sewing techniques, the Singaporean book artist builds a circular form from thread and folded paper, turning a hidden structural detail into an architectural object.

In Xanthe Somers’ ‘The Caretaker’s Clotheshorse’, a coiled stoneware vessel slumps against its own internal frame, its woven-clay exterior referencing Zimbabwean basketry.

Textiles also carry narratives. Nigerian artist Fadekemi Ogunsanya’s quilt, ‘We Are Not Lying, Your Language is Not Enough’, combines Adire Eleko resist-dyeing (including work in Kano’s Kofar Mata indigo pits) with embroidery, beading and Yoruba script – a surface that treats cloth as both image and message.

Elsewhere, reinvention takes centre stage: Kyoto-based lacquer artist Nan Wei’s ‘Knot-Loving’ reworks the Japanese Shippi lacquer technique using leather, while Coco Sung’s ‘Shadow Kkokdu’ reimagines Korean funerary figures as small, talismanic characters built from clay, lacquer, wire and beadwork.

The winner will receive €50,000, with two special mentions awarded €5,000 each. This year also sees the Loewe Foundation partner with Belmond to launch three two-month residencies for selected artists at La Residencia in Mallorca. The countdown to May begins.

Optimism, colour and a sense of play are the order of the day as this season’s 12 standout looks and accessories spark a fresh start. As taken from the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, we unpack S/S 2026’s defining trends.

Bold Texture

Above left.

For her Bottega Veneta debut, Louise Trotter channelled a feeling of ‘liberation’ through an expressive use of colour and texture, including a series of pieces constructed from strands of iridescent recycled fibreglass. In their dynamism, she sought to reflect the vibrant life of Laura Braggion, Bottega Veneta’s design director from 1985-2001, who was a member of Andy Warhol’s Factory before her time at the house.

Lucky charms

Above right.

The charm bracelet is an item of jewellery long said to bring luck andprotection. This season, the auspicious accessory enjoys a renaissance, thanks to Michael Rider at Celine: the designer’s debut ready-to-wear collection featured bracelets heavy with charms, from the house’s Triomphe monogram to heart-shaped padlocks, lockets and a helping hand, the latter a longtime symbol of prosperity and safety.

The 1990s slip

The 1990s’ mythic cool continues to be an influence on contemporary fashion (and looks set to carry on with the launch of Tate Britain’s blockbuster exhibition ‘The 90s’ in October). Few garments are more synonymous with the era than the slip dress, which had a rebirth on the runway this season, appearing at Victoria Beckham, Tom Ford and Wooyoungmi, where this negligee came edged in delicate fronds of lace.

A brand new bag

‘A study in intimacy’ is how Sarah Burton describes her first major bag launch for Givenchy. Titled the ‘Snatch’, its gently curved shape, which hooks over the shoulder and hugs neatly under the arm, is designed to echo Burton’s ready-to-wear, whether the cinched waist of a blazer or the curve of a bra top. The softness of the leather is an echo of this feeling of intimacy: ‘it pulls, cinches and embraces,’ she says.

Pyjama dressing

There is an undone elegance to the pyjama shirt, which appeared in various iterations this season – at Dries Van Noten, Dunhill and Dolce & Gabbana, among others. This striped offering, from Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, is part of a collection of ‘ease and escapism’, in which Vaccarello sought to capture the inertia of a summer afternoon. ‘Everything feels light; shapes float rather than cling,’ he says.

Block colour

At Ferragamo, Maximilian Davis took inspiration from the dress codes of the 1920s, injecting modernity via vivid accessories – feathers sprouted from bags while mules came in luminous hues – and colour-blocked garments, like this graphic silk-panelled dress. Indeed, colour blocking was a throughline of the wider S/S 2026 season – collections from Celine, Jil Sander and Loewe all featured the expressive motif.

True blue

Blue provided a feeling of undeniable uplift this season, with the breezy hue colouring the runway at IM Men (part of a collection inspired by the work of ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda), Fendi, Tom Ford and Dolce & Gabbana. Over at Lanvin, Peter Copping paid homage to house founder Jeanne Lanvin’s love of the colour – a fascination that began with the vivid blue skies of Fra Angelico’s 15th-century frescoes.

A new summer shoe

Former Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez looked to artist Ellsworth Kelly for their debut collection for Loewe, channelling his ‘elemental colours’ and ‘chromatic intensity’ in a collection that sought a feeling of freedom and release. Sculpted leather dresses, flocked heels and vivid striped knits had a playful sensibility, injecting new energy into the Spanish house.

Extreme layering

Zane Li’s debut show for his eponymous New York label LII made a case for extreme layering, a playful theme that ran throughout the S/S 2026 season. At Issey Miyake, diaphanous layers of fabric were stretched over household objects to create surreal silhouettes, while rising Belgian designer Julie Kegels turned garments upside down and collaged them together, as if they had taken on a life of their own.

Shirt tales

Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection for Chanel featured a collaboration with Parisian shirtmaker Charvet. The designer drew inspiration from Coco Chanel’s love affair with polo player Boy Capel and the way she would purportedly share his clothing. Embroidered with ‘Chanel’ and crafted with a weighted hem, the poplin shirts capture Blazy’s knack for elevating the quotidian through meticulous acts of craft.

Standout specs

Sunglasses are for making a sartorial statement this season. Case in point: these goggle-like frames from Miu Miu, which appeared on the S/S 2026 runway in bright shades of yellow, orange and blue. Similar styles were seen at Loewe, Versace and Balenciaga, the latter presenting huge bug-eyed shades adorned with shimmering crystals and worn with gowns and opera gloves – a very modern proposition for eveningwear.

Vivid outerwear

Outerwear eschewed the usual hues of grey, brown and black for bold colours that befit spring. This red overcoat by Prada embodies the season’s optimism, appearing as part of a collection that was about capturing a mood of escapism. Colourful outerwear was also spotted at Auralee, Dries Van Noten and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, the latter inspired by hazy summer days on New York’s Fire Island.

Shop the story

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

Models: Pascal Thulin at Next, Marrit Krikke at Platform Agency. Casting: Leila at Suun Consultancy. Hair: Paula McCash using Babylisspro and Evopro. Make-up: Claire Urquhart at Julian Watson Agency using Make Up For Ever. Manicure: Saffron Goddard using Chanel La Base Camélia and La Crème Main. Digi tech: Cameron Williamson. Photography assistant: Lucas Bullens. Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Danielle Quigley.

The Year of the Fire Horse – heralded by Lunar New Year on 17 February 2026 – apparently signals optimism and opportunity and comes around only once every 60 years (the horse sign's pairing with the element of fire distinguishing this from other horse years in the Chinese zodiac’s 12-year cycle), so we are saddling up to make the most of it, at least on the design and style front.

With all things equestrian a classic source of inspiration for creatives and luxury brands – some of which, such as Hermès and Gucci, have saddlery in their DNA – there is no shortage of horsey-in-a-good-way accessories for you and your home. And plenty of brands are embracing the theme with specially introduced products and campaigns – see Giorgetti’s collection of horse-shaped leather home accessories; Swatch’s horse-adorned watch; and Prada’s campaign-fronting geometric red steed.

We’ve picked out a few designs we’re sure have staying power, from Abask’s exquisite hand-glazed dinner plates to Jonathan Anderson’s bookish new take on Dior’s ‘Saddle’ bag. If you are inclined towards the subtle, horseshoe earrings by Awe are neat and discreet. For the uninhibited and spatially unchallenged, Front’s lamp for Moooi – essentially a horse with a shade on top – has been a statement-making stablemate since 2006. Happy horse hunting.

12 horse-inspired designs for equestrian chic

No matter who you are, every day of your life contains a multitude of tasks to be undertaken. The mark of a well-designed object is when it makes those tasks more pleasurable – sitting down to work, for instance, is easier with an elegant, ergonomic desk chair; bracing the cold weather is more pleasant when you can do it in a cocooning overcoat. The following beauty products have been selected as winners because they each have their own way of transforming one aspect of daily life into a simple, effective routine that you actually look forward to.

The Ziip Halo is a sleek, handheld device that offers the transformative effects of a high-end salon facial in the comfort of your home. Designed to be an all-in-one skincare solution, the Halo uses gentle microcurrents that promise to firm skin, diminish wrinkles, boost collagen, reduce acne and even out skin tone (such claims have been backed by clinical studies). It can be linked to an app with video tutorials on how to address concerns like dullness or breakouts with a personalised programme of electrical currents sent to the device via your phone. Each pre-programmed facial takes only a few minutes and is so easy to use, it can be done while having your morning coffee. The impact on your skin is instantly noticeable.

The same is true of Chanel’s Le Lift under-eye patches, which are formulated with hyaluronic acid and the brand’s signature eye complex to reduce dark circles and puffiness, while also reducing the appearance of discolouration and wrinkles with prolonged use. Playfully emblazoned with the Chanel logo, the patches are designed to be left on for five minutes a day and, once removed, excess product can be rubbed into the surrounding area to create an ideal base for make-up application.

When it comes to make-up, few recent launches have been more impressive than Hermès Beauty’s Plein Air foundation, which creative director Gregoris Pyrpylis began developing when he joined the house four years ago. Its purpose, says Pyrpylis, is ‘not to cover or mask the skin, but to care for it’. To that end, the foundation is formulated with an 82 per cent skincare base that is designed to hydrate, nourish and plump the appearance of skin with continual use. It can be paired with the line’s new primer and applied with tools inspired by the traditional artist’s palette and brush. ‘We are a house of craftsmanship, and I understand how important tools are in any discipline, including make-up,’ says Pyrpylis. ‘We all have busy lives and often feel pressed for time, but with this collection, I wanted to create a ritual that asks you to take a moment – whether it’s five, ten or 15 minutes is up to you – and elevate it into an act of self-care.’

The same attention to craftsmanship can be seen in Victoria Beckham’s line of make-up brushes, all of which are inspired by calligraphy tools and feature synthetic bristles specially developed for exceptional pick-up and easy application of everything from foundation and eyeshadow to lipstick and eyeliner. ‘I’m incredibly particular about design, and everything I create has a purpose,’ Beckham told Wallpaper* after the brush collection’s launch last year. ‘Nothing is chosen at random; there’s always intention behind every element.’

The same is true of Loewe’s recently launched Crafted Collection, a line of three perfumes that each take a commonly used note in perfumery – oud, iris and vanilla – and transforms them into idiosyncratic new scents. Roasted Vanilla, for instance, has a warm, creamy heart that is complicated by the spiciness of pink pepper and the alcoholic sweetness of cognac, while Bittersweet Oud brightens its familiar animalistic scent with a touch of bitter orange and warming sandalwood. Iris Root, the lightest of the fragrances, has a powdery, creamy quality made even more intriguing with the addition of herbaceous angelica seed and citrusy timut pepper. All three fragrances are housed in weighty, handblown glass vessels with a tactile granite cap – on a shelf or counter, they look like small sculptures, a testament to Loewe’s continuing dedication to transforming even the simplest objects into a showcase for exceptional craft.

Discover all the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2026 winners in the February issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 8 January 2025. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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

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

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

Acne Studios, Tokyo

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

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

Miu Miu, London 

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

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

Longchamp, New York

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

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

Extreme Cashmere, Amsterdam

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

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

Dries Van Noten, London

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

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

JW Anderson, London

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

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

Saint Laurent, Paris

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

Stone Island, New York

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

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

Loewe, Paris

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

Dior, Shanghai

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

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

In my eyes, a book might well be the perfect gift: chosen correctly, it can feel deeply personal – an expression of your knowledge of the recipient’s interests and enthusiasms, whether their desire to be engrossed in a novel or adorn their coffee table with an aesthetically pleasing art monograph.

Here, we offer a line-up of gifts for the style aficionado – a selection of fashion books, all released in 2025, that offer a wide-ranging and visually lush survey of contemporary style, from retrospective compendiums on the work of fashion provocateurs Rick Owens and Jean Paul Gaultier to weighty volumes on Loewe and Louis Vuitton. Alongside are thoughtful studies on the Black Dandy – accompanying this year’s Costume Institute exhibition at The Met – and a deep-thinking exploration of fashion imagery and the domestic space.

Chosen by the Wallpaper* style editors to inspire, intrigue and delight, they are an invitation to contribute to your loved one’s fashion library – or simply build your own.

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez chose the manicured gardens of Parc Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, situated in the south of the city, to stage their debut show for Loewe, erecting a vast white box which editors and celebrity guests – including Pedro Almodóvar, Parkey Posey, Tracee Ellis Ross and Sarah Paulson – gathered in anticipation of a new era for the Spanish house.

Inside, the white-walled space was bare beyond rows of colourful tiled benches and one artwork. Hung in the show’s entranceway, the abstract masterpiece, Yellow Panel with Red Curve, was painted by Ellsworth Kelly in 1989 (and, like other celebrity attendees, came with its own pair of security guards).

The collection that followed – which had been teased prior to the show in a series of sensual, sun-soaked images by Talia Chetrit – drew upon Kelly’s hard-edge technicolour minimalism, translating it into a wardrobe that celebrated the Spanish house’s long-standing commitment to craft. ‘In [the painting] lies an optimism and spirit that we deeply identify with,’ said the pair. ‘It operates as a starting point, a prelude of sorts, to what lies ahead.’

McCollough and Hernandez, who are partners in both life and work, arrive at Loewe after stepping away from their own label, Proenza Schouler – a portmanteau of their mothers’ maiden names – earlier this year after almost two decades honing a vision of contemporary and eclectic femininity, inspired by the brand’s native city of New York (the label is in good hands: CFDA award-winning designer Rachel Scott of Diotima has stepped into the role, presenting her first collection at a New York Fashion Week last month).

Taking up the mantle of the Spanish house from Jonathan Anderson, who left his 11-year tenure to embark on a new chapter at Dior, McCollough and Hernandez faced two challenges: firstly, how two Americans might interpret the 180-year history of the Madrid-founded house, and secondly, how they might continue the vast commercial success of their predecessor, who lifted Loewe from relative obscurity into the creative behemoth it is today. To begin, they asked themselves a series of questions: ‘How might craft be redefined today? How far can one push the expression of the handmade before its very traces of making disappear? What constitutes Spanishness in 2025?’

Using the ‘chromatic intensity’ of Kelly as a guiding throughline, their answers came in a storyline of ‘clarity and colour, sensual physicality, and sunniness’. Models charged through the space to a pulsating soundtrack, opening with thigh-skimming looks that played with the house’s signature material – leather – in colour block mini dresses and mock-neck jackets so rigid that they held hourglass shapes away from the body.

The looks that followed were cut sharp and clean, seeing wardrobe staples and athletic sportswear take on a ‘sensuality and fervour’; billowing windbreakers worn with frill-edged micro shorts, straight-edge trenchcoats in fuzzy yellow and orange wools, body-clinging striped dresses and jeans worn topless with chunky knits slung on shoulders and tied over bare chests. It was all the expressive colour and texture that has come to be synonymous with Loewe, restrained in the pair's New York language of easy, eclectic cool. It made for a collection not of revolution but redirection – fans of Anderson’s Loewe will find plenty to enjoy here, but there was a fresh eye that made this astute collection their own.

Catch up on live coverage of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2026 here

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

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

That pre-holiday packing panic? It hits every time. What makes the cut and what gets left behind? With strict baggage limits and an overload of must-have options, it’s easy to feel like you’re missing the mark. Whether you’re planning a weekend away or a long-term escape, the Wallpaper* edit of travel essentials – spanning tech, beauty, and style – is your passport to packing smart and impeccably.

The Wallpaper* guide to travel essentials

A trusty companion

A pocketable friend

A melodic companion

A perfect multitasker

A personal choice of sunglasses

Revitalising goodness

A clever hack

A romantic notebook

A stylish writing instrument

Printed matter

In 2019, the micro-sized version of Jacquemus’ ‘Le Chiquito’ bag – so small it could fit into the palm of your hand with proportions less than the size of a credit card – briefly became a viral sensation, dangled from the fingertips of celebrities and influencers, the protagonist of many a street-style photograph. It captured a mood for the miniature which had defined accessories of the late 2010s – a playful riposte to the hefty and unwieldy handbags of a previous generation, with the understanding that all you really needed to carry was your phone.

Half a decade on, the demands of contemporary life have shifted thanks to the pandemic: now, our bags have become vessels for hybrid working, hauling laptops, chargers, papers, gym kits and the various accoutrements of workplace life between office and home (and back again). It’s why the XXL bag has replaced the micro, ushering in a generous new class of oversized shoppers, carry-alls and totes – from Loewe’s ‘Puzzle’ tote and Prada’s ‘Buckle’ bag, to the resurgence of the Hermès Birkin, which was originally designed to cater to the lifestyle of its namesake, actress and singer Jane Birkin, after a chance encounter with Jean-Louis Dumas, the former chairman of Hermès, on flight (as a young mother, she had struggled to find a leather bag large enough for her belongings).

It’s why the XXL tote also doubles as a reliable travel companion – with an easily accessed top opening and spacious interior, it makes navigating trips through airport departures or cross-country train journeys simple (and, for the over-packer, can carry more than you will probably ever need). In time for such escapes, the Wallpaper* style team has collated ten of the best supersized totes and shoppers – from the slouchy and nostalgic to the playfully surreal.

Ten of the best supersized tote bags and shoppers

The origami-like Puzzle bag, first introduced by Jonathan Anderson as part of his S/S 2015 menswear collection for Loewe, remains perhaps his most perennial design for the Spanish house, where he held the role of creative director for just over a decade (he left the house in March of this year; today, it was announced he will head up both Dior’s men’s and womenswear collections in an unprecendented appointment).

Reimagined in a catalogue of iterations – featuring everything from embellishment to artworks, and even Studio Ghibli illustrations – as well as numerous sizes, from the XL to the micro, it is perhaps Loewe’s most successful export. Even after Anderson’s departure – he will be succeeded by Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, whose debut show will be held this September – expect the Puzzle bag to remain as part of the Loewe roster.

10 years of the Loewe Puzzle bag at Harrods

Indeed, this month, the house reveals a colourful new Harrods pop-up, which displays an array of Puzzle bags – focussing on the more arresting and outlandish iterations – in an exhibition-like pop-up which celebrates Anderson’s expansive creative legacy (far more than a fashion brand, under the Northern Irish designer Loewe became a cultural behemoth, inaugurating an annual Loewe Craft Prize, holding presentations at Salone Del Mobile, and collaborating with a roster of contemporary artists on show sets and objects).

The various bags on show are part of the ‘Puzzle 10 Collection’, which comprises 19 re-editions, as well as one new version of the bag. The latter is suitably celebrational: titled the ‘Confetti’, it features a colourful explosion of leather and metal sequins, a demonstration of the superlative handcraft of the Loewe leatherwork atelier. Like the 19 re-editions – which span an original S/S 2015 bag in vivid hues of pink, versions adorned with clouds, parrots and playing cards, and collaborations with the estates of William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Joe Brainard – it comes with a commemorative plaque and two balloon-shaped charms.

Other re-editions are notable for their intriguing textural finishes: a ‘Kiwi’ bag from a 2021 Paula’s Ibiza collection features undulating leather panels to recreate the tropical fruit in surreal style, a tartan wool jacquard version from A/W 2020 is left purposefully frayed at its edges, while a 2019 Puzzle featuring motifs by Arts & Crafts artist William De Morgan is embroidered to give the appearance of tapestry.

The Puzzle bag’s unique cuboid shape and foldable structure were designed by Anderson to recall the traditional art of Japanese origami. ‘It was about deconstructing a conventional bag to create a flat object with a tridimensional function,’ he said of the Puzzle on its release. ‘I set out to find a new way of building a bag, fundamentally questioning its structure.’

Running until June 22 and inspired by Loewe’s textural, art-filled ‘Casa Loewe’ stores, the Harrods space sees the various bags displayed in velvet-lined cavities within metallic walls, designed to give the appearance of a jewel box. Elsewhere in the space, artisans will demonstrate the craft behind some of the bags, while six exterior windows of the department stores will be inspired by three of the artists who appear on the bags – Ken Price, Joe Brainard and William Morris. Finally, refreshments come courtesy of a special spotted Loewe truck parked outside the store, serving hot and iced coffees, alongside special Loewe ’Puzzle’ chocolates.

The Harrods Loewe ‘Puzzle 10’ pop up runs until June 22, 2025.

loewe.com

Spanish fashion house Loewe has announced the winner of its 2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize – dedicated to celebrating the contemporary evolution of traditional craft practices – as Kunimasa Aoki. The Japanese sculptor was chosen for his terracotta work ‘Realm of Living Things 19’ (2024), in which layers of clay have been stacked and compressed – expressing cracks and distortion from the force – before being smoked and coated with soil and pencil marks. He describes the work as ‘50 per cent tradition and 50 per cent innovation’.

Aoki was selected as the winner by a jury of 12 leading figures from the worlds of design, architecture, journalism, criticism and curating, including designer Patricia Urquiola, ceramicist Magdalene Odundo, and architect Frida Escobedo. The panel praised Aoki’s technical accomplishment, skill, innovation and artistic vision, selecting his work for its use of the ancestral coil process and its intricate surface details. As the prize winner, Aoki receives €50,000.

30 finalists were shortlisted for the prize, displaying a range of international craft skill and creativity. Alongside Aoki as the winner, two other finalists were given special mentions by the jury: Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Studio Sumakshi Singh.

Marcus-Bello, a Lagos-based designer and artist, was celebrated for his work ‘TM Bench with Bowl’ (2023). The sculptural furniture piece of simple geometric forms is created from reclaimed aluminium from the car industry, cast in pieces before being welded together and sanded. The work explores ideas of globalisation, trade and the dynamics of power, becoming a powerful yet practical meditation on consumerism and the life of materials.

In a recent interview with Wallpaper*, Marcus-Bello discussed how the intersection of craft, history and function is central to his approach, which investigates how materials influence and reflect the societies that use them. ‘Objects are more than their function,’ he explained. ‘They carry histories, relationships, and meanings that shape how we interact with them.’

Studio Sumakshi Singh, based in Gurugram, India, comprises artist Sumakshi Singh, alongside Birendranath Sarkar, Samarjeet Samarjeet and Bikas Barman – working across textiles, threadwork, sculpture, painting and installation. For the Craft Prize the studio was highlighted for its work ‘Monument’ (2024), a life-size reimagining of a column from a 12th-century colonnade in Delhi, made using copper zari, a metallic thread. The jury praised the delicate structure of the piece and the way it forms a testament to the resilience of cultural histories in the face of physical degradation over time.

The other finalists for the prize spanned a diversity of mediums and craft practices, including glassware, jewellery design, pottery, woodworking, furniture making, embroidery and silversmithing. All the finalists’ work is on show at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid until 29 June 2025.

The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize is an annual award established in 2016 by the Loewe Foundation, a cultural body that the fashion brand set-up in 1988 to support design, culture and craftsmanship. The prize honours Loewe’s origins, as a craft workshop of leather artisans which began in 1846.

Book tickets for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid until 29 June 2025

Summer is a time for living with abandon; for freeing yourself from quotidian routines and making straight for the nearest beach. Dressing for the season should be approached with a similarly liberatory spirit: the heat of summer calls for embracing your instincts for the playful and the brightly hued, a more is more aesthetic befitting a mood of escapism, where, for a tantalising brief few months, you can reveal a whole different side of yourself (both metaphorically, and, for the brave, physically).

As seen in the Wallpaper* June Travel issue, Bulgaria-born, London-based photographer Irina Shestakova and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture this spirit of playful abandon, proposing a pile-up of accessories that look best on the beach. From raffia totes, bag charms and candy-like strings of necklaces to barely-there swim trunks and fluoro T-shirts – as well as bikes and snorkels – this is our directive to let go this summer, and give into your desire for escape.

Explore the story below.

Splash out! This summer’s best accessories

Models: Mia and Tsion at Next, Nikita, Adam and Eden at IMG, Chanula at Milk. Casting: Nico at Ikki Casting Hair: Christos Bairabas. Make-up: Victoria Martin using Haus Labs. Manicure: Olivia Gane using Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistants: Federico Covarelli and Sam Sorabjee. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor Hair assistant: Malita Nagelyte. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the June 2025 Travel Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The best beauty products of the month, as selected by Wallpaper*, span skincare, make-up, fragrance and tech. They include Dyson’s latest hairdryer release, the Supersonic r, a revolutionary piece of design that makes light work of the at-home blow-dry. Also, there's Hermès’ new limited-edition Les Mains nail polish collection, with a zingy colour palette that packs a punch for the warmer days ahead. And, if your skin barrier requires some TLC, look no further than a moisturiser, a serum and a face oil by Dr David Jack, Omorovicza and Dr Barbara Sturm respectively.

The best beauty products of the month, according to Wallpaper*

Skincare

A healing elixir by Omorovicza

A multi-tasking face oil by Dr Barbara Sturm

A lipid-rich moisturiser by Dr David Jack

Make-up

An ‘explicit’ lipstick by Nars

A powder duo by Westman Atelier

A zingy edit of nail polish by Hermès

Fragrance

An inspired eau de parfum by Yves Saint Laurent

A honeyed scented candle by Loewe

A brave new fragrance by To My Ships

Tech

A ‘revolutionary’ hair dryer by Dyson

A world first microcurrent device by ZIIP

It wasn’t so long ago that the sign of a covetable sneaker was its relative heft, perhaps best epitomised by the Balenciaga ‘Triple X’, a shoe so weighty that each step proved a workout. And, while the supersized sneaker remains ubiquitous – Balenciaga recently added the ‘3XL’ to its roster, and Marni’s collaboration with Hoka was blown-up like a cushion – there has been a shift towards the narrower, slimmer low-pro trainer, defined by its knife-thin sole and lightweight construction.

The ten best low-pro sneakers for men and women

Case in point: the rise of Adidas Original’s ‘Tokyo’ and ‘Taekwondo’ sneakers, the latter originally designed for martial arts in the 2000s, which in their razor-slim design are beginning to compete with the prevalence of the ‘Samba’ (the latter’s renaissance in 2023 was perhaps a pre-cursor to the low-pro trend). On the runway, Prada’s ‘Collapse’ sneaker first appeared as part of a S/S 2025 menswear show which co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described as capturing a mood of ‘freedom, youthful optimism and energy’ – a mood reflected in the colourful footwear, which had the appearance of being flattened through wear. At sister brand Miu Miu, the ‘Gymnasium’ sneaker was its girlish equivalent (there, Mrs Prada talked about the ‘simplicity’ and ‘clarity’ of adolescence).

Here, the Wallpaper* style team selects its ten favourite low-pro sneakers for men and women, from Abra’s surreal ballerina slipper-sneaker hybrid to colourful 1970s-inspired styles from Adidas, Miu Miu, Prada, Nike and more.

Milan Design Week 2025 saw the fashion contingent put on its most comprehensive showing at the design fair to date, taking up residence in some of the city’s storied landmarks to do so.

From Gucci’s ‘Bamboo Encounters’ staged in the cloisters of San Simpliciano and Aesop’s ‘The Second Skin’ exhibition in the sacristy of the Chiesa del Carmine, to Loewe at the Palazzo Citterio and Prada Frames taking over the iconic Milano Centrale station, the showcase proved a heady melting pot of sensorial immersions and design collaborations.

Here, Scarlett Conlon highlights the standout fashion moments of Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2025 – from Loewe’s playful artist-designed teapots to a blockbuster Charlotte Perriand exhibition from Saint Laurent.

Georg Jensen’s ‘Gelateria Danese’

Danish design house Georg Jensen provided Milan Design Week’s most palatable pit stop: Gelateria Danese, an ephemeral ice cream parlour that drew inspiration from the interiors of Copenhagen’s Palace Hotel (opened in 1910, Georg Jensen provided furnishings and silverware) while referencing Milanese café culture. On the menu was traditional affogato (coffee was sourced from local roastery Prolog), while an array of ice cream flavours were dreamed up by Copenhagen-based Italian chef Chiara Barla. Each was served on Georg Jensen silverware, from coupes to tub-shaped cups, as well as spoons taken from ‘The Artisans Series’. ‘You’ll find pieces you’d typically associate with ice cream, but instead of being disposable, they’re crafted in silver,’ said recently appointed creative director Paula Gerbase. ‘Not only creating durable objects, but elevating the fleeting moments we use them in.’

The Row’s first homeware offering

In signature understated style, The Row launched ‘Home’ at Salone. Comprising a collection of three handwoven throws and a quilted blanket, the Olsens’ first foray into luxury home design was presented elegantly draped over steel and bronze rails by Julian Schnabel in the frescoed rooms of what will shortly become the New York-based brand’s Milanese HQ. Created with artisans in Kashmir, India, each blanket takes between 600 hours to craft and employs a different weaving technique from which they take their name: the Classic, The Row Weave, and the Himalayan Weave, arriving in four colourways – mink, ivory, brown and black. Lightweight at less than 14.5 microns and discreetly embroidered with the brand’s initials, they stand to become one of the year’s most coveted IYKYK home improvements.

Prada Frames boards a restored Gio Ponti train

As the city’s most majestic portal, Milano Centrale station proved the perfect location for the fourth edition of Prada Frames, ‘In Transit’. The annual event curated by Formafantasma that invites panellists from all areas of design, including architecture, engineering and environmental planning, into thematic dialogue has become one of the most popular attractions at Design Week, taking place in iconic landmarks around the city. This year, attendees were invited into the station’s Padiglione Reale that once served as the waiting room for Italian royalty and heads of state before boarding the Arlecchino train designed by Gio Ponti and Giulio Minoletti in the 1950s and recently restored by the Fondazione FS Italiane (out of the entire original fleet, this was the only one viable to be brought back to its former glory). Over the course of the week, discussions on digital, global, material and hacking infrastructures, along with interrogations of infrastructures of power, played out on board, seeking to examine ‘the impact of digital revolutions and global distribution networks on daily life’. Once again brilliantly introduced and contextualised by Alice Rawsthorn, several key takeaways included the necessity for infrastructure to collaborate rather than colonise, integrating ancestral knowledge to reframe industrial design, and the urgent need to re-evaluate industrial infrastructures to work in conjunction with the natural world rather than see them as separate entities.

READ: Aboard Gio Ponti's colourful Arlecchino train in Milan, a conversation about design with Formafantasma

Stone Island’s ‘sonic experience’

Stone Island invited visitors to its ‘sonic experience’ called ‘Friendly Pressure: Studio One’, staged in collaboration with Friendly Pressure, the London-based sound system studio founded by Shivas Howard Brown. A study of the textures of sound, the week-long programme of events took place in spaces that had bespoke hi-fidelity audio systems installed by Friendly Pressure in direct response to the precise dimensions of the space to rouse emotions akin to ‘the golden age of recorded music, treating sound as both a sensory and physical experience,’ the brand relayed. Studio One, where the events took place, was inspired by Carlo Scarpa, while inside soundproofing by Soundwave Jasmine and CC-Tapis rugs ensured the desired sound dispersion. Mirroring Stone Island’s sartorial approach to how materials respond to their environment, an allegorical experience emerged, parallelling reactions to touch and sound.

Louis Vuitton’s latest Objets Nomades series

Louis Vuitton revealed its 2025 home collection by staging a takeover of the neoclassical residence of Palazzo Serbelloni in the centre of Milan alongside its Objets Nomades series. Featuring designs from leading artists that the Paris fashion house has collaborated with over the years – including Patricia Urquiola, Jaime Hayon and Atelier Biagetti – it drew special attention to the work of futurist artist Fortunato Depero and Charlotte Perriand, whose textile work for the house was realised for the first time. Elsewhere, a special-edition trunk celebrating the house’s original design icon, the Malle Vaisselier, opened to reveal a service of refined porcelain and delicate glasses. It was the more whimsical items on display that drew the most attention: the Odyssée table football and a pinball machine inspired by the A/W 2025 fashion show by creative director Pharrell Williams were designed for Studio Louis Vuitton by Estúdio Campana and balanced the splendour with a cheeky wink.

Miu Miu’s ‘Literary Club’

The doors to The Miu Miu Literary Club opened once again during Salone, inviting guests into the Circolo Filologico Milanese that had been given a modernist Miu Miu makeover. Conceived under the direction of Miuccia Prada and curated by writer and researcher Olga Campofreda, the theme for this year was ‘A Woman’s Education’ and saw two days of panel discussions exploring the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the pages of Simone de Beauvoir’s 1954 coming-of-age novella ‘The Inseparables’ and Fumiko Enchi’s groundbreaking 1957 novel charting female desire, ‘The Waiting Years’. On day one, author Lou Stoppard moderated a panel discussion exploring ‘the power of girlhood’ in the context of De Beauvoir’s work with Lauren Elkin, Geetanjali Shree, and Veronica Raimo, and on day two Kai Isaiah Jamal delved into Enchi’s with through the lens of ‘love, sex, and desire’ with Nicola Dinan, Naoise Dolan, and Sarah Manguso, both championing the voices of female literary voices past, present and future.

Valextra’s ‘travelling sculpture’ with Zaven

Milanese leather goods brand Valextra is famed for sitting at the intersection of fashion and design with an archive dating back to 1937 that includes collaborations with AG Fronzoni and the first Compasso D’Oro award. For its Salone project this year, it continued its Vocabulario Project, inviting the Venice-based design studio Zaven to work with one of its most famous creations from the last century and recontextualise it through an idiosyncratic lens. The result is the ‘Costa 70 x Zaven’ suitcase, an identical re-creation of the Giovanni Fontana-designed luggage that dates back to the 1960s filled with a series of abstract resin objects that Zaven designed to be engineered into a build-it-yourself home sculpture. ‘Responsive and thought-provoking design has been at the core of Valextra’s DNA since 1937 and Zaven mirrors our own passion in realising objects of excellence in both a functional and meaningful way with this exceptional reinvention of an archival icon,’ says Valextra CEO Xavier Rougeaux.

READ: Valextra’s collaboration with Zaven is a ‘travelling sculpture’ with its own suitcase

Brioni bottles a rare fragrance with Lalique

If time is regarded as one of the greatest luxuries, then Brioni bottled it for Salone. A project four years in the making was unveiled at its Via Gesu flagship to mark Brioni’s 80th anniversary. Beloved for its exquisite attention to sartorial detail, the brand unveiled the Dualité Crystal Edition Perfume in collaboration with Lalique, an ode to artisanal craftsmanship and the art of olfactory. The glass bottle – of which only 18 are available – stands at nearly 40cm high and features an internal sculpture that was created using the cire-perdue method, the lost-wax technique first used by René Lalique in 1893 and passed down through generations of glassmakers. Inside, the Extrait de Parfum scent was created by master perfumer Michel Almairac over a seven-year-period and features notes of green apple, violet, Ambroxan, and rare iris butter. ‘This collaboration between our maisons became one of shared passion, representing everything we stand for: a dedication to time, the selection of precious raw materials, exquisite artisanry and the difference that human touch makes,’ says Brioni design director, Norbert Stumpfl.

Luca Faloni collaborates with Winetage

Luca Faloni partnered with Winetage, the fellow Italian brand that upcycles wine barrels into original design objects, to create a daybed upholstered in its exquisite brushed linen fabrics. Crafted from wood that still bears the red-wine stains and aromas from years of maturing the best Italian vintages, the daybed is furnished with padded tubes in fruity Bordeaux-red tones. Designed to spotlight the best of Made in Italy, the finished product combines fashion, wine, and design, providing the perfect resting spot to indulge in all three.

Missoni Home opens new Milan store

Missoni Home might be a mainstay in many a Milano dwelling, but it didn’t have its own spot in the city it calls home until this design week. Beside the brand’s Via Solferino showroom, the first dedicated Missoni Home boutique opened this week with its interior decor riffing on several of the brand’s most distinctive signatures, including degradé-painted pillars, zig-zag wallpaper, and its joyful rainbow colour palette, featuring a special curation of its expansive home offering.

Tod’s celebrates Made in Italy craft

As one of Italy’s most recognisable design icons, the Tod’s Gommino driving shoe holds a special place in the Made in Italy playbook. For Salone, the brand released a limited edition of the driving shoe (above) and unveiled a special coffee-table photography tome, ‘Italian Hands; Artisanal Stories From Italy’. A celebration of the processes and products that are exported all over the world, it features prominent Italian tastemakers alongside the artisans with whom they collaborate and promote – including master Murano glassblower Giberto Arrivabene, master of terracotta Rosario Spina, artisan of brass and bronze Ernesto Carati; and pesto connoisseur Christian Belforte. ‘This book is a tribute to those who, every day, with passion and commitment, contribute to keeping a fundamental part of our cultural identity alive,’ says Tod’s group president Diego Della Valle. ‘It is a recognition of those who know how to enhance craftsmanship, making it a symbol of authentic, timeless quality, even for new generations.’

Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters

Few materials are as synonymous with Gucci as bamboo. One of the fashion house’s defining motifs since it was first used on its iconic handbag in 1947, its legacy defines the innovation inherent to the Florentine brand. For Milan Design Week this year, the house invited seven artists to give their take on the material in their own mediums for its installation ‘Gucci Bamboo Encounters’. Curated by 2050+ founder Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and staged in the cloisters of the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, works ranged from a sculpture by Swedish-Chilean artist Anton Alvarez and a collection of baskets featuring hand-blown glass accents by Palestinian architect, artist, and researcher Dima Srouji, to a jubilant collection of bamboo kites by the Dutch design collective Kite Club. They were joined by artists Nathalie Du Pasquier, Laurids Galleé, and Sisan Lee, each of whom explored the shapeshifting possibilities of this chameleonic material.

READ: Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli on curating Gucci Bamboo Encounters at Fuorisalone: ‘We didn’t want to produce commodities’

‘La Prima Notte Di Quiete’ by Loro Piana and Dimoremilano

Loro Piana may have staged its design week event in the Cortile della Seta courtyard of its Milan headquarters, but there was nothing familiar about this space. Realised in collaboration with design duo Dimorestudio (founded by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci), the usually light-flooded space had been transformed into a decadent 1970s film set meets affluent Milanese penthouse accessed via a cinema foyer draped in red theatre curtains. Invited through the curtains, visitors were presented with a fully furnished home, featuring furniture designed by Dimorestudio for Loro Piana Interiors alongside exquisite vintage pieces upholstered in Loro Piana’s luxurious home textiles and art from Tornabuoni Art, Cardi Gallery, and Galleria Gracis e Secci Gallery. Immersing visitors in the space for four-minute intervals was a soundtrack curated by music composer and multimedia artist Nicola Guiducci that ranged from excerpted dialogue on a rainy evening to a phone ringing and a piano playing that both heightened the cinematic experience.

Saint Laurent’s homage to Charlotte Perriand

When it comes to the design world, Yves is never far from Saint Laurent. For its design week installation, creative director Anthony Vaccarello looked to one of the design heroes of the French fashion house’s founder, Charlotte Perriand, commissioning four pieces of furniture she conceived between 1943 to 1967 that have only existed as sketches or prototypes until now. Comprising the rosewood and cane sofa designed for the Japanese ambassador’s Paris residence in 1967; the rose and cherrywood Mille-Feuilles table that she made a reduced-scale model of in 1963; the Indochina Guest Armchair she designed for her own home in 1943; and the Rio de Janeiro bookcase she designed in 1962 for her husband Jacques Martin’s apartment, the collection has been produced in full scale for the very first time for Milan Design Week. Standing in homage to the design talents of both Perriand and Saint Laurent, each piece in the collection will be available on an exclusive made-to-order basis following the showcase.

Versace’s celebration of the ‘Art of Living’

The Versace brand may be undergoing creative changes following the announcement last month that Donatella Versace would be stepping down as creative director, but its extravagant proposition for home design remains steadfast at its Milan Design Week presentation, The Versace Art of Living. Described as a ‘universe that brings a fantasy of poise, extravagance and heritage to life’, the star of the show this season was the reinvention of the ‘Harem’ chair, its steel frame made bountiful with the addition of thick padded satin cushions and, of course, a large gold Medusa head, alongside an update the of the 1994 wooden chair the ‘Vanitas’, upholstered in velvet. The house referenced Versace’s last fashion show at the event, stating that, like its ready-to-wear offering, ‘to embody Versace is to embrace a way of living at once proudly historied and decidedly modern, and to live it – to wear it, eat from it, sit on it, sleep in it – with uncompromising intention.’

Dolce & Gabbana’s ode to ‘love and hospitality’

The master of Southern Italian charm, Dolce & Gabbana, brought the verdant coastal landscapes of its founders’ native Sicily to the northern design capital for Salone with Verde Maiolica, a porcelain service in green and white. Celebrating the handmade craftsmanship of the region, its botanical design finds its roots in the Mediterranean shrub, while the collection – comprising tea and coffee sets alongside tableware, flatware and glassware – ‘represents and narrates the tale of love and hospitality’, relayed the brand at its Via Broggi cocktail presentation.

Fendi Casa’s collaboration with Lewis Kemmenoe

Fendi Casa continued its Design Miami collaboration with British designer Lewis Kemmenoe in Milan, seeing him take over the windows of its Via Manzoni flagship with his large-scale abstract panels. Acting as a metaphor for the savoir-faire behind the Rome-based brand’s furniture, they encapsulated the duality of the new interiors collection that is at once sumptuous and minimal. New to its line-up this year was ‘Cover’ sofa, designed to be ‘dressed up or down’ – a sartorial reference to reliable wardrobe staples; the ‘Twist’ chair by Stefano Gallizioli, a wood structure upholstered in leather with armrests resembling the swirls of a ribbon; and the modular ‘Later’ sofa, designed by Ceriani Szostak and inspired by the rationalist architecture of Fendi’s iconic Rome HQ that is famously both imposing and inviting.

Issey Miyake’s ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’ lighting

Issey Miyake invited guests to its Milan flagship to unveil ‘Type-XIII Atelier Oï’, the fruits of its collaborative project between the Swiss design studio Atelier Oï and A-POC Able Issey Miyake, which explores the seemingly limitless possibilities of its iconic ‘A Piece of Cloth’ concept. Unveiling lighting prototypes that use one piece of wire and a piece of cloth in several formations, the house presented two distinctive series. The first, the ‘O Series’, draws inspiration from the Japanese art of Ikebana, with five sculptural lights designed to take on the same decorative presence as flower arrangements that can be easily moved around the home with the recycled polyester ‘Steam Stretch’ material used in A-POC Able’s clothes-making process appearing to blossom in spontaneous directions. The second, the ‘A Series’, pays homage to Miyake’s iconic 1997 APOC show that saw a formation of models take to the runway connected by one continuous roll of fabric. Here, a pre-knitted roll stretches out to create a three-shade interconnected light installation that can be cut to size to suit the space it is destined to take pride of place in.

READ: A-POC Able Issey Miyake’s lighting collaboration with Atelier Oï is based on its philosophy of ‘a piece of cloth’

Hermès’ brilliant white box

In a departure from the darkened rooms of recent years, Hermès turned its La Pelota venue into a brilliant-white box. ‘To design an object, to make it, a box is needed,’ visitors were told before stepping into the stark space. Designed by Charlotte Macaux Perelman, architect and artistic director of Hermès collections for the home, the cavernous box-like room presented four polyhedron shapes descending from the ceiling and emitting a fluorescent glow beneath.‘Like a sculptor's marble block, [the box] contains the object, the idea we have of it, and the dream it inspires,’ the house continued. Each of these suspended structures featured this year’s ‘Objects For The Home’, including the ‘Contrepoint Dinner Service’ by Nigel Peake and Pivot D’Hermès side table by Tomás Alonso alongside the ‘Double D’Hermès’ jugs and ‘H Partition’ throws by Studio Hermes. Positioned both inside the cavities and on cutout shelves along their surface, the intersection between an object of function and admiration was brought to the fore.

READ: A bit of all white: Hermès unveils its latest home collections in Milan

Armani Casa’s ‘Oriental Inks’

After two years of delighting Milan Design Week-goers by throwing the doors open to his historic Palazzo Orsini home on Via Borgonuovo, Giorgio Armani opted to redirect attention back to the sprawling Armani Casa flagship on Corso Venezia to mark 25 years of Armani Casa and unveil its new homewares collection, ‘Oriental Inks’. Working in collaboration with De Gournay, iconic items of furniture in the permanent Armani collection were transformed with exquisite silk and beaded embroidery and gold-leaf appliqué depicting bamboo, dragons and jungle landscapes, chosen for being ‘auspicious symbols of strength, flexibility and endurance’ designed to transport their owners – and admirers – elsewhere. The ‘Amedeo’ bed, in particular, took over 200 hours to embroider its monkey-inhabiting canopy scene. ‘The display and the new pieces, authentic examples of the highest level of craftsmanship, are visible through the windows to anyone passing by,’ shared Mr Armani. ‘I quite like the idea of a surprise that captures attention, a suggestion that broadens horizons, now that horizons are often becoming narrower.’

Loewe’s artist-designed teapots

Former Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson may have left the building, but one of his proudest legacies lives on at design week. Marking its ninth craft exhibition during the city-wide showcase, the brand presented ‘Loewe Teapots’ featuring 25 different interpretations of the ubiquitous vessel by 25 international artists and the last curation from Anderson to be presented by the Spanish house. From the coral-like glaze application of South Korean artist Jane Yang-D'Haene’s pot to the surrealist two faces of Spanish ceramicist Laia Arqueros Claramunt’s design, the collection ranged in depiction from classic ceramic to convention-defying proportions, with each piece representing the intimate ceremony in which a teapot takes the lead.

READ: 25 artists reimagine the teapot at Milan Design Week 2025

Dior expands ‘Ode to Nature’ collection with Sam Baron

Dior Maison worked with French artist Sam Baron to expand its ‘Ode To Nature’ collection with three one-metre-high glass vases that were every bit as intricate as one of the French fashion house’s couture creations. Each depicting its own garden of intertwining branches, petals and foliage, the bodies of the hand-blown and hand-constructed vessels were inspired by the first Miss Dior amphora perfume bottle from 1947. Starting as a ribbed glass tube, each was gently blown and fired over several hours to create the distinctive shape before the exacting process of applying the delicate decorative details could begin. Designed to conjure the bouquets of flowers that founder Dior insisted on having in his salon, each of the three designs is available in a limited edition of eight – Monsieur Christian Dior’s lucky number.

Stay tuned for more of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2025.

An illuminated façade with neon mushrooms. A paper flower garden. A rainbow library of leathers. A grey silk 'car dress'. A whipped cream-like swirl of stoneware. And a staircase waiting to be covered in stickers.

These are among a cornucopia of creations, large and small, recently unveiled in Crafted World, the first major brand exhibition by the Spanish luxury brand Loewe, which is now open in Tokyo’s Harajuku district.

Step inside Loewe's Crafted World

Innovative, crafted, rooted in heritage and unwaveringly playful – these are all qualities that underpin the exhibition, which explores Loewe’s progressive approach to fashion, craft and culture since its 1846 establishment as a leather-making collective in Madrid.

The spatial journey was brought to life by Dutch studio OMA, spanning 1,300 square metres across two levels and expressed through a layered unfolding of spaces, corridors, staircases and immersive installations.

Crafted World initially debuted in Shanghai last year, before being modified for its new Tokyo home, complete with a sharpened focus on the brand’s deep ties with Japan, which began when Loewe opened its first retail space outside Europe in Tokyo in 1973.

It’s a journey that carefully unravels the DNA of Loewe – from its historical roots as leather-making specialists and the fruits of its respected Loewe Foundation Crafts Award through to its fashion collaborations and the imaginative imprint of the brand’s recently-departed creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Giulio Margheri, associate architect at OMA, tells Wallpaper*: 'When Loewe approached OMA in 2024, it was the brand’s first time working on an exhibition of this scale. They outlined a series of themes they wanted to explore, but these needed to be transformed into a cohesive experience and the content was yet to be defined.

'The exhibition is a journey into the world of Loewe. We worked on scripting a sequence that allows visitors to encounter all the key aspects of the brand through a series of distinct spatial experience.'

The experience begins before crossing the threshold: an illuminated block-like façade is transformed into an urban dialogue with Tokyo, with iconic Loewe objects, including floating red and white mushrooms, lit up in neon against a black backdrop.

Inside, the spatial experience flows through seven chapters, each with a different identity, texture and atmosphere. It kicks off with Born from the Hand, a space filled with visual stories exploring the history of the brand, through heritage objects, archive photography, architectural models and contemporary creations.

Early tools dating back to 1846 (awls, bevelers, burnishers, gougers, groovers, mauls) sit alongside century-old calfskin travel vanity cases and monochrome photography from around 1910 of the Madrid store and workshop on Calle del Principe.

As the timelines moves forward, there are replicated elements of the 1959 Madrid store designed by architect Javier Carvajal (from woven leather chairs to logos), sculptural 1980s perfume bottles and costumes worn by Rihanna and Beyoncé.

This segues smoothly into the Welcome to Spain section, passing through a terracotta-filled casa typical of Galicia, whose traditional weaving is applied to Loewe’s Bucket bags, and the playas of southern Spain, where seashells inspired raffia leaf bags.

Next up is The Atelier, with maze-like behind-the scenes glimpses of craftsmanship, including a library of tactile leathers, the geometry of deconstructed bags and explorations into the technology that underpins innovations such as leather marquetry, origami modelling and 3D printing.

The atmosphere tilts in the next space: The Castle Room has a softly-textured cartoon-like scenography of green hills, blue skies and white skies, with a 2m-high Howl’s Moving Castle bag, inspired by the iconic Studio Ghibli film and featured in a 2023 capsule collection.

Downstairs, United in Craft spans a serenely minimalist space with angular concrete-covered surfaces, showcasing a curated collection of craftsmanship (in clay, textiles, metal, grasses, lacquer), including works by Loewe Foundation Craft Prize winners.

Exhibits include the gentle lines and textured surfaces of British artist Jennifer Lee’s stoneware; the airy swirling ceramic abstractions of Japanese artist Takayuki Sakiyama; and the rich surface depth and organic curves of Kyoto-based Genta Ishizuka’s contemporary reimaginings of lacquer.

'I have been producing work with the desire to turn the transparency, depth and allure of the ‘gloss’ that lies within urushi (Japanese lacquer) into artworks,' explains Ishizuka, who won the 2019 prize. 'I was inspired to make this work when I saw oranges being sold in mesh bags at the supermarket. I believe that the sense of touch and sensibility of artists and craftsmen can permeate the gaps in modern standardised society.'

The exhibition shifts into the fashion cosmos in the next room, a bright white space with 54 looks from across the decades displayed on mannequins, alongside Loewe art collection works plus buzzy screens framing catwalk footage.

It concludes with Unexpected Dialogues, an immersive exploration into the creative worlds of five collaborators, each with their own room – from the dizzying scenescape of the New Mexico studio of potter Ken Price to a dreamy foray into the magical animal-dancing world of Japanese ceramicist duo Suna Fujita, culminating in a suspended flower garden, crafted from paper, inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement tile and textile designs of British architect C.F.A Voysey, expressed in a collaboration with Tokyo-based studio edenworks.

For Sheila Loewe, president of the Loewe Foundation and fifth generation of the luxury house, the exhibition can be summed up in three words: heritage, playfulness and beauty.

'Every room brings me such joy and so many memories,' she tells Wallpaper*. 'The first room, which explores the history of Loewe, humbled me as I reflected on all my grandfather’s achieved in the early days of the company.'

Highlighting the timeless value of the handmade in the modern world, she adds: 'Craft is a universal language, it’s part of our collective history, it tells us where we come from and gives us a sense of belonging. By providing a global platform for these crafts at risk of extinction, we’re able to raise awareness and inspire a new generation to safeguard craft’s future.'

Crafted World Tokyo runs until 11 May craftedworld.loewe.com

I’ve always been fascinated by the ritual of the tea ceremony, especially in Japan, Korea and China,’ says Patricia Urquiola. ‘It is a form of meditation. It’s choosing to dedicate time for yourself. It is the physical comfort of the warmth of the cup and the tea, with the mental comfort of the experience.’

Urquiola is one of 25 artists, designers and architects commissioned by Loewe for Milan Design Week 2025, which sees the cross-cultural and ritualistic nature of tea considered by designers including David Chipperfield, Dan MacCarthy, Takayuki Sakiyama, Rose Wylie, Jane Yang-D’Haene, Akio Niisato, Shozo Michikawa and Lu Bin.

The teapot, holding a unique place at the intersection of culture, history and ritual, becomes intertwined with personal meditations by the artists and designers when considering the significance of the tea ceremony. Once elevated to become a figure of design, the teapot both removes and reinforces its comfortable functionality. Loewe’s enlisted creatives, reflecting on its role in the family and community, have marked this contrast in teapots created in traditional mediums, such as porcelain and ceramic, complete with eclectic twists on material and form, from plays on proportion to offbeat silhouettes and subverted design tweaks.

For Urquiola, the physical form a teapot inspires is as significant as the philosophical role of tea. She muses upon its introduction to ancient China, followed later by its journey to Japan, in a design that considers the tea ceremony’s integral role in social standing. ‘[I’m fascinated by] how an object and a gesture can create an experience that goes beyond function,’ she says. ‘The teapot’s form is designed not only to hold and pour tea, but to guide the hands, control the flow and shape the rhythm of the moment. Its weight, texture and temperature become part of the ritual, engaging the senses in a way that feels both intimate and intentional. Simple actions – pouring water, holding a bowl, taking a sip – become gestures of presence. There is a beauty in this culture of attention, the way each movement is deliberate, each object carefully chosen.’

It is a sensual physicality that Urquiola draws on with her design, which blurs the lines between form and function, the silhouette spilling over a teapot’s classic parameters to create a more abstract form. Named ‘Ardilla’ (Spanish for squirrel), it embodies the duality of the animal, capturing both its playfulness and its purpose.

‘In designing this teapot, I wanted to capture that duality: the energy of movement and the sense of tenderness and gathering that the squirrel evokes,’ Urquiola adds. ‘There is something beautiful in the way the squirrel collects and holds, whether it’s storing food for the future or pausing to observe the world around it. I sought to reflect this in the teapot’s form: a vessel that holds warmth, inviting a moment of pause. The design plays with organic curves and tactile elements, creating an object that feels natural in the hands. The tail, with its characteristic curve, becomes both a sculptural detail and a functional element.’

Other designs take their cue from tradition, with Simone Fattal and David Chipperfield choosing to uphold the teapot’s historical elements. For Fattal, the pull is also a personal one, a nod to the reassurance of a recurring tea ceremony. ‘I started having tea every day a few months before the civil war in Lebanon started, in the spring of 1975,’ she says. ‘I had just moved to the first apartment I owned, and every afternoon saw me on the balcony with my tray and teapot.’

It was a habit that continued through exile, travel and displacement. ‘This ritual became the anchor of the day, helping [me] to go through all the difficulties,’ she adds. ‘This pause – the fact that one took time to sit and ponder and enjoy the wonderful taste of tea – became the support I needed for what was going on. Tea in the Arab world is extremely important. Many people travel with their own mix of teas and when they are in a café, they order hot water, paying for a tea but then using their own.’

Fattal was inspired to create her teapot in porcelain, opting for a simple design with
a woven leather handle. ‘I see so many artists using treasures of imagination to create all kinds of extravagant shapes and forms for teapots. But I chose to keep it simple. And to keep its shape close to the traditional. I find that more conducive to the joy of using it for this convivial moment.’

David Chipperfield agrees, drawing on his long relationship with Japan for a celebration of the elements that are so integral to its culture. ‘The tea ceremony is a representation of the importance of ritual and of doing simple things with care and attention,’ he notes, choosing to work with Galician ceramic artist Paula Ojea and jewellers Noroeste Obradoiro in bringing his design to life. ‘At a time when innovation seems to be overvalued, I was interested in making something predictable, something that looks like a teapot. In sketching its form, I also looked for inspiration among the extensive collection of ceramic objects that I have accumulated over the years.’

‘Loewe Teapots’ is on show from 7-13 April during Milan Design Week 2025, alongside a selection of exclusive homewares produced by Loewe for Salone, at Palazzo Citterio, Via Brera 12, palazzocitterio.org, loewe.com, patriciaurquiola.com

This article appears in the May 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 3 April, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

In news announced this morning, it has been confirmed that Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, founders of New York-based label Proenza Schouler, are the new creative directors of Loewe.

Their much-rumoured appointment comes in the wake of Jonathan Anderson’s departure from the Spanish house earlier this month, as well as their own exit from Proenza Schouler, the brand the pair founded in 2002.

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez are the new creative directors of Loewe

Made up from a combination of their mothers’ maiden names, the pair – who are partners in both life and work – met at Manhattan’s Parsons School of Design in 1998, founding Proenza Schouler after graduation.

The following decades would cement their status as one of New York’s defining fashion names with collections that captured a so-called ‘downtown cool’ – namely, riffs on wardrobe staples with unexpected details, from geometric cut-outs and layers of transparency, to crisp, modernist plays on ruffles, eyelets and tassels.

With it, they would also establish a legion of high-profile fans, from actress and New York it-girl Chloë Sevigny to musician Arca and model Paloma Elsesser. They would win five CFDA awards for ‘Designer of the Year’ and ‘Accessories of the Year’, showing primarily in New York, their home city.

‘We are incredibly honoured to join Loewe, a house whose values and mission align closely with our own. We look forward to working alongside its extraordinary teams and artisans, whose talent – under the exceptional creative direction of Jonathan Anderson – has shaped Loewe into the cultural force it is today,’ the pair said in a statement.

The appointment will be in effect from 7 April 2025, with McCollough and Hernandez overseeing womenswear, menswear, leather goods and accessories. Though not confirmed, their first show will likely take place this September in Paris.

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Loewe’s Casa de Campo perfume captures the beginning of spring in a bottle. As the latest addition to the brand’s Un Paseo Por Madrid fragrance collection, an olfactory translation of some of the city’s most iconic landmarks, it pays tribute to Madrid’s largest urban park, originally built by King Philip II in the 16th century as a royal hunting estate.

Today, Casa de Campo is a favourite gathering spot for the city’s locals to escape the bustle of the city, with an Arcadian atmosphere and reputation as an oasis of relaxation. During springtime, as its almond trees and violets bloom, it becomes a place for informal gatherings between family and friends, informing the composition of the Casa de Campo perfume.

Loewe’s Casa de Campo perfume smells like the first day of spring

Here, enveloping notes of sandalwood and musk meet the powdery sweetness of violet, echoing the sensation of walking through the park’s impressive range of flora and fauna.

‘Each fragrance in the Un Paseo Por Madrid collection creates a sensory experience of these iconic locations,’ explains the brand’s in-house perfumer and nose behind Casa de Campo, Núria Cruelles. ‘With Casa de Campo we have created a floral formula that transmits the real essence of this area; while the addition of sandalwood and musk helps to craft a deep and enveloping fragrance, blending woody warmth with a soft elegance, creating a olfactory experience that is ultimately luxurious and comforting.’

Casa de Campo also contains the brand’s signature ‘Loewe Accord’ which Cruelles developed as the olfactory signature of its fragrance line. Inspired by the Spanish rockrose – a wildflower that grows across the Iberian Peninsula – the accord has a raw, resinous character that makes it instantly recognisable. And, like all the other Un Paseo Por Madrid scents, Casa de Campo comes in a block-shaped glass bottle with a veined wooden topper.

For those who know Madrid, the fragrances will no doubt hold a special resonance, recreating the atmosphere of a familiar location and, inevitably, evoking the memories of the time spent there. Past locations and corresponding scents have included the Prado, the national art museum that is home to work by Velazquez, Bosch and Goya; Ópera, the city’s grand theatre for performing and musical arts; San Miguel, a lively market that is a monument to Spanish cuisine and Doré, the iconic 1920s cinema.

Yet, even those who have never set foot in the Spanish city can find a scent in the collection that speaks to them. Rosaleda, for example, is another fragrance included in the Un Paseo Por Madrid collection befitting springtime, inspired by the landscaped rose gardens in Madrid’s El Retiro park.

‘The Loewe Un Paseo Por Madrid fragrances embody a significant part of our Spanish roots; whether through the choice of ingredients or the inspirations behind each scent,’ says Cruelles. ‘This cultural background enriches the olfactory experience, ensuring that each fragrance reflects both a personal identity and the vibrant essence of Madrid. At the same time, the fragrances are also designed to be unique and memorable, I hope that people feel a deep personal connection with them, experiencing a sense of timeless elegance every time they are worn.’

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A ‘visual retrospective’ is how Loewe describes a new, large-format publication that celebrates Jonathan Anderson’s transformative 11-year tenure at the Spanish fashion house. On Monday morning (17 March), Anderson announced that he was leaving his role as Loewe’s creative director, with his A/W 2025 collection – shown in an intimate, art-filled presentation in Paris earlier this month – being his last.

‘11 years ago, I was given the most incredible opportunity: to write a chapter in a story that is now 179 years old,’ Anderson said on his Instagram account. ‘Over [this time], I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, tenacity and resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas.’

‘Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe’ book

Titled Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe – a reference to ‘Loewe Crafted World’, an exhibition that opened last May 2025 in Shanghai – the wide-ranging book collates photography and ephemera from both his runway shows and his various cultural initiatives and collaborations. These include the annual Craft Prize, which Anderson calls his ‘proudest achievement’ at the house – one which has proved highly influential.

‘We created a platform that genuinely supports and gives visibility to vanishing crafts, young makers, old masters, and new ideas,’ he said on Monday. The last edition was held in Paris last summer. ‘It’s a bridge to help people,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘Craft is the essence of Loewe. That’s where modernity lies, and it will always be relevant.’

The book’s timeline spans a decade at the house, from his debut S/S 2015 women’s show to his S/S 2025 menswear show, which featured an exhibition-like show set featuring works by Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Susan Sontag. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ he said at the time. ‘It’s about knowing when to pull back, or when to push it,’

Indeed, the book also captures his numerous collaborations with artists, including Anthea Hamilton, one of his closest creative confidantes. For his A/W 2022 womenswear show, her giant pumpkins populated the set, while in 2018, Anderson designed the surreal, squash-shaped costumes for her installation at Tate Britain. She would also participate in one of Loewe’s projects at Milan Design Week – another one of Anderson’s cultural initiatives at the house – creating a kimono-inspired lamp alongside 23 other artists for the 2024 edition.

One her her pumpkins features on the cover of the tome, which spans a vast 636 pages. Alongside the eclectic assemblage of imagery – which comprises show sets, campaigns, store interiors and behind-the-scenes moments – the author Zadie Smith has written a foreword, alongside a conversation between Anderson and stylist and longtime collaborator Benjamin Bruno. Interviews with Loewe ‘friends and family’ also feature.

The book, which is published by Loewe, will be able to pre-order tomorrow (21 March 2025), prior to a wider release on 27 March 2025. Strictly limited edition, each will come in a custom box featuring the Loewe monogram in copper on each corner. It will be available from loewe.com and selected international retailers.

Pre-order ‘Crafted World: Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe’ here.

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Jonathan Anderson is stepping down from his role as creative director of Spanish luxury house Loewe, it has been confirmed this morning. The announcement comes after fervent speculation about the Northern Irish designer’s next move, and the absence of Loewe runway shows on both the men’s and women’s Paris Fashion Week schedules this season.

‘While reflecting on the last 11 years, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by people with the imagination, the skills, the tenacity and the resourcefulness to find a way to say “yes” to all my wildly ambitious ideas,’ Anderson said in a statement. ‘While my chapter draws to a close, Loewe’s story will continue for many years to come, and I will look on with pride, watching it continue to grow, the amazing Spanish brand I once called home.’

An A/W 2025 collection, shown in an intimate presentation earlier this month in Paris, will be his last.

Jonathan Anderson is leaving Loewe

Anderson, who rose to renown with his eponymous London-based label JW Anderson, joined Loewe in 2013. Then a relatively sleepy house in the LVMH roster, Anderson would begin its transformation into a global player by reimagining its visual identity alongside French creative studio M/M Paris. A memorable debut campaign featured his revived Loewe logo – written in a font inspired by German-born typographer Berthold Wolpe – alongside a mix of contemporary and archival imagery by Steven Meisel from a 1997 Vogue Italia shoot.

Anderson’s early collections for the house were rooted in the idea of craft and ease: his debut collection featured turned-up fisherman’s trousers, sinuous striped knitwear, python espadrilles and voluminous poplin shirts, while models grasped Loewe-branded blankets in their hands. ‘I like the idea that people today are so culturally aware that everything that goes into their homes matters as much as each piece of clothing,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time, hinting towards the universe he would build at Loewe, which would eventually include fragrance, home scents, decorative objects, and a series of Salone del Mobile projects which reimagined chairs, lamps and baskets. He would also create a summer diffusion line, Loewe Paula’s Ibiza, inspired by the legendary bohemian boutique on the Balearic island.

The introduction of the Puzzle bag in his S/S 2015 collection would provide his first commercial hit. A top-handle style constructed from jigsaw puzzle-like slices of leather, its proportions are designed to adapt to the wearer’s body. ‘I set out to find a new way of building a bag, fundamentally questioning its structure… it was about deconstructing a conventional bag to create a flat object with a tridimensional function,’ he said at the time. It has since been reimagined in various sizes, including the ubiquitous Puzzle tote, introduced for A/W 2023. Other hits have included reworked versions of the house’s Flamenco bag, which began life in the 1970s, and the crossbody Gate bag.

Recent seasons have seen Anderson adopt a more avant-garde approach with collections featuring surreal elements – from balloon-shaped heels to enormous perspex flowers and hammered-metal angel wings – or garments reduced to their absolute essence. ‘I wanted something erotic, psychedelic, touching on Surrealism,’ he said of his S/S 2022 show, which marked something of a turning point for the designer, seeing models rise from beneath the runway making the audience assess the look from the head down. ‘Everything appears normal, but it’s not really. I didn’t want to create a collection that was completely grounded in reality’.

More recently, he has talked about the idea of reduction, with his S/S 2025 menswear collection featuring sharply defined tailoring with elongated feather headpieces, which gave the effect of slicing the look in half. ‘It’s about knowing when to pull back, or when to push it,’ he told Wallpaper* after the show. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision.’

That same collection was shown amid a gallery-like collection of works by Paul Thek, Carlo Scarpa, Peter Hujar and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, selected by Anderson for their ‘singular’ vision. Such a multi-disciplinary approach has defined his tenure at Loewe, including numerous artist collaborations – among them Lynda Benglis, Richard Hawkins and Anthea Hamilton – and the establishment of the yearly Loewe Craft Prize, which supports ‘uniquely talented artisans whose artistic vision and will to innovate set new standards for the future of craft’.

Meanwhile figures from film, like Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ayo Edebiri and Richard Gadd, have appeared in the house’s campaigns (during his tenure, he would also work with Luca Guadagnino on the costumes for Challengers and Queer under his own name). Loewe would also sponsor the 2024 Costume Institute exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, dressing a slew of celebrities for the accompanying Met Gala, including Taylor Russell, Ariana Grande, and Jamie Dornan. Also in 2024, Loewe would host the ‘Loewe Crafted World’ in Shanghai, exploring and celebrating craft past and present in all its forms.

‘I have had the pleasure of working with some of the great artistic directors of recent times, and I consider Jonathan Anderson to be amongst the very best. What he has contributed to Loewe goes beyond creativity. He has built a rich and eclectic world with strong foundations in craft which will enable the House to thrive long after his departure,’ says Pascale Lepoivre, Loewe’s CEO.

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Instead of hosting a typical runway show, this season, Jonathan Anderson had something different in mind. To present his A/W 2025 men’s and womenswear collections for Loewe, the designer took over the 18th-century Hôtel de Maisons in Paris – which is set within the beautiful Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin neighbourhood, just a stone’s-throw from the Musée d'Orsay – transforming its 17 rooms and manicured grounds into a sprawling, day-long presentation for guests to explore.

Sort of like entering an Anderson Disneyland, the event was conceived as a ‘scrapbook of ideas’ by the designer, uniting his new co-ed collection alongside significant past designs and the work of several makers who have inspired him through the years. Fashion editors, friends of the brand and celebrities such as Stephane Bak, Úrsula Corberó and Jamie Dornan (who recently fronted a campaign for Loewe Perfumes) drifted through the airy rooms of the home (once the residence of Karl Lagerfeld), moving between theatrically posed mannequins and artworks selected from the Loewe art collection. Among them were Anthea Hamilton’s giant pumpkin (from the A/W 2022 show set), South African ceramic artist Zizipho Poswa’s spiky vases, and Japanese artist Yoshihiro Suda’s tender flower sculptures. ‘A scrapbook contains things old and new that are gathered at random to be preserved as memories,’ said the house of the display. ‘Mementoes fill the pages.’

Adding to the fairytale of it all, Anderson’s interest in ideas of the surreal – which have steadily deepened over the past few seasons – were on show like a curated album of his greatest hits. The super-sized apple from the brand’s Juergen Teller-shot S/S 2025 campaign took centre stage in the hotel’s drawing room, while inflatable acrobats, playfully nodding to Loewe’s jewellery collection, climbed up the banisters of the staircase. Meanwhile, a cluster of mushroom stools, originally created for Salone del Mobile 2023, sprouted from the garden grass.

The idea of the scrapbook also informed the A/W 2025 collection itself, which saw Anderson drill down into the codes and tropes he has transformed the Spanish leather house with over the past 13 years. Seamlessly blending mens- and womenswear, the mannequins – which were animatedly posed in chairs and the hotel’s corniced eaves – were adorned in the designer’s distorted scales and volumes, tactile fabrics such as leather and shearling, witty trompe l’oeil prints and dramatic, sculptural cuts. As always, Anderson’s love for contemporary art and craftsmanship took centre stage, highlighted by a special collaboration with the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.

Josef and Anni Albers were pioneers of 20th-century modernism who fell in love at the experimental Bauhaus School in 1922. While each was influential in their own right, they shared an connected understanding of colour and form – Josef in his spacial, geometric abstract paintings, and Anni with her graphic wall hangings and pictorial weavings. Anderson pulled reference from both, translating the maddening vibrancy of Josef’s Homage to the Square series into his A/W 2025 palette, and the knobbly woven masterpieces of Anni’s 1950s textiles into his textures, felt most strongly in a series of gorgeously rich, cocooning coats.

Unfolding over a drizzly day in the French capital, the event felt like a celebration of all that has defined Anderson’s tenure at Loewe – his flair for surreal invention, breathtaking craftsmanship, and deep respect for the contemporary artists who have inspired his collections and efforts at the Loewe Foundation. Though the event reflected on the past, as people mingled and shared in the space, it was evidently just as much about being together in the present moment, too.

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Read more Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights

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

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

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

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

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

Explore the looks below.

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

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

Nothing is quite what it seems with the S/S 2025 collections, seeing designers riff on wardrobe staples with illusory tricks – from trompe l’œil to twisted silhouettes and unexpected fabrications. Whether the turned-up hemline of a leather Loewe overcoat – as though perpetually caught in a gust of wind – or a surreal Hodakova shoe, which squashes together a beach flip-flop and high-heeled pump, these are pieces that appear as one thing, but are actually another (a response, no doubt, to our increasingly disorientating digital age). The effect is something like a surreal collage; garments that implore a second look.

S/S 2025’s twisted wardrobe staples

As such, in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), photographer Nicole Maria Winkler and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture these looks in a surreal interior of their own: a liminal apartment whereby Winkler’s archival photographs become trompe l’oeil wall coverings, or adorn folding screens and chests of drawers. Inhabited by Swiss artist and model Veronika Kunz, the space – which was imagined by set designer Kim Harding – is completed with modernist furnishings, from a Ron Arad bed to an Afra and Tobia Scarpa Cassina sofa.

‘Nicole and I have been friends for many years and have played with trompe-l’œil before, and this story was a further exploration of that theme,’ Harding told Wallpaper*. ‘Delving into Nicole’s archive of still lifes, we created some interesting stand-alone pieces to sit among the set itself.’

Model: Veronika Kunz at Kunz Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kim Harding Studio. Hair: Sophie Jane Anderson. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Makeup by Mario. Manicure: Sasha Goddard at Saint Luke using Dior. Digi tech: Anna-Sophia John. Photography assistant: Tom Porter. Set design assistants: Matilda Greenwood, Heather Allen. Fashion assistants: Nathan Fox, Rebecca Evans-White. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

For the Wallpaper* March 2025 style issue, we imagined six intoxicating perfumes through six different looks, photographed by Grace Difford and styled by Jason Hughes.

Dior, Poison: Notes of coriander, tuberose absolute and vanilla (above)

Derived from the French word for ‘wake’, ‘sillage’ is a perfumery term used to describe a lingering scent trail. Although its wearer may have left the room, any powerful fragrance will remain behind, like an olfactory phantom. ‘Long after one has forgotten what a woman wore, the memory of her perfume lingers,’ said Christian Dior of an intoxicating fragrance’s ability to haunt and beguile.

Of the many perfumes in the history of Dior, Poison, created by Edouard Fléchier in 1985, distinctly encapsulates this statement. Containing plum, coriander, anise, tuberose, incense and honey, this bombastic, syrupy scent could diffuse a nuclear aroma of grape flavoured candy with a single spritz. (Such was its intensity, some offices and restaurants outlawed those who dared to wear it.)

Escentric Molecules, Escentric Molecule 001: 100 per cent Iso E Super

Fléchier’s predecessor, master nose Edmond Roudnitska, who created perfumes for Dior between 1948-1976, would surely have admired this polarising elixir, believing that ‘the beautiful perfume is the one that gives us a shock’. Roudnitska was the first perfumer to make commercial use of hedoine, or methyl dihydrojasmonate, a synthetic molecule found to activate human pheromone receptors and areas of the brain associated with emotion.

Iso E Super is another synthetic ingredient said to trigger a similar pheromone response. Geza Schoen founded his fragrance brand Escentric Molecules in 2006, inspired by the moment he smelled this compound in isolation. ‘Iso E Super is highly unusual. You can never get enough of it. One sniff and you want the whole bottle. It’s like a drug,’ he said. ‘It’s brought alive by the warmth of the body. It blossoms on the skin, adding a velvety radiance to your own individual scent signature. You want to nestle into it, it’s sensual, cocooning.’ The first perfume by the brand, Escentric 01, is crafted from Iso E Super alone. One review on Fragrantica describes it as so ‘addictive to my own nose that I keep burying it in my shirt’.

Loewe, 001 Woman: Notes of jasmine, linen and musk

The synesthetic quality of perfume is celebrated by Serge Lutens in his Collection Noire, a capsule of fragrances with ‘strong Proustian accents’. This includes the 1993 scent Ambre Sultan, designed to evoke a ‘fragment of amber resin picked up by Serge Lutens during a wander through the souks of Marrakech, which lay forgotten for years inside a thuja wood box.’ Resinous, smoky and sweet, thanks to a welcome underscore of vanilla, it recalls the feeling of stepping into a sauna and imbibing the terpene smell of hot cedarwood.

In 2016, reflecting on another intimate setting, Jonathan Anderson put forward the initial perfume offering for Loewe under his tenure: 001 Woman and 001 Man. These ‘reinterpret the scent of a skin caress’ and are ‘suggestive of the morning after’, with shared notes allowing them to be worn together, as if lovers entwined in bed. The jasmine and musk in 001 Woman combine with notes of linen for an enveloping effect.

Hermès, Oud Alezan: Notes of rose oxide, rose hydrolat and oud

For Christine Nagel, head perfumer at Hermès, it was a close encounter with a chestnut mare named Scheherazade, in the stables at the annual Saut Hermès competition in Paris, that led to the creation of Oud Alezan. ‘I could feel the hair across her head… her palpitating heart in her neck,’ she said in an interview with us last year. ‘One day, I was given some blotters. The supplier didn’t say what was on them. When I smelled one of them, it was as if I was smelling Scheherazade’s neck again.’ On those blotters was an exceptionally rare oud that would form the foundation of Oud Alezan. Enveloping and supple, the sharpness of rose oxide slices through it in the manner of a craftsman’s blade through leather.

Celine, Reptile: Notes of cedar, pepper, tree moss, leather and musk

Celine’s Reptile and Black Tie also evoke the tactility of fabric, referencing the clothing designs of the then creative director Hedi Slimane. According to the brand, the former is an ‘olfactory twin’ of the stage outfits made for the designer’s rock star muses, while the latter nods to the textures of grain de poudre and satin. Intensely powdery via musk and white orris butter, a Fragrantica user attests to Black Tie’s addictive qualities: ‘What has this done to my nerve endings?’ Another adds that Reptile is ‘like I’ve stuck my nose into a fine leather handbag’.

Slimane’s penchant for designing perfume that elicits a visceral response is, in part, thanks to his one-time mentor Yves Saint Laurent, who, alongside his A/W77 Les Chinoises collection, debuted Opium, a heady blend of myrrh, patchouli and vanilla. ‘I chose Opium for the name because I hope that it will diffuse through its incandescent powers, divine fluids, magnetic waves, and the things that most appeal to the heart,’ explained Saint Laurent. ‘The charms of seduction, which give birth to passionate love, when you fall head over heels, fatal ecstasy…’

Yves Saint Laurent, Opium: Notes of cloves, cinnamon, incense and sandalwood

‘Saint Laurent oversaw the entire creative process, from the choice of scents and the shape of the bottles to the press kit and the advertising campaign featuring Jerry Hall photographed by Helmut Newton,’ notes the Musée Yves Saint Laurent website, adding that the fragrance caused global controversy for its association with the narcotic. Opium’s scandalous legacy continued under Tom Ford, whose 2000 advertising campaign, shot by Steven Meisel and starring a nude Sophie Dahl seemingly in the throes of ecstasy, was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority after receiving an unprecedented number of complaints. Four years later, Ford left Yves Saint Laurent to set up his own brand. A beauty line soon followed, and with it, the first Tom Ford fragrance: Black Orchid. ‘This is not about an ordinary orchid, it’s about something a little more strange and rare,’ Ford said at its launch in 2006.

Tom Ford, Black Orchid: Notes of truffle, plum, rum, ylang-ylang, black orchid and patchouli

‘For the last decade, I think we’ve launched fragrances that have become so stripped-down, so transparent in terms of colour and scent,’ he continued. ‘For me to put a story back into fragrance and put the fragrance into a beautifully designed bottle and shoot it in a very lush way, this is a reaction to a decade of minimalism that has left people starved for content and substance. I wanted a potent product.’ In a world where audacious fragrances are, at times, more diluted than ever before, we could do well to heed Ford’s words.

Model: Maaike Klaasen at Platform Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Stelios Chondros at Julian Watson Agency using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Claire Urquhart at Julian Watson Agency using Nars. Manicure: Abena Robinson at Agency 41 using Margaret Dabbs London. Prop maker: Sienna Murdoch. Photography assistants: Adam Roberts, Bradley Polkinghorne. Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Hair assistant: Kate Hussey. Make-up assistants: Fernanda Paz, Tasmin Ballingall. Retouching: Art Post

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

As seen in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), we explore S/S 2025’s defining trends – from illusory trompe l’oeil to transparent layers and gravity-defying spiralling silhouettes – through 12 arresting looks and accessories, for men and women.

Trompe l’oeil (top left)

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal,’ said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons of their S/S 2025 menswear collection, which was filled with trompe l’oeil illusions – a response, no doubt, to our disorienting post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems. Their womenswear collection followed a similar track: like this coat, its surface printed to give the effect of faux fur.

Cut-outs (top right)

Bold acts of construction have long defined Florentine house Ferragamo, whether the vertiginous ‘Rainbow’ wedge heel – created for Judy Garland in 1938 – or the sculpted surface of the ‘Wanda’ bag. Current creative director Maximilian Davis picked up the mantle for S/S 2025, using the house’s atelier to extraordinary effect with leather mesh jackets and skirts cut to the shape of Ferragamo’s historic ‘Gancini’ motif.

Reimagined plaid

Plaid made something of a return this season, with designers evoking the humble material to suggest a mood of teenage rebellion – a nod to plaid’s longtime synonymy with grunge and punk. At Acne Studios there were enormous plaid bows on skirts (‘the familiar, twisted,’ said creative director Jonny Johansson); nipped-waist checked shirts were infused with a mood of refinement at Bottega Veneta; while at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson placed floating layers of plaid over baggy chino-style pants – part of the designer’s ongoing interrogation of wardrobe archetypes.

Hybrid accessories

The mashed-up accessory – like this futuristic sneaker-cum-penny loafer by Fendi – was a throughline of the season, with designers proposing strange and surreal hybrids that appeared as one thing but were actually another. They seem fit for our online era: the effect is reminiscent of the kind of dizzying juxtapositions you find when whizzing through a social-media stream at speed.

Spiralling silhouettes

The spiralling staircase of New York’s Guggenheim Museum inspired the construction of Pieter Mulier’s latest Alaïa collection, where dresses looped around the body to gravity-defying effect. In a shift from Paris to New York, Mulier presented the collection at the Frank Lloyd-Wright-designed landmark, echoing a similar transatlantic trip Azzedine Alaïa took in 1985, showing at the city’s Palladium nightclub.

Puzzle-piece construction

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest womenswear show for Louis Vuitton took place on a raised runway constructed from a puzzle-like collection of the house’s signature trunks in an array of finishes and hues. Such playful amalgamations continued in the collection itself, which featured a series of sandals constructed from chunky, bolted-down straps of leather, some adorned with coins and crystals.

Blown-up tailoring

‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ said Matthieu Blazy of what would be his final collection for Bottega Veneta (he was named artistic director of Chanel last December), hoping to evoke a sense of childhood wonder. Cue animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs and blown-up silhouettes, as if a child was playing dress up in their parent’s closet. ‘We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’

Shifted waistlines

Recent seasons have seen the American designer Tory Burch – once the poster girl for all-American preppiness – take a more experimental approach with freewheeling collections rooted in fabric and form. For S/S25, clever construction sees knee-length skirts hover away from the waist for an unexpected silhouette – the type of twisted classic that has now become Burch’s forte.

Brown

If brown has been something of an overlooked shade on the runway, in recent seasons designers have begun to embrace the hue for its suggestion of nostalgic sartorial elegance – particularly its richest shades of chocolate and chestnut. Like this trench coat by Paul Smith, part of the designer’s reminiscence on Soho’s Italian coffee bars of the 1960s and their famous patrons, from Lucian Freud to Francis Bacon.

Transparency

‘The paradox of lightness through craftsmanship,’ said Nadège Vanhée of her latest outing for Hermès, presented amid a set constructed from raw artist’s canvases. Impossibly lightweight layers of sheer fabric suggested the initial brushstrokes of a painting, while also proposing a mood of feminine sensuality, long a hallmark of Vanhée’s collections for the Parisian house.

Open arms

Jonathan Anderson described his latest menswear outing for his eponymous London-based label as ‘irrational clothing’, a nod to the surreal blown-up silhouettes, supersized knits and balloon-like protrusions of fabric. Though, as is his knack, the strangeness proved seductive, like a series of oversized gilets that proposed arms-out dressing as the mode du jour.

Deconstruction

The ritual of dressing, of putting on your clothes in the morning and removing them at night, was the inspiration behind Victoria Beckham’s S/S25 collection. ‘Observing the physical relationship between skin and garment,’ led the British designer to pieces turned inside out or deconstructed – like a series of sliced-away tailoring, as if still in the process of creation.

Models: Loka Lindaregard at Models 1, Reuben Larkin at Linden Staub. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Ilapothecary. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Nailberry. Photography assistants: Guillaume Mercier, Julie Robinson. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

As usual, our biannual Wallpaper* Style Issue reflects the changing fashion seasons. Rather less usually, this March 2025 edition arrives at a moment of relative upheaval within the industry, with close to a dozen creative directors on manoeuvres. Given that this list includes the likes of Sarah Burton, Matthieu Blazy and Haider Ackermann, it’s fair to say that something more involving than the industry-standard ‘musical chairs’ is underway.

Meanwhile, something akin to fashion’s tectonic plates is in motion, ushering in a more liberated, less prescriptive view of what a collection can be. Fashion features editor Jack Moss first identified the shift at Prada, where, he writes, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons chose to operate ‘more like an open-ended invitation: who do you want to be today? “Infinite options proffer infinite opportunities,” said the house. These options comprised 49 entirely different looks to choose from; a collage of elements with barely a garment or idea repeated.’

This disavowal of the traditional ‘convening power’ of a collection, unless defined by its very disparity, inspired Jack and fashion & creative director Jason Hughes to explore further examples of this new, more eclectic mood. They found it in the work of Satoshi Kondo at Issey Miyake, Francesco Risso at Marni – whose S/S 2025 collection once again celebrated the house’s individuality – and Rei Kawakubo’s characteristic perfume provocations at Comme des Garçons.

Elsewhere, we conjure with the spirit of self-expression that resides in the work of fashion designer-turned-jeweller Gabrielle Greiss; Eva Gödel, whose model agency Tomorrow Is Another Day is changing the mores of the runway; and the founders of Furu, the project management agency that is turning to architecture in the stark surroundings of the Swedish island of Gotland. Going your own way never felt less fanciful, more freeing, so now.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The March 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 6 February 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Sticks of green asparagus, verdant lettuce leaves, little round radishes: Loewe’s A/W 2024 womenswear collection featured a veritable cornucopia of produce, reimagined in cloth and intricately decorated with thousands of tiny, hand-stitched caviar beads.

Of these pieces designer Jonathan Anderson said it was about taking the familiar out of context, in part inspired by Albert York’s ‘small but intense’ Edenic landscapes and floral still-lifes which decorated the Paris show space in a rare exhibition of the American painter’s work. Little-known but collected by figures like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Anderson imagined these bucolic scenes of nature trapped away in luxurious Upper East Side apartments.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Loewe’s beaded vegetables

It set the stage for a collection that Anderson said turned the ‘tropes of class and wealth on their head’, riffing on markers of wealth, from Etonian morning suits to prints inspired by 18th-century ceramics. Caviar beading – a craft associated with the historical art of haute culture dressmaking – featured throughout, across heavy biker boots, slouchy handbags, or harem-style pants.

These pieces spoke of a throughline of Anderson’s recent collections for Loewe, whereby painstaking craft has been translated into distinctly contemporary garments – whether beading or hand-painted feathers, or tiny shards of shells evocative of the inside of a jewellery box. Like the extraordinary beaded vegetables – which were the year’s most appetising accessory – the results are spectacular and surreal. ‘I like the idea of craft becoming something else,’ says Anderson.

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

loewe.com

Last June, British designer Craig Green opened up his London studio to show his latest collection after a two-year absence from the runway. He admitted that such an intimate show was scary – ‘It’s like someone painting a runway through your house,’ he said – but it also felt liberating. Here was the site of Green’s fashion experiments, a creative lab of endless enquiries into fabric and material; all that intricately moulded leather, the glimmering candy wrapper-like fabrics, or the various constructions designed to hang off the body like contemporary sculpture. In the past decade, these have evoked sails and lilos, medical equipment and horse-riding stirrups, even contorted dummies used for martial arts practice.

For this show, his S/S 2025 offering, Green felt like a designer in full flight, riffing on archetypal menswear garments in imaginative style: a series of ‘biker jackets’ were made in collaboration with Danish leather brand Ecco and constructed in colourful jigsaw puzzle-like layers of ‘shooting and protective patches’. The resulting pieces were strange and seductive, the result of hours of experimentation and meticulous assembly. ‘The childish idea of taking an engine apart to see how it works,’ Green said of his process, which is one of enquiry and curiosity. Walking back out of his studio into London’s Docklands – currently in its own state of reinvention, surrounded by looming cranes and construction sites – the excitement for his return was palpable.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: the fashion winners

Indeed, the show spoke to a wider mood in fashion, whereby its most intriguing designers are eschewing the pedestrian in favour of experimentation and high-minded design. It is a riposte, no doubt, to the so-called era of ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘stealth wealth’ – that post-pandemic moment of stratospherically expensive cashmere sweaters and swaddling silhouettes – and a response to the frenetic, tremulous times in which we live. The resulting collections spanned the thrilling (John Galliano’s triumphant Artisanal show for Maison Margiela), the unexpected (Rick Owens’ 200-strong old Hollywood epic featuring his parading white-clad ‘army of love’) and those that mined a feeling of childlike wonder, like Matthieu Blazy’s colourful S/S 2025 outing at Bottega Veneta, which took place amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. ‘I wanted to feel the primal pull of fashion once more,’ said the designer. ‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing: the power of wow.’

Our Design Award winners – which include Green’s ‘biker jacket’ and a purposely crumpled overcoat from Blazy – were also chosen for their wow factor. Transcending the everyday, they are clever, sculptural, sometimes weird; each relies on process, craft and construction. When selecting the pieces, we were in part led by the thinking behind Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Prada, which the designers described as a rallying call against the internet algorithm; the way it silos us into bubbles, smoothing our tastes towards pure hegemony (‘we like things because people tell us to like them,’ said Mrs Prada backstage). Instead, they wanted to create a collection that rejected the ‘derivative and expected’ through 49 unique looks, a riot of colour and silhouette. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

We’ve also rejected the derivative and expected. We were seduced by the work of Duran Lantink and Ellen Hodakova Larsson, both awarded at the 2024 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers for their distinct viewpoints. The work of the Dutch-born Lantink – with its smooth, bulbous protrusions, like inflatables have been snuck under the surface of his garments – is bold and challenging in the way it transforms the body but remains rooted in everyday garments. He is confident that he will see them worn on the street (and his growing stockist list seems to agree). Swedish designer Larsson works with deadstock garments, turning the earnest connotations of upcycling on their head and conjuring up a surreal glamour with pieces made from discarded objects (we chose a dress made from stitched-together faux fur hats).

Other winners include Francesco Risso’s S/S25 collection for Marni, which reimagines elegant midcentury silhouettes in paper-like fabrics evoking fur and feathers, as if twisted fashion illustrations come to life. Like Blazy, it spoke of a primal desire to dress up and play, and was one of our highlights of the season. Another was Nicolas Ghesquière’s show for Louis Vuitton, which kicked off with a runway, formed from the house’s trunks, rising from the floor, its liberated mood reminiscent of high-voltage 1980s shows. The collection riffed on the same era: bold wide-shouldered jackets, flourishes of tulle, pirate-style pants, and a vibrant mash-up of print and adornment. Or the one-legged trousers, featured here, which loop cleverly around the lower body and introduce an intriguing new silhouette.

Construction is always on the mind of Satoshi Kondo, who is leading Issey Miyake into exciting new realms while retaining the pioneering spirit of the house’s namesake. This season, he looked to washi, inspired by the traditional handmade Japanese paper’s ability to fold and be shaped that reminded him of playing with origami sheets as a child (the dress we chose, with its undulating silhouette, recalls crumpled paper). Victoria Beckham’s collections also saw her experiment with forms, including a dress that saw fabric laid over twisting, wire-like rods. It’s exciting to see a designer refusing to rest on their laurels or take the easy route.

It has undoubtedly been Jonathan Anderson’s year, though. At both Loewe and his eponymous label JW Anderson, he proved his ability to shift the eye, to endlessly interrogate the way that we wear and perceive clothing. His S/S 2025 womenswear collection for Loewe featured featherweight dresses crafted over bouncing cage-like constructions, the delicate wires intricately welded together by hand, alongside elongated dress shoes, and feather T-shirts hand-painted with the work of Van Gogh and Manet, a play on ‘band merch’.

At JW Anderson, he said he wanted to intuit ‘where the next decade is going’, with a purposely reduced collection of sharply flared skirts and garments printed with extracts from an essay by British art critic and Bloomsbury Group member, Clive Bell. Anderson explained post-show that it explores ‘the idea of art and design and how they sit together’, though he elaborated that he was less interested in the essay’s content and more in ‘the modernity of text on a white page’. ‘There needs to be a narrowing of things,’ he continued. ‘[This collection] is about the idea of taking a blank page and starting afresh.’ For Anderson – and indeed the rest of the designers assembled here – the possibility of that blank white page seems endless. The question is, where next?

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Awards winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Awek Gak Chol at Titanium Management, Arthur Del Beato at Milk Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM Hair: Tobia Bartolini using Oribe. Make-up: Michelle Dacillo at Agency 41 using Laneige. Manicure: Cherrie Snow at Snow Creatives using Boy de Chanel Le Vernis and Chanel La Crème Main. Photography assistant: Michel Bewley Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Production assistant: Archie Thomson. Digi tech: Alexander Brunacci.

While January might typically be a month of piety and abstinence, we have always been proponents of embracing the new year in a more celebratory fashion. Particularly when it comes to clothing – after all, in the year’s darkest months, there is still joy to be had in dressing up.

Here, taken from the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* – a celebration of a new era of design – photographer Dham Srifuengfung and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture the best men’s and women’s looks from the Resort 2025 collections, which herald the beginning of a new year in style.

The best Resort 2025 fashion

Reflecting a wider shift in fashion, away from the quiet and the beige, the Resort 2025 collections are defined by a mood of nostalgia and eclecticism, with looks made to be mixed and matched with abandon – whether flourishes of animal print or faux fur, pussybows or neckties, or playful combinations, like a classic Dunhill tuxedo worn with MM6’s riff on the carpenter jean.

Each look comes complete with an equally sonic accessory: an assemblage of vintage music devices, from Walkmans and Discmans to dictaphones and iPods. It’s our nod to the season’s free-spirited mood: we imagine these looks as ones to pound the streets in (complete with your own soaring soundtrack) or for letting loose at your very own silent disco.

Models: Giovanna Pinho and Anick Chan at IMG, Valentin Haedecke, Raad Al Gabril and Abdallah El Farjani at Supa Management, Jamie Riselay, Kentha Kirezi and Marcello Chang at The Milk Collective, Zhou at Linden Staub. Casting: Hien Le Casting. Hair: Anna Cofone using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Surratt. Props stylist: Haleimah Darwish. Photography assistants: Emmet Banahan, Ben McManus. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Leonie Dennett. Hair assistants: Jessica Hau, Lee-Anne Willoux. Make-up assistants: Craig Hamilton, Lily Simmonds. Props assistant: Kash. Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq.

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

The breaking news of Margot Robbie becoming the new face of Chanel No.5 (and starring in a Luca Guadagnino-directed campaign film alongside Jacob Elordi), plus the reveal of Marina Abramović’s new range of skincare, are just two of the beauty features on Wallpaper.com that you loved reading in 2024.

Below, find a wider selection of articles that got you clicking and scrolling, including a look at Dyson’s latest science fiction-like styling tool and a 15-step illustrated guide outlining the meticulous process of a Korean scalp treatment.

The most-read Wallpaper* beauty stories from 2024

1. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi almost become lovers in Luca Guadagnino’s Chanel No.5 campaign

In October, Margot Robbie was announced as the new face of Chanel No.5. (2024 also saw Robbie front a nightclub-inspired‘Rouge Allure Velvet’ lipstick collection). See You at 5, an accompanying Chanel No.5 campaign film also starring Jacob Elordi and shot by Luca Guadagnino, saw the two actors ‘almost’ become lovers, as they attempt to meet one another against the backdrop of the setting California sun.

Read the full feature here.

2. How the 15-step Korean scalp treatment rejuvenates hair like nothing else

For the Wallpaper* February 2024 Design Awards issue, we presented a beauty award to the Eco Jardin hair salon in Seoul, for its meticulous 15-step scalp treatment. Including a microscopic scalp analysis, massage, steam LED light therapy and more, Lucy Birant illustrated each step of the process.

Read the full feature here.

3. Marina Abramović releases a skincare and wellness range ‘inspired by mindfulness’

In January, artist Marina Abramović brought the principles of her ‘mindfulness-based’ Longevity Method to a new skincare and wellness collection developed with Dr Nonna Brenner. The project certainly raised a few eyebrows – was it another performance piece, perhaps? Or was she deadly serious? – the Wallpaper.com feature on the products and ideas behind them certainly got people talking.

Read the full feature here.

4. Poor Things’ Oscar-winning make-up and hair: behind-the-scenes interview

Yorgos Lanthimos’ film Poor Things, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Grey, received critical acclaim. Winning a Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival, it also garnered 11 nominations at the Academy Awards, with Emma Stone winning Best Actress for her performance as Bella Baxter. The hair and make-up design team, led by Nadia Stacey, also received several accolades including an Academy Award and a BAFTA. We interviewed Stacey about her work on the film on Wallpaper.com.

Read the full feature here.

5. First look: how Diptyque used synaesthesia to create its poetic new perfume collection

Diptyque launched a new luxury perfume collection in the summer of 2024, ‘Les Essences de Diptyque’, which was (true to Diptyque’s form) inspired by the natural world. Here, five unique fragrances captured ‘the scent of coral and mother of pearl’, with five unique fragrances designed by a team of noses using synaesthesia. We interviewed them all for a first look at the project on Wallpaper.com.

Read the full feature here.

6. The new Dyson ‘Airwrap i.d.’ will style your hair using an app

Dyson made further strides in hair and beauty in 2024, with ‘Chitosan’ (its first-ever range of hair care products) and the ‘Airwrap i.d.’, an updated model of its beloved ‘Airwrap’ styling tool. Upon its launch in August, we covered the news on Wallpaper.com, revealing the ‘Airwrap i.d.’ works in tandem with the ‘MyDyson’ app to carry out a personalised curling sequence at the touch of a button.

Read the full feature here.

7. The Substance: how Pierre-Olivier Persin transformed Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley with prosthetic make-up design

The Substance was a film on everyone’s lips in 2024, drumming up plenty of ‘discourse’ for its subject matter and visual language. Directed by Coralie Fargeat and starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, the story of Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) and her ‘other self ’Sue (Qualley) came to life through the visionary prosthetic make-up design by Pierre Oliver Persin. We spoke with Persin to gain insight into transforming the actors into the grotesque and comedically tragic characters ‘Gollum’ and ‘Monstro Elisasue’.

Read the full feature here.

8. Bleach London’s permanent dyes transform hair (without using bleach)

Session stylist Alex Brownsell (who has worked with everyone from Gucci and Versace to Celine and Marc Jacobs) founded the east London hair salon Bleach in 2010, after growing tired of dying her friends’ hair in the kitchen sink. In 2024, however, Bleach made a revolutionary development for dying hair at home, with its ‘No Bleach London’ permanent box dyes, which create vibrant colour without any bleach at all. Brownsell shared her insights on the products with Wallpaper*.

Read the full feature here.

9. Jamie Dornan takes a bath in Le Corbusier’s villa for Loewe Perfumes

In September, the news broke that brand ambassadors Jamie Dornan and Sophie Wilde were the new faces of Loewe Perfumes. A portrait series and film by David Sims saw Dornan and Wilde make themselves at home inside the master bathroom in Villa Savoye, which was designed and built in the 1930s by Le Corbusierand Pierre Jeanneret. The 2024 campaign also spotlighted four scents from Loewe Perfumes’ ‘Botanical Rainbow’ and ‘Un Paseo por Madrid’ collections: ‘Esencia’, ‘Agua Drop’, ‘Un Paseo por Madrid Doré’ and ‘Prado’.

Read the full feature here.

10. What makes a ‘winter perfume’? The Wallpaper* guide to fragrances that linger on the skin and in the air

As temperatures dropped in November, we turned our focus to a selection of potent and long-lasting perfumes for the winter months. This includes fragrances from the Dior ‘Esprit de Parfum’ collection, also featured in the Wallpaper* December Entertaining Issue, ‘L’Eau d’Hiver’, by nose Jean Claude Ellena for Frederic Malle, and more.

Read the full feature here.

Just before men’s fashion month began this past June, Meta introduced a new tag for Instagram and Facebook allowing you to label images ‘made with AI’. It was a response, no doubt, to the bizarre ‘AI art’ which flooded the latter: anthropomorphic animals that move like humans; statues of Jesus made of stacks of shrimps or vegetables; ‘cyborg’ children engineered with empty plastic bottles and computer detritus. They have been deemed ‘slop’: a queasy and surreal stream of images made by a mysterious army of bots to mine likes and views (search: ‘weird AI art Facebook’ on Google Images to view some of these oddities).

Later that month at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a menswear collection which the duo said explored ideas of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’. It made for a collection of illusions: belts that looked like belts but were actually stitched into the construction of a trouser, shirts that were warped with hidden wires, shield-like sunglasses overlaid with images of Roman statues, ravers and American highways. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was fashion for our bewildering post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Throughout 2024, designers have used their collections to grapple with designing for our increasingly disorientating world, resulting in idiosyncratic and intriguing collections which British designer Jonathan Anderson best described as ‘irrational clothing’ (he was talking about his own S/S 2025 menswear collection). The idea of the hybrid ran throughout, strange mash-ups that seemed to capture the dizzying spin of a social-media stream: at Loewe and Balenciaga garments appeared crafted from stacks of discarded clothing, at Sacai garments like the MA-1 flight jacket were melded together in Chitose Abe’s offbeat style, while at Issey Miyake sweaters appeared stitched on to the front of vests (typical of the Japanese brand’s innovative approach, they were actually knitted as a single piece).

Though it was accessories that made for some of the most curious hybrids. There was JW Anderson’s loafer bag, first appearing as part of Anderson’s S/S 2025 menswear collection in Milan, which ‘deconstructed and reconstructed in bag form’ the penny loafer (the classic shoe’s ‘whale-tail keeper’ detail runs across the bag’s boxy design, while the base recalls a loafer’s sole). Part of a collecton that was inspired by the stream of memories dug up by hypnotherapy – sweaters ran with slogans like ‘Real Sleep’ – it was both strange and familiar, like an object appearing from a dream. And, judging by a buzzy release last month, it looks set to follow in the JW Anderson ‘Bumper’ bag’s footsteps as a contemporary it-bag.

At Hodakova, the Stockholm-based winner of the 2024 LVMH Prize, eponymous designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson uses deadstock in imaginative ways. Like a series of bags constructed from discarded belts, or a surreal bag crafted from a knee-high boot, capturing an undone glamour that feels fitting for our times. At Duran Lantink’s thrilling S/S 2025 show, handbags became hats, while at Acne Studios trompe l’oeil prints saw ‘denim jeans’ printed across silk scarves and tote bags. Demna, meanwhile, melded a soft satin house slipper with towering stiletto heel at Balenciaga, while at Bottega Veneta, what appeared like a knitted wool sock was actually a woven leather shoe. Off the runway, New Balance’s loafer-cum-trainer was one of the year’s most divisive (and talked about) shoes.

These were pieces that spoke of not only the experience of living in what feels like an endless, infinite scroll of a social media stream – the dizzying juxtapositions from one post to the next – but also a newly experimental attitude in fashion as designers shift away from the quiet to the loud, no doubt buoyed by a new generation of consumers willing to make bolder statements with the clothes they wear. Indeed Anderson said his S/S 2025 collection had partly been inspired by seeing young people experiment with their outfits when he had attended Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier that year. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said post show. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Hybrid accessories: the Wallpaper* edit

Although I’m Wallpaper’s resident beauty editor, this gift guide takes a more eclectic approach, which I hope will inspire your festive shopping habits. (For fragrance ideas, head to this Wallpaper.com feature on winter perfume. Or if you’re on the hunt for a scented candle, then look no further).

Here, however, you will find unique pieces for the home, including a mid-century silver ashtray in the shape of a lily, sourced by London-based interior designer Hollie Bowden. Plus, an archival poster for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – a film which captures the oh-so-festive feeling of turning up alone to a fancy dress party.

There’s also a pair of kitten-heeled ‘Campo’ loafers by Loewe – a style universally beloved by the Wallpaper* team – and iridescent, bottle-green eye-make up from Victoria Beckham Beauty, which I plan to wear whilst sipping Champagne on New Year’s Eve.

Wallpaper* beauty editor Hannah Tindle’s gift guide

A Hollie Bowden ashtray

Hollie Bowden is a London-based interior designer who also sources unique objects for the home. This silver ashtray in the shape of a lily was created c.1950-1960, with cocktail parties in mind. Each of the six petals can be removed individually, becoming vessels for cigarette ash. Disclaimer: I do not encourage nicotine consumption. But this would make for a decorative item or a handy receptacle for burning incense. (I also have my eye on this Tiger's Eye blanket from Bowden’s recent collaboration with artist Cesca Dvorak).

Hollie Bowden Silver Petal Ashtray, £500; Hollie Bowden x Cesca Dvorak Tiger's Eye Blanket, £350.

shop.holliebowden.com

A Dr Karen Doherty gift card

Dr Karen Doherty is an aesthetic medicine practitioner taking a ‘less is more’ approach to injectables and non-invasive procedures. Her clinic, located in North London’s Stoke Newington, offers a wealth of different procedures, including NeoGen plasma and polynucleotides. And, the clinic now also offers gift cards to put towards any treatment of your choice.

More information on Dr Karen Doherty gift cards can be found on the clinic's website.

drkarendoherty.com

A La Bonne Brosse hairbrush

A contemporary rival to the storied grooming brand Mason Pearson, Parisian label La Bonne Brosse creates design-led hairbrushes in a spectrum of colours, built to last a lifetime. Each is tailored to specific hair types and concerns, whether it’s loss, dryness or scalp-stimulation. (Taking a diagnostic quiz on the La Bonne Brosse website will guide you towards the right brush according to your needs).

La Bonne Brosse, N.02 The Care & Detangling Hair Brush, £138.

labonnebrosse.co.uk

A pair of Loewe loafers

Wallpaper’s style team are huge fans of the ‘Campo’ Loafer by Loewe. Fashion & creative director Jason Hughes has a pair in tan suede and fashion features editor Jack Moss is coveting a boat shoe iteration, included here in his gift guide. I would very much like the kitten-heeled version, which is available in leather or brushed suede.

Loewe 'Campo' loafer, price between £875-£925.

loewe.com

An Eyes Wide Shut poster from Posteritati

Posteritati has been sourcing archival film posters since 1995. (Though located in New York, it ships worldwide). It was difficult to make a selection from the selection on its website. But a French language poster for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut — a film set in December that captures the festive feeling of turning up alone to a fancy dress party and making small talk with strangers — seemed like a fitting choice.

Posteritati, Eyes Wide Shut poster, $175.

posteritati.com

A Victoria Beckham eyeliner

I’ve been meaning to try the shimmer and jewel textures of Victoria Beckham Beauty’s ‘Satin Kajal Liner’ for some time now. And what better time than when party season kicks into full gear? The colours ‘Olive’ and ‘Sequin Green’ happen to coordinate perfectly with a bottle of champagne. I plan on using them with ‘Vast Lash’ mascara to create smudgy, smoky eye make-up for New Year’s Eve. (For something even punchier, the brand has also just launched an ‘Emerald’ shade of its ‘Lid Lustre’).

Victoria Beckham Beauty ‘Satin Kajal Liner’, £32.

victoriabeckhambeauty.com

A Celine cosmetic pouch

And the perfect place to keep said eyeliners is this cosmetic pouch from Celine. Crafted in leather and printed with the house’s ‘Triomphe’ monogram, it’s also the ideal size to fit in the rest of my ‘on the go’ make-up collection, such as Nars’ ‘Radiant Creamy Concealer’ and Chanel’s ‘Baume Essentiel’ – two products that, at the risk of sounding dramatic, I can’t live without,

Celine small cosmetic pouch in ‘Triomphe’ canvas and leather, £270.

celine.com

A gift wrapped by Colford

For all your gift-wrapping needs, Colford has you covered. Founded by Nathan Cole and Imogen Beresford, the sustainable, design-led company was featured in the December 2024 issue of Wallpaper*. services businesses and individuals – and worked with the likes of Hermès, Stella McCartney, Cartier and Johnston’s of Elgin.

Colford bespoke wrapping services, price on request.

colford.co.uk

A charitable donation

A donation to a charitable organisation is a meaningful way to give back during this time of the year. The Hair and Beauty Charity has been running for 150 years, providing a safety net for hair and beauty professionals and their families through financial hardships. Any unwanted hygiene and self-care products can also be donated to the Hygiene Bank, a grassroots charity which tackling hygiene poverty.

Head to the links below to find out more.

hairandbeautycharity.org

thehygienebank.com

Dover Street Market is celebrating two decades of ‘beautiful chaos’. Opening its doors in London's Mayfair in 2004, the radical concept store was founded by Comme des Garçon’s Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe with a simple mission: to offer a shopping experience without definitions. Departments were intentionally mixed up, windows changed constantly, and visual arts institutions and creatives were invited to bring their subversive ideas into the space. Moving to the cavernous site in Haymarket below Piccadilly in 2016 – potentially an act of retail suicide that luckily paid off – while expanding to outposts in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, Dover Street Market has, over the years, come to represent so much more than a store. It's the beating heart of Comme des Garçons, a touchpoint for a global community of creatives, and an incubator for emerging design talent. Never sticking to convention and always evolving, it is above all a place where people can connect with one another and feel inspired.

Incredible displays have been a part of life at Dover Street Market since the beginning. In a practice linked to its Tachiagari turnover – where the store closes for a few days each season to be reimagined anew – everyone from Ai Weiwei to Karl Lagerfeld has been given free rein over the space. In efforts that have often kept staff working through the night, these interventions have seen Stephen Jones festoon hundreds of hats from the ceiling; artist Matt Clark sail a captainless boat through the window; and a huge wooden structure with positive aphorisms penned by Kawakubo, made in celebration of DSM’s tenth anniversary, which very nearly got vice president Dickon Bowden arrested by Westminster City Council. ‘Storytelling is not just one thing,’ says Joffe, when asked why these installations are a vital part of DSM’s world. ‘Experiences are better when deeper and wider.’

Marking 20 years of radical retail, the store has planned a carnival of displays and special releases with Undercover, Cav Empt, and more, set to be unleashed in Haymarket this week. As celebrations get underway, here Wallpaper* looks back at the most memorable installations in Dover Street Market’s history.

Two decades of Dover Street Market installations

Heaven by Marc Jacobs, 2022

In 2020, Marc Jacobs channelled his inner teenage angst into the launch of the diffusion line, Heaven. Drawing upon subcultures like grunge and rave, the youthful offshoot of his namesake label was a stratospheric success from the word go, and has since caused frenzy with rebellious collaborations alongside Kiko Kostadinov, Dilara Findikoglu, and Isabella Burley’s Climax Books. In 2022, the brand found a spiritual home in the basement of Dover Street Market, the area of the store that houses fledgling brands and where DSM’s youngest customers can access a piece of its world at more affordable price points. Brought to life by John Scharbach, the installation resembled a suburban teenage bedroom on acid, complete with a wall made from hundreds of teddy bears, a plush colourful carpet and logo neon light. No parents allowed!

Simone Rocha, 2021

After several lockdowns and a year of working, for the most part, at a distance from others, the start of 2021 marked a year of strange seclusion around the world. Livestreamed from an empty Gothic Revival church in central London, Simone Rocha’s ‘Winter Roses’ A/W 2021 collection was a product of these disjointed months, fusing the formality of school pinafores with airy, dreamlike dresses and looks of a darker mood. As ever with the Irish designer, it was about being tough and tender at the same time. In celebration of ten years of her brand, and after having to show the collection digitally, the designer decided to bring the church to Dover Street Market, where a sturdy house-like structure was erected on the ground floor. Its walls were printed with the angelic figures found in the stained glass windows of St John’s Hyde Park.

Martin Parr, 2019

Few photographers have captured the quirks of British identity as prolifically, and with such accuracy, as Martin Parr. In 2019, a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery celebrated the seminal photographer’s enduring fascination with people, bringing together some of his most recognisable works from the past five decades with never-before-seen photographs. To coincide with the landmark Only Human show, Parr designed an installation at Dover Street Market that brought the unbeautiful charm of his images into the 3D realm. Channelling the sunburnt splendour of his iconic 1980s series, The Last Resort, the photographer brought objects of English coastal nostalgia into the store, such as a plastic Mr Whippy ice cream cone, toy capsule vending machines, and a weather-beaten wooden bench.

Hello! 30th Anniversary, 2018

Over the past 20 years of Dover Street Market, frequenters of the store have learnt to expect the unexpected. The gossipy headlines of Hello! magazine might feel like a universe apart from the conceptual beauty of Comme des Garçons, but nevertheless, in 2018, DSM had its fun celebrating the British tabloid’s 30th birthday with an installation imagined by visionary set designer Andy Hillman. Emblazoned with red and white signage that read ‘Haymarket!’, a temporary newsagent stall sold items that started at the price point of 75p, including notebooks, mugs, and bottle openers.

Comme des Garçons, 2016

Rei Kawakubo’s A/W 2016 collection for Comme des Garçons was a particularly memorable display of the designer’s genius. Sending a procession of floral warriors down the runway in exaggerated silhouettes made from rose jacquards, leather bondage, and upholstered armour, it drew upon the spirit of punks and the revolutions of the 18th century. Imagined by Kawakubo herself, an austere metal structure that resembled a temple was built in the store, under which her warriors stood proudly in formation as if ready for battle.

Loewe, 2015

In 2022, Jonathan Anderson released his viral pigeon clutch – perhaps the year’s most headline-grabbing accessory – which was made even more famous by its cameo on And Just Like That in 2023. Hardcore fans of the designer will know, however, that the Irish designer’s love for bringing animals into his surreal world stretches back some years. Before the pigeon and his frog-shaped Wellipet shoes, Anderson invented the adorable – and now mainstay – Elephant crossbody bag for Loewe, which realised the curves of the gentle giant in supple calfskin leather. To mark its release, Anderson teamed up with Dover Street Market to create a life-size elephant in cheerful technicolour stripes, which towered over 10ft tall on the ground floor of Haymarket.

JW Anderson, 2016

Jonathan Anderson created his first window installation for Dover Street Market ten years ago. On the precipice of becoming one of the most important British designers of our times, that year Anderson’s men’s and women’s collections had an architectural quality to them – all strange angular cuts and dramatic silhouettes – and he described the men he imagined for S/S 2014 as ‘columns.’ With the ancient act of building on his mind, it made sense that his debut installation at DSM resembled a town, seeing sky blue walls and turrets snake together in a conceptual city for passers-by to admire in a window adjacent to DSM’s iconic white spheres.

Octopus, 2008

The gallery-like proportions of Dover Street Market have allowed space for installations of impressive scale. The team has taken advantage of this in manifold ways over the years. One particularly playful example saw a gargantuan octopus sculpture take over a corner of the shop. Created by Les Trois Garçons back in 2009, the piece was carved by hand and finished with glossy black resin and metal disks for suckers. Its tentacles wrapped around the walls, as if the mollusc was making a move to ascend the wooden spiral staircase at the heart of the store.

Tim Walker, 2008

Dover Street Market is a place where fashion’s most inventive fantasies can be experienced and touched; where you can lose yourself for a little while in a thousand different stories told by clothes. In 2008, the store celebrated an escapism of a similar kind, marking the release of Tim Walker’s now-highly collectible book, Pictures. Drawing upon the fairy tales that have shaped the legendary photographer’s ambitious tableaux images, a human-scale wooden drummer puppet sat in the window display with a dozen hand-painted drums tumbling around him, a copy of Walker’s fashion tome sat at his feet. While it may not be the biggest or brashest project the team has pulled off, the poetic display was, however, one of the store’s most beautiful – and also one of Joffe’s all-time personal favourites.

And so it begins: the turning of November to December marks the start of the festive season, as advent calendars are opened and halls are decked with gleaming displays and stacked-up Christmas trees (for inspiration, see this year’s Claridge’s Christmas tree designed by Paul Smith, or for the less traditional, Kengo Kuma's minimal wooden displays in Tokyo’s two Edition outposts).

Here, in our own annual tradition, the Wallpaper* style team has selected a line-up of Christmas baubles from fashion’s best-known names, providing the perfect festive adornment for the fashion fan this holiday season. From Bottega Veneta’s surreal, undulating ornaments to Loewe’s fantastical collaboration with Suna Fujita, or some truly luxurious cashmere pom-poms from Loro Piana, they will accessorise your tree in style.

Christmas baubles for style fans

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy’s gourd-like tree ornaments are satisfyingly surreal – all the more so in this vivid banana-yellow and black colourway (an alternative to the usual green and red Christmas fayre). Crafted using a traditional Polish technique, the glass ornament’s undulating texture is inspired by the Italian house’s ‘intrecciato’ woven leather.

Available from: bottegaveneta.com, £140 for two.

Loewe x Suna Fujita

‘Childhood dreamscapes’ inspire a new collection of clothing, accessories and trinkets from Loewe in collaboration with whimsical Japanese ceramicist Suna Fujita released in time for festive gifting. Alongside, a menagerie of animals to decorate your Christmas tree – like this colourful dotted octopus with Loewe-branded ribbon tie.

Available from: mytheresa.com, £75 for one.

Celine

An elegant line-up of the house’s motifs – from the ‘Triomphe’ logo to a perfume bottle and handbag – make up this selection of gilded baubles from Celine. In an expression of Parisian savoir-faire, each one is handpainted by Celine artisans, and come encased in a gift-worthy white Celine box.

Available from: celine.com, £270 for three.

Prada

These sleek Prada baubles take their geometric designs from the flooring of Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, where the Italian house’s first-ever store was opened in 1913 by Mario and Martino Prada (back then, it was called ‘Fratelli Prada’ – 'Prada Brothers' – and sold luggage). Available in red and white or black and white, each set of four is hand-crafted from glass and stamped with the Prada logo.

Available from: prada.com, £380 for four.

Hermès

This sweet leather charm, depicting a horse in flight, was crafted using the near-unparalleled expertise of the Hermès artisans (in particular, those who usually make the house’s leather gloves). And, while a fittingly festive adornment for the tree, it doubles as a bag charm for a sprinkle of year-round magic.

Available from: hermes.com, £660 for one.

Saint Laurent

Part of the house’s Rive Gauche line – a collection of Saint Laurent-branded ephemera, from travel mugs to ski helmets – this heart-shaped decoration is crafted from silver-coloured metal and engraved with ‘Saint Laurent’. The heart motif was a particular favourite of house founder Yves Saint Laurent, whose ‘coeur fétiche’ (‘heart luck charm’) necklace – created by jewellery Roger Scemama – would appear in almost every runway show from the early 1960s to his retirement in 2002.

Available from: saintlaurent.com, £130 for one.

Gucci

Add a touch of Italian glamour to your tree with this set of Gucci baubles, made from traditional mouth-blown Murano glass and completed with the house’s signature webbing-stripe ribbon. They are part of a luxurious line-up of gifts designed by creative director Sabato De Sarno, spanning fantastical luggage sets, animal-shaped bag charms and a pair of shimmering crystal-adorned pumps.

Available from: gucci.com, £485 for two.

Loro Piana

We first glimpsed these ultra-chic baubles at Loro Piana’s festive takeover of Harrods, which opened last month with a series of transporting displays along the department store’s Brompton Road facade. Crafted from the house’s signature cashmere in a series of warm, natural hues, they will add a textural flourish to any Christmas tree.

Available from: loropiana.com, £1080 for six.

Bill Prince, Editor-in-Chief

'The second week of November invariably means a visit to Geneva for the ‘Oscars’ of the world’s watchmaking fraternity – the GPHG, or Grand Prix Horlogerie d’Geneve. In recent years, the scale of the event has grown in tandem with the growing interest in fine and high watchmaking, with makers from Malaysia and Japan joining the Swiss-based throng at the lakeside Theatre Leman. Overseen by jury president Nick Foulkes, journalist and author of Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner published in partnership with Wallpaper*, top prize this year was awarded to IWC for its Eternal Calendar, able to account for irregularities in the Gregorian calendar for the next four centuries. Suddenly, ‘same time next year?’ takes on a whole new meaning.'

Jack Moss, Fashion Features Editor

'I loved seeing Jonathan Anderson’s brilliant S/S 2025 Loewe collection up close this week at a press day – it was one of my highlights of the womenswear shows this past September in Paris. It featured these incredible feathered T-shirts decorated with the works of Manet and Van Gogh, as well as portraits of Mozart and Bach, entirely painted by hand. Inspired by Anderson’s morning commute along the River Seine, where tourist stalls sell tea towels and canvases imprinted with the works of the art masters, they make for an idiosyncratic take on band merch.'

Hannah Tindle, Beauty & Grooming Editor

'On Thursday just after the sun went down, I attended the New Bond Street Christmas light switch-on. This year, the display has been designed in collaboration with Chanel Beauty. Brand ambassador Lucy Boynton performed the honours, wearing a Chanel A/W 2024 ecru and silver tweed dress, illuminating the stretch of luxury stores from Piccadilly to Oxford Circus with over 85,750 LED bulbs made from recycled aluminium. The ambience of the street now feels a little like the 2004 Chanel No.5 campaign by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman. (In keeping with the festive spirit, I've also now got my eye on several products from Chanel Beauty's limited edition 'Winter Tale' make-up collection).'

Hannah Silver, Watches, Jewellery, Arts & Culture Editor

'Taking a pause before Christmas celebrations seriously kick in, this week I have been slinking home early and loading up on nutritional goodness from Oxford Circus gem, Nathalie. The juices and lunch boxes are a stand-out from the usual central London fare.'

Sophie Gladstone, Photography Editor

'Meetings with photographers, agents and other creatives to get discuss potential ideas are always high points of my week. Where these interesting conversations happen varies but a favourite of mine is Toklas bakery, where this week I enjoyed a perfect danish, filled with pear and saffron. I also love their hibiscus tea.'

Ellie Stathaki, Architecture & Environment Director

'Caravan is a firm favourite for coffee in London. This week, I met friend and Piercy & Co communications manager Gwen Webber at their under-the-radar, north London roasters and headquarters in a renovated Victorian warehouse for a cup and chat. The smell of freshly ground coffee and bread from the bakery is unbeatable. It always inspires interesting conversations.'

Sofia de la Cruz, Travel Editor

'Lucky me saw Okay Kaya perform her new album Oh My God - That’s So Me at Village Underground last week. The Norwegian-American musician blessed us with her soft vocals and decisive bass sets. The rather intimate venue in east London seemed the perfect setting for what was a wholesome conversation between artist and audience. Kaya’s mischievous lullabies are invigorating, perplexing and, at times, seductive – watching it all live was an otherworldly experience. My favourite part? When the singer and songwriter awkwardly walked off stage after her final song and her microphone fell into the hands of the front row, who began to sing off her most popular track, ‘Mother Nature’s Bitch’.'

What makes a ‘winter perfume’?

Our sensory experiences are inextricably seasonal: through the materials we wear, the food we consume and subsequently, our relationship with taste and smell. In the same way that savouring a rich mug of hot chocolate during the height of August has little appeal, dousing oneself with crisp and ozonic fragrance notes can be somewhat jarring when it’s bitterly cold outside.

Temperature also dictates a perfume’s sillage (the scent trail left by the wearer), projection (the distance it travels from the wearer) and also the way in which scent molecules interact with the skin. Heat decreases longevity; cold increases it. But the opposite is true with sillage and projection, meaning that gourmand, spicy, or resinous notes (often used in the base of a perfume) can become cloying in summer, but infuse the air with a much-needed sense of warmth during winter.

Below is a list of fragrances that do just that, ranging from niche scents designed by innovative independent brands to modern classics from major luxury houses.

Dior

Francis Kurkdijan, who was appointed creative director of Parfums Dior in 2021, created the recently launched ‘Esprit de Parfum’ collection to push the notes of iconic fragrances in the house’s ‘La Collection Privée’ portfolio – ‘Lucky’, ‘Rouge Trafalgar’, ‘Oud Isaphan’, ‘Ambre Nuit’ and ‘Gris Dior’ – to the extreme of their expression’. Subsequently, ‘Gris Dior Esprit de Parfum’ has a heighted floral accord but is also sweeter and woodier.

dior.com

Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta’s Alchemie is a fitting choice for those who like to make a statement with their winter fragrances. Unabashedly bold, this blend of myrrh from Somalia and spicy pink pepper lasts from the moment you spray it in the morning until late in the evening. Notes of mandarin, nutmeg and leather add even more depth, while the artisanal glass bottle, handblown in Venice and elevated on a base of Verde Saint Denis marble, compliments the opulence of the fragrance inside.

bottegaveneta.com

Loewe

The fragrance equivalent of a cashmere sweater, Loewe’s Roasted Vanilla is one of three scents in its new Crafted Collection. A soft, warm fragrance, its creamy vanilla heart is complicated by the peculiar spiciness of pink pepper and the alcoholic sweetness of cognac.

perfumesloewe.com

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton's ‘​​Fantasmagory’ is the latest addition to its Les Extraits Collection, a line of perfumes for which in-house nose Jacques Cavallier Belletrud reinterprets classic perfumery notes into idiosyncratic new fragrances.

‘​​Fantasmagory’s’ central focus is a remarkably pure vanilla note. To create it, the brand cryogenically freezes a whole vanilla pod prior to CO₂ extraction, producing a scent that is ‘akin to smoothing a vanilla pod's natural essence directly over bare skin.’ Almond notes add a creaminess to the vanilla’s natural sweetness, while the addition of CO₂-extracted ginger adds a touch of freshness. Visionary architect Frank Gehry designed the bottle with soft curves and a silver cap inspired by the appearance of a wind-blown flower.

louisvuitton.com

Perfumer H

Perfumer Lyn Harris’ cult favourite brand, Perfumer H, has come out with a new fragrance just in time for winter. Rose With Insect with a dark reimagining of a classic rose fragrance with succulent notes of peach and neroli, spicy cardamom and metallic aldehydes inspired by the glint of an insect's wing. It is a unique interpretation of a classic rose fragrance that, in the words of the brand, ‘evokes a tainted idyll where perfection is unsettled and fragility becomes desirable.’

perfumerh.com

The Nue Co

The Nue Co’s ‘First Milk’ is an ideal choice for those who prefer their winter fragrances to be more subtle. One of three scents in the brand’s ‘nostalgic’ functional fragrance line–scents that use neuroscientific research to trigger certain emotions– ‘First Milk’ is designed to evoke the infantile comfort of a person’s first scent memory. Made with notes of almond milk, tonka bean, and iris, this ‘skin fragrance’ infuses the natural scent of its wearer with an intimate, creamy quality that lives up to its promise of being instantly calming, while also smelling strangely compelling.

thenueco.com

Acqua di Parma

Acqua di Parma is synonymous with Italian sunshine and its signature fresh and citrussy colognes. But ‘Luce di Rosa’, with rich floral notes of Bulgarian Rose and verdant geranium has a darker facet to its character: a grounding of vetiver, guaiac wood and cedarwood, finishing with the embrace of musk.

acquadiparma.com

Frederic Malle

‘L’Eau d’Hiver’, created in 2003 by nose Jean Claude Ellena for Frederic Malle, translates to ‘winter water’. The perfume has been rather accurately described by the brand as ‘fluffy’ and ‘like a perfect scarf, warm and light at the same time, inviting you to curl up with it’. Weightless enough to be worn all year round with top notes of bergamot, the heliotrope in its base notes provides a gourmand and powdery base.

fredericmalle.com

Marissa Zappas

Joining the roster of fragrances created by Marissa Zappas for her namesake brand is ‘Carnival of Souls’, inspired by the 1962 B-movie of the same name. (It was fittingly released on 31 October, to mark Halloween). With notes of mimosa cream, violet, saffron and vanilla, plus incense and musk, Zappas has described it as a ‘melancholic celebration of life (and death), and the radiant psychedelia of survival’.

marissazappas.com

Diptyque

‘Bois Corsé’ is one of the richer scents in Diptyque’s ‘Les Essences de Diptyque’ collection. Created by nose Nathalie Cetto, it combines cedarwood with roasted Arabica coffee, creamy sandalwood and Tonka bean. As Cetto told Wallpaper*: ‘[With ‘Bois Corsé’] I wanted to capture the duality of the tree bark – its rough exterior and its tender, protected core’.

diptqyueparis.com

Maison Francis Kurkdijan

Maison Francis Kurkdijan’s ‘Oud Satin Mood’ was created in 2015 with Bulgarian rose, violet and strawberry, Turkish rose and gourmand notes such vanilla and caramel meeting with resinous oud and benzoin at the base. Kurkdijan has said that he designed this fragrance for the wearer to ‘wrap’ themselves in, like being swathed in a rich fabric.

franciskurkdijan.com

Unifrom

Stockholm-based independent brand Unifrom is a fragrance house inspired by Swedish high-rise architecture. But, all its perfumes are developed in Paris and made in Grasse. This includes perfume oil ‘Winter Saga’, which blends fresh and warm notes together such as sweet ginger, cinnamon and clove, fir tree and white musk.

unfrom.com

Fashion and Creative Director, Jason Hughes

WEAR: 'This week I’ve been wearing these loafers by Loewe: with their curved flipper shape, they capture the playful, idiosyncratic approach of creative director Jonathan Anderson (you can also get boat shoes, biker boots and sneakers in the same distinctive silhouette). I might have been inspired by the brand’s Juergen Teller-shot S/S 2025 pre-collection campaign, which stars Ayo Edebiri, Drew Starkey and Leo Woodall, alongside armour-clad knights, rowers and leather daddies. As expected, it took over my social media feed.'

Hugo Macdonald, Global Design Director

'I’ve been busy sharing the wisdom of our design expertise at Wallpaper* onstage over this past week, first at Almería in Spain for Cosentino’s Next Designer’s conference, and then for the Design Leadership Network’s annual retreat, which took place this year in Edinburgh. Wearing a wireless headset mic will never not make me feel like Britney. '

Tianna Williams, Editorial Executive

READ: 'This week I had a browse through Mangal II, the debut cookbook from the Turkish East London restaurant of the same name. Flipping through the pages, I was intrigued by the intimate stories about food and creativity from the Dirik brothers, who have followed in the footsteps of their father, Ali Dirik, who opened the first restaurant, Mangal I, in 1994. I have already bookmarked the pages and am excited to make the Tahini Tart and Baklava this weekend.

Lauren Ho, Travel Director

STAY: 'Earlier this week I was in Bangkok and stayed at the Mandarin Oriental, one of my favourite hotels in the world. Perched on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, it's the best spot for jet-lagged nights, when you can sit by your bedroom window and easily lose hours by the mesmerising sight of tugboats, ferries and longtails criss-crossing the water. Back in Hong Kong, I attended a red carpet event at the Four Seasons Hotel, which was held as a thank you to friends for our support throughout the year.'

Sofia de la Cruz, Travel Editor

DINE: 'I recently visited Rovi – the Fitzrovia restaurant by Ottolenghi – to meet its new head chef, Andy Frantzeskos, and try its refreshed seasonal menu. Before sitting down for a fresh, plant-led lunch, I had the chance to check out the restaurant’s urban garden located in North London’s Wolves Lane, where a team of local growers grow seasonal produce and engage in regenerative farming practices. I highly recommend savouring the new menu’s grilled hispi cabbage, served with a smokey porcini and chestnut butter, and finishing things off with the punchy beetroot and ancho chilli fondant dessert – a treat to the senses.'

Jack Moss, Fashion Features Editor

GO: 'One of the highlights of a recent trip to Lanzarote was the Timanfayo National Park and El Diablo, a 1970s restaurant designed by utopian Canarian artist César Manrique on top of an active volcano. As surreal as that description suggests, it is like a restaurant hovering at the edge of the world: curving floor-to-ceiling windows in the circular dining room look out onto Mars-like landscapes, food is barbecued using the heat of the volcano, and the numerous empty laid tables (and their checkered tablecloths) are appealingly strange.

I also visited the César Manrique Foundation for the second time, housed in the artist’s former home outside of Arrecife. Constructed in the natural bubbles of a lava field in the 1960s entirely to Manrique’s design – complete with a subterranean swimming pool and custom space-age furnishings – it is one of my favourite galleries in the world.'

Melina Keays, Entertaining Director

WATCH: 'The clocks are changing this weekend - as the nights grow longer I’m going to dive into Marcio Kogan’s selection of the 50 best films of all time. Some of these I first saw decades ago and re-viewing them through the prism of time and experience adds another level of interest, not least the understanding of how profoundly they affected me the first time around and became embedded in my mental landscape. For instance, at least once a week I think about The Shining (hotels; relationships) and Blade Runner (boiling eggs, going to any specialist doctor) Re-visiting these films is like a highly enjoyable stock-take of influences and inspirations.'

Hannah Silver, Art, Watches an Jewellery Editor

READ: 'This week I really enjoyed reading a study of American artist, Lee Lozano. 'Not Working' is an overview of her career in twentieth century New York, from her abstract paintings and sculptures to her final conceptual artwork, Dropout Piece, where she left the industry entirely and boycott other women until her death. A brilliant spotlight on a radical, troubled and talented artist.'

Charlotte Gunn, Director of Digital Content

TRAVEL: 'A sizeable birthday for my partner prompted a soujourn to the French Riviera. La Merenda remains a favourite dinner choice in Nice (rustic French fare in a cosy setting) and the sun popped out, on an otherwise rainy weekend, for a train ride up the coast to Menton with its colour palette of pinks, reds and ochres.

Nice's Museé de la Photographie is currently hosting a Vivian Maier exhibition; the incredible 'amateur' photographer who worked as a governess, capturing over 100,000 photographs in New York and Chicago in the 50s and 60s. Tight purse strings meant she never developed the bulk of her film, which were found in an estate sale after her death. The unearthed archive can now been seen in all its glory, cementing Maier as one of the greatest street photographers of the last century. There's a documentary about her life – Finding Vivian Maier – which I shall be watching.'

Sophie Gladstone, Photography Editor

FIND INSPIRATION: 'I’ve been travelling the world this week (via my emails) as I converse with photographers ahead of our especially global January issue for some very special portraits. The book, Face Time: A History of the Photographic Portrait, has been present in my mind.'

Ellie Stathaki, Architecture & Environment Director

'Last week I attended the 2024 RIBA Stirling Prize dinner, the UK's biggest architecture award event of the year. It has everything you'd want it to have - glamour, relaxed architectural chit-chat, suspense, great projects to celebrate and discuss, and a great venue, the Roundhouse in Camden. Congrats to the winners, the team behind the Elizabeth Line!'