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

12 of the best summer travel essentials for 2026

As its first watch, the original 1988 Monterey watch marked the beginning of a new path for Louis Vuitton. The only watch designed by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, it made for a striking choice for Louis Vuitton's watch debut. We saw it resurface in 2025 as a collector's heirloom, limited, pebble-smooth and making eighties Monterey values soar. Today it is back in techy ceramic as a runway charm.

The lugless gold pebble that Gae Aulenti sketched for the house set the tone for Louis Vuitton's watch language and proves that architectural watch design ages the way a good building does. The 2025 re-edition set the tone, but upscaled in spec from its eighties namesake, in 18-karat yellow gold. The Monterey was sized to 39mm and finished with a white grand feu enamel dial framed by red and blue railroad tracks, faithful to the original down to the crown perched at twelve o'clock rather than three. Aulenti positioned it there deliberately, borrowing the grammar of a pocket watch, and the result has always looked slightly foreign among conventional watches, setting the tone for Louis Vuitton and making it a cult favourite.

Now the Monterey has crossed into fashion. At Pharrell Williams's S/S 2027 men's show in Paris, Louis Vuitton unveiled two ceramic versions of the watch, one in glossy black, one in a bold green. They were presented not on wrists but as charms tied to the runway looks themselves, the latest sign that pocket and fob watches are making a return. The watch can be worn as an accessory, or as seen here, insouciantly dangle from a belt hoop.

The lugless case and the crown-at-twelve silhouette carry over unchanged, so the ceramic Monterey inhabits a quirky pocket watch silhouette, but that pocket-watch inheritance is not incidental. From Daniel Arsham’s teardrop Hublot to plastic Swatch Audemars Piguet collaborations, we see mechanical watches drifting further from the wrist and into the territory of decorative objects worn on chains and clipped to bags. Louis Vuitton, a house built on trunks and travel rather than horology, is unusually well positioned to make that case.

The ceramic editions arrive in stores from 26 September

louisvuitton.com

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

Dior’s bold brooches

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

Simone Rocha’s ballet pumps

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

Prada’s belt bags

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

Celine’s colourful cummerbunds

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

Ralph Lauren’s statement belts

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

Dolce & Gabbana’s bejewelled slippers

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

Paul Smith’s undone ties

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

Saint Laurent’s see-through shoes

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

Auralee’s holiday beads

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

Louis Vuitton’s surfboards

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

Dries Van Noten’s animal-print lace-ups

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

Wooyoungmi’s laundry bags

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

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

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

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

Auralee

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

Dior

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

IM Men

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

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

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

Studio Nicholson

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

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

Junya Watanabe

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

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

Willy Chavarria

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

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

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

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

Celine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

louisvuitton.com

Ten years after launching the Horizon luggage line, Louis Vuitton and industrial designer Marc Newson – most recently behind Ferrari’s Luce – have reunited to unveil the Horizon Aluminium, the maison’s first aluminium suitcase and a technically ambitious evolution of its contemporary travel offering.

The project builds on a longstanding dialogue around innovation, engineering and movement. Newson’s relationship with Louis Vuitton spans more than a decade, encompassing everything from a limited-edition biomorphic backpack to the sculptural bottles created for the House’s fragrance collection. In 2023, the pair notably unveiled ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, a playful reinterpretation of the Louis Vuitton trunk featuring cube-like compartments upholstered in leather and suede.

Yet the Horizon line remains perhaps the most enduring expression of the partnership. First introduced in 2016, Horizon distilled Newson’s streamlined industrial design language into a lightweight suitcase engineered for the modern traveller.

The engineering of Louis Vuitton’s new Horizon Aluminum

Constructed from stamped and laser-cut aluminium, the Horizon Aluminium draws on a material long associated with Marc Newson’s bold, future-facing design language – from his seminal LC1 lounge chair of 1984 onwards – while also nodding to Louis Vuitton’s own legacy of crafting aluminium trunks for explorers and adventurers in the late 19th century. Accompanying the suitcase is a matching Vanity Case, finished in the same embossed aluminium and engineered with the same concealed technical detailing.

Described as the first rivet-free aluminium suitcase on the market, the Horizon Aluminium replaces conventional folded and riveted construction with a single-piece, full-depth shell mounted to an ultra-thin frame. External hinges have been eliminated entirely, their function absorbed into discreet mechanisms hidden within the body of the case. Even the Monogram pattern serves a practical purpose. Embossed directly into the aluminium surface, it enhances structural rigidity while eliminating the need for the reinforcing grooves typically found on hard-shell luggage.

Newson’s longstanding obsession with efficiency is evident throughout. An externally mounted trolley system frees up additional packing space inside, while oversized wheels and an extra-wide telescopic handle improve manoeuvrability in transit. Leather corner reinforcements, TSA-approved locks and a removable protective cover add further refinement. Available with either natural VVN leather or black leather trim, the collection has been engineered with longevity in mind, allowing for straightforward repair and maintenance over time.

The Louis Vuitton Horizon Aluminium will be released globally on 12 June via the Louis Vuitton website. Prices start at £2,580 for the Louis Vuitton Vanity Aluminium Case and £3,500 for the Louis Vuitton Horizon 55 Aluminium Suitcase.

The conundrum of how to transport precious objects is one that Louis Vuitton has faced since its founding in 1854. Back then, it was the intricate crinoline gowns and hunting attire of the Parisian aristocracy as they shuttled between their various residences – including Eugénie, Empress of France, wife of Napoleon III, who appointed a young Louis Vuitton as her personal trunk maker. Such was the extent of her wardrobe that it led to his most enduring innovation: the flat-top trunk, which eschewed the traditional curved lid, allowing it to be stacked in piles for transport on trains, carriages and ocean liners.

In the nearly two centuries since, Louis Vuitton's artisans have created all manner of custom trunks for clients, both well-known and anonymous, from those rooted in the original idea of a travelling wardrobe (a 1929 trunk for 30 pairs of shoes; the toolbox-like 1905 ‘Ideal' trunk, designed for a week-long business trip) to the playful and the obscure. There have been casino trunks and library trunks; cases for musical instruments, cakes, watercolour paints, billiard cues and flowers; and those that unfold into beds and desks.

Few things, perhaps, are as precious as the trophies for major sporting tournaments, the gleaming spoils of being the best in the world at a given event. There is often just one in existence (winners are usually given a replica for their own trophy cabinet), and they can date back more than a century (the trophy for the America's Cup sailing race is 178 years old), so it is reasonable that their storage is meticulously considered, and not just technically. These are objects that also deserve a certain amount of flair: after all, a trophy can't arrive at a sporting arena in a cardboard box and bubble wrap.

Step in Louis Vuitton, which, in 1988, created its first ‘Trophy' trunk for the America's Cup – a towering design in Epi blue leather – and has gone on to create travelling cases for the sporting world's biggest prizes, from the FIFA World Cup to the NBA finals, as well as cases for medals and torches at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

This year, in January, the house continued a partnership with the Australian Open tennis tournament, seeing the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup and the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup arrive on court in a pair of Louis Vuitton trunks. Such was the intricacy of their system of clasps and fastenings, the opening required an on-court rehearsal earlier in the day (for the women's final, the task was down to Thai pop star BamBam and 2001/2002 winner Jennifer Capriati; for the men's, actress Chloë Grace Moretz and 2005 winner Marat Safin).

These trunks, alongside those created for various other sporting prizes, are crafted in Asnières-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris, where Louis Vuitton moved the business in 1859 after outgrowing the studio in the city centre. ‘The “Trophy” trunk stands as a precise expression of our savoir-faire [and] requires absolute rigour, from the alignment of the monogram canvas to the tailored protection of the object it houses,' Pierre- Louis Vuitton, a sixth-generation Vuitton and head of savoir-faire, tells us. ‘This approach is rooted in the historical métier of Louis Vuitton as emballeur, entrusted with securing and protecting the most fragile objects for travel,' he continues, noting that the team still use a quote from Louis Vuitton's son Georges as a mantra: ‘The most important thing is to ensure that one's objects travel in the greatest comfort.'

This year, the house had its most extensive ‘Trophy' trunks project to date: 24 custom-made cases for the 2026 Formula 1 season, designed to house the Grand Prix for each of the 24 circuits. All were handcrafted in Asnières to the various trophies' proportions, encased in monogram canvas and adorned with an enormous ‘V', standing for both Vuitton and Victory – a nod to the ‘Trophy' trunks tagline, ‘Victory travels in Louis Vuitton'. These are hand-painted in a black-and-white version of the house's Damier check, referencing the F1 starting grid, while the stretching of the canvas and the installing of the lozines, locks and clasps replicate techniques used by Louis Vuitton himself.

Pierre-Louis Vuitton says the ‘Trophy' trunk is a perfect symbol of the house's values: ‘excellence, transmission and invention', a convergence of both function and artisanal flair made possible by the through-line of craft that dates all the way back to his great-great-great-grandfather. ‘While techniques are passed down through generations, every piece remains unique, shaped by the object it will carry,' he says. ‘It is this balance between continuity and adaptation that defines Louis Vuitton's savoir-faire.'

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

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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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In Mayfair, a Georgian townhouse has been reimagined through a distinctly Parisian lens. Louis Vuitton’s temporary hotel pop-up has taken over the former home of Morton’s private members’ club, to mark 130 years of its legendary Monogram with an immersive, three-storey environment that blurs retail, hospitality and exhibition.

First conceived in 1896 by Georges Vuitton in tribute to his father, the motif endures as one of fashion’s most recognisable codes, and here, it is deployed as an exquisite narrative thread. Each floor is anchored by the house’s seminal bags – Speedy, Keepall, Noé, Alma and Neverfull – unfolding into a broader meditation on travel and the rituals of luxury hospitality.

Bienvenue à Louis Vuitton Hotel

Arrival begins in the Keepall Lobby, a nod to the 1930 travel bag that redefined mobility with its foldable construction and enduring pragmatism. Guests can browse a selection of travel accessories – card holders, passport covers and even city guides – while a dedicated concierge offers repair and restoration services. A series of postcards, inspired by vintage travel posters, sits at the entrance, ready to be scribbled on.

Upstairs, Café Alma – named after the 1992 bag inspired by Place de l’Alma in Paris – channels art deco geometry and proposes a seasonal menu, spanning a two-course déjeuner to afternoon tea. Playful British patisserie leans into logo-led whimsy, such as a delightful Earl Grey and raspberry-inflected confection.

On the second floor, the Speedy Room acts as a glamorous guest suite, celebrating the design favoured by Audrey Hepburn and its association with early 20th-century modernity. Push a mirrored door to find a gold-drenched Safe Room, spotlighting the Speedy P9: a colourful, contemporary reworking of the classic by Pharrell Williams. Nearby, a dedicated vanity room presents the house’s latest beauty launches, including lipsticks and fragrances, as objets d’art, while tucked away, the Neverfull Gym nods to the eponymous tote’s strength-to-weight ratio – just 800 grams, yet capable of carrying up to 100 kilograms.

Lower ground Bar Noé leans into Prohibition-era intimacy. The velvet-lined champagne bar pays tribute to the 1932 design created to carry five bottles – four upright and one inverted. Expect a polished selection, from R de Ruinart to Dom Pérignon Vintage 2015, alongside irreverent cocktails including a chocolate Old Fashioned and a Bellini 1885 with morello cherry purée.

Everything from leather room tags fixed to each door to furniture modelled on the maison’s trunk silhouette, and fireplaces finished with branded ironwork, speaks to a level of detail and savoir-faire that underpins the house’s legacy.

The Louis Vuitton Hotel opens on 24 April and runs until 21 June 2026. It is located at 28 Berkeley Square, London W1J 6EN, United Kingdom

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

Elevate your egg basket this Easter with Louis Vuitton’s decadent ‘Chocolate Egg Bag’. The new edible collection is created by Louis Vuitton pastry chef Maxime Frédéric, with realistic detailing and adorned in the maison’s recognisable codes.

Tuck into Louis Vuitton’s chocolate egg bag

The ‘Chocolate Egg Bag’ was first released last year, and is inspired by the original ‘Egg Bag’ designed by Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of women's collections at Louis Vuitton, for the S/S 2019 show. In 2026, the well-received chocolate version is back, this time in a colourful iteration.

The taste is as good as the bag's artistry promises. The piece comprises two dark chocolate shells, which are filled with an assortment of roasted nuts, candied fruit and hazelnut praline. The white chocolate handles and zipper are in a soft shade of yellow. Inside, you will find a bar of milk chocolate filled with a luscious centre of hazelnut praline and lemon caramel.

The collection also includes a box of six mini chocolate egg bags. These are smaller takes on the main design, and come in different, but all divine, flavours: a milk chocolate egg is filled with hazelnut praline, pieces of hazelnut and vanilla caramel; a dark chocolate egg is filled with a crunchy chocolate praline and caramel; and another milk chocolate egg is filled with peanut praline, pieces of peanut and vanilla caramel.

Frédéric, who won the title of Best Pastry Chef in the world in 2025, finished the collection with the return of three chocolate chicks, each with a Louis Vuitton motif around its neck. Like with the miniature eggs, the chocolate chicks come in three flavours: there's a dark chocolate chick filled with crunchy buckwheat praline and buckwheat caramel; a milk chocolate chick filled with oat praline and honey caramel; and another milk chocolate chick filled with corn praline and vanilla caramel.

These chocolate morsels look too good to eat, but that won’t stop us indulging in the gourmet range this Easter. The collection is available to purchase online here, and will be available in-store at the Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton chocolate shops in Paris and New York, from 13 March 2026.

Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton, 2 bis rue du Pont Neuf, 75001 Paris

Le Café Louis Vuitton at Louis Vuitton 57th Street NYC, 6 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA

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

The Louis Vuitton monogram is one of fashion’s definitive motifs: created in 1896 by Georges Vuitton in tribute to his late father – and house founder – Louis Vuitton, it has remained a revered emblem of global luxury for the 130 years since.

This year, the Parisian house marks this substantial anniversary with a celebration of the monogram, beginning with a new version of the ‘Speedy’, perhaps the house’s best-known handbag and an enduring emblem of its own (the Speedy was introduced in 1930 as the ‘Express’ and iterations have been on the shelves since, reimagined by everybody from Japanese artist Takashi Murakami to former menswear creative director Virgil Abloh).

Wallpaper* Design Awards: Louis Vuitton’s monogrammed Speedy is our ‘Best Party Bag’

Adorned with a special label to ensure its collectible status, the new iteration features the original 1896 monogram rendered on the house’s contemporary linen-and-cotton canvas – the type of throughline between past and present which has long defined the house’s oeuvre.

Reimagined in bold pastel hues, the monogram is applied using the traditional ‘pochoir’ stencilling technique, and also features on an array of other reissued classic handbags, from the 1992 ‘Alma’ – an ode to Parisian architecture named after the city’s Alma Bridge – to the ‘Noé’, which was originally designed to carry five bottles of champagne.

Though it is the Speedy which is our award winner: an accessory that, like the monogram which adorns it, has stood the test of time.

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

louisvuitton.com

It was in 1858 that the eponymous Louis Vuitton created his first trunk: flat on its top and sides, the innovation allowed them to be stacked ad infinitum to house the growing wardrobes of the burgeoning travelling classes. One early client was Empress Eugénie de Montijo, the wife of Napoleon III, an admirer of the opulent crinolines of Marie Antoinette who would purportedly not wear a gown more than once.

In the time since, the Louis Vuitton trunk has metamorphosed to house a series of eclectic objects, from a folding bed (made for the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in 1905) to a library of books (created for Ernest Hemingway, it sold at a 2024 Christie’s auction for €88,200), alongside caviar boxes, tea sets, hot air balloons and teddy bears. And, since the late 1980s, a series of ceremonial ‘trophy trunks’ which are used to transport the sporting world’s biggest prizes (the first was an epi blue leather trunk in 1988 for the America's Cup, the world’s oldest international sporting trophy). So the tagline goes: ‘Victory travels in Louis Vuitton’.

This weekend in Melbourne, Australia, the house continued its partnership with the Australian Open, creating a pair of bespoke monogrammed trunks to house the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup and Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, which are awarded to the tennis grand slam’s women’s and men’s singles winners respectively. On Saturday night at Rod Laver Arena, in a three-set thriller defined by shifts in momentum between the players, Kazakhstan national Elena Rybakina, a former Wimbledon champion, beat world number one Aryna Sabalenka (and four-time grand slam winner) to the first major of the year.

Meanwhile, earlier this evening, back at Rod Laver Arena, Spanish tennis wunderkind Carlos Alcaraz – himself a Louis Vuitton ambassador – triumphed in a tense four-set match against Novak Djokovic, a great of the game whose 24 grand slam titles have cemented him as the most decorated men’s player of tennis’s contemporary era (in sporting parlance: the GOAT). An emotional Djokovic praised Alcaraz’s performance as ‘legendary’, while also shouting out his former rival, Rafa Nadal, who watched on from the crowd.

‘What you're doing is really inspiring, not only for the tennis players, but for any athlete or person around the world,’ Alcaraz said in his winner’s speech, addressing Djokovic. ‘For me, it's been an honour sharing the locker room [with you], sharing the court and watching you play.’ Though the Spanish world number one was making history of his own: at just 22 years old, Alcaraz is the youngest ever to achieve a career grand slam, a record which has held since 1938 (he beat out Don Budge by just days). ‘Nobody knows how hard I’ve been working to get this trophy,’ he continued.

The trunks were each created in the house’s historic atelier in Asnières-sur-Seine, which is now primarily used by the 300-or-so-artisans who work on special commissions such as these (just north of Paris, the suburb is where Louis Vuitton moved his business in 1859 after outgrowing his store in the centre of the city). In differing sizes – the women’s trophy is taller than the men’s – the two trunks are encased in the house’s signature monogram canvas and feature a contrasting V emblem, standing for both ‘Victory’ and ‘Vuitton’.

Though the trunk is also a pragmatic object: inside, a microfibre insert in ‘Australian Open blue’ (anybody who has watched the tournament will be familiar with the bright oceanic hue) keeps the trophy safe and in place when being carried or in transit (‘AO on the Road’ sees the trophy tour around the local state of Victoria before the tournament’s start). Meanwhile, a number of intricate lozines, locks and clasps – exact versions of those originally used by Louis Vuitton himself in the 1860s – keep the trunk tightly sealed.

So much so that those tasked with opening the trunk at each final had to undergo a rehearsal earlier in the day (the various clasps must be opened in a specific order; for the Australian Open, it was done in unison in pairs). At the women’s final, it was the turn of BamBam – a Thai pop sensation and Louis Vuitton ambassador – alongside American tennis player Jennifer Capriati, who won the Australian Open in 2001 and 2002 (marking 25 years since her first win at the event, she also presented Rybakina with the trophy at the winner’s ceremony). Meanwhile, tonight, actress Chloë Grace Moretz, another house ambassador, and Russian tennis player Marat Safin, who won the Australian Open in 2005, did the honours, opening the trunk just prior to the men’s final’s start.

They are just one of a long line of trophy trunks Louis Vuitton has created to bolster its connections to the sporting world – alongside the Australian Open and the America’s Cup, custom trunks have been created for the FIFA World Cup, the NBA, the Paris 2024 Olympics and Roland Garros. More recently, Louis Vuitton created the 2025 and 2026 trophy trunks for each of Formula 1’s 24 international circuits, a move which coincided with LVMH’s major 10-year sponsorship of the event (the luxury conglomerate is the parent company of Louis Vuitton). As part of this, Louis Vuitton was named the title sponsor of the Melbourne Grand Prix, the first race of the season, while in 2026, the house will also become the title sponsor of the Monaco Grand Prix. The new season will begin this March at the Melbourne Grand Prix circuit.

louisvuitton.com

Following a palpably quieter Pitti Uomo and Milan Fashion Week Men’s, Paris dialled up the energy with a busy few days to close out the A/W 2026 men’s season. Starting strong on Tuesday evening, proceedings got underway with a resolutely beautiful show from Auralee and a house party of sorts at Louis Vuitton, where Pharrell erected a contemporary home with glass walls, furniture and a lawn (made in collaboration with Shinji Hamauzu’s Tokyo-based architecture firm Not a Hotel) inside the brand’s foundation. Another blockbuster display followed at the Musée Rodin on Wednesday, where Jonathan Anderson presented his sophomore men’s collection for Dior. The Irish designer looked to couturier Paul Poiret for a collection which reworked codes of ‘history and affluence’, cementing his eclectic, reference-rich vision for the house.

As for the rest of the week, there was a mixture of new beginnings and momentous goodbyes. Joining the calendar for the first time was Bologna-based Magliano, who presented his Paris debut among mainstays Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten, Issey Miyake and Sacai. Closing out the week was a swan song collection from Véronique Nichanian on Saturday evening (24 January), rounding out a 38-year tenure at the helm of Hermès’ men’s universe. She will be succeeded by British designer Grace Wales Bonner, who will present her debut for the heritage Parisian house in January next year.

Wooyoungmi

The Wooyoungmi showspace was covered in a fine layer of faux fur, giving the illusion that you were stepping onto freshly powdered snow. This season, Madame Woo began by thinking about dressing for the icy depths of winter (‘South Korean winters are cold,’ she prefaced) in a time-travelling collection which saw Edwardian double-breasted tailcoats and waistcoats edged with faux astrakhan meet more contemporary cold-weather attire, from puffer jackets lined in faux fur to elongated windbreakers. In part, Madame Woo drew inspiration from the opening of the Gyeongin railway in her native Korea, seeking to capture the magic of turn-of-the-century travel, ‘when [it] was something you dressed for, even in the freezing cold’. Here, dressing up had a playful bent: enormous beanie hats in chunky knits or faux fur teetered on models’ heads, while flashes of bold colour ran throughout. It made for a collection of satisfying juxtapositions, between modernity and tradition, function and play. JM

Hermès

Though Paris Fashion Week Men’s officially concludes this afternoon, yesterday evening’s Hermès show felt like the season’s final act. Indeed, for Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe, it was to be her swan song: the concluding collection of an extraordinary 38-year-tenure at the Parisian house, one which allowed her to claim the title of the longest-working creative director of a major fashion house.

Not that Nichanian is one to dwell too long on the past. Staged at Palais Brongniart, which Napoleon I commissioned to house the Paris Stock Exchange, the designer took one last chance to hone her vision for the Parisian house’s menswear – one of timelessness and ease, whereby making a garment a pleasure to wear was paramount (silhouettes would evolve through the movement of a centimetre of fabric, while the materials which made up her collections were the result of endless experimentation and play).

Here, she once again looked towards menswear archetypes – the blouson, the parka, the peacoat and the double-breasted suit all featured in the collection – drawing on past collections to instil them with her signature ease. Fabrics, were, as ever, superlative: fluffy shearling and calf skin ran throughout, while high-shine crocodile, technical satin and a featherweight wool and silk faille added flair. ‘Everything fits together, but everything is mobile, alive, enduring, seamlessly, continuously, through a season made for a lifetime,’ she said via the collection notes.

The show closed with Nichanian taking a final lap of the runway, as the assembled guests rose to their feet for a minutes-long ovation. It was well-deserved: she is a testament that success can be achieved by pursuing pleasure and perfection over ephemeral trends. Backstage, she was asked for what advice she would give to her fellow designers. She smiled and said, ‘to slow down’. JM

READ: Inside Véronique Nichanian’s swan song runway show for Hermès

Kiko Kostadinov

There was a feeling of clarity to Kiko Kostadinov’s latest runway show, staged on the sunlit upper floor of the Grand Plateau – a former university in Paris’ 5th arrondissement – on Saturday morning. Scattered around the space were a series of Oscar Tuazon’s white-box sculptures, which Kostadinov described as ‘minimal, architectural forms’, though they also had an intriguing strangeness. What are they? What are they for? And what’s inside?

The same could be said of Kostadinov’s A/W 2026 outing: on their surface, these were clothes with a sense of uniform and simplicity (a feeling compounded in the largely monochrome looks), though – as with much of the Bulgaria-born, London-based designer’s oeuvre – beneath their surface was an intriguing use of pattern cutting to distort familiar menswear forms. ‘It is a return to the primary language of construction and material,’ he said. ‘The collection builds through sequential variation, developing fundamental cuts and silhouettes that are gradually adapted and evolved.’

This was largely achieved through a tension in the garments between a feeling of precision – sliced necklines, clean, uniform-inspired jackets, neat toggles and fastenings – and an impulse towards drapery and volume. The latter was explored in the collection’s brilliant closing looks: a series of tabard-style sweaters in vivid coloured stripes, whereby the hemline was pulled by the model all the way up and over the shoulder. With garments like these, Kostadinov said he designed them to be worn in a multitude of ways. ‘This is a collection that is happy being challenging, with an emphasis on producing clothes that actually bring something new to a wardrobe,’ he said. Jack Moss

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

Rei Kawakubo titled her latest Comme des Garçons Homme Plus collection ‘Black Hole’, one of the small bits of information that the designer offers each season about her arcane thinking process (she instead challenges those who attend her shows to draw their own conclusions). ‘Let’s get out of the black hole,’ she elaborated, suggesting that this was her attempt to pull us out of the darkness and into the light (the finale saw models assemble on the runway en masse in all-white clothing, bolstering this tentatively hopeful mood). The visual leitmotif of this collection was a series of masks by Shin Murayama, recalling Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask from Friday the 13th (others saw Hannibal Lecter), which appeared to have been busted open to reveal models’ faces, while typically subversive tailoring had Kawakubo’s distinctive energy (silhouettes were sliced away to reveal the midriff or flared just above the waistline; others bloomed with ruffles, or patchworked with panels of black sequins). As ever, this was a pitch from Kawakubo for liberation through clothing – indeed, as one motif scrawled on the collection read, ‘my energy comes from freedom’. Long may that last. Jack Moss

Willy Chavarria

Part of the reason that American designer Willy Chavarria shifted his seasonal runway show from New York to Paris was to ‘reach more people’, he told Wallpaper* last year. ‘Moving the show to Paris as such an American brand was about having a global message – a message of humanity that’s about people in all countries,’ he said at the time. Yesterday afternoon at a vast judo dojo on the edge of Paris – marking his third runway show in the city – he made his loudest statement yet, staging an all-singing, all-dancing musical spectacular in front of 2000 guests (a large number had been invited from influencer Lyas’ ‘La Watch Party’, an initiative which invites the public to watch live-streamed runway shows in a series of community screenings; here, in a suprise gesture, they got to attend the real event).

Unfolding under a vast screen reminiscent of those at a rock concert – the designer’s name scrolled across at the show’s start – the floor had been transformed into a reimagining of a New York City intersection, complete with a gleaming Cadillac, phone boxes and bus stops, on which a cast of characters enacted a tale of love, loss and high drama. They included the Chilean-Mexican singer Mon Laferte and Puerto Rican performer Lunay as a pair of star-crossed lovers; boy band Santos Bravos, who bounded around the stage in unison, and the Italian singer-songwriter Mahmood. On the runway, a cast of over 100 models – including Julia Fox, Romeo Beckham and Goldie – walked alongside.

While the clothes occasionally came second to the spectacle, Chavarria’s design vernacular remains distinct: namely, riffs on working uniforms and sportswear, inspired by his adopted home city of New York (Chavarria was born to an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father in Fresno, California; his collections also draw on his heritage and upbringing). The show was presented in three sections – Big Willy, a see-now-buy-now line with a streetwear focus; an Adidas collab (this season, football was an inspiration); and his eponymous Willy Chavarria – with the latter capturing a nostalgic elegance in 1950s-inflected tailoring and ladylike gowns, calling on the silhouettes of mid-century haute couture.

At the end of the show, the entire cast returned to the stage – including Chavarria himself, who wore a T-shirt that read ‘Protection is Love’. The applause was, unsurprisingly, rapturous. ‘The connection between us is powerful. We are in this together,’ he said. ‘All of us.’ Jack Moss

Junya Watanabe MAN

Presented yesterday morning in a shadowy set space lined with cafe tables, Junya Watanabe’s latest collection for his namesake label continued the legendary designer’s fascination with crafting clothes that expand the imagination. In recent seasons, this has taken the form of extrapolating garments from their original purpose to create something entirely new, often with fantastical effect. Last September, he went so far as to pile red high heels onto models’ shoulders.

Yesterday morning, however, Watanabe’s deconstructive motifs took on subtler cues. A series of impeccably dressed men, some wearing top hats, emerged from the darkness in tailored looks crafted from a mishmash of lustrous and everyday materials. The effect was a surreal Magritte-meets-Dickens elegance, with tuxedo jackets assembled from latticed leather and classic wool coats patchworked with plaid shirting. Formality was offset by a collaboration with Stüssy, which saw the skate brand’s insignia sprayed across the backs of suits and puffer jacket hoods spliced onto pinstriped tailoring. Transportive and original, he titled it ‘The Best, Dressed’. Orla Brennan

IM Men

The vaulted nave of Collège des Bernardins, a 13th-century Cistercian school, provided an atmospheric backdrop for IM Men’s third show in Paris, which was titled ‘Formless Forms’ (the Issey Miyake brand replaced Issey Miyake Homme Plissé on the schedule). Designers Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi said that this season they were imagining those moments at the ‘seam of a day’, dawn and dusk, moving from the opening looks in black and white towards a kaleidoscopic finale (a section in optic white was interspersed between). ‘Moments when something begins, and when something ends,’ they elaborated.

But, as the collection’s title suggested, this was at heart a show about form: the endless possibilities of a singular piece of cloth has long been at the heart of the Issey Miyake project. The collection’s expressive silhouettes – largely cut generously, and wrapping around the body, like the scarf-inspired looks towards the end of the show – were developed through endless fabric experimentation. Like the pieces they called ‘Clay’ (presumably for the material’s malleable quality), a heat-treated ribbed knit, which allowed the team to create sculptural silhouettes around the body that would not have been able to be achieved in flat pattern-making.

Other pieces were cleverly padded – life-raft-style or crafted from Kasuri-woven fabric, where yarns are pre-dyed to make intriguing patterns once on the loom. If the processes behind each garment were complicated, the result was anything but: these were clothes which appeared to have been made with the simplest of gestures – ‘formless forms’, appearing like magic from the darkness. Jack Moss

Rick Owens

Rick Owens has never shied away from a little controversy, but this season he initially felt some hesitation around the dominant theme of his new collection – military uniforms – given the state of global current affairs. Carrying on nevertheless, the designer chose to travel down a road of ‘parody’. In a steam-filled room within the Palais de Tokyo, where the American designer has shown for over ten years, Owens’ army of goth warriors emerged through the smoke in a series of looks that twisted combat uniforms through his unmistakable codes. Silhouettes were armour-like and structured or sinuously body-hugging, crafted from protective glossy black bull leather and kevlar – a fibre used in modern combat wear that is stronger than steel – and worn with ‘grotesquely’ bloated police boots. Designed to be protective and adjustable, such as leather vests worn under detachable sleeves, these were clothes fit for battle.

Beneath the intimidating allure of Owens’ glam rock gods was the work of a global community of craftspeople. Transformable outerwear was cut from waxy cowhides tanned in Japan and made in a specialist atelier in Atsugi, performance fabrics were sourced from a third-generation Italian mill, tough insulating cabas were felted in a small workshop in Rajasthan, while shaggy shearlings and goat hides were crafted in collaboration with London designer Straytukay. And, if the gothic storylines of Owens’ world have earned him the moniker of fashion’s Prince of Darkness, his genius has always been in his balance of sentiments, always offsetting intellectual depth and beauty with humour and a touch of sleaze. Choosing to title the collection Tower – a continuation of sorts of his ‘Temple of Love’ display in Paris last season – yesterday’s display was a particularly sharp example of exactly that. It was, he said, ultimately ‘a prayer for love and hope.’ Orla Brennan

Amiri

Los Angeles native Mike Amiri has shown his collections in Paris since 2018, but this season he decided to bring a bit of the Californian hospitality he grew up with to the French capital. He invited guests to the covered market Carreau du Temple in the 3rd, where the designer had recreated a Laurel Canyon home he described as ‘a luxurious den’ complete with a careworn curation of furniture and objects. The clothes this season were also close to home, drawing upon a lexicon of West Coast influences that are close to the brand – shifting eras of music culture, the Golden Age of cinema, and the louche glamour of the art scene that settled in the city during the 1970s. Expressed in an earthy palette of burgundies, brown and teals, the overall mood was one of superstar sensuality – sinuous sheer gowns followed by nostalgic tailoring worn over barely buttoned up shirts, biker-inflected second skin leather and all-American denim worn with Western accessories and embellished knits. These were, said the designer, ‘clothes that feel like an extension of who you are,’ adding that this collection was a particularly special one, straight from ‘our reality, our heart, our home.’ Orla Brennan

Dior

Jonathan Anderson’s second menswear show for Dior began with the British designer noticing a blue plaque for the French couturier Paul Poiret on Avenue Montaigne, just outside of Dior’s spiritual home at number 30 (in 1946, Christian Dior founded the house in a four-storey hotel hôtel particulier on the street; it remains the home of the house’s haute couture atelier today). Poiret, who began his career in 1898 but would rise to prominence in the 1910s, was known for a fluid, uncorseted line, vivid fabrications and theatrical flourishes, often borrowing from world culture (such was his influence on Belle Époque fashion, he went by the nickname ‘Le Magnifique’). Having acquired a Poiret gown, Anderson fantasised about how this would look clashed with the codes of Dior: in the opening looks, Anderson presented a series of vest tops in sequinned silk, as if that gown had been sliced away at the waist, with skinny jeans (thanks to Hedi Slimane’s Dior Homme, these are part of the house’s menswear lexicon).

What followed was a collection of vivid experimentation, a continuation of his exploration of codes of ‘history and affluence’ that began in his debut, imagining a gang of ‘aristo-youths’ dashing down a Parisian street (a short film released before the show by Jessica Madavo showed just this). So there were ultra-shrunken riffs on the Bar jacket in tweed and denim; cotton polo shirts adorned with crystal epaulettes; while jackets with enormous ‘fur’ cuffs, shimmering sweaters and undone dinner suits suggested a mood of dressing up (Poiret was well-known for his fancy dress parties; bright yellow wigs added to the liberated mood). ‘For me, fashion shows are about showing ideas,’ Anderson said of the collection, which was happily without inhibitions. ‘I don’t want normality.’ Jack Moss

Lemaire

It's true that runway shows have lost much of the exuberance of decades past, which makes it all the more refreshing when a brand brings a bit of theatre back to fashion week. Inviting guests to the imposing modern opera house Opéra Bastille in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, yesterday afternoon Christophe Lemaire and his co-artistic director Sarah-Linh Tran did exactly that. The pair enlisted choreographer Nathalie Béasse to stage a piece titled ‘mine eyes’, which imagined a Fantasia-esque world where domestic objects have ‘souls’ and fabrics and colours are able to ‘speak’.

Moving through the space, some holding chairs, models brought this tableau to life dressed in looks that pushed Lemaire’s sharp codes – artful pleats, asymmetrical draping and billowing tailoring – to expressive new realms. An attention to fabrication was particularly strong this season, with ideas of illusion explored through materials that played tricks on the eye; crushed velvet that looked metallic, lacquered denim with a leather-like sheen, and coated cotton resembling dry silk. Shapeshifting took on a more literal meaning in hybrid pieces, such as quilted silk skirts that double up as capes or blankets, and the brand’s ubiquitous asymmetrical draped dresses cut in colour block dual tones. Men, meanwhile, were dressed in a wardrobe of a largely Western mood, where bootcut tailoring was layered with deerskin-style outerwear and leather boots (although a few pieces seemed to look to the east, such as mandarin jackets in supple calfskin leather.)

Continuing a surreal theme, French illustrator Roland Topor’s dark dream worlds inspired accessories, with leather bags that loosely took on the shape of buttocks and seashells. Layering so many ideas in a single collection is a gamble, but with Lemaire and Tran’s discerning execution it worked, making for one of the most memorable displays the pair have produced in some seasons. Orla Brennan

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams’ latest menswear collection for Louis Vuitton was one of sartorial trickery. He called it ‘timeless’, and it was certainly rooted in the canon of menswear classics – double-breasted tailoring, gentlemanly overcoats, Harrington jackets, cableknit sweaters all featured. But, thanks to the Wonka-lik wizadry of the house of Vuitton, these were transformed through futuristic fabrications developed by the house’s atelier (in Williams’ words: ‘a wardrobe structured from lasting forms elevated through the artisanal and scientific ingenuity of Louis Vuitton’). So there were jackets that appeared to be constructed from houndstooth or herringbone tweeds, but were actually a light-reflecting technical yarn (a use of trompe l’oeil ran throughout); silk and chambray jackets with in-built thermoregulatory technology; jackets applied with crystals to appear as if the wearer had been caught in a rain shower; or simply a T-shirt crafted not from simple cotton but ultra-soft vicuña.

Williams also used the occasion to reveal Drophaus, a prefabricated home in wood and glass that sat in the centre of the showspace. Described as a ‘future living concept’, it was made in collaboration with Shinji Hamauzu’s Tokyo-based company Not a Hotel, which has created a series of architect-led vacation homes across Japan. It was another attempt to create something timeless: ‘Drophaus is my vision of the future – something that makes sense today or 20 years from now because it’s built on function, savoir-faire and real human need,’ Williams told Wallpaper*. ‘I’m not an architect. I’m a solution builder.’ Jack Moss

READ: At Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams reveals ‘future living concept’ designed in collaboration with Not a Hotel

Auralee

With the festivities of December a distant memory and days as short as they are bracingly cold, January can feel like a spiritual affront. Last night in Paris (20 January), a day after ‘Blue Monday’ – the most depressing day of the year – one of the menswear calendar’s most sensitive designers, Ryota Iwai of Auralee, presented an affirming shot of life amid the gloom. Asking simply ‘What makes winter joyful?’, the collection found its starting point in moments of luminosity and seasonal calm, such as the feeling of crisp morning air on the skin or the delicate way that winter sun filters through cloud lines.

In practice, this resulted in a resolutely wearable co-ed collection, crafted with a deft elegance that has long been Auralee’s DNA (last year the brand celebrated a decade of business). Seeking ease in roomy shapes, the show opened with a series of looks that played with contrasting textures of comfort – reassuring deep piles of shearling hidden inside outerwear and warming textiles of nep yarn, tweed, and cashmere, which became wrap skirts edged with fringe that resembled classic scarves. Several looks harnessed the ease of throwing on a perfect pair of jeans on a winter Sunday, while lightness came in graceful silk georgette dresses and barely-there technical layers that mixed neutral tones with shocks of primary blue, yellow, and red. Ending with a series of sturdy, dark looks of timeless chic – an enveloping midnight-black duffle coat, a simple grey merino wool set – it was, as intended, a bid for joy in deepest, darkest winter. Orla Brennan

For more updates, read our live blog from Paris Fashion Week A/W Men’s 2026, where we’re covering everything from presentations to parties.

Pharrell Williams, the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear line, is a true multi-hyphenate. Designer, musician, producer – and, as of now, architect, having revealed a ‘timeless future living concept’ in the middle of his A/W 2026 runway show for the Parisian house. It was presented (on the evening of 20 January) in a specially constructed show space next to Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne, having also been teased on Instagram before the show (a series of clips showed architectural models and plans, captioned with ‘building the future’).

The building is a collaboration with Shinji Hamauzu’s Tokyo-based Not a Hotel, a company that has created a series of vacation homes across Japan, which are architect-designed and sold by fractional ownership, rather than the typical renting of rooms (‘it was important to signify that we were completely different from your regular hotel,’ Hamauzu told Wallpaper* when he was awarded a 2023 Design Award for the project). In February 2025, Williams and his close collaborator Nigo were announced as ‘investors and creative advisors’ for the company, with several projects in the works.

The building itself is titled ‘Drophaus’, named for the way it finds inspiration in a droplet of water. Compressed glass walls mimic a water drop; the effect, says Williams, is that the lines between the home and the garden are blurred (in the show set, it was surrounded by Japanese-style terraces and long grasses). He says that the living space is one of an ‘outsider’s design mindset’, which is about ‘reimagining disciplines around feeling, function and cultural relevance’.

‘I grew up around water, I’m drawn to it, I build and create my best work close to it. Drophaus is based on a water drop, so if you stand back and take the roof and the ceiling off, it’s just a drop,’ Williams tells Wallpaper*. ‘If I can’t live in water, this is the closest thing. Drophaus is my vision of the future – something that makes sense today or 20 years from now because it’s built on function, savoir-faire and real human need. I’m not an architect. I’m a solution builder.’

True to this multidisciplinary approach, Drophaus also features ‘Homework’, a new furniture series whereby each object has ‘ten per cent imperfection’ – whether in their irregular forms or undulating textured surfaces. Williams says he designed them to emphasise this as a place for living: reflecting this, the invite for the show was a pair of leather slippers imprinted with the show’s date. And, at the start of the show, a trio of models explored the home, before walking the grass-covered runway.

Scored by a live choir, the collection explored themes of timelessness: Williams said that these were pieces designed to ‘endure rather than expire’. This was largely done through fabrication: menswear archetypes – from the trench coat and the double-breasted suit to classic workwear – were reimagined through experiments in material, from ‘houndstooth’ and ‘herringbone’ that were actually reflective technical yarns to crystal embroidery designed to evoke droplets of water.

louisvuitton.com

Follow along with our Paris Fashion Week live blog for more updates.

LVMH Watch Week, this year taking place in Milan from 19 to 21 January, is the first opportunity to discover the watch trends for the year ahead. LVMH is presenting new timepieces from Zenith, TAG Heuer, Gérald Genta, Daniel Roth, and Louis Vuitton. The latter three brands, part of Le Fabrique du Temps (LVMH’s Geneva-based manufacture) exemplify its distinctive contemporary design and ambitious mechanical ethos.

Here are seven brand highlights that see LVMH Watch Week once again framing horology as micro-engineered statements shaped by culture, proportion and intent.

Bulgari Maglia Milanese Monete

One of the highlights of Bulgari's novelties this week is the Maglia Milanese Monete in rose gold. This broad, woven milanaise mesh bracelet revisits the Monete collection from the mid Sixties. Just like its forebears, an ancient Roman coin from 198-297 AD takes centre stage, set in a central lid that covers the ‘secret’ watch, within an octagonal frame set with diamonds. The watch features a mother-of-pearl dial with twelve diamond indices, set into a square, sunray-patterned, engraved case that houses the Piccolissimo BVP 100 manual movement.

Hublot Classic Fusion All Black Camo

Hublot teams up once again with Yohji Yamamoto, unveiling their fourth joint creation: the Classic Fusion All Black Camo, produced in a limited run of 300 watches. A matte black ceramic case, juxtapose against a hybrid strap of fabric an rubber, brings a rich textuality to black. Rooted in Hublot’s All Black DNA and Yamamoto’s avant-garde mastery of form, the watch elevates black to an art form.

Gerald Genta Geneva Time Only

The soft contours of the Gerald Genta Minute Repeater, shown last year at Geneva Watch Days, quickly became one of our favourites, and with collectors clamouring for a more accessible version, Gerald Genta has delivered. With a version in white gold and another in 4N rose gold, the softly rounded cushion case is neither square nor circular, very different from Genta’s angular sports watches and flamboyant jump-hour creations. The graphite version has a monochrome, grained dial with a soft fumé appearance, with the choice of gold for the indices and hands adds a soft contrast. The Geneva Time Only is a wearable 38mm, and features a Zenith Elite movement, enabling a svelte 8.5mm profile.

Louis Vuitton Escale Tiger’s Eye

Based on last year's releases, Louis Vuitton can do no wrong with its Tambour and Escale wristwear. In Milan, the Escale and Convergence took centre stage, with the new Tiger’s Eye version of the Escale proving that stone dials are here to stay. It carries on the torch lit by Louis Vuitton in Dubai last November, where the actual mic case is crafted from solid stone, and at 40mm, it makes a strong statement. The 18K yellow gold offsets the lighter stripes in the semi-precious stone, accentuating the warm tones as the rounded lugs embrace the striated stone case. With a 10.34 mm thickness, it is versatile and features an automatic movement, fitted with a soft brown Saffiano leather strap.

Zenith DEFY Skyline Tourbillon Skeleton

There were watches at the LVMH Watch Week in steel and ceramic, but there was also a marked emphasis on precious metals, seen as both a celebration of the group’s watchmaking and a signal that higher price points are more stable sources of income for many brands. Tangential market views aside, Zenith comes on strong with a host of new DEFY novelties, leaning on the modern expression of the Skyline series, and this is the halo model. With the hypnotic spin of a tourbilllon at 6 o’clock and without a traditional dial to conceal it, the movement’s architectural flair becomes the highlight of the show. Framed in an angular case, with its recognisable twelve-sided bezel, it is a distinct blue, with juxtaposed bridgework in the 41mm case in warm rose gold. Power is provided by the El Primero 3630 SK movement, which offers a 50-hour power reserve.

Daniel Roth Extra Plat Rose Gold Skeleton

By reviving the Daniel Roth brand, LVMH has introduced one of the most distinctive shapes to a new cadre of collectors, headed by the creative force of Gerald Genta’s two original watchmakers, Navas and Barbasini. We have been treated to restrained, pinstripe dials and immaculate movement finishing, but with the Skeleton version of the Extra Plat in rose gold, we have a small, distinctive case. With a fan-like, skeletonised bridgework intricacy taking centre stage, the understated Daniel Roth shape displays delicate hand finishing, with two blued hands contrasting the warm tones of the movement.

TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph Seafarer

TAG Heuer offers an accessible, sportier outlook, underscored by the fresh colours of the Seafarer. It marks a return to the world of sailing seen in 2023, with the release of a modern interpretation of the celebrated ‘Skipper’ regatta countdown timer of the 1960s. This time, maritime history comes to the fore again with the return of another chronograph, inspired by the Heuer ‘Seafarer’ tide watch, which dates back to 1949. With a champagne-like dial set in the Glassbox case, it’s a dressy take on a sports chronograph, and balances the retro vibe with modern detailing, and a fascinating tide indicator at 9 o’clock in the larger 42mm version of the Carrera case.

L’Epée 1839 La Regatta

This is not a wristwatch, but L’Epée 1839 makes a strong case for the re-emergence of sculptural clocks within the horological spectrum. La Regatta is a sculptural, almost totemic clock inspired by a racing skiff, featuring an exposed, vertically inclined movement and an eight-day power reserve. The ‘hull’ of the angular creation is adorned with Grand Feu enamel art, courtesy of the Georgian atelier of David Kakabadze, a well-known artisan.

On a warm Paris evening this past June, guests of Louis Vuitton’s S/S 2026 menswear show – including Beyoncé, who made her dramatic entrance moments before its start – were momentarily transformed into playing pieces on a monolithic game of Snakes and Ladders, erected on the forecourt of the Pompidou Centre.

It was a typically vivacious move from menswear artistic director Pharrell Williams, who has staged a series of blockbuster runway shows during his tenure so far – several of which have encompassed dramatic mise-en-scène. His debut shut down Paris’ Pont Neuf bridge in a shuddering spectacular which featured a gospel choir and performance by Jay-Z (guests arrived to the event by boat), while later shows have been backdropped by flurries of fake snow or the fluttering world flags of the rooftop of the city’s Unesco building (for that, a live orchestra was the accompaniment).

The supersized version of Snakes and Ladders – stretching over 2,700 sq ft in total – was conceived not by Williams alone, but Indian architect Bijoy Jain, whose practice Studio Mumbai has drawn acclaim for transportative projects which draw on ancient techniques and traditions yet are resolutely contemporary in their focus. Case in point: the Snakes and Ladders board itself, which melded the game’s ancient Indian history – it originated in the country as Moksha Patam in the 13th century – with a sheen of Louis Vuitton luxury (the checkboard was reminiscent of the house’s signature damier motif).

’I’ve admired Bijoy and his work for years, and I was honoured when he agreed to collaborate on the set design for the show in Paris,’ said Williams following the show. ‘India has always inspired me. It’s where Snakes and Ladders was born, and the game felt like the perfect metaphor for life: the climbs, the falls, the lessons. This collaboration was a meeting of minds – human, intentional, and full of spirit.’

A new documentary released by the house provides a deep dive into the collaboration, which began with Williams’ travels to India (the collection itself drew on the country for inspiration, though less from specific silhouettes or garments than from its distinctive creative energy). Studio Mumbai became a conduit for Williams’ vision for the season, seeing him embark on a months-long exchange which saw him, Jain and their respective teams refine the monumental set through endless experimentation and exchange.

‘From the onset, Pharrell wanted to make a space that was engraved on the hemisphere of the earth,‘ says Jain in the short film. ‘We wanted it to be like how you might draw the game on the ground.’

Documenting both the establishment of the show set – from early models in India to its construction at the Pompidou Centre – and the creation of the collection itself, which drew inspiration from William and Jain’s early dawings, the documentary offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes at Louis Vuitton. ‘A giant Snakes and Ladders board in front of the Pompidou – it’s crazy, unprecendented, it’s beautiful,’ says Williams.

Watch the full film above.

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.

We are a peripatetic generation: restlessly curious and forever plotting the next trip. It’s a trait that proves surprisingly useful when it comes to gifting. Travel-minded presents rarely miss the mark; they signal care in its most pragmatic form, helping to plan, elevate or ease someone’s journey.

Our edit strikes a balance between function, comfort and design intelligence. True to Wallpaper*’s sensibility, it gathers the sharpest designs in tech and lifestyle. The categories may be familiar, but each pick brings a fresh, forward twist on the pieces we reach for time and again.

For more design-driven gifting ideas and aesthetically attuned stocking fillers, explore our other seasonal gift guides.

The Wallpaper* travel gift guide 2025

Analogue in-flight entertainment

Five-star treatment

A chic name-drop

Escape artist

Pleat elite

An order keeper

Mile-high comforter

Free roaming

Lights out

A mood mixer

A reset wash

A flight-mode facial

A pocketable friend

A power move

Do not disturb

Dubai Watch Week [19 - 23 November] has opened its doors in its new Dubai Mall venue, safe from the storms that nearly washed out the 2023 edition. Going inside and increasing the space naturally gives more prominence to the bigger brands, notably, Rolex (whose 2025 story remains the era-defining Land Dweller), Van Cleef & Arpels, starring the incredible Brasséede Lavande table-top automaton, and the LVMH stable, including Bulgari and TAG Heuer.

Given the location and the wealth concentrated in the city, it’s no surprise that the exhibitor list is full of what you might call alt-Pateks, the brands to catch your eye before or after your number comes up for that coveted Nautilus or World Time Calatrava. Of note this year is the concentration of technically ambitious (and correspondingly pricy) makers such as Ferdinand Berthoud, Greubel Forsey, HYT and de Bethune, as well as more craft-focused makers such as Chopard, H Moser, Parmigiani and Laurent Ferrier.

Meanwhile, there’ll always be strong interest in the independent sector, however loosely defined, and Dubai Watch Week is a chance for those brands to get in front of the watch-buying public on more equal terms. What is notable is that the value range extends right through to the likes of Ming, Oris and Studio Underdog.

Dubai Watch Week 2025 highlights

Van Cleef & Arpels

The Brassée de Lavande is a new table-top automaton featuring a central lavender bouquet that opens to reveal a butterfly with orange plique-à-jour enamel wings, diamond accents, and black enamel contours. The butterfly’s body is crafted from tiger’s eye with amethyst cabochon eyes and diamond-tipped antennae. Detailed lacquered buds and an integrated carillon mechanism complete the piece

Chopard

The new L.U.C Grand Strike from Chopard is as technically ambitious as it comes: a highly complex chiming watch with a minute repeater and both grande and petite sonnerie functions, all using sapphire crystal gongs. Developed over 11,000 hours and protected by ten proprietary patents (five created specifically for this watch), it is the most intricate timepiece Chopard has ever produced – the culmination of a decades long adventure in sonnerie watches.

Parmigiani

Parmigiani are showing an ‘Arctic Rose’ edition of its PF Tonda Rattrapante, a sort of slow-food chronograph that unfussily allows you set a time interval with its extra minute hand. But it’s less about what it does and all about how beautifully it’s done–the subtlety of the finishes, (particularly theGrain d’Orge guilloché treatment on the dial) and the perfectly fluid shape of the case and bracelet take care of that.

Louis Vuitton

The Escale gets a gorgeously 70s makeover with two new stone dial editions that are being unveiled at Dubai. The new 40mm watches have dials and case rings in turquoise and malachite respectively, and are matched with platinum versions of the trunk inspired case that Louis Vuitton refreshed in 2024. Matthieu Hegi, Louis Vuitton’s Watch ArtisticDirector, promised at the 2024 launch, that a multitude of colours and materials would star in the new Escale and these two watches are that promise delivered.

Pérpetuel Gallery

Away from the Dubai Mall, the Pérpetuel Gallery will be hosting a stellar cast of top level makers including Roger Smith, Fiona Kruger and star of the future, Renaud Tixier. The Monday Watch, first seen last year, gets new dials to compliment the exceptional marriage of innovation and craftsmanship that Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier have brought to the project.

For A/W 2025, high jewellery encompasses bold and colourful forms. From Fernando Jorge's fluid silhouettes to Buccellati's pop of colour and Hermès' intricately rendered cuff, it's all about the details.

For Louis Vuitton, silhouettes are oversized, while Cartier's delicately sized earrings champion the pared-back. Van Cleef & Arpels and Tiffany & Co demonstrate their mastery of embellishment, while Piaget's delicate watch swinging from a necklace of precious stones rewrites jewellery rules entirely. Taken together, these pieces make for high jewellery that is exciting, bold and very modern.

This article appears in the November 2025 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 9 October. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Originally designed by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, the LV I and LV II watches broke from convention with their smooth, pebble-like cases and travel-inspired aesthetic. Nearly four decades later, their silhouette returns with entirely new mechanics.

Now, in its new form, produced by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, the brand’s Geneva-based fine watchmaking division, the 39mm yellow gold Monterey keeps Aulenti’s distinctive lugless form and crown at 12 o’clock but sharpens every detail. The case, polished to a mirror finish, catches light like liquid metal. Its widened crown, meanwhile, is notched with a Clous de Paris texture and crafted at La Fabrique des Boîtiers Louis Vuitton, the maison’s specialist case-making atelier. Underneath, a quick-release strap system engraved ‘1 of 188’ offers a discreet nod to the watch’s rarity.

The white Grand Feu enamel dial demonstrates the level of technical finesse behind the new Monterey. Its creation demands up to 20 hours of meticulous handwork and around ten firings at temperatures between 800°C and 900°C to achieve a subtle opaline depth. Red and blue printed scales trace the hours and minutes, echoing the colour accents of the original 1988 design, while slender syringe-style hands in white gold and a blued-steel seconds hand adorn the dial’s gloss surface.

Inside, the automatic calibre LFTMA01.02, with a 45-hour power reserve, replaces the quartz movement of the past. Conceived and finished entirely in-house, it features a circular-grained main plate, sandblasted bridges, and a rotor in 18ct gold trimmed with Vuitton’s V-notches.

'The Monterey represents a symbiosis between old and new,' says Matthieu Hegi, artistic director at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. 'We’ve respected the design’s graphic codes while elevating it for today.'

That conversation between past and present extends beyond watchmaking. It’s echoed in Nicolas Ghesquière’s womenswear collections, where the creative director recently styled archival LV II watches from 1988 on the A/W 2025 runway, creating a subtle dialogue between the brand’s archives and its current offering.

The resulting timepiece is a faithful reissue that feels distinctly modern – more evolution than homage.

louisvuitton.com

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

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

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

Chanel

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

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

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

Thom Browne

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

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

Miu Miu

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

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

Sacai

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

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

Chloé

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

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

Jean Paul Gaultier

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

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

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

Valentino

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

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

Akris

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

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

Celine

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

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

Balenciaga

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

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

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

Vivienne Westwood

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

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

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

Junya Watanabe

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

Maison Margiela

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

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

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

Hermès

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

Alaïa

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

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

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

Givenchy

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

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

Victoria Beckham

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

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

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

Issey Miyake

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

Loewe

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

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

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

Schiaparelli

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

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

Carven

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

Rabanne

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

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

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

Acne Studios

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

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

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

Dior

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

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

Lanvin

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

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

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

Courrèges

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

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

Dries Van Noten

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

Stella McCartney

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

Louis Vuitton’s beauty line, La Beauté Louis Vuitton, is finally here, following its announcement in March this year. The collection comprises 55 shades of LV Rouge lipsticks (55 being LV in Roman numerals), ten shades of LV Baume lip balm, eight shades of LV Ombres eyeshadows, as well as application brushes and leather accessories, and was developed under the auspices of legendary make-up artist Pat McGrath.

McGrath was a natural choice for creative director as a long-standing collaborator with Louis Vuitton fashion who shares the brand’s exacting attention to detail and dedication to quality. ‘With product development, I have always been obsessed with the smallest of details,’ says McGrath. ‘The perfection needed in product texture, the precise application methods, just the right amount of pigment pay-off, and how products should make you feel. I always like to push boundaries with make-up – and this métier is no different.’

If anyone knows about pushing cosmetics into new territory, it’s ‘Mother’ – a nickname given to McGrath thanks to her mentorship of younger artists and her foundational role in shaping contemporary beauty. From her iconic Vogue Italia covers with Steven Meisel in the 1990s to her recent glass skin for a Martin Margiela show, as well as her commercial work creating cosmetic lines for Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, her overseeing of Covergirl and Max Factor in the early 2000s, and the launch of her own beloved make-up brand, Pat McGrath Labs, in 2015, no one in beauty has a more impressive resume than McGrath. Yet, for all this experience, La Beauté Louis Vuitton has given McGrath the chance to do something new – to parlay the expertise she has honed over decades in the industry into a line of unparalleled luxury.

One of McGrath’s greatest skills is her ability to develop high-impact colours that flatter a wide variety of skin tones. Nowhere is this more evident than in the hero products of the La Beauté Louis Vuitton collection, the LV Rouge lipsticks. With 27 satin shades and 28 matte, the lipsticks range from ‘406 Fearless Night’, a rich plum colour, to ‘103 Vanity Beige’, a subtle mauve. In between is the house’s signature shade, ‘896 Monogram Rouge’. Developed by McGrath to reflect the heritage of the house, this unique take on a classic red fuses the brown shade of Louis Vuitton’s iconic canvas fabric with traditional scarlet to create a rich, burnished colour.

A sheer interpretation of the shade is also available as an LV Baume, alongside eight other lightweight, buildable tints and one transparent balm. Formulated with shea butter, hyaluronic acid, five-flavor berry extract, and upcycled mimosa wax from Grasse, the balms are designed to have a skincare effect on lips, improving their smoothness and hydration with every wear.

Rounding out the collection are the LV Ombres eyeshadow palettes, each of which contains three easy-to-wear base shades and one bold colour to make them pop. There is, of course, a ‘Monogram Rouge’ palette, with deep browns and the signature red, as well as a ‘Beige Memento’ palette that draws inspiration from the patina of Louis Vuitton’s leather with gleaming ivory and shimmery bronze; and more outré options like the blue colours of ‘950 Sky’s The Limit’ or purple shades of ‘450 Cosmic Dreams’.

McGrath and Vuitton have, unsurprisingly, taken an exacting approach to the composition of the eyeshadows. Each shade is formulated with plant-derived squalane to help colour blend into the skin without compromising its long-lasting hold, while the glitter in each of the pearly and metallic shades is wrapped in a transparent gel to reflect light for maximised shine.

It’s these details that, according to McGrath, make La Beauté set a new standard in luxury beauty. ‘Luxury in make-up is about performance, craftsmanship, and sensoriality. It’s about textures that feel exquisite, colours that captivate, and formulas that perform flawlessly. True luxury is when every detail is considered – from the way the pigment melts into the skin to the way a lipstick feels in your hand. It’s the fusion of artistry and technology, of heritage and innovation.’

When it comes to La Beauté, every detail certainly has been considered, even the way it smells, with a scent designed by the brand’s in-house perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud. Instead of traditional perfumes, which are built on an alcohol base, Belletrud had to work with a wax and oil foundation for the lipstick, a much more difficult task. ‘Creating fragrance for lipstick is a completely different challenge than for skin,’ says Belletrud. ‘The scent sits much closer to the wearer’s nose, so it must be delicate yet expressive, something that seduces first the wearer herself before anyone else.’ In order to create a fragrance that would last, Belletrud had to find and formulate materials that would strike the right balance between delicate and distinctive. It took a total of four years to find a formulation he was happy with, which blends flowers native to Grasse – mimosa, jasmine, and rose – into subtle, lasting scent.

Rounding out the powerhouse team behind the line is German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, who brought his sophisticated reimagining of simple forms to the design of La Beauté Louis Vuitton’s packaging. Grcic’s designs for La Beauté are weighty cases that close with a satisfying click and feature elegant details like a lock system for the lipstick and eyeshadow refills in the shape of LV’s signature flower, or a window at the top of the lipstick case that allows you to view the shade inside. ‘The way it feels in your hand, the sound of the closure, the temperature of the materials – these are all part of the emotional connection,’ says Grcic about the design.

Each La Beauté Louis Vuitton piece is designed to be a lifelong keepsake, and that ethos is reflected in its prices (lipsticks are priced at £120 and the eyeshadow palettes at £190). For those who would like to make the experience of owning one of the items extra special, the brand has designed a line of small leather goods to accompany the collection, including Monogram canvas cases to hold lipsticks and blotting papers.

Ultimately, it is a collection that sets a new standard for luxury in beauty. ‘I’ve always said make-up is more than product: it’s performance, obsession and emotion,’ says McGrath. ‘This new chapter is about pushing craftsmanship into a new realm.’

Shop the collection at louisvuitton.com

Sometime at the turn of the last century, Georges Vuitton, son of the legendary Louis, developed a lock system so impenetrable that even famed escape artist, Harry Houdini, rebuffed a chance to crack it.

More than a century later, it might be wise for Houdini to steer clear of another challenge: getting a reservation at Le Café Louis Vuitton in New York. On any given day, the waitlist to the luxury brand’s in-store restaurant can balloon to 1,000 people or more. But for lucky diners who get the opportunity to drift up to the fourth floor of Louis Vuitton’s temporary flagship at 6 East 57th Street, they’ll find that their patience is rewarded.

Inside Le Café Louis Vuitton, New York

Le Café Louis Vuitton, which opened last fall, marks the label’s first culinary venture in the US, joining concepts in Paris, China, Japan and Saint-Tropez. It’s the project of Philadelphia-based hospitality group STARR Restaurants (behind Pastis, Le Coucou and many local favourites), led by executive chef Christophe Bellanca and executive pastry chef Mary George. The pair worked alongside Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric, who’ve crafted culinary experiences at Louis Vuitton’s other locations.

The restaurant specialises in what it terms ‘luxury snacking’ via a menu that focusses on tempting smaller plates. In a district where in-store restaurants are de rigueur (see The Polo Bar; Tiffany’s Blue Box Café and the Armani Ristorante), Le Café Louis Vuitton stands out by delivering haute cuisine without taking itself too seriously. Indeed, Bellanca describes dining here as ‘an approachable yet luxurious experience’ – and it certainly delivers.

That starts with the space itself, which was designed to feel like a home library. The dining room, which has room for 70 diners, features a welcoming palette of timber, exposed brick and fabrics in hues like persimmon and gold. Look up and you’ll notice that the ceiling lighting is not diffused by louvers, but by hundreds of Louis Vuitton leather luggage tags; Look right and you’ll discover hundreds of volumes on art, fashion, architecture and – of course – LV history arranged on softly illuminated shelves.

Once tucked into a cosy banquette, the sumptuous snacking begins in earnest. The café offers an all-day dining experience, so early-bird shoppers would be wise to take in some sustenance via truffle eggs ‘à la coque,’ a dainty take on egg and soldiers that comes complete with a monogrammed ‘soldier’; pain au chocolat; or – because this is Le Café Louis Vuitton – Golden Ossetra caviar.

For lunch, the Louis Vuitton Culinary Journey offers a prix-fixe menu of opulent signatures, starting with a choice of appetizer. Go for the crab ‘Louis’ which comes piled high atop an avocado and is studded with diminutive radishes, stamped into LV’s signature quatrefoils Follow-up with braised black bass with bouillon ‘al verde’ or the ultra-tender filet mignon. If you still have room for dessert, the entremets – available in vanilla, chocolate, pistachio and hazelnut – are as rich and indulgent as a Capucines handbag and come with monogram ganache, of course.

The logo-mania doesn’t stop with the food. You can find the monogram surrounding your place in a cafe-au-lait circlet; on the stacked trompe l'oeil trunks where wait staff deftly fetch serveware; your sugar cube with post-dessert espresso; even the butter pat at bread service was stamped in the form of a creamy yellow monogram.

It’s all part of the fun– and the fantasy – of a languid afternoon meal (with a glass of Champagne, of course) at Le Café Louis Vuitton. And fortunately, on a recent afternoon, the waitlist was a mere 800 guests long.

Le Café Louis Vuitton is on the fourth floor of Louis Vuitton 57th Street, New York.

louisvuitton.com

An ‘all-encompassing voyage’ is how Louis Vuitton describes an expansive new exhibition, 'Visionary Journeys’, which unfolds in Osaka’s Nakanoshima Museum of Art this summer. Coinciding with the World Expo Osaka Kansai 2025, and marking 170 years since Louis Vuitton was founded, it continues the house’s deep-rooted relationship with the country – Louis Vuitton has collaborated with numerous Japanese artists and designers, from Rei Kawakubo to Takeshi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama, and hosted its Cruise 2018 show at the Miho Museum, Kyoto.

Louis Vuitton opens two new exhibitions in Osaka, Japan

Indeed, Kusama – who is responsible for some of Louis Vuitton’s most distinctive, dot-covered handbags, part of a collaboration which began in 2012 – is being celebrated in a coinciding exhibition, also in Osaka (it is the latest iteration of Fondation Louis Vuitton’s ‘Hors-les-murs’ scheme, which aims to bring the Paris institution’s collection of contemporary art to a wider, international audience). Titled ‘Yayoi Kusama – Infinity’, it features a wide-ranging selection of hallucinatory works by the celebrated artist, including her ‘Infinity’ rooms, which use mirrors to give the illusion you are standing within a limitless space (and often feature her most distinctive motifs, from dots to pumpkins). Kusama herself calls the act of standing in such spaces as one of ‘self-obliteration'.

Comprising over 1,000 objects, ‘Visionary Journeys’, meanwhile, is rooted in Louis Vuitton’s near-two-century history, and its foundation in travel – both real and imagined (the eponymous Louis Vuitton, after journeying to Paris by foot in 1837, would become known as a trunk maker for the era’s burgeoning travelling classes). Presenting a more abstracted view of this history, ‘Visionary Journeys’ takes place over 12 ‘chapters’ – from ‘Origins’, which links the house’s early trunks to contemporary iterations of the signature object, to ‘Expeditions’, which traces more adventurous innovations (among them, the ‘Secrétaire Bureau Stokowski’, a travelling desk, and a hardy zinc version of the trunk).

Another chapter explores the links between Louis Vuitton and Japan more closely – from the ‘Japonisme’ of early Louis Vuitton creations, to the collaborations with Murakami, Kusama, Kawakubo, and NIGO – and takes place amid a unique display of floating tatami platforms (a book on the subject, ‘Louis Vuitton Japan’, published by Rizzoli, will also launch in July). Meanwhile, in the atrium of the Endō Katsuhiko-designed museum, guests will find eight enormous trunks constructed from washi, a traditional Japanese paper. Lit from within, they form lanterns, a suitably transportative entranceway to the exhibition, which has been curated by Florence Müller and designed by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA.

‘Visionary Journeys’ at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, runs until 17 September 2025.

‘Yayou Kusama: Infinity – Selected Works from the Collection’ runs at Espace Louis Vuitton Osaka until 12 January 2026

louisvuitton.com

Louis Vuitton has unveiled an ambitious new cultural and retail destination in Shanghai’s Wujiang Road, part of the heaving Nanjing West Road business district. ‘The Louis’ inhabits a colossal, cruise ship-like structure, nearly 100ft tall, that pays tribute to the maison’s history as a malletier (trunk maker) and Shanghai’s port history as the ‘Gateway to the East’. Its prow and hull sport a sleek metallic Monogram embellishment, while the deck and stacked upper levels evoke the elegant shape of 19th-century transoceanic travel trunks.

Louis Vuitton launches The Louis in Shanghai

Spanning the first two floors is exhibition and retail space. The retail concept offers leather goods customisable with ship motifs or the Shanghai skyline, along with limited-edition pieces. Anchoring the site is the immersive ‘Louis Vuitton Visionary Journeys’ exhibition, featuring scenography designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu. The expansive display celebrates the house’s history, from its origins in Asnières, France to maritime adventures and contemporary innovations.

Signature installations include Trunkscape, also designed by Shigematsu: a striking tunnel of floating Monogram trunks previously seen at LV The Place in Bangkok and the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka, alongside a series of multisensory, themed sections that chronicle Louis Vuitton’s legacy in travel, fragrance, literature, sport, and craftsmanship.

Le Café Louis Vuitton, a high-end dining experience blending Eastern and Western influences, is situated on the third floor and opens onto an outdoor terrace with seating that nods to the seaside. Chefs Leonardo Zambrino and Zoe Zhou present a refined menu inspired by mentorship under chefs Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric, as well as their formative experiences in Paris and Saint-Tropez.

Highlights include Monogram Ravioli styled after traditional jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), the Cesar Salad Eclipse with yuja dressing, and indulgent desserts such as Peach Charlotte with jasmine tea.

Entrance to Louis Vuitton’s The Louis is free and open to the public, with reservations available via the ‘My LV’ WeChat mini program. The site is open daily from 10am to 10pm and is located at HKRI Taikoo Hui, No. 789 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China.

This summer, the runway leads to the Riviera. Primarily across Europe, luxury hotels are quietly slipping into their seasonal roles as extensions of major fashion and lifestyle brands. Behemoths such as Burberry and Dolce & Gabbana are migrating from urban fashion capitals to the coast in the coming months, trading marble flagships for fresh ocean air and beachfront real estate. The formula is straightforward: exclusive pop-up boutiques flanked by monogrammed loungers and umbrellas, and occasionally, chef-led restaurants. Here are some of the hotel takeovers making a splash this summer – where you too can pop up in style.

Fashion hotel takeovers happening this summer

Burberry at The Standard Ibiza

Hot on the heels of its takeover at The Newt in Somerset, Burberry is off to embrace the Mediterranean sunshine, landing at The Standard, Ibiza, until October. The hotel’s seasonal rooftop bar and restaurant, Up, has been Burberry-ified with a bespoke check pattern in bright yellow. This energising design adorns the site’s loungers, parasols, and seating, as well as a photo booth in the lobby. Starting in mid-July, weekly DJ nights, featuring guests such as Phil Mison, Eric Duncan, and Nicolas Matar, will be accompanied by a curated cocktail menu. For those who can’t get enough of the partnership, Burberry and The Standard also propose a summer capsule collection ‘for warm days and balmy nights’, with swimwear, sunglasses, and hats available for purchase.

The Standard, Ibiza is located at Carrer de Bartomeu Vicent Ramon, 9, 07800 Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain.

Dior at Jumeirah Capri Palace

For the fifth time, Jumeirah Capri Palace, which recently unveiled new suites by Patricia Urquiola, welcomes the return of Dioriviera to its seafood restaurant, Il Riccio. The breezy setting, surrounded by Anacapri’s rocky cliffs and adjacent to the island’s magical Blue Grotto, is now decorated with Dior’s Toile de Jouy pattern and animal statues. Guests can choose to sip limoncello spritzes on the beach club terrace or dine at the restaurant, on dishes such as spaghettino with sea urchins. Meanwhile, a Dior boutique pop-up features a summer-ready wardrobe.

Il Riccio is located at Via Gradola, 4, 80071 Anacapri, Italy.

Dolce & Gabbana at Four Seasons Hotel Taormina

Despite occupying its privileged hilltop position for centuries, San Domenico Palace, Taormina, entered the modern zeitgeist in 2022 after serving as the fictional ‘The White Lotus’ hotel. The property, which was acquired by Four Seasons in 2020, is also a beloved part of the Dolce & Gabbana universe, as the Italian brand has taken over its pool area for a couple of years in a row. The now familiar bespoke Blu Mediterraneo theme, seen across parasols, cushions and towels, seeks to reflect the region’s vibrant seaside blues and celebrates the artistry of handmade Sicilian ceramics. Wallpaper’s fashion features editor Jack Moss visited the activation last month to celebrate Dolce & Gabbana’s ninth collaboration with Mytheresa, describing the experience as ‘a day of sunshine, food and spritzes’. Until the end of the season, guests will also be able to browse an exclusive pop-up boutique offering a selection of clothing and accessories, including some location exclusives.

San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel is located at Via S. Domenico, 5, 98039 Taormina, Italy.

Herno at Phi Beach

The rugged granite landscape of Baja Sardinia provides the perfect backdrop for Herno’s sophisticated take on exploration, travel, and outdoor living. In collaboration with Phi Beach, the Italian brand is showcasing its vision of seaside leisure for the second consecutive summer, lasting through the first week of September. Alongside dressing the exclusive club’s cabanas and deckchairs in sandy, deep brown tones, Herno has also introduced its first fully designed restaurant, Herno Suite. Here, chef Claudio Marenzi presents culinary delights on ceramics inspired by the Erno River, paying tribute to the brand’s roots. With a focus on natural aesthetics and sustainability, bill holders, menus, and coasters are made from natural cork sourced from Sardinia. A selection of ‘open-air accessories’ is available for purchase, including beach towels, tote bags, water bottles, baskets, and hats.

Phi Beach is located at Via Forte Cappellini, 07021 Arzachena, Italy.

Jacquemus at Monte-Carlo Beach Club

As part of a strategic transformation of the area, Monte-Carlo’s emblematic beach club has reopened for the season with a complete redesign of its deck and pool area by French interior designer Dorothée Delaye. Adding a burst of Provençal panache, a sun-kissed collaboration with Jacquemus is underway until 7 October. Inspired by ‘La Croisière’ collection unveiled in Paris in January, the takeover dresses sunbeds, towels, and parasols in banana-yellow, coconut milk, and black stripes. This theme extends to the adjacent Pool Café, which features speciality brews and an Olympic-sized pool, as well as two newly opened Jacquemus boutiques, featuring sketches by Renoir and Matisse on their walls.

Monte-Carlo Beach Club is located at Av. Princesse Grâce, 98000 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, Monaco.

Louis Vuitton at White 1921 Hotel

For the third consecutive year, the Arnaud Donckele & Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton restaurant has returned to the White 1921 Saint-Tropez hotel for the season. Michelin-starred chef Arnaud Donckele and chef pâtissier Maxime Frédéric present a bountiful menu, available for lunch, tea time, and dinner, spotlighting local, seasonal produce and creative twists. Think dishes such as grilled blue lobster enriched by a shiso-infused sauce, or Wagyu beef served in a fragrant bouillon. The restaurant’s interior features natural macramé touches paired with rattan furnishings and tables dressed in seasonal Louis Vuitton tableware. Crockery is adorned with interpretations of the maison’s signature Monogram Flower.

The Arnaud Donckele & Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton restaurant is located at Hotel White 1921, Trav. des Lices, 83990 Saint-Tropez, France.

Missoni at JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa

Nothing embodies summer quite like Missoni’s signature zig-zag motif, a warm-weather staple cherished by many for its cheerful, multicoloured hues and light texture. On the private Isola delle Rose in Venice, the Italian label has established a bijou pop-up store at the JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa, making it convenient for guests to stock up on its beachwear essentials. A serene blend of blue and azure, combined with warm ochres and beige, dominates an exclusive collection of men’s and womenswear, ranging from swim trunks and bowling shirts to bikinis and long cover-ups. This same pattern features in the shop’s sofas and pouffes, as well as the large-scale bunny welcoming visitors. The pop-up is open at JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa until 15 September, with another Missoni Resort Club takeover occurring in Oku Ibiza in the form of a branded poolside lounge.

JW Marriott Venice Resort & Spa is located at Isola delle Rose, Laguna Di San Marco, 30133 Venice, Italy.

Alo at Mandarin Oriental, Bodrum

Turkey is familiar territory for Alo Yoga, which launched its first Istanbul brick-and-mortar store last year. This summer, the lifestyle brand has set its sights on the Aegean coast – in particular, Mandarin Oriental Bodrum’s private shoreline, to debut a second boutique, an immersive beach club experience, and wellness workshops. Complementing the oak and pine beach umbrellas are branded cotton towels and seating in an earthy hue, while a customised cart offers refreshments served in coconut cups. Until September, international Alo instructors will lead a wellness programme for hotel guests, including sunrise yoga and pilates alongside sound healing and meditation sessions.

Mandarin Oriental, Bodrum is located at Gölköy, 314 Sokak No.10, 48483 Muğla, Turkey.

Yesterday marked the end of the S/S 2026 menswear season and the last of jam-packed six days in Paris. Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton opened proceedings on Tuesday with equally fantastical spectacles set within two of Paris’ best-loved art institutions. At the Bourse de Commerce, Anthony Vaccarello’s latest Saint Laurent collection sought a languid ease through an imagined trip between Paris and Fire Island, backdropped by a pool of floating porcelain bowls by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. As the sun set in the evening, a star-studded crowd (including Jay-Z and Beyonce) gathered at the courtyard of the Pompidou Centre to see Pharrell Williams’ staging of a supersized game of snakes and ladders, where he ground down into his vision of the modern dandy through a collection that skewed Indian craftsmanship with the house’s damier-patterned codes.

Earlier in the week, Rick Owens opened ‘Temple of Love’ in tandem with his theatrical Palais de Tokyo show, a retrospective that charts the incubation of his subversive design philosophy from early days in LA to Paris. Elsewhere, alongside the Comme des Garçons roster, renegade New York favourite Willy Chavarria presented his second Paris collection and London’s own Wales Bonner made a soulful return to the schedule after a hiatus. Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior made for the most anticipated event of the week. Designers Pier Paolo Piccioli, Donatella Versace, Pharrell Williams, Silvia Venturini Fendi, and Stefano Pilati came in support of the historic moment, for which Anderson revealed an astute collection that ‘de and recoded’ Dior’s 100 year history. It was, said the designer, about ‘taking joy in the art of dressing up.’

Here, we select the best shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026

Craig Green

It has been two years since Craig Green showed in Paris, and a year after his last runway show in London, a purposefully reduced schedule which signals a designer who works on his own terms. The time this affords Green – who continues to live in work in London – means his collections are deeply thought, and near-ceremonial (indeed, in the Sunday morning slot, walking towards the cathedral-like Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, you could hear glimpses of choirsong as Paris’ churches undertook their own Sunday services).

The space had been laid with a runway in bright yellow sand, a colour that only revealed itself when the lights turned on at the start of the show. Yellow, Green said backstage, was a colour he was thinking about for the way it affects the mood – often jarringly – ‘the idea that babies cry more in a yellow room, that people have more arguments in a yellow room’. The deep shade he chose, which ran through the collection itself, was also one he linked to the late 1960s, a time period which informed the collection. A series of extraordinary layered looks, comprising asymmetric parka jackets and streamer-like shirts, featured a heady melange of prints derived from vintage bed sheets of the era. Meanwhile thick, whip-stitched belts were painted with dainty Alpine flowers.

Somewhat unexpectedly, The Beatles had been one of Green’s influences this season, particularly the psychedelia of their later oeuvre. ‘I think there were a lot of references to psychedelic, mind-opening [practices],’ he said, noting the illuminated glasses – which gave models surreal glowing eyes – were constructed from the lights usually used for dolls houses. ‘I was thinking about the era when The Beatles found LSD and [there was] this switch and change in their work.’ Green saw the colourful closing looks as the opening ones ‘with their minds widened’.

But Green was also inspired by the band’s prolific output and endless reserves of creative energy. ‘What they achieved was almost like a miracle,’ he said. ‘The amount of albums they were putting out, the amount of work they were doing. It’s almost otherworldly; it’s the joy of doing things.’ JM

Wooyoungmi

Tails are probably the last thing you'd want to wear – bar a fur coat – at the height of summer, unless, perhaps, they were Woo Youngmi’s featherlight viscose versions. Shown this afternoon at the stately Maison de la Chimie in Paris, the designer’s S/S 2026 collection doubled down on her decades-long fascination with the ceremonial rigour of tailoring – though this time, through the context of hot, humid South Korean summers. Reimagining old-world dress codes in light, breathable fabrics – cotton poplin, silk, and superfine lycra – the collection brought together a series of razor-sharp silhouettes designed to remain elegant in soaring city temperatures. Beyond tailoring, turn of the century gentlemen’s swimming costumes inspired a storyline of striped, deep-scoop tops and miniscule short shorts, worn with knee-high socks and mary janes. Elsewhere, slender pyjama trousers, slip dresses, and slinky camisoles saw Wooyoungmi join the cohort of designers who put their spin on sleepwear this season (alongside Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, and Kiko Kostadinov). Expressed in a mellow, balmy palette the designer described as capturing the ‘ecstasy of summer,’ it was a fitting finale to a busy menswear season in a European heatwave. OB

Hermès

Hermès’ Véronique Nichanian is proof that not all collections need complicated thematics or esoteric inspiration points. For S/S 2026, the designer – who has been at the helm of the Parisian house’s menswear line for 37 years – instead settled on ‘summer in the city’ as the mood of the breezy outing, which unfolded at Paris’ Palais d’Iéna yesterday afternoon. Fittingly, Paris is in the midst of a sweltering heatwave – temperatures are tipping the mid-30s – which made her vision of summertime ease a particularly attractive proposition, with loose-weave knits, open-toed sandals (the sole of which featured loops of rope), and lightweight shirting with tailoring lapels (a warm-weather alternative to the suit) all looking seductive in the heat of the afternoon. Most intriguing, though, were a series of pieces in open-weave leather – a clever way to bring lightness to Hermès’ signature material, allowing it to be worn in the height of summer. JM

Kiko Kostadinov

On the penultimate day of the menswear season, Kiko Kostadinov invited guests to a carpark in Paris which he had transformed into a fictional island town. ‘Somewhere small and hard to place, at a remove from the outside world,’ is how the show’s notes described this vague idyll, alongside a poetic line that subtly reworked the opening of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood to read, ‘It is a moonless summer night. Starless and inky black. You can hear the small town breathing.’

The collection that followed imagined the course of a day unfolding in this quiet place, with easy silhouettes taking after the ‘trusty sometimes unexpected things’ one puts on heading out the door on a day off. The ‘morning’ looks took after Bulgarian military pyjamas, where abstracted paisley twill scoop necks were paired with drawstring crinkled floral cotton bottoms. Afternoon time turned to spontaneous assemblage of workwear shapes in technical stretch twill, Japanese denim and striped shirting. And by night, the excitement of dressing up took over in ruched and cropped blazers, heavily pleated trousers, and K-dark cut long coats newly developed in Japan.

With the idea of replicating the soft weathered feeling of wardrobe favourites, a focus on the tactility of fabrics was evident this season, from romantic light twills and seersucker wools made with Lanificio Luigi Ricceri in Pratofor to jerseys the designer had dyed to take on the crackly effect of Yotiman pottery glazes. It was a confident display of Kostadinov’s off-kilter take on beauty – one that posed the question, if you lived in a town where no one was watching, how would you dress? What clothes might bring you closest to yourself? OB

Dior Men

The show space for Jonathan Anderson’s highly anticipated debut collection for Dior was designed to evoke the ’velvet-lined’ interiors and parquet flooring of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie museum, though here there were just two pictures on display – a duo of still-lifes by 18th-century French artist Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin (one a bunch of flowers in a Delft vase, the other a bowl of ruby red strawberries). These ‘modest yet beautiful’ paintings had metaphorical heft for Anderson: ‘at a time when art was often concerned with excess and spectacle, Chardin revered the everyday, trading grandeur for sincerity and empathy,’ read the collection notes. With his opening collection, Anderson sought a similar task – to ‘de and recode’ the house of Dior and its synonymy with affluence, formality and grandeur towards something more irreverent, ‘taking joy in the art of dressing up’.

As such, codes of formality – from frock and dress coats to the Bar jacket, alongside schoolboy jumpers, regimental neckties and waistcoats – were dishevelled and skewiff (one inspiration point was an Andy Warhol photograph of Jean Michel-Basquiat wearing a wonky tie over one side of his collar). Other garments worked the other way round – the humble cargo pant was presented supersized with a ruffled construction inspired by an archival gown by Christian Dior. Capes, elongated evening scarves and colourful cable-knit jumpers, here worn slung over the shoulder, captured a feeling of loucheness, while smatterings of embellishment had a Rococo flavour, a historical era which long fascinated Monsieur Dior. ‘

‘You have to decode and recode Dior,’ said Anderson prior to the astute debut. ‘Modernity can be found by not being scared of the past. Everything has to rebirth from itself.’ JM

Willy Chavarria

Willy Chavarria isn’t afraid to make a statement – in fact, the New York-based designer has used clothing as a tool to communicate political ideas for nearly a decade. Yesterday afternoon, at the Salle Pleyel concert hall in the east of Paris, he delivered perhaps his most impassioned message yet. The show opened with 35 men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), referencing Salvadoran prisons where people are being detained through unlawful processes. Though this marked the designer’s second collection shown in Paris, it made clear his thoughts were with communities under threat in Trump’s America. ‘With immigrant rights, trans justice, reproductive freedom, and more at risk, we're in courts and communities across the country to protect everyone's rights – we need you with us,’ read the show’s notes.

But Chavarria knows how to rouse emotion – and what followed was an exuberant celebration of his personal story. A love letter to his childhood in Huron, California (the collection’s namesake), the show presented an impressive 74 looks exploring ‘colour as rebellion‘ and the dress codes of his Chicano and Latin heritage. Working in a rich palette of chicle, papaya, bourdin blue, butter yellow, and verdant green, loose nostalgic tailored shapes made from lightweight Italian-milled fabrics honoured ‘immigrant expression and craftsmanship,’ while cinematic trench dresses and puffy satin gowns – made in collaboration with the brand’s Head of Design, Rebeca Mendoza – nodded to the cinematic wardrobes of Pedro Almodóvar and Wong Kar-wai.

In between, Chavarria’s core silhouettes – more relaxed, streetwear-coded – were paired with new supple calfskin accessories that riffed on a ‘W’ motif. Evidence of the designer's breakthrough success in recent seasons appeared in collaborations with adidas originals and luxury French shoemakers Charles Jourdan – but the show made it clear that Chavarria hasn’t lost sight of what matters most. Bravely asking what fashion’s role might be in a world of uncertainty, it was a display of subversive joy from a designer fully attuned to the urgency of now. OB

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

‘I had the feeling that we would really need to get someone powerful like a shaman to come back to lead us to peace, love and fraternity,’ said Rei Kawakubo of her latest outing for Comme des Garçons Homme Plus. Made all the more heady by the sauna-like temperatures of the concrete-walled showspace on Rue Auber, her contemporary shamans trudged the runway in enormous baker-boy caps – some with two peaks, or adorned with turban-like wraps of fabric – from which thick plaits of black hair emerged, the kind of strange apparitions that so often appear on a Comme des Garçons runway (headpieces were by Paris-based Japanese milliner Hizume, while Takeo Arai did this season’s hair and make-up). Kawakubo titled the show ‘Not suits, but suits’, seeing her re-explore the foundational garment in typical vivid ways, from the trippy, skinny-legged tailoring of the opening looks – some of which flared into waterfall-like drapes – to a series of blazers with enormous blown-up labels. Elsewhere, a series of elongated waistcoasts were constructed with pannier-like bulges – an intriguing technique of construction so often employed by Kawakubo in her womenswear collections. JM

Junya Watanabe MAN

This season, Junya Watanabe said he was interested in the idea of ‘something that is old but feels new, or something new that is born in the process of reproducing old things’. The inspiration here was self-referential: for his A/W 2004 MAN collection, Watanabe crafted tailored suits from vintage upholstery fabrics found in antique markets, and over two decades on, he wanted to create them ‘remake them anew’. Indeed, there was a striking resemblance between the tailored jackets shown on Friday morning and the handful of pictures which exist online from the A/W 2004 show, particularly (like some fashion collections, the images have largely been lost to time). In its evocation of the past, the collection had a feeling of lost beauty: antique jacquards were used once again across a series of blazers, but also patchworked trousers, which in their melange of fabrics captured the passing of time. Elsewhere, there was a grandeur to voluminous shirts with contrast bibs – some adorned with vintage silk scarves, chains, or neckties – while a series of prints of works from artists Elizabeth Peyton, Trove Jansson and Edvard Munch were yet more elements from the past put in new contexts, and reimagined anew. JM

Rick Owens

‘Temple of Love’ is the name of a new retrospective from iconoclastic American designer Rick Owens, opening this week at Paris’ Palais Galliera. Spanning the early days of creation in Hollywood, Los Angeles, all the way to the present day, working on the exhibition had got him thinking about the idea of ‘peaking, finality and decline, and I was delighted to lean into it,’ he said in a letter distributed to guests just prior to his S/S 2026 menswear show yesterday evening.

For Owens, the idea of his clothing – particularly the raw ‘glamour and sleaze’ of his earliest work – occupying the hallowed halls of a historic Paris institution, was a juxtaposition which captured a throughline of his work. ‘I have always thought of what I do as a fascination with the denseness of European aesthetic sophistication seen through a filter of American bluntness,’ he said. In the collection, this clash was best encapsulated in a hulking jacket incongruously adorned with sequins. Other garments were printed with photographs of urinals, or purposely destroyed – in its brutal majesty, it was typically Rick.

The all-standing presentation indulged the designer’s penchant for theatrics. Staged at the Palais de Tokyo, an enormous scaffold ‘Temple of Love’ had been erected in the institution’s front pool. From it, models descended into the water below, dunking themselves under its surface before wandering its edges, doused and dripping. At the end, enormous platform boots and all, they hauled themselves upwards once again – a symbolic gesture of Owens’ tenacity and staying power. JM

READ: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Dries Van Noten

After making his debut at Dries Van Noten earlier this year with an acclaimed womenswear collection, Julian Klausner – who was part of the Belgian brand’s design team before becoming creative director – chose a sparse concrete space on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine to stage his first menswear show, which was titled ‘Just a Perfect Day’ (outtakes from the Lou Reed song provided the show’s soundtrack).

‘Approaching this collection, I had in mind the Dries Van Noten wardrobe that I always loved – traditional yet daring, the different layers of dressing up,’ said Klausner, who took over from the brand’s namesake after his departure last summer. And, with the same sublime strokes of colour and print, this was a collection which cemented the designer as a worthy heir, capturing a feeling of both electricity and ease which was inspired by a photograph of Nirvana wearing the label in the 1990s.

His use of colour was most impressive – clashing tones of red and pink, wide boldly-hued stripes, a shimmering assemblage of sequins and beads – though the collection itself had a seductive summertime ease. Shorts were high and abbreviated, or cut from looser, billowing silk, while a nipped-waist – across tabard tops and tailored T-shirts, as well as the use of colourful cummerbunds – ran throughout. Sleeveless knits, sarongs, plunging polo tops and diaphanous striped shirting captured the same languid mood.

‘A man in love, on a stroll at the beach at dawn, after a party… shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, the silhouette takes on a new life,’ described Klausner in evocative style. ‘[An] attraction to spontaneous gestures. And, of course, the sound of Lou Reed – just a summer day.’ JM

Amiri

In the early 2010s, American artist Wes Lang spent months living in room 34 at Los Angeles’ infamous Chateau Marmont, where he produced a series of delicately illustrated artworks on hotel notepads. This romantic image – of an artist holed up in a hotel room, sequestered from the world and the rhythms of real life – struck a chord with designer Mike Amiri. Bringing a distinctly Los Angeles-coded idea of glamour to the centre of Paris yesterday, he invited guests into his own hotel mise-en-scène, where models appeared in looks that nodded to the 1970s playboy and the 1990s movie star. Tropical jacquard embroidery evoked hotel wallpaper and soft furnishings, while silhouettes channelled a cast of disparate Hollywood characters one might find buzzing around a lobby at 4am – spangled red carpet-esque gowns, smoking jackets, and shapes that riffed on the plush comfort of bathrobes. With roots in West Coast culture since founding in 2014, and a fixture at Paris Fashion Week Men’s since 2018, the show felt like a natural meeting point between the two cities most important to the brand. OB

IM Men

For its sophomore Paris show, IM Men – part of the Issey Miyake umbrella of brands – looked towards pioneering Japanese ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda. Achieving greatness in just two decades (he would die young, aged just 49), his expressive works inspired a collection of intriguing fabric manipulation, bold colour and sculptural silhouettes that played out at Paris’ Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain. Fabrics were made to recall the surfaces and glazes of Kamodo’s ceramics – from a lustrous metallic material inspired by Gintō (silver pottery), to circular prints informed by ‘Kaiyu’, a glaze made from plant ash – while intricate wrapped and twisted forms captured a sense of dynamism and movement. Indeed, dance was prescient (the collection was called ‘Dancing Texture’), the show beginning with playful choreography designed to look like Kamoda’s ceramics had leapt off the display case and into life. JM

Wales Bonner

‘A collector of soulful clothing,’ is how Grace Wales Bonner described her protagonist for the season, which marked ten years of her eponymous London-based label. Returning to the Paris runway after a hiatus, the designer said she had been considering the idea of ‘Superfine’ style – a reference to this year’s Met Gala theme, which celebrated Black Dandyism (for the red carpet, she dressed numerous figures, including co-chair Lewis Hamilton). Here, she translated the look into a more expansive wardrobe, drawing particular inspiration from the tenets of British dress: Oxford shirts and henleys, morning suits and ‘Jermyn Street shirting’, a pair of gloves grasped in the hand (on knitwear, she had collaborated with John Smedley, while tailoring was made with Savile Row’s Anderson and Sheppard). A collector’s eye gave looks the moments of richness and opulence that have defined Wales Bonner’s oeuvre since day one: from delicate scales of Art Deco embroidery on a tulle skirt to pearl brooches and patent dress shoes adorned with glimmering crystal buckles. For a title, she chose ‘Jewel’: ‘a celebration of ideas inherited – of influence gathered and guidance received.’ JM

Hed Mayner

What would happen if garments were emptied of their structure? How would they look? And how would they feel on the body? This is the question, and the challenge, Hed Mayner set himself this season. Shown yesterday afternoon in Paris, the designer’s S/S 2026 collection pursued a new sense of lightness, marking a departure from the bulky, architectural silhouettes for which he is best known. Air moved freely between fabric and skin in a series of loose shapes: handkerchief shorts, feather-light trousers, and fluid tailoring and shirting with the sharp angles of the shoulders removed, so that pieces floated and collapsed around the models as they walked. Elsewhere, stretch fabric blazers were pinched at the waist – accentuating the body Mayner usually conceals – while crunchy cottons, decadent florals, and ginghams evoked the faded beauty of the 1950s. A designer who has spent his career dressing men in powerful, tailored shapes, this season Mayner shed the armour of these structures in favour of something more vulnerable. ‘Something that’s been made to be soft, with confidence,’ read the show notes. OB

Lemaire

Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran have always eschewed ephemeral trends in favour of crafting a rich and expressive wardrobe built around the idea of personal style – a project continuing with a S/S 2026 collection they described as intuitive, ‘shaped by a distinct sense of personal expression’. Played out against a live performance by Valentina Magaletti and Zongamin (on drums and guitar respectively), the energetic musical accompaniment reflected a collection Lemaire and Tran said was ‘alert and worn with confidence’. Indeed, there was a dynamism to this season’s outing, which, as ever, traversed inspirations – among them work, Western and utility wear, mid-century tailoring and the classic bias cut dress – though was always in the pair’s distinct design vernacular. It was also a little sexier than recent seasons, largely through a play on transparency – for women, this meant diaphanous layers (’like smoke veils’) and deep slits, while handkerchief skirts were designed to ‘suggest scarves tied low on the hips on a hot day.’ JM

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams deals in spectacle. On Tuesday evening, just as the sun set over Paris, he laid out a 2,700 sq m snakes and ladders board in front of the Pompidou Centre to stage his latest menswear collection for Louis Vuitton. There was a floor-shaking soundtrack, performed live by Virginia-based Voices of Fire and l’Ochestre du Pont Neuf, and a roll call of celebrities – including Beyoncé and Jay-Z – which prompted frenzied screams from the crowds that gathered around the piazza’s edges. Even the pigeons dramatically took flight at the show’s start.

This season, India was a loose influence for the collection, which continued to posit Williams’ take on the global dandy – a sleek but eclectic vision of a world traveller, which largely sees the designer riff on menswear archetypes, from the suit to the working uniform. He worked with Studio Mumbai on the show’s set, and nods to the country – which Williams said has ‘always been an inspiration’ – came in paduka-style footwear, woven and tasselled trims, cricket jumpers, and the recreation of a Louis Vuitton luggage set (originally created by Marc Jacobs) for Wes Anderson’s India-set 2007 movie, The Darjeeling Limited. ‘We are a house of travel,’ said Williams, who had undertaken research trips to Mumbai, Jaipur and Delhi with his team prior to creating the collection.

In terms of silhouette, there was a satisfying languidity to the season’s tailoring – which made up the majority of the collection – with fold-front or gently flared trousers capturing a sense of ease which has occasionally felt missing in his past collections. He was also strong when playing with workwear – uniform striped shirting, polo shirts and cargo pants all had real-world appeal – while moments of superlative craft, like a hoodie constructed from tiny hand-sewn panels of mink, was a reminder of the power of the Louis Vuitton atelier, one which Williams is now harnessing to impressive effect. JM

Auralee

Sandwiched between the two high-budget headliners of the day – Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton – Auralee’s effortless S/S 2026 display felt like a breath of cool air. Staged in the serene courtyard of the National Archives Museum in the Marais, Japanese designer Ryota Iwai’s show focused less on a concept than on a particular time of year – one when flashes of warmth surprise us in the day, while the nights can still be bristlingly cold. Noting how unpredictable weather can make outfits feel ‘mismatched’ and ‘undone’ – ‘loosening us up a little’ – the collection that followed was a masterclass in Iwai’s quiet language of chic.

In practice, this sense of seasonal discombobulation played out in classically tailored, hand-sewn outerwear in autumnal tones, thrown over airy shirting, organza silk dresses, and cropped shorts in sunny hues – a nod to swimwear and beachside ease. The brand’s much-loved knitwear appeared in Japanese sunset reds and Yves Klein blues, crafted from luxurious cashmeres and wools. Accessories, meanwhile, exuded the laid-back feeling of holidays – bucket hats, drawstring bonsacs, and sleek flip-flops.

While this collection was inspired by a particular time of year, Iwai founded Auralee in 2015 with a more precise time in mind – dressing in the soft, clarifying light of morning (Auralee translates as ‘the land that lights up’). A celebration of the painstaking craft and quiet beauty that has earned the brand its cult following over these years, yesterday in Paris felt like a luminous, confident toast to a fresh decade ahead. OB

Saint Laurent

Staged in the bright light of the afternoon – a rarity for a Saint Laurent show – Anthony Vaccarello’s S/S 2026 menswear show took place in the rotunda of Bourse de Commerce – Pinault collection, around an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot currently on show at the Paris gallery. Comprising an enormous round pool on which floated hundreds of porcelain bowls, it set the stage for a collection of ‘ease’ and ‘escapism’ that centred on an imagined trip from Paris to Fire Island – ‘where escape becomes elegance, and desire becomes a language’.

Clothing channelled the setting’s daydream-like mood with abbreviated shorts, pyjama sets and colourful layers of silk and nylon meeting wide-shoulder shirts, blazers and ties for a continuance of Vaccarello’s riff on the 1980s working uniform (though here, it was rendered with new lightness). In part, the designer said that the collection was an homage to a generation of queer artists – contemporaries of Yves Saint Laurent – who escaped New York City in the 1970s and found sexual liberation and kinship among Fire Island’s dunes (the locale, off the coast of Long Island, New York, has been known for its queer community since the 1920s).

‘This collection pays tribute to a lost generation, to the artists – [Larry] Stanton, [Patrick] Angus, [Darrel] Ellis – who gave a face to silent desires,’ said Vaccarello, with gestures of concealment and exposure running through the collection. ‘[It is] inspired by a time when desire was style, when beauty served as a shield against emptiness. The collection explores this subtle sensuality, that fragile moment when one dresses as much to reveal oneself as to conceal.’ JM

Stay tuned for live coverage of Paris Fashion Week Men’s here.

You may or may not know that Snakes and Ladders has been played since the 2nd century BC, when it originated in ancient India as the game Moksha Patam. It was devised to teach Hindu morality to children, using ladders to represent virtues and snakes to represent vices. Supersizing the humble game, multi-hyphenate Pharrell Williams’ blockbuster Louis Vuitton S/S 2026 show staged a human-scale version on a colossal 2,700 sq m game board at the Centre Pompidou yesterday evening. Closing out day one of Paris Fashion Week Men’s, the display was a ladder-ascending win for Williams’ fifth season at Vuitton.

The set was brought to life by acclaimed Indian architect Bijoy Jain, whose practice Studio Mumbai is famed for its 'cosmic' large-scale projects. Blending traditional Indian craftsmanship and contemporary design, these have ranged from sensitively built residential projects rooted in nature to spiritual displays in art institutions. Last year, an exhibition at Fondation Cartier, ‘Breath of an Architect’, delved into ‘the sensuality of architecture’ and the forces ‘that connect us to the elements’.

Louis Vuitton’s Snakes and Ladders S/S 2026 show set

When it came to the Louis Vuitton set, the designer and his studio worked in their holistic method – rendering the various squares with wood, burnt pigments and weaving work in Mumbai. Assembling at vast scale in Paris, the resulting space – beheld by the fashion crowd and celebrities including Beyoncé and Jay-Z as the sun set over the city – saw five serpents weave through a clay-hued chequerboard outside of the Pompidou’s iconic piazza. ‘I am grateful and privileged to embark on this journey with Pharrell,’ said the architect of the project.

Using the game as a metaphor for life’s ‘journeys, growth, and transformation,’ the collection continued to hone the vision of contemporary dandyism which Williams has been carving out at Louis Vuitton over the past two years. This season, he looked towards India for inspiration – evoked in open-toed paduka-style footwear, woven trims and riffs on the cricket jumper – though the resulting clothing was typically eclectic, spanning plays on workwear, animal and palm tree motifs, and bejewelled surface embellishment.

With the set, it was impossible not to think of his predecessor, close friend Virgil Abloh, who brought a transportive joy rooted in boyhood imagination to Paris Fashion Week on more than one occasion – from the rainbow he trailed through the Jardin du Palais-Royal, setting the scene for his emotional debut in 2018, to his surreal cloud-strewn offering for A/W 2020, which was about the ‘gazing at the world through the optics of a child’.

The link, and indeed the collaboration with Jain, benefits Williams’ approach at the French house thus far, where he has extended the remit of Louis Vuitton beyond himself and the echo-chamber of fashion week. Last season, he teamed up with life-long friend Nigo, celebrating their decades-long friendship with a display inside a gleaming pink box in the courtyard of the Louvre. The season before that, he turned Paris’ Maison de l'UNESCO into a playground for the ‘Global Dandy’, using the display as a call for unity during a moment of international tension.

Last night, it was again about diverting Louis Vuitton’s juggernaut powers towards ideas of community and human connection. ‘I’ve admired Bijoy and his work for years, and I was honored when he agreed to collaborate on the set design for the show in Paris,’ said Williams in a statement following the show. ‘India has always inspired me. It’s where Snakes and Ladders was born, and the game felt like the perfect metaphor for life: the climbs, the falls, the lessons. This collaboration was a meeting of minds – human, intentional, and full of spirit.’

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For the third consecutive year, the Arnaud Donckele & Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton restaurant has taken up residence for the summer season at the White 1921 Saint-Tropez hotel, just a two-minute walk from the maison’s store. This refreshed edition comes with a recently awarded Michelin star, announced in the 2025 guide.

The return of Restaurant Arnaud Donckele & Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton

Michelin-starred chef Arnaud Donckele and chef pâtissier Maxime Frédéric, both originally from Normandy and long-time collaborators, present a beauteous, seasonal menu (available for lunch, tea time and dinner) influenced by myriad cultures – its main pillars being international, disruptive, and culturally inspired dishes. The concept brings Louis Vuitton’s ‘The Art of Travel’ philosophy to life through a gourmet experience.

The duo amp up light, fresh flavours from the Mediterranean and Provence with an array of international influences. Cases in point: the grilled blue lobster enriched by a shiso-infused sauce or the Wagyu beef served in a fragrant bouillon. The perfect sweet finale awaits in the form of a refreshing rhubarb Vacherin or the indulgent hazelnut meringue with lemon sorbet.

The setting, meanwhile, is colourful and breezy. Natural macramé touches paired with rattan furnishings complement tables dressed in Louis Vuitton tableware from the seasonal ‘Art de la Table’ collection. The crockery, crafted from fine Limoges porcelain, is adorned with takes on Louis Vuitton's signature Monogram Flower – similar to the designs featured throughout the 2025 Women’s Resort Collection.

From the brand's meticulously crafted, limited-edition ‘Objets Nomades’ collection – which took over Palazzo Serbelloni during Milan Design Week 2025 – mini ‘Bell Lamps’ by Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby, alongside Zanellato/Bortotto’s woven-leather ‘Lantern PM’, round up the elegantly appointed interiors.

Although Louis Vuitton’s hospitality ventures began in 2020 with the debut of a café and restaurant in Osaka, the Louis Vuitton Culinary Community was formalised later as a global network of chefs mentored by Donckele and Frédéric. ‘The Louis Vuitton Culinary Community allows us to align the Louis Vuitton hospitality offering while still encouraging the chefs to flourish according to their skills and creativity,’ shared Frédéric in a press statement.

The Arnaud Donckele & Maxime Frédéric at Louis Vuitton restaurant is located at Hotel White 1921, Trav. des Lices, 83990 Saint-Tropez, France.

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 notes of spring perfumes are markers of the season itself, with blossoming flowers, ripening fruit and green accords symbolic of new beginnings.

After the moodier, heavier scents of wintertime – rich gourmands, spicy ambers and woody ouds that linger in a colder atmosphere – spring fragrances are a welcome breath of fresh air, in keeping with the climbing temperatures and renewed sense of optimism buoyed by the sun’s rays.

Here, Wallpaper* presents our edit of the best spring perfumes of 2025, from the likes of Réservation, Perfumer H, Louis Vuitton and more.

The best spring perfumes of 2025

Today (5 March 2025) Louis Vuitton has revealed it will launch a make-up line, with Pat McGrath as its creative director. The new métier will be called La Beauté Louis Vuitton.

The British make-up artist first collaborated with the house under the tenure of Marc Jacobs (1997 to 2014) and has remained the visionary lead behind its runway beauty over the past 12 years of Nicolas Ghesquière’s reign. ‘Working backstage for over 20 years at Louis Vuitton fashion shows, I am thrilled to now play such a key role in the launch of La Beauté Louis Vuitton, which is the result of extraordinary craftsmanship, creativity and innovation,’ McGrath said in a statement.

Louis Vuitton is launching beauty with Pat McGrath

This won’t be the first time Louis Vuitton has dabbled in the cosmetics world, in a contemporary sense at least. Over 100 years ago, it produced power compacts, brushes and mirrors designed to be transported in its monogrammed leather luggage and vanity cases. Two of these pieces remain in the Louis Vuitton archives: a bespoke beauty kit and toiletry case crafted c.1925 for opera singer Marthe Chenal and composer Jan Paderewski.

Whilst Louis Vuitton’s fragrance line will remain in the hands of master perfumer Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud, McGrath, one of the most influential make-up artists working today, will blend its expansive history with her singular vision.

Alongside Ghesquière, she has devised make-up looks that speak to his avant-garde and futuristic take on the storied house codes. Notable catwalk moments include her beauty looks for shows such as S/S 2017 and A/W 2019, with angular eyeliner and airbrushed 1980s-inspired eyeshadows a signature of her work at Louis Vuitton.

‘La Beauté Louis Vuitton is a natural business evolution, driven by our meticulous attention to quality, formula and innovation,’ Petro Beccari CEO of Louis Vuitton says. ‘Through this new universe, we have the opportunity to further accompany clients in their everyday lives with purpose and pleasure, while continuing to celebrate our creativity and heritage.’

La Beauté Louis Vuitton is set to arrive in the autumn of this year, with a collection of eight eye palettes, ten lip balms and an array of lipsticks (55, to be exact).

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Louis Vuitton updated the Tambour watch case in 2023, creating a slimmer, more refined version of the capstan head shape that was the signature of the brand’s watchmaking during its first twenty years.

The changes are subtle: the curve of the 10mm high case is less pronounced and the smaller 40mm diameter body combine with a supremely well engineered bracelet to make a watch that’s as discreet as it is sophisticated – think Parmigiani’s Tonda or Chopard’s Alpine Eagle for intent but with far more contemporary feeling. Too many recent ‘sports-luxe’ watches owe too much to the template established by Gerald Genta’s design for the Royal Oak, but the Tambour turns the sporty-dressy on its head – you’d need a very stylish pool to be its backdrop.

As with the original design, the intention was always for the Tambour to be the vehicle for horological fireworks, and La Fabrique du Temps have duly delivered with two watches: the Spin-Time with its rotating cubes that highlight the hour, which is something of a signature for Louis Vuitton watchmaking, and the Tambour Convergence.

Louis Vuitton even point out that the polished rose gold front of the watch is bound to pick up what they call the 'palimpsest of subtle marks that reflects the story of its wearer'. Who else would dare?

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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.

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

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

S/S 2025 heralds a new era of fashion eclecticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fashion currently feels in a state of limbo. With a slew of creative directors taking up tenure in the coming months, menswear fashion week – which took place in Florence, Milan and Paris this January – felt somewhat subdued, with the distinct feeling that designers and houses were taking stock ahead of some seismic changes ahead (the number of debuts taking place from now until September has reached the double digits, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford). As of yesterday morning, the changes kept coming: Kim Jones is set to leave his position as creative director of Dior Men after seven years at the creative powerhouse. As for his replacement, rumours abound.

The changes also meant a more scant schedule than in recent seasons: Gucci and Fendi were off the Milan Fashion Week schedule (both will show co-ed in February), as was JW Anderson, who has shown in the city since the summer of 2022. In Paris, Loewe was notably absent, as was Dries Van Noten (the latter will show its first collection by Julian Krausner next month), while Givenchy also chose to wait until womenswear fashion month to unveil Burton’s vision for the house. There were some additions, though: buzzy American designer Willy Chavarria swapped New York for Paris, and brought some much-needed energy, while Peter Copping debuted his men’s and womenswear collections for Lanvin on Paris Fashion Week Men’s final evening.

With all that said, there was still plenty to unpack from the month-long schedule of shows, which largely continued to move away from quiet, understated luxury towards a bolder, more eclectic wardrobe – Prada, Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton, Sacai and Magliano all proposed the idea of individual style over a prescribed uniform. There was also an intriguing re-examination of eveningwear, an influence of the outdoors, and some extraordinary expressions of craft. Meanwhile faux fur became the surprising fabric du jour.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the trends and takeaways from menswear month, which concluded in Paris this past Sunday.

Men’s Fashion Month A/W 2025: the trends and takeaways

Designers continued to embrace the eclectic

After Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ paean to individual style at their S/S 2025 womenswear show in September – complete with 49 radically different looks – the pair continued to eschew thematics for a bold assemblage of elements which Simons describe as akin to an ‘unconscious’ stream of thought. As such the collection teetered between the romantic – floral motifs, washed-out plaids, shrunken knits adorned with metal charms, boyish pyjamas – and something more ‘primitive’ in faux fur hoods and tabards, cowboy boots, and suits made from patchworked pieces of leather. Mrs Prada said it was about ‘instinct, passion and romance.... which is so crucial at the moment; it’s the season of artificial intelligence, and this is our move again towards humanity.’

It was a mood which infused much of the season, whereby designers largely rejected the quiet and understated in the pursuit of bolder expressions of personal style. At Giorgio Armani, the 90-year-old designer presented a collection of ‘elegance to live in’ which he said was a rejection of a ‘pre-packaged formula’ (as such, the collection moved between typically fluid tailoring, iridescent skiwear, and a multitude of enveloping textures and surface finishes). At Sacai, Chitose Abe drew inspiration from Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, in which the protagonist travels to a magical realm of beasts and creatures; in the collection, this meant a heady mash-up of faux fur, skiwear and the tuxedo, alongside playful collaborations with Carhartt and Ugg.

Opening Paris Fashion Week Men’s, Pharrell Williams drafted fellow designer Nigo to collaborate on a Louis Vuitton collection inspired by their personal archives – from CDs and toys to varsity jackets and sneakers – which were displayed in the Louvre showspace. The collection itself had a similarly eclectic mood, an uninhibited ride through the pair’s shared obsessions, from playful Japanese motifs to souped-up riffs on workwear and uniforms. Like at Prada, it was an invitation to experiment and play.

Evening wear was re-examined

‘I think it’s time to bring back the pleasure of wearing a suit, not because you have to, but for the fun of it,’ said Véronique Nichanian at the end of her A/W 2025 show for Hermès, which culminated with louche, 1970s-inflected tailoring. Indeed, a desire for dress up – and the continuing renaissance of tailoring – ran through the season, with designers embracing (or indeed deconstructing) traditional formal wear. At Wooyoungmi, a riff on the tuxedo opened a show which saw designer Madame Woo rework menswear archetypes (the suits were sculpted at the waist, and came adorned with 3D-appliqué flowers in tailoring wool), while at Sacai, the closing look saw black blazers sliced away to reveal their lining, trimmed with faux fur, or reconstructed into flared, peplum silhouettes. Meanwhile Kim Jones, in what would be his final collection for Dior Men, looked towards the ‘graphic and angular’ tailoring of Christian Dior’s mid-century Ligne H collection, presented in the mid-1950s. It led to some extraordinary pieces: a crossover single-breasted tuxedo, nipped at the waist; a ballooning black kimono jacket, or a white blazer adorned with a single white bow along its back. They continued Jones’ assertion that clothing must be precious to warrant your attention: ‘people want something that noone else has,’ he told Wallpaper* in 2024.

Faux fur was everywhere

Occasionally, a trend emerges in such a way that you feel convinced that designers must have plotted up the idea together beforehand. This season, it was faux fur, which began in Milan with Dolce & Gabbana’s shaggy 2000s-inspired hooded jackets (the collection was tilted ‘Paparazzi’, and the collection was an ode to celebrity street style) and continued in Prada’s S/S 2025 collection, whereby Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons said animalistic slices of faux fur represented an intuitive, primitive way of dressing (after all, the desire to swaddle oneself in fur and animal hides dates back to the neanderthals). In Paris, Auralee’s faux fur jacket – worn beneath an overcoat with a baby blue collar poking out from beneath – offered a more quotidien take on the trend, while at Saint Laurent, which closed the month with a surprise show, Anthony Vaccarrello showed a series of showstopping ‘fur’ coats which were actually constructed from thousands of feathers. In a similar vein, shearling was also in abundance throughout the season – Zegna, Hermès and Sacai all used the enveloping fabric in their collections – suggesting a collective want for protection against the elements (whether adverse weather or something more existential).

Designers were ready to head outdoors

Utility and pragmatism were a throughline of the season, with a number of designers looking towards outdoor-wear for inspiration (with the churn of world news continuing across fashion month, it was unsurprising that designers sought refuge in the call of the wild). A rugged collection from Japanese label Junya Watanabe MAN, featuring a series of burly, bearded models, set the tone with a collaboration with Filson, a historic American outdoorwear brand which dates back to 1897. Citing a desire for ‘something real’, Watanabe’s signature workwear silhouettes were presented alongside plaid shirts, waxed jackets, patchworked jeans and trucker hats (the sounds of bearded American folk singer Avi Kaplan provided the soundtrack). Both Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani had whole sections of outdoor-wear (the former in gleaming iridescent skiwear, the latter in piled-up fluoro hiking gear), while at Yohji Yamamoto and IM Men (an Issey Miyake offshoot), quilted fabrics were used to enveloping effect. Most intriguing, though, was Kiko Kostadinov’s latest collection, which he said was inspired by the stark, isolated natural environments of Hungarian director Béla Tarr. In his signature queasy colour combinations, models trudged across a runway of fallen leaves, wearing riffs on fleece hiking jackets, military overcoats and swaddling ponchos, while a pair of tabi sneakers (the latest in a collaboration with Japanese sportswear brand Asics) were this season’s most covetable footwear.

High-level craft remained key

Rick Owens titled his latest collection ‘Concordians’, a reference to the industrial Italian town, close to Venice, where he produces his collections. In its austerity, he called it a kind of creative monastery, a space for him and his teams to work on ideas in total isolation (‘this cloistered life seems to be what it takes to be able to focus on reaching for something weird and wonderful,’ he said). As such, his A/W 2025 collection was an impressive demonstration of craft, from the ‘megacrust’ jeans (made from bronze foil and wax painstakingly applied onto denim), to the sweeping tops made from millefeuille layers of hand-cut rubber, or the incredible boots adorned with scale-like layers of laser-cut leather (a collaboration with Victor Clavelly). Make no mistake, despite their purposeful appearance of rawness and dishevelment – a Rick Owens signature – this craft was couture level.

Indeed, a focus on high-level craft ran throughout the season, not least at Dior, whereby his latest couture line for men (interspersed with the ready-to-wear collection) melded impressive construction with breathtaking beadwork and embellishment, like a twinkling of crystals across the shoulder of a blazer that gave the appearance of having been caught in the rain. At Louis Vuitton, there were mink intarsia hoodies replicating the house’s checkerboard motif, while at Saint Laurent, the aforementioned ‘fur’ coats were constructed from delicate fronds of feathers painstakingly hand-applied. Meanwhile at Giorgio Armani, which will celebrate 50 years in business this year, the show ended with a black velvet blazer adorned with smatterings of sparkle, evoking a night sky dotted with stars.

Paris Fashion Week Men’s marked the final stop on menswear’s A/W 2025 month-long tour, a blockbuster finale comprising shows from some of fashion’s biggest names – among them Dior and Louis Vuitton, the latter opening proceedings on Tuesday evening with Pharrell Williams’ latest collection for the house. Celebrating a ‘friendship for life’ with streetwear legend Nigo, he teamed up with the Kenzo creative director on a co-designed collection shown among a series of vitrines containing objects from their personal archives (a nod to Nigo’s legendary fashion collection, which numbers over 10,000 pieces).

Elsewhere, Rick Owens paid ode to Concordia – the industrial Italian town where he has created his garments for over two decades – and Issey Miyake’s IM Men line held its debut runway show (it replaces the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake presentation the Japanese label usually shows in Paris). And, while Loewe might be sitting this season out, a handful of new arrivals on the schedule filled the gaps: notably, Willy Chavarria shifted from New York to Paris with a show at the American Cathedral, and Jacquemus hosted a dedicated menswear show (complete with haute couture-inspired looks for women). British designer Peter Copping’s anticipated debut at Lanvin closed the week on the evening of 26 January (he showed his first men’s and womenswear collections together).

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the highlights from Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025.

Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025: the best of

Lanvin

British designer Peter Copping looked towards the figure of Jeanne Lanvin herself for his anticipated debut at the Parisian house (after roles at Louis Vuitton, Oscar de la Renta and Balenciaga, it was fair to say expectations were high). ‘This collection is deeply personal – an homage to Jeanne Lanvin’s world and her intimate sense of style,’ he said of the collection, which was fittingly titled ‘À la maison’ and presented men’s and womenswear together. ‘I sought to project the essence of her wardrobe today while imagining it on a cast of modern characters.’

Indeed, there was a distinctly 1920s inflection to Copping’s vision in robe de style silhouettes (a Lanvin signature), darkly glamourous adornments (which took their cues from Art Deco), and roomy, mannish overcoats. Other dresses were constructed from clashing panels of fabric, swathes of sequins, or the molten golden material which closed the show, while the jumpsuit became another proposition for formalwear. But while there was certainly something appealing about the collection’s opulence and eclecticism – there were a multitude of propositions on show – at times you wished Copping would hover a little longer over an idea and really drill into a silhouette.

Menswear, for now, felt a little less fleshed out, largely comprising overcoats worn over high-neck tops and worn with formal trousers ribbed at the ankle, though a 3D-knit cardigan gave a glimpse of something more intriguing. For now, it was a robust start from Copping, who has plenty of good will on his side (his runway bow took place to rousing applause). We look forward to seeing his vision for Lanvin – a house which has been sorely missed from the schedule – evolve.

Wooyoungmi

A re-consideration of eveningwear has run through the menswear season, with designers embracing (or indeed disrupting) formal tailoring in pursuit of a contemporary elegance (there have been plays at Dior, Prada, Hermès, Willy Chavarria and Acne Studios, albeit in radically different ways). At Wooyoungmi – in a kind of back-to-front manner – eveningwear looks came at the start of a show which explored the idea of sartorialism amid the opulent surroundings of 51 Rue de l’Université, one of Karl Lagerfeld’s former Paris residences. Double-breasted and narrowing to a sculpted waistline, Madame Woo’s pin-sharp proposition for the suit came adorned with 3D-appliqué flowers, a silhouette which continued into an elongated leather overcoat and a play on ther herringbone sports jacket, while similar 3D floral motifs bloomed from the neck of a striped shirt, or emerged from the neckline of a satin military jacket for women (the collection was co-ed). The designer said she had been thinking about ‘ideas of proper dressing’, seeing the remaining collection play on a series of menswear archetypes – from the shearling-collar crombie coat to parkas and crew-neck sweaters – reimagined in neat, youthful proportions. Meanwhile an element of play (Madame Woo has always derived inspiration from the eclectic street style of her native South Korea), came in quilted florals, zip-away trousers and enormous mittens which hung from the sleeves of jackets.

Sacai

Chitose Abe set her A/W 2025 menswear collection in the curving upper gallery of Palais de Tokyo, its vast walls plastered with floor-to-ceiling photographs of rolling desert dunes, to surreal effect. It provided the backdrop for a collection she described as an exploration of the ‘notion of wilderness… ideas of living in nature, untamed and unrestricted by convention’. The starting point was Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, with the author’s illustrations appearing on intarsia-knit sweaters or scrawled across T-shirts. In the book, protagonist Max imagines escaping to a land of magical beasts; here, Abe sought to evoke a similarly fantastical realm, with colourful flourishes of faux fur (a continuing trend) sprouting from the hems of a skirt or the sleeve of a blazer, while a collaboration with Ugg saw huge shaggy folds enveloping their signature footwear (a Carharrt collaboration also featured). The rest was a gloriously eclectic mish-mash which hopped between place and time – from skiwear and hiking apparel to the classic trench and tuxedo – de- and reconstructed in Abe’s signature hybrid style.

Hermès

As artistic director of the Hermès men's universe, Véronique Nichanian has proved astute at creating the type of garments you view on the runway and want to wear straight out the door. This was especially true of her A/W 2025 collection, shown at Paris’ Palais d’Iéna on Sunday afternoon, where on a particular grey and drizzly day she presented a collection of envelopment and comfort: ‘to enter a garment as you would a house, to dress with the feeling of being welcomed,’ she described via the accompanying notes. This meant a collection of cold-weather layers ‘to brave the bite of winter’, a sublime textural assemblage of alpaca, cashmere flannel, velvet, bouclé, shearling and mohair across chunky-knit sweaters with poncho hoods, coats with swaddling blanket linings, and glossy-finish parkas which looked particularly primed for the day’s conditions. Though there was a suggestion of formality, too, in a beautiful pair of velvet suits which were revealed in the collection’s closing looks – albeit in Nichanian’s insouciant style, with sharp notched lapels and wide-cut trousers recalling the louche glamour of the 1970s.

Kiko Kostadinov

The consensus after Kiko Kostadinov’s latest menswear show was that this was his best collection in some seasons, a brilliant melange of elements which despite their intrinsic strangeness nonetheless felt rooted in the reality of an everyday wardrobe (the Bulgaria-born, London-based designer is known for his off-kilter silhouettes, unexpected colour combinations and sheen of futurism, which has run through his oeuvre so far). Presented on a runway littered with dried leaves and torn-up shards of paper, Kostadinov had looked towards the work of Hungarian director Béla Tarr this season, whose haunting films often unfold in stark, isolated environments. As such, Kostadinov described the collection as ‘textured and rugged… defined by a feeling of rawness and organic assemblage,’ and there was a certain toughness to military-style jackets, funnel-neck overcoats and chunky leather boots. Though wrapped, poncho-like knits spoke to a softer feeling of envelopment, while an as-ever astute use of colour and textural motifs – much of the latter drawn from the designer’s native Bulgaria and its historic handcraft – suggested a figure finding beauty even in the extreme. ‘Tarr’s characters exist in worlds where the surroundings – the weather, objects, spaces – are constantly seeping in, accumulating, installing themselves within an individual’s very being and the fabric of their clothes,’ said Kostadinov via the collection notes.

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

Despite the churn of world news which has backdropped this edition of Men’s Fashion Week, surprisingly few designers have engaged a political stance this season. At Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, Rei Kawakubo would prove an exception. In surprisingly direct style – typically, her brief, one-sentence collection notes are more esoteric, and open to interpretation – she titled her A/W 2025 menswear collection ‘To Hell With War’. Set to a melancholic trio of songs by Nina Simone – Lilac Wine, Four Women and Wild is the Wind – she described it as a ‘breaking down [of] army symbols such as uniform shapes, colour, camouflage, patterns [and] helmets’. As such, helmets sprouted with flowers or were wrapped in opulent, turban-like satin wraps; military jackets were stretched into strange proportions, or deconstructed and torn apart; while heavy army boots had their toes cut and turned upwards. Other military attire was boldly recoloured into childlike hues. It felt tentatively hopeful: an army of rebels breaking away from stricture and convention, towards utopia. Or did the flowers represent a memorial? As ever, Kawakubo gave no more explanation.

Dior

In his over-half-decade as artistic director of Dior’s menswear line, British designer Kim Jones has proved adept at translating the house’s venerable archive into clothing for the present day – or, in his words, for ‘now’. This can be complex: Christian Dior worked only in womenswear, and in the medium of haute couture, though Jones has found a throughline in the way the couturier often drew from men’s tailoring and its fabrics (since early in his tenure, he has created versions of the nipped-waist Bar Jacket in new proportions for men). For his latest show, which was presented on a stark white staircase in a specially constructed showspace in the grounds of Paris’ École Militaire, Jones said he wanted to get back to the ‘quintessence’ of Dior, drawing inspiration from the ‘graphic and angular’ lines of the house’s Ligne H collection, presented in the mid-1950s.

It made for a show of renewed clarity from the designer, which shifted between periods and silhouettes – from the opulent abundance of an opera coat to the sharp, carved line of the tailoring – in what he described as ‘an encounter of extravagance and simplicity, of yesterday and today’. Looks from his second dedicated couture collection for men were interspersed throughout (including some truly extraordinary embroidered pieces), while the bow became a motif, hanging from the back or sleeve of a jacket, and referenced in the twisting knots of fabric on the shoes. One inspiration was the figure of ‘ladies man’ Casanova in the shifts between masculine and feminine, and the air of 18th-century opulence (he was also conjured in the blindfold-like silk scarves which wrapped around models' faces).

‘There is a sense of fashion history, particularly the history of menswear, running through this collection – the shift from something quite ornate and extravagant in the 18th century to something more linear and utilitarian in the 19th, with the beginnings of modern menswear,’ said Jones, who later that evening would receive the French Legion of Honour, the country’s highest civilian decoration (the equivalent to a British knighthood). ‘Yet, while a lot refers to the history of fashion, this is not historical fashion. Ultimately, in this collection, we wanted to say something about now.’

Junya Watanabe MAN

Junya Watanabe MAN has long taken cues from traditional workwear, with intriguing interpretations of the chore jacket, carpenter pant, and denim jeans among the Japanese designer’s signatures. For his latest show, he continued an exploration of archetypes with a more rugged iteration of the Junya Watanabe man, collaborating with historic Seattle-based outdoor brand, Filson, which was founded in 1897. Noting a desire for ‘something real’, the collection – which centred around reinterpretations of Filson’s Mackinaw Cruiser jacket – was presented on a cast of burly, bearded men, with plaid shirts, waxed jackets, patchworked jeans and trucker hats all riffed on in the down-to-earth collection. And, while there was certainly a masculine directness to the show’s vision – which also featured collaborations with Levi’s and New Balance – elements of strangeness, like the incongruous office shirts and ties which sat beneath the rugged outer layers, were true to Watanabe’s avant-garde roots.

Rick Owens

There was a sense of optimism to Rick Owens’ latest outing, held in one of Palais de Tokyo’s vast gallery wings that is currently between installations (as such, the raw concrete and building detritus provided a suitable backdrop for Owens’ brutalist approach). Soundtracked by David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ – the musician’s soaring tale of lovers across the Berlin Wall, here played in various languages – there was an uplifting energy to the collection, which was an ode of sorts to Concordia, an industrial town in Italy where Owens has produced his collections for the past two decades. From staying in ‘serial killer hotels’ in those early years to sleeping on couches in his office, and later purchasing an apartment in the town, the designer said he was thinking about how Concordia has come to represent something of a creative monastery.

‘Me and my team all travel from our respective glittering cities to live here in a kind of studious isolation, almost bleakness,’ he said. ‘This cloistered life seems to be what it takes to be able to focus on reaching for something weird and wonderful.’ This season, that meant a series of extraordinary boots constructed from slices of laser-cut leather reminiscent of feathers or scales (a technique undertaken in collaboration with Victor Clavelly and appearing also on skirts), ‘megacrust’ jeans (bronze foil and wax layered onto denim) and sculptural garments made from millefeuille layers of rubber. ‘I want to depend on less things but make them as supernatural as possible,’ he concluded.

IM Men

The trio of designers behind Issey Miyake’s IM Men, which made its debut in Paris this season, said their latest collection began with a look backwards to ‘Fly with Issey Miyake’, a seminal show that the Japanese house’s namesake held in Tokyo and Kyoto in 1977. For Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi – who helped found the offshoot in 2021 alongside the late Issey Miyake himself – the show is ‘legendary’, capturing the designer’s longtime fabric-first philosophy of ‘a piece of cloth’ with billowing, parachute-like silhouettes. As such, for A/W 2025, the designers thought about a piece of material floating through the air; in the collection this was formulated in garments that were layered and draped around the body, moving from shades of white to a kaleidoscopic collage of green, purple and yellow. Several of the garments were made, in the brand’s typically innovative style, from a single square of fabric, a fact demonstrated at the show’s close, where models undid garments until they were a square of material, brandishing them like flags and darting around the runway. ‘We wanted to go back to the beginning, to go back to something simple and beautiful,’ Kawahara told Wallpaper*. ‘I visualised a piece of cloth, flying away.’

READ: Inside the kaleidoscopic debut of Issey Miyake’s IM Men in Paris

Paul Smith

Last summer, as part of Pitti Uomo in Florence, Paul Smith hosted an intimate presentation which saw the designer talk through the looks in place of a runway show. ‘I think the world’s gone a bit mad with these shows everywhere around the world,’ he said at the time. ‘I think it’s so lacking in personality. So I thought, why don’t I just talk to everyone and show the collection?’ It worked: Smith is a natural raconteur, and to hear him talk about clothing – the cut of a lapel, the origin of a fabric, the history of a silhouette – is a pleasure.

Which is why, on Tuesday afternoon in Paris, he chose to continue the format, inviting guests into his Rue des Archives offices to talk them through his A/W 2025 collection (on the ground floor, the same ‘Bar Paul’ from Florence had been erected, serving coffee to the gathered guests). This season, he was thinking about photography: holding up a camera he had been gifted by his father, Harold B Smith, as a child, he credited the medium with teaching him to ‘look and see’. Though it was his father’s photography which provided the nexus of the collection, a series of his images of flowers appearing as prints on shirts and ties (the original photographs appeared in books left on each attendee’s seat). Even the presentation space was entered through a recreation of his father’s dark room.

Smith also looked towards the uniform of British photographer and friend David Bailey – who had spoken at his father’s camera club in the 1960s in Nottinghamshire – with military-inspired jackets and plays on the type of heritage fabrics worn in the era, including houndstooth and ‘thornproof’ tweed (named for its double-weave strength). He also revealed an upcoming collaboration with Barbour, which, in typical Smith style, saw the famous wax jacket’s linings adorned with prints of cows, while colourful hoods could be mixed and matched. They felt befitting to his particular – and much beloved – brand of British eccentricity, on full display here. ‘Now it’s time for the photo op,’ he joked at the show’s end, posing on stage with his cast of models, much to the gathered crowd’s delight.

Lemaire

Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran are steadfast in the evolutionary nature of the Lemaire wardrobe, meaning that its runway shows – held in the intimate surroundings of the pair’s serene Place des Vosges offices and atelier – do not always feel revelatory in terms of thematics or trends. This is not a bad thing: having built a $100-million-dollar business, their sensitively constructed collections capture a more pragmatic beauty, which is rooted in everyday style. This season, they said they were thinking about ‘real characters… their individuality, desires and sartorial needs’, demonstrated here through the kind of subtle but unexpected gestures which have become Lemaire’s signature: a headscarf crafted from leather not silk, magnifying glass-shaped jewellery created in collaboration with modernist artisan Carl Auböck, the matching red of a skirt, shoes and hosiery, all worn together. Dance was one inspiration: the pair imagined a dancer throwing a coat over soft cotton vests and tights after a rehearsal (suspender details were also a nod to dancewear). Fabrication, as ever, was key: several of the looks were monochrome, though in a multitude of layers and textures, from soft washed-out and satin-finish cotton to the sheen of leather. They looked a pleasure to wear.

Louis Vuitton

‘The artistic manifestation of a friendship for life,’ described Pharrell Williams of his latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection, which saw the multi-hyphenate designer collaborate with Tokyo streetwear legend Nigo, the founder of A Bathing Ape and current creative director of Kenzo. Since meeting in the early 2000s, the pair have shared a ‘creative synergy’ – they would create Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream in 2003 – celebrated in the Louvre showspace, which featured a number of vitrines containing pieces from each of their personal archives (from rails of clothing to CDs, sneakers, tapes, trunks and luggage).

Indeed, the eclectic, freewheeling collection felt like a journey through the pair’s fixations, taking workwear silhouettes – carpenter pants, denim, bomber jackets and blousons – and elevating them through fabric and embellishment, whether crystal adornment or camouflage damier leather (though there was also strong tailoring, too, the silhouette comprising a boxy blazer worn with gently flared trousers which puddled at the ankle). More playful elements – like a lobster-shaped handbag or a pink ‘cherry blossom’ damier check – reflected both designers’ love of Japanese street culture.

The finale saw the pair taking a shared bow, while post-show guests mingled to take in some of the extraordinary objects on display, a minuscule slice of Nigo’s legendary archive, which numbers 10,000 pieces of workwear, streetwear and ephemera. ‘[It’s] a conversation between the past and future,’ Williams described. ‘[A] gaze into the future through the telescope of history.’

READ: Pharrell Williams’ latest Louis Vuitton show celebrates a ‘friendship for life’ with streetwear legend Nigo

Auralee

A quiet confidence exudes from Ryota Iwai’s Auralee, reflected in a growing buzz around the Tokyo-based label, which, despite having been in business for ten years, is only now gaining prominence outside of its native Japan (it is a favourite among many fashion insiders). For A/W 2025, Iwai continued his exploration of the everyday wardrobe, enlivening its components through intriguing fabrications and unexpected colour combinations. There was an enveloping faux-fur jacket worn with a perfect blue shirt collar poking out from beneath, fuzzy mittens which hung around the neck, a pair of carpenter pants gently splashed with paint, colourful striped knitwear, and charming shrunken hoodies and cardigans – our wish list went on.

‘I drew inspiration from a friend whose effortless individuality struck me. Whether dressed in an elegant suit one day or their old worn-out T-shirt the next, they always exuded a sense of unapologetic authenticity,’ Iwai explained of the collection’s starting point. ‘It’s about the relationship between personal artefacts and the modern wardrobe: an old leather jacket from [your] younger days, a knit cardigan, now too small, that still offers comfort and reassurance. [With this collection] we aim to honour these keepsakes and mementoes... A place where your old favourite T-shirt carries the same significance as a luxurious cashmere coat.’

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025.

In 2022, Tokyo streetwear designer and founder of A Bathing Ape, Nigo, invited a handful of his musician friends to collaborate on an album. With features from A$AP Rocky, Pusha T, Kid Cudi and Tyler the Creator, it was playfully titled ‘I Know Nigo’ for the way that rap and hip-hop stars would boast that they knew the designer, who with the 1993-founded BAPE (as A Bathing Ape is shortened) would change the way that we view and consume streetwear. Early collections would number just 50 or so pieces, with the same amount given away to proto-influencers to generate ‘hype’; soon, there were hours-long lines outside BAPE’s doors. The low-supply, high-demand recipe has been much replicated, spawning hype culture as we know it today.

Though it was Nigo’s friendship with the American musician and producer Pharrell Williams that would prove most formative – out of all those names, he really knows Nigo. Meeting in the early 2000s through ‘Jacob the Jeweller’, Williams would remember his first visit to his studio on a Beats 1 podcast: ‘I’d never seen anything like [it in my life]’. Later, in 2013, the duo would start Billionaire Boys Club, and Nigo would prove significant to Williams’ own eclectic sense of style, which remains highly influenced by Japanese street culture. In the past few years, they have taken on the Paris establishment together as creative directors of two of the city’s largest houses: Louis Vuitton menswear for Williams, and Kenzo for Nigo.

This evening in Paris, for his latest Louis Vuitton menswear show (part of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025), Williams drafted Nigo as a co-designer of the collection, which celebrated the idea of friendship and creative exchange – ‘the cross-pollination between the house and the two collaborators,’ as he described via the extensive collection notes. ‘An artistic manifestation of a friendship.’ Staged in a gleaming box erected in the courtyard of the Louvre museum – its damier-check surface reminiscent of an enormous Louis Vuitton trunk – the in-the-round showspace was populated with vitrines, like those found in the house’s archive. At the end of the show, their frosted glass cleared to reveal objects from their personal collections – an amalgam of sneakers, playing cards, CDs, tapes, rails of clothing, trunks and luggage – alongside rare pieces owned by the house and its collectors.

The set, which was created by Masamichi Katayama’s design agency Wonderwall, was titled ‘An Archive of LVers’ and seemed to speak to the central thread which ran through the collection – the idea of collecting objects through a lifetime, and the influence that your relationships have on the things that you buy (Nigo’s own archive – comprising vintage workwear, streetwear and ephemera – spans over 10,000 objects). It lent the collection a feeling of eclectism and free expression, whereby silhouettes largely rooted in workwear – carpenter pants, denim jeans and bomber jackets all featured prominently – were enlivened with pattern and embellishment, whether scatterings of crystal, plays on the damier check, or Japanese motifs. More idiosyncratic accessories featured a lobster-shaped handbag, and trunks decorated with prints of Williams’ and Nigo’s profiles wheeled around the runway by T-shirt-clad models (playfully, these were called the ‘Damier Phriendship’ trunks).

Williams described the look as a kind of contemporary ‘dandy’, a word he has used previously to define his vision for Louis Vuitton. It is a word he relates to the street: one cap read both ‘Shibuya’ and ‘Paris’, a reference to the bustling neon-lit district of Tokyo which has long housed the city’s subcultures. Williams says he wants to ‘lionise’ streetwear: the vitrines were a statement that alongside the century-and-a-half of objects inside the Louis Vuitton archive, a house that made luggage for emperors, these pieces are just as worthy of preservation. And what better curators for a library of street culture than them? ‘[It’s] a conversation between the past and future,’ Williams described. ‘[A] gaze into the future through the telescope of history.’

louisvuitton.com

LVMH's Watch Week has become something of an institution, with the group’s stable of brands combining to own the airwaves, ahead of shows such as Geneva’s Watches and Wonders (where most of the brands still take part). It’s also an opportunity to get a first sight of the watch trends that will dominate the year ahead (check back to LVMH Watch Week 2024).

Last year was a tough year for the industry as a whole, thanks to the usual array of geo-economic headwinds not to mention the tail end of the Covid hangover. That said, LVMH has reasons to be cheerful as brands all had positive developments to report. Keep an eye on this frequently updated guide for all the news from LVMH Watch Week 2025, kicking off 21 January in New York (moved from Los Angeles due to the LA fires) and with a European leg in Paris.

LVMH Watch Week 2025

Tag Heuer

Clearly, the biggest news for 2025 is TAG Heuer’s new status as Official Timekeeper for F1. The watchmaker is nothing if not a motorsport brand, and with the new status comes a new Formula 1 Chronograph collection. Designed to capture the spirit of extreme engineering that the cars represent, the Formula 1 chronographs feature titanium cases, aluminium and forged carbon bezels, hands and hour markers coated in NAC ceramic. In a suitably 80’s manner, the black dials and cases are contrasted with pops of bright colour not just on the dial but on the crown and edges of the straps.

See Tag Heuer's new collections at LVMH watch week

Zenith

One of the more surprising launches of Watch Week is Zenith’s Chronomaster Sport Rainbow in white gold. It brings together one of Zenith’s most enduring legacy designs and the name of one of the brand’s most sought-after watches but whereas the 1997 Rainbow was almost purely monochrome (bar three sectors on the minute counter), the 2025 watch is set with 50 baguette-cut diamonds, spinels and sapphires that create a rainbow spectrum around the dial and on the hour markers.

Tiffany & Co

This year sees the most comprehensive watch collection from Tiffany & Co since the 2021 acquisition, with the most characteristically Tiffany design being the Jean Schlumberger inspired piece. Derived from a 1959 design, the watch dial features a rotating ring decorated with a cross-stitch motif in 18k yellow gold and is set with 707 diamonds totalling more than 6.5 carats. Heritage and modernity unite in the piece, with the cross-stitch motif inspired by Schlumberger's origins from a family of Alsatian textile manufacturers.

Bulgari

2025 is the Year of the Snake, so no real surprise that Bulgari lead off with an update for the Serpenti, the mid-Century design that’s most distinctively Bulgari. For the first time, the Serpenti gets an automatic movement designed specifically for the case shape and is released in both Sedutorri (where the case is integrated with a serpent scaled bracelet) and Tubogas (the open ended, double-wrap bracelet) forms. “More than an icon: a signature” says Fabrizio Bounamassa Stigliani, Bulgari’s Executive Director of Watch Design. If Cleopatra wore a watch ..

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton’s redefined Tambour case meets the brand’s unique Spin Time complication in the Tambour Taiko. Inspired by the old mechanical displays used at airports and train stations, the Spin Time was the first movement designed for Louis Vuitton’s La Fabrique du Temps and, for the first time, sits on top of Louis Vuitton in-house movements, including a world timer and a central tourbillon.

Hublot

Hublot’s cascade of launches starts with a Big Bang Tourbillon cased in emerald-green Saxem, a sapphire like material that’s enhanced with rare thulium and holmium, that give it an enhanced brilliance. There is also the return of the Meca-10 in a more compact 42mm case in the typically Hublot material mix of King Gold, Titanium and Frosted Carbon. Inspired by Meccano-type construction systems, the MECA-10 is an exercise in creative micromechanical design.

See all of Hublot's new collections at LVMH Watch Week 2025

‘A monumental marriage between art and business,’ is how the designer Marc Jacobs, then the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear line, would describe the collaboration between the behemoth of Parisian luxury and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Debuting as part of Jacobs’ S/S 2003 collection for the house, Murakami’s multi-coloured reimagining of the Louis Vuitton monogrammed handbag – most memorably on white canvas – would become the it-bag for the it-girls du jour (and has had something of a renaissance in recent years on resale sites due to fashion’s fascination with all things 2000s).

A slew of Murakami collabs would follow – his playful cherry and flower motifs would appear across the house’s leather goods throughout the 2000s – running until 2015, a year after Jacobs exited the label, replaced by current artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. The influence of the partnership was immense: not only did it rack up hundreds of thousands of handbag sales for Louis Vuitton, it would also spawn the phenomenon of the art-fashion collaboration, one which shows no signs of abating today (at Louis Vuitton alone, since 2003 the house has collaborated with Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, Marc Newson and Jeff Koons, among others).

Inside the Louis Vuitton x Murakami London-pop up

Late in December, Louis Vuitton announced that it would be reinvigorating its collaboration with Murakami with a ‘re-edition’ collection which will be revealed in chapters throughout 2025 (a splashy ad campaign, featuring house muse Zendaya, accompanied the news). Something of a greatest hits, ‘Chapter 1’ will celebrate the ‘Monogram Multicolore’ – Murakami’s original motif for the house – seeing numerous versions of the house’s ‘City Bag’, ‘Malle Wardrobe’ trunks, caps, silk carré scarves, belts and even skateboards adorned in the print, which is made up of 33 different colours. Meanwhile the ‘Supersoft Panda’, a typically Murakami-esque rendering of the animal, appears on necklaces and bag charms. ‘Chapter 2’ will launch in March 2025 with Murakami’s ‘Cherry Blossom’ pattern appearing across a similarly extensive product list.

To celebrate the launch, Louis Vuitton has inaugurated a number of colourful pop-ups in world cities; in London, a new two-storey space opens today (9 January 2025) on Brewer Street Soho. It promises a colourful immersion into the Louis Vuitton x Murakami universe, from fluffy flower cushions and tables adorned with ‘Monogram Multicolore’, to futuristic, chamber-like ‘modules’ filled with pieces from the collection (a note should also given to the staff uniform, a kind of space-age kimono pyjama with an LV pin at the chest). Archival pieces are also on display in the store, which Louis Vuitton says takes design cues from traditional modular Tokyo hotels.

Though arguably the Soho space’s biggest draw is the one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton x Murakami café on the upper floor, housed in a ‘dedicated sphere module’, where cakes, pastries and drinks will be served from Murakami-branded cups or napkins (it will be the only such café in Europe). Meanwhile a vending machine, which can be played after shoppers purchase something from the collection and receive a special token, sees various Louis Vuitton x Murakami novelties, from stickers to trading cards, encased in plastic spheres ready to be won by the already-queueing aficionados.

Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-up is open now at 39 Brewer Street, London, W1F 9UD. Until 9 February 2025.

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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.

A new project from Louis Vuitton hones in on the house’s emblematic monogram canvas – in particular, the repeating floral motif which accompanies the signature ‘LV’.

Reinterpreted by five artists, the flower – imagined in a series of vivid illustrations – becomes the centrepiece of a colourful series of ‘carré’ scarves, part of a continuing project to use the silk square as an artistic canvas which began in the 1980s (then, the collection was titled ‘The Silk Road’). Here, each scarf is made and printed in the historic mills of Como, Italy in a meticulous process using several layers of colour to recreate the intricate designs.

Louis Vuitton’s colourful ‘LV Art Silk Squares’

This time, the roster includes a vibrant line-up of artists which comprises pixel-art collective eBoy, artist-publisher duo Icinori, graphic novelist Nicolas de Crécy, comic artist Thomas Ott and illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti.

The latter, who hails from Italy, brings his vivid, dreamlike vision to the carré, which features an iris drawn from a design he discovered on an Art Nouveau stained-glass window in the house’s historic atelier in Asnières, north-west of Paris. With it, he weaves a line between past and present – a central tenet of Louis Vuitton, which has long revelled in its rich, near-two-century-old history.

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

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If ever there was a time to hone your working uniform it is the autumn, a season which, after the hot and heady rush of summer, marks the moment to pack up your holiday wardrobe and embrace the strangely seductive pull of officewear – a mood of grown-up polish that draws you back to your desk and the routine of the nine-to-five.

This needn’t suggest tedium: the A/W 2024 collections offer an altogether twisted view of city dressing, seeing futuristic and sculptural silhouettes meet unexpected flourishes of texture in a corporate palette of navy, grey and black. Alongside, riffs on the classic overcoat: like Acne Studios’ version in moulded leather, which creative director Jonny Johansson likened to Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo’s enormous rubber armchairs that were dotted around the runway when the collection was revealed in Paris earlier this year. ‘[It’s] rooted in toughness and human form, leather and denim,’ Johansson says of the full-throttle collection.

A/W 2024’s twisted officewear

Victoria Beckham describes her A/W 2024 collection as taking the silhouettes at the core of her brand and ‘abstracting’ them, often deconstructing them to their essence and rebuilding them into new propositions. This includes office-style tailoring, whereby blazers are redesigned to hang on the front of the body, leaving the back exposed, as one might hold a garment to the body before trying on an outfit. At Sportmax, the wide, notched lapels of a tuxedo are combined with a classic elongated grey coat for statement-making outerwear that need not be removed when you step inside the office.

Meanwhile at JW Anderson and Louis Vuitton, the idea of a sculpted waist is explored in different ways by Jonathan Anderson and Nicolas Ghesquière, two designers who defined the A/W 2024 season with imaginative and intriguing collections. At JW Anderson, a grey sweater has a darted waist for a pinched silhouette recalling tailoring or dressmaking, while at Louis Vuitton, a sculptural jacket comes with the kind of sharp, futuristic line which has defined Ghesquière’s postmodern approach during his ten-year tenure at the house (the A/W 2024 collection was a celebration of the past decade, seeing the French designer revive his archive anew).

In the heart of London’s Square Mile – the financial epicentre of the city – photographer Sasha Marro and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture A/W 2024’s new working uniform as part of the October 2024 Guest Editors’ issue of Wallpaper*, which is on international newsstands now.

Model: Julia Rambukkana at The Milk Collective. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Chloe Frieda using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at St Luke using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale Le Sérum. Photography assistants: Fred Barlet, Pablo Gallegos. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Nathan Fox. Production assistants: Minna Vauhkonen, Ady Huq, Archie Thomson. Retouching: IPP Studio.

This article appears in the October 2024 Guest Editors’ Issue of Wallpaper* available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The S/S 2025 shows offered a typically transporting array of runway sets and show spaces, which spanned the romantic, the playful and the surreal, alongside the downright cinematic. Like Anthony Vaccarrello’s opulent, monolithic set for Saint Laurent – an enormous gilded circle that hovered over a circular blue runway – made all the dramatic by rain pouring through its open-to-the-elements ceiling.

Other brands drafted artists to create installations to backdrop their shows: there was Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s ‘messy, complicated’ domestic scene for Acne Studios, or Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work, ‘Bays’, for Daniel Lee’s latest Burberry show in London. Meanwhile, perhaps the most Instagram-friendly moment of the month came at Bottega Veneta, where Matthieu Blazy created a menagerie of leather beanbag animals inspired by a scene from E.T. (read on for the full story).

Here, selected by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, are the most breathtaking runway sets fashion month – a celebration of the architecture of fashion.

The best runway sets of S/S 2025

Artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted living room for Acne Studios

‘The idea for this collection started from a twisted domestic scenery. I asked myself whether classic domestic codes could actually be translated into fashion,’ explained Jonny Johansson of his surreal S/S 2025 Acne Studios collection, which reimagined home furnishings – from curtain ties to wax tablecloths – as clothing. Backdropping the show was a ‘complicated and messy’ domestic scene by Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase, comprising soft sculptures of lamps, radios and cats, alongside recycled furniture from Leboncoin scrawled with his playful motifs. Evoking a twisted living room, the artist told Wallpaper* that the installation was a musing on ‘emotions and the body, and how they affect the space around you’. Read more.

Bottega Veneta’s menagerie of bean-bag animals

‘I was interested in the power of “wow”,’ said Matthieu Blazy of his latest collection for Bottega Veneta, which was inspired by a sense of childhood wonder, 'the joy of looking, discovering and dressing’. It was a mood reflected in the show space, a menagerie of leather beanbag chairs for guests to sit on – a reference, the designer said, to the scene in E.T. when the titular extraterrestrial hides amid a pile of soft toys in Elliott’s closet. Spanning killer whales, bunnies and foxes, the beanbag design was inspired by Zanotta’s ‘Sacco’ easy chair, with Blazy working with the Italian design company on the unique project. Read more.

Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work for Burberry

At London’s National Theatre, Daniel Lee looked towards artist Gary Hume – best known for being a part of the YBA movement, and currently showing at Sprüth Magers in London – to create the runway set for his latest Burberry collection, inspired by the artist’s 1990 work ‘Bays’. Originally staged as part of the notorious East Country Yard Show, the work comprises a series of lorry tarpaulins, hung like curtains and slashed to recall doorways and windows. Over three decades on, they were reimagined in medical green, lining the lobby of the brutalist theatre, which was partly chosen for the way it recalls the original concrete industrial space of the 1990 show. ‘I hadn’t touched the pieces in a long time, and so when Daniel asked me if I could participate in his show, I said yes,’ Hume told Wallpaper*. ‘There was a real bond of being two creative people.’ Read more.

Balenciaga’s dining-table runway, inspired by Demna’s childhood

Demna said that this season began with reminiscences of holding fashion shows on his grandmother’s kitchen table in Georgia as a child. ‘My early memories of fashion start with me drawing looks on cardboard, cutting them away and making “fashion shows” on my grandmother’s kitchen table,’ he wrote in a letter to guests. ‘Thirty-five years later, this show reconnects me to the beginning of my vision. It’s a tribute to fashion which has a point of view.’ For the runway set, this scene was blown up to surreal proportions, with an enormous polished dining table – around which VIP guests sat – serving as the show’s runway.

Loewe’s ‘radically reduced’ runway set, featuring a Tracey Emin sculpture

Jonathan Anderson described his latest Loewe show as an act of ‘radical reduction’, an attempt to replicate the ‘eye going into focus’ as your eyes adjust to a darkened room. The show space, constructed in a box in the grounds of Paris’ Château de Vincennes, was similarly spare: a vast white space with a circular runway that ran around a 2007 sculpture of a metal bird on a narrow, totem-like plinth by British artist Tracey Emin. Anderson said he liked the idea of the looks circulating around the sculpture ‘like a sundial’. ‘Caught in a moment of pause, [Emin] encourages us to imagine the bird’s imminent flight, and ultimately its freedom,’ said the designer via the collection notes.

Chanel’s blown-up birdcage, marking the house’s Grand Palais return

Chanel’s S/S 2025 show marked a triumphant return to the Grand Palais, the longtime site of the house’s runway presentations after the Beaux-Arts building was renovated to host the fencing competition during the Paris Olympics. Under the enormous glass roof, the house erected a giant birdcage, complete with the house’s double-C motif interwoven into its design. At the end of the show – which drew on bird motifs, from feather trims to feather prints – the actress-singer Riley Keough was lifted upwards on a swing inside the cage, singing a version of Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ as models took their finale circuit. It was a nod towards one of Chanel’s most memorable ads: the 1991 Coco L'Esprit de Chanel campaign starring house muse Vanessa Paradis as a feathered bird in a cage (though this time, the enormous fluffy white cat was missing).

Louis Vuitton’s raised runway, constructed from hundreds of the house’s signature trunks

There was a hint of nostalgia to the runway set for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest show for Louis Vuitton, which was staged on a raised runway and lit by a ‘Louis Vuitton Paris’ neon sign, recalling the amped-up fashion shows of the 1980s and 1990s. The runway itself was crafted from what appeared to be hundreds of Louis Vuitton’s signature trunks – spanning an array of eras and styles – all stacked up and hammered together, rising from the floor of the Louvre venue as the show began.

Archer-artist Sagg Napoli creates a fantastical show set for Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest show began with the multidisciplinary Italian artist-archer Sofia Ginevra Giannì (aka Sagg Napoli) marching down the runway, bow in hand, before entering a Perspex corridor and firing shots on target. Carrying on the tradition of Chiuri collaborating with women artists, she had also designed the runway set. It saw the space in the gardens of Paris’ Musée Rodin transformed with an installation evocative of wrought-iron gates adorned with looping texts from the artist, who draws on the culture of southern Italy in her work. Meanwhile, an enormous Big Brother-style eye served as Sagg Napoli’s target – light work for the artist, who also has competed in national Italian archery competitions.

Alessandro Michele’s romantic, dust-sheet covered set for his Valentino debut

Fashion month’s most-anticipated moment took place in a judo stadium on Paris’ outer reaches, entirely transformed for the occasion by Italian design maverick Alessandro Michele, who was making his debut for Valentino after a two-year hiatus (he left his role as creative director of Gucci in 2022). Evoking what Michele deemed a 'Pavillon des Follies’ (which was also the title of the collection), the typically theatrical space saw the designer assemble a jumble of chairs, furniture and lampshades which were all covered in dust sheets, while the runway itself was made from shattered mirror, casting shards of light on the models’ faces. It provided an apt backdrop for Michele’s romantic exploration of beauty. ‘When I say beauty, I am clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,' he wrote in an introduction to the collection. ‘I rather allude to that unique capability to deeply feel and connect with something.’

Saint Laurent’s rain-soaked show space, which paid ode to Yves Saint Laurent’s Marrakech

It was a return to Saint Laurent’s Rue de Bellechasse headquarters on Paris’ Left Bank for Anthony Vaccarello’s latest womenswear show for the house, a location that he had not shown at since his debut eight years ago. The monolithic set, created by Bureau Betak, comprised an enormous gilded circle – open to the elements – under which models walked on a slick blue runway, evocative of the blue used in the Saint Laurent gardens in Marrakech. It was made all the more strking by the fact that the rain was pouring, a final cinematic flourish to the already dramatic mise-en-scène.

Gucci’s setting sun at Milan’s Triennale Milano design museum

Milan’s temple to design, the Triennale Milano museum, provided the setting for Sabato De Sarno’s latest Gucci show, following a menswear presentation in the historic space earlier this year. This time, the designer created an enormous curving runway that looped around the museum’s ground floor, where various ‘rooms’ were designed to evoke a sunset, moving from yellow to orange to Ancora red, the deep oxblood hue that has become central to De Sarno’s tenure. The idea behind the exuberant collection was to capture a moment in time, just as the sun is rising or setting: ‘a moment to seize and live to the fullest’.

Fendi’s futuristic runway set, which came with a final surprise

It was only fitting that what will be Fendi’s first collection of its centenary year (the brand turns 100 in 2025), was celebrated in theatrical style. In the centre of the vast, sound-stage-like space on the outskirts of Milan was an enormous, futuristic white box, into which models streamed after taking their loop around the square-shaped runway. It was to provide a moment of surprise: as the show ended, the box opened up, revealing a tableau of models inside. In their flapper-inspired dresses and nostalgic, crystal-adorned looks, it was a clash of past and present: ‘I wanted something romantic, something with a debt to the 1920s from the 2020s,’ said Kim Jones, artistic director of Fendi’s womenswear and couture.

For more on the latest fashion weeks, see our reports from the Paris, Milan, London and New York S/S 2025 shows.

At the heart of high jewellery collections lies a dedication to showcasing the rarest and most precious gemstones, putting them in the best possible light. For this year’s new releases, high jewellery houses zoned in on colour, eschewing traditional pastels for a generous rainbow of hues, from the muted and abstract to the brilliant and bold.

Shimmering prisms are the central focus for Hermès’ creative director of jewellery, Pierre Hardy, who continues his exploration into the brilliant refraction of coloured stones with his ‘Les Formes de la Couleur’ collection. Hardy, who studied colour theory for his art degree, is a master of illusion, conjuring up geometric plays with architectural cuts of an array of precious stones, including rubies, beryls and sapphires. The collection marks the first time in the house’s history that such a large selection of stones has been used, with semi-precious and precious stones sitting together in a wide-ranging celebration of nuanced gradients. Teasing, modern references run throughout, such as with the ‘Color Icon’ bracelet, the hypnotic patterns of the stones coyly nodding to a pixellated, digital image.

A play on storytelling also characterises Chaumet’s offering. The ‘Chaumet en Scène’ collection is divided into three inspirations, music, dance and magic, with each drawing on the house’s far-reaching links with the arts. Chaumet’s Paris HQ is at 12 Place Vendôme, which was once home to Chopin, and it was here that he was said to have begun his last work, the Mazurka Op. 68, No.4. With this in mind, the sweeping lines of the house’s graphic ‘Mélodie’ necklace reference the grids and curves of a musical composition. For Francesca Amfitheatrof, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director for watches and jewellery, historical references are united with a freedom of spirit. Her latest jewellery collection for Louis Vuitton is epitomised by elaborate ornamentation and rich design detailing, encapsulated in pieces such as the ‘Splendeur’ necklace. Technically accomplished, it can be worn three ways.

Creative freedom also characterises Tiffany & Co’s ‘Blue Book 2024’ collection, which pays tribute to the artistic legacy of French jewellery designer Jean Schlumberger, intertwining fantasy and celestial themes in a romantic mish-mash. Peacocks, shooting stars and whimsical symbols are drawn in a juxtaposition of diamond cuts and thickly drawn gold – in the ‘Flames’ ring, the medley of cuts become a diamond firework, on the point of exploding in the sky.

Traditionally-cut diamonds are the focus of a heritage bracelet by Van Cleef & Arpels. Dating from 1923, the piece is faithful to the style of the time, when a trend for ‘white jewellery’ – a mix of diamonds and platinum – reigned. The house continues to champion these vintage designs in its ‘Heritage’ collection, which unites pieces created between the 1920s-1990s. A classic diamond bracelet is typical of its time, embracing the art deco sensibilities of clean lines and geometric forms, simplifying a floral design into an elegant arabesque.

Alongside diamonds, milky-hued pearls are perennial favourites in the world of high jewellery. They are a natural choice for Tasaki, which has cemented its status as a pearl specialist since its beginnings in the 1950s, when it became experts in both farming and selling cultured pearls. It has continued to build on this reputation in various ways, including collaborations with Ritz Paris, which began in 2016 to commemorate Tasaki’s first boutique in France and the reopening of the hotel.

The design of its ‘Lumineux’ collection nods to the Ritz’s heritage with the curved silhouettes reminiscent of the hotel’s sweeping staircase, once the centrepiece for the grand balls organised by César Ritz for the crème de la crème of Parisian society.

A European flamboyance is also prevalent in the ‘Diorama & Diorigami’ collection for Dior, designed by Victoire de Castellane, who drew on toile de Jouy, the patterned cloth featuring pastoral scenes that was popular in the 18th century and a distinctive feature in Christian Dior’s aesthetic (he clad his original boutique, Colifichets, in the fabric). In de Castellane’s collection, the flora and fauna are richly interpreted in colourful precious stones. Meanwhile, at Gucci, the mazes and symmetry of a traditional Italian garden form the inspiration for its ‘Labirinti Gucci’ collection. Striking a balance between meticulous planning and wild beauty, a form of ordered chaos is reflected in the smattering of blue-hued stones and the rigorous diamond grid.

Elsewhere, natural themes take a playful turn in Cartier’s ‘Nature Sauvage’ collection. Animals appear where you least expect them: crocodiles coil around the finger, the sinuous body of a snake splits in two to caress the curve of the neck, a snow leopard picks its way across a diamond and rock crystal icecap, while a turtle rests contentedly on a lapel. We feel the call of the wild.

This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 5 September on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Soft curves, streamlined silhouettes and sleek fabrics: the A/W 2024 menswear collections were imbued with a new flamboyance, seeing classic ensembles reimagined with a sense of panache and performance.

There was Loewe, where creative director Jonathan Anderson looked towards the ‘iconography’ of Hollywood and the ‘collaged realness’ of social media with a collection adorned with theatrical flourishes. This included bows and beads alongside the delirious illustrations of Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins (‘it’s all about different types of validation… how we perceive ourselves to the outside world,’ said Anderson at the time).

At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello proposed louche, oversized tailoring and outerwear which recalled the 1980s silhouettes of American Gigolo. ‘Fluid, with an intentional slouch, an illusion of fabric turning liquid,’ said the designer. Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana’s latest menswear offering was titled ‘Sleek’: a ‘story of elegance and handmade… a sartorial essay,’ described Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of the largely black collection, which demonstrated their tailoring prowess.

Here, taken from the September 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographer Matthieu Delbreuve and fashion editor David St John James put a series of these menswear looks centre stage in a series titled ‘Quiet on Set’.

Model: Indy van Opstal at Ford Models Paris. Casting: Svea Casting. Grooming: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Sunday Riley and Sisley. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistant: Kevin Ramos. Fashion assistant: Olivia Meghan. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Production assistant: Minna Vauhkonen.

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