For this summer’s eyewear, bigger is better, it seems, as face-shielding styles dominated the collections – from Phoebe Philo’s enormous ‘Bombé’ sunglasses to Miu Miu’s colourful goggle-like frames, and the armour-like eyewear at Saint Laurent, which captured a louche, 1980s-inflected sensuality.

These enveloping, mask-like frames make for the perfect summer eyewear, repelling not only the sun, but the world at large after one of those mornings after the night before. The Georgian designer Demna, current creative director of Gucci, channelled this hedonistic mood in his debut runway show for the Italian house, evoking 2000s Hollywood starlets in his own subculture-infused style. ‘Unapologetically sexy, extravagant and daring,’ he said of the mood, seeing smudged eyeliner, body-contouring minidresses and louche tailoring accessorised with shielding black shades.

Here, the Wallpaper* style editors pick eight of the best shield sunglasses to accessorise your summer – from the ultra-oversized to the sporty and streamlined.

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

Italian fashion house Miu Miu has never limited itself to the field of fashion – of simply adorning women in pretty clothes. Through schemes like Women’s Tales (a platform for commissioning female-led short films) and various artistic collaborations, it has championed women’s empowerment and supported those expressing themselves in other fields.

And, while the house recently organised the Miu Miu Literary Club during Milan Design Week – encouraging attendees to read books and discover more about female authors – on 13 May 2026, the house arrived in Tokyo, and turned to music, to mark the reopening of its store in the city’s Ginza neighbourhood with a one-night-only jazz club.

Inside the Miu Miu Jazz Club, Tokyo

Indeed, Miu Miu has always embraced the diverse cultures of the various countries where it has a retail base. When its London store reopened in late 2025, the brand celebrated the occasion at Koko, the iconic music club in Camden that recently marked its 125th anniversary. In honouring the reopening of the Ginza store, Miu Miu paid tribute to Japan’s distinctive jazz culture.

Originating in the United States, jazz was brought to Japan as early as the 1920s by Japanese people who had travelled to America via the Pacific, and has been a part of the country's culture ever since. With the opening of Japan’s first dance halls during the same period, jazz took root in Japanese society, alongside ballroom dancing. It also spawned a distinctive local listening culture, what is known as the ‘jazz kissa’ – a café to listen to jazz.

Following the unveiling of the renewed Ginza store, which houses Miu Miu’s first VIP salon in the country – aligned with the brand's philosophy to be tailored to Japanese customers who appreciate intimate hospitality – the venue for the one-night-only jazz club was the Dance Hall Shinseiki, which opened in 1948, shortly after the Second World War. Located near Ueno, a cultural district in Tokyo where Japan’s first public art museum (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum) and art university (Tokyo University of the Arts) are still based. It is now the only remaining dance hall in Japan.

It was an apt location for the jazz club, with the evening unfolding against the backdrop of a nostalgic dance hall, where the original interior from some 80 years ago remains intact – complete with velvet stage curtains and Victoriana-style damask wall coverings. Performances included young Japanese trumpeter Reiya Terakubo and jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, the latter acclaimed worldwide. A Grammy Award winner, Uehara is a fearless artist who, at the age of 17, was invited by the late jazz pianist and composer (and legend in his field) Chick Corea to join him on stage.

Immersed in the rich and versatile melodies, it felt as if Uehara was playing in a quartet rather than solo. Incorporating elements of Latin, rock and classical music, she nonetheless encapsulated the unique character of Japanese jazz. Her performance also saw her use her body as if dancing, the smoky stage lighting only adding to the atmosphere. A revelation, the pianist transfixed even Miu Miu’s younger fans, who might not usually be drawn to jazz.

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

The best colourful outerwear to brighten spring days

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

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

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

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

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

One of the most hotly anticipated of Salone del Mobile’s host of erudite, brand-backed events will be taking place between Wednesday 22 April – Friday 24 April, 2026, in the form of the Miu Miu Literary Club. The fourth iteration of this bookish salon takes as its theme the ‘Politics of Desire’ and will invite audiences to engage in the subject through a series of conversations, lectures, and a public reading room with a curated selection of printed matter.

This is the third occasion that Miu Miu has brought the club – which draws from the tradition of literary circles and artistic collective – to Milan’s Circolo Filologico Milanese, an institution dedicated, appropriately, to language (another Miu Miu Literary Club was held in Shanghai in 2025). This spring’s event will examine its theme in part through the writing of two internationally renowned authors, Annie Ernaux and the late Ama Ata Aidoo, via conversations with contemporary writers, moderated by Lou Stoppard and Nadia Beard. The line-up of speakers includes Megan Nolan, Lea Melandri, Annabelle Hirsch, Jennifer Guerra, Wayetu Moore, Francesca Marciano, Gloria Wekker, and Elisa Cuter.

Miu Miu Literary Club at Milan Design Week 2026

The three-day event also features two lectures: Professor Olga Gorinunova, a cultural theorist working with technological cultures, media philosophy and aesthetics, will present a talk titled ‘Desire After AI’, which will examine desire’s roots before sexuality, and the ways it is being re-oriented towards abstractions produced by artificial intelligence. ‘We find ourselves in a situation when what we are supposed to desire is a logical inference, a prediction based on data,’ Gorinunova tells Wallpaper*. ‘Personalisation, recommendation systems and profiling all work on this basis. They guide us to things we supposedly want, tell us the “truth” about ourselves, but these truths are produced by computation.’

Following that, ’How do we talk about consent?’ is the title of literary non-fiction writer and psychotherapist Katherine Angel’s lecture, a continuation of issues raised in her 2021 book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. ‘Post-#MeToo, there was a vital reassertion of the importance of consent. But I felt worried about rhetoric that places a burden on women to assert themselves sexually, as a way to keep themselves safe,’ Angel details to Wallpaper*. ‘In my lecture, I talk about the messy space between “yes” and “no” that we all have to negotiate, and about the importance of thinking about pleasure, joy, discovery, curiosity – rather than thinking about consent as the only measure of sexual ethics.’

Miu Miu Literary Club has been a space for rigorous conversation around feminist issues, through a literary lens, since its inception in 2024. Previous editions of the symposium have centred on women’s education and writing as a creative medium, and the format is usually dedicated to the oeuvres of selected writers – the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Sibilla Aleramo, Alba De Céspedes, Fumiko Enchi, and Eileen Chang have all served as entry points to past events. Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and writer, poet, and former Secretary for Education in Ghana Ama Ata Aidoo will form the basis of this week’s discussions.

‘Annie Ernaux’s frank and unflinching accounts of ordinary – but momentous – experiences are so resonant and powerful, for so many readers of a wide span of generations, which I always find interesting,’ says Angel. ‘And Ama Ata Aidoo’s poems are so pithy and reverberating. Whom Do We Thank For Women’s Conferences? is wonderful – “We were / only ourselves; each alone as when we were born, and / shall be, when we died”. I mean! What a line!’

On the prescience of the theme, Gorinunova tells Wallpaper* that: ‘We need a new political vocabulary and tools to deal with this new situation. Desire is not necessarily “good”. People can find themselves in frameworks where what they desire is incompatible with who they are, and their desire can undo them.’ Angel continues, ‘I think conversations about the relationship between politics and the intimate, between culture and the complex textures of our inner worlds, are so important. I think they need to be everywhere! But of course we are all beset by the quandaries of the moment we’re in, which involves a paradoxical surplus of discourse about supremely pressing political questions, and a simultaneous failure of that discourse to have traction. In some ways, it’s easier than ever for discourse to circulate, but in other ways, change seems harder than ever.’

Miu Miu Literary Club runs until Friday 24 April, 2026. Register at miumiu.com.

‘Playful and sophisticated’ is how Miu Miu defines the miniature top-handle Wander handbag, defined by its crescent ‘croissant’ shape, which is designed to nestle neatly under the arm or be gripped in the hand. Something of a contemporary it-bag and available in an array of iterations – from candy-hued satin and tinsel-like taffeta to classic leather – the Wander is defined by its pillowy matellassé construction, the house’s signature quilting technique, which has appeared on the Miu Miu runway since the early 2000s.

Miu Miu’s ‘Wander’ is a contemporary it-bag

It captures the free-spirited femininity at the heart of the Miuccia Prada-led house, one which inspired the 2025 short film Autobiografia di una Borsetta by acclaimed British director Joanna Hogg, part of Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series. In it, a white Wander bag plays the film’s protagonist, recounting the story of its life through its series of owners – from a bourgeois teenager and a Miu Miu-clad female assassin, to a group of wandering travellers. ‘I realised I was of great value, but sensed at the same time I was worth nothing at all, unless I was useful,’ says the bag, which is voiced by Izetta Tollapi.

‘I wanted it to be funny and I wanted it to be sad. And in 23 minutes that’s quite hard,’ Hogg told Wallpaper* at the time, saying she was inspired by Miuccia Prada herself, and the idea of contradiction that runs through her work. ‘I don’t know her personally. I’ve met her a couple of times at events. But I was interested in representing what I knew, in a kind of almost spiritual sense in the film. I don’t know if you can quite unpick it as cleanly as that, but the way she is, or what I understand of how she is, is definitely in there.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miu Miu closed the final day of Paris Fashion Week with a star-studded cast of models for its A/W 2026 collection, which included Chloë Sevigny and Gillian Anderson.

The collection, titled ‘Mindful Intimacy’, evoked the 1990s in minimal tailoring and close-fitting bootcut pants, worn with zig-zag headbands and block heels – so it was no wonder Miu Miu tapped two icons of 90s style for the show.

Meet Miu Miu’s all-star cast for A/W 2026

Sevigny has been an official US brand ambassador for Miu Miu’s beauty line since 2025, and an unofficial muse for its ready-to-wear division for much longer. She opened the S/S 1996 show in a dusty blue pant-and-shirt set, hair closely cropped and jawline already the envy of the world. For its Resort 2019 collection – which riffed on the idea of ‘spontaneous’ dressing – Sevigny stepped out in another two piece, this time a leather peplum top and microshorts, styled insouciantly with a granny-ish floral blouse layered over her shoulders. Today, she was dressed in a three-button blazer over a mini-dress, both in fabric that graduated from black leather to brown shearling.

Sevigny’s past runway appearances include walking for Proenza Schouler and Mugler, and she has starred in numerous campaigns, from Saint Laurent to Ecco. However it is her eclectic personal style which has solidified her status as one of the world’s most enduring cool-girls, with its effortless mix of casual grunge and precisely chosen luxury.

Nor is Gillian Anderson a stranger to great style – known equally for daring red-carpet looks (such as the low-cut dress by Eduardo Lucero with thong exposed, for the 2001 Academy Awards), and her off-duty Y2K sunglasses and boyish baseball caps, she made her runway debut just last year, for Le Défilé L’Oréal Paris.

The casting of Anderson, 57, who closed the show in cream, appliqued shift dress, is part of a growing trend for luxury houses showing clothes on a more mature generation of stars. Miu Miu itself has featured the likes of Willem Dafoe, 70, and Richard E Grant, 68, in recent collections, and Burberry, SS Daley, Prada and Simone Rocha have found virality by sending out respected film and TV talent including Lesley Manville, 69, Jeff Goldblum, 73, Kyle MacLachlan, 67, Ian McKellen, 86, and Fiona Shaw, 67.

Other famous faces who walked the show were singer-songwriter Lauren Auder, multi-media artist Charlie Osborne, Anderson’s Sex Education co-star Lily Newmark, and models Kristen McMenamy and Gemma Ward.

Catch up on our live Paris Fashion Week coverage here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shop the story

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

Bold Texture

Above left.

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

Lucky charms

Above right.

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

The 1990s slip

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

A brand new bag

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

Pyjama dressing

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

Block colour

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

True blue

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

A new summer shoe

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

Extreme layering

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

Shirt tales

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

Standout specs

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

Vivid outerwear

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

Shop the story

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

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

Mona Fastvold has been busy. Last March, her film The Brutalist, which she co-wrote and produced, swept up three Academy Awards. Just six months later, she premiered The Testament of Ann Lee, a drama about the life of the founder of the Shaker movement, at the Venice International Film Festival to critical acclaim.

It was during her time in Venice that Fastvold began to think about clothing and the meaning it can carry – particularly, the striped Miu Miu shirtdress she wore to a press conference promoting her film. ‘It was this really intense moment – it’s the first time you’re presenting your thoughts to the world,’ Fastfold recalled. ‘I have a lot of feelings about this garment.’

What resulted was a new short film, Discipline, an intimate and surreal portrait centred around girlhood, and how we present ourselves to others. The film debuted on 12 February in Manhattan at the Village East by Angelika cinema to coincide with New York Fashion Week and is the latest instalment of Miu Miu’s ongoing series, Women’s Tales, an initiative that aims to support and promote the work of female directors. Since debuting in 2011, Miu Miu has debuted 31 short films, including projects by Dakota Fanning, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Agnès Varda and Miranda July, among others.

For Fastvold, the opportunity to work with Miu Miu was a creative boon, despite her packed schedule: ‘It felt like this wonderful gift to have a moment to just really be playful and explore some ideas, it’s something you rarely get to do,’ she said. Naturally, she tapped past and present collaborators, including The Testament of Anne Lee star Amanda Seyfried and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, to join her.

Discipline unfolds in a stately country home (the exteriors were shot in northern Italy, while the interiors are set in a Gilded Age manor in Upstate New York), a setting that evokes a boarding school. Viewers are first greeted with a tranquil morning scene, the sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves filling the air. Inside the grand, historic interiors, the camera settles on a dormitory, showing sleeping figures covered in sheets.

Rather than humans, however, you realize that the dreamers are featureless puppets, paired with masked human dancers. Quietly, these puppets, their limbs controlled and manipulated by their cloaked counterparts, awaken, pull up stockings, put on dresses (the same, in fact, that Fastvold wore during her press conference) and go through the motions of their morning school routine. They play outside, read books, eat breakfast, and attend lessons, all under the supervision of masked nuns.

‘[As a young girl], you’re constantly trying on new identities. You're trying on new dresses,’ Fastvold explained. ‘There's a separation between the core of you, who you present in the world. And I thought, wouldn't it be exciting if you played with that? There’s a puppet, the puppeteer, and then you play with that relationship in the physical space.’

Half of the film's 13-minute run time is consumed by a surreal dance lesson, where the masked actors and their inanimate puppets, strapped to their bodies, undertake an intricate, choreographed ball. One mannequin, it becomes clear, is not like all the rest — rebelling against the strict choreography by dancing joyfully by herself. One by one, the dancers collapse slowly into a pile. A human figure, depicted by Seyfried, emerges from the mound of still bodies – her pink floral frock the sole object of colour in the scene. She exits the country house, the breeze to her face and her hair flowing behind her, and is free.

The film, at intervals, is unsettling, humorous and joyful as the actors manipulate the life-size puppets. ‘I became interested in the idea of a split self - the private interior versus the version we present to the world,’ Fastvold said. ‘The dolls emerged as a way to externalise that division. They allowed me to explore how bodies are taught, trained and rehearsed before identity fully arrives.’

‘With Miu Miu and the Women’s Tales framework, I was able to work intuitively and abstractly,' she continued. 'The format allowed me to create something quite playful, to explore something new with my film family. It was great.’

Watch the full film below.

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

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

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

Acne Studios, Tokyo

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

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

Miu Miu, London 

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

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

Longchamp, New York

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

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

Extreme Cashmere, Amsterdam

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

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

Dries Van Noten, London

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

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

JW Anderson, London

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

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

Saint Laurent, Paris

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

Stone Island, New York

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

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

Loewe, Paris

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

Dior, Shanghai

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

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

‘Alexander McQueen was all about the waistline,’ said Irish creative director Seán McGirr following his A/W 2025 collection for McQueen, which carved out the waist in dramatic fashion. It would be a trend that ran through the season: architectural tailoring was nipped at the waist or narrowed with wide-leather belts, suggesting not constriction but a new power silhouette (as such, it was often teamed with a wide shoulder, superhero-style). At Sarah Burton’s Givenchy debut, jackets were meticulously sculpted at the waistline (‘to cut, shape and proportion. It’s what I feel, how I work, and want to do,’ she said), while Kim Jones’ swansong at Dior Men looked towards the pinched-waist Bar Jacket for inspiration.

In keeping with this mood, the belt became the accessory of the season, with iterations at Prada, Jil Sander, Saint Laurent, Brioni and Sacai worn to reshape the body – whether over gowns or blazers, or cinching the waist of an overcoat. But the statement belt has been bubbling under for some time: at Miu Miu’s S/S 2025 show, looping and stacked-up chain belts were akin to strings of jewellery, while other designers – from Hodakova to August Barron and Craig Green – have created iterations that are studded, charm-adorned, painted with florals or furry to the touch. As such, they provide the perfect flourish to an otherwise simple outfit, channelling an au courant desire to adorn ourselves and our accessories (see: the unstoppable rise of the bag charm).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are ten statement-making belts to add drama to any outfit.

Emma Corrin is effortlessly dressed in Miu Miu: a green knitted cotton polo over a poplin shirt, washed blue jeans, tortoiseshell ‘Miu Regard’ glasses, and a pair of socks (without shoes). The actor has made themselves at home for the afternoon, sitting cross-legged on a carved oak and velvet-upholstered chair in the corner of the University Women’s Club in Mayfair. It’s mid May, and one of the first sweltering, cloudless days of the year so far. ‘Miutine makes me think of this,’ Corrin says, gesturing through the shaded room towards the balmy city outside. ‘When it’s just turning from spring to summer. You feel all the pollen and the blossom and everything in the air. It’s like you’re walking through scent.’

Discover Miutine the new fragrance by Miu Miu

Miutine is Miu Miu’s new fragrance, and Corrin is its ambassador. It’s the brand’s first perfume created under license with L’Oréal Groupe, a partnership that began in February 2024 when Miu Miu announced it would be venturing into beauty with the French cosmetics giant, following in the footsteps of its ‘older sibling’. (Miu Miu was founded by Miuccia Prada in 1993 as a ‘little sister’ to Prada, with the latter debuting a make-up line in 2023).

Though they have walked Miu Miu runways, starred in fashion campaigns and contributed to special projects such as Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales, the brand’s long-running short-film series, this will be the first time the star has ventured into the world of fragrance.

‘I love working with Miu Miu because it never feels impersonal,’ says Corrin, who rose to prominence playing a young Princess Diana in the fourth season of The Crown (2020), taking home a Golden Globe award for their performance. ‘I’ve been working with them through the second half of my twenties. You grow a lot in that time.’

Since The Crown, Corrin has acted in on-screen adaptations of My Policeman (2022), Lady Chatterly’s Lover (2022) and Nosferatu (2024), as well as a stage production of Chekov’s The Seagull, also starring Cate Blanchett, which ran at The Barbican until April (2025).

Their next project is taking on Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett in Netflix’s upcoming Pride & Prejudice, written by Dolly Alderton. ‘My identity has expanded and grown in certain ways [over these years]. Miu Miu has grown with me. They listen to me. It’s a very reciprocal relationship, which I’m grateful for,’ they add.

The Miutine campaign was captured in Prague (in the same location that Robert Eggers directed Corrin in Nosferatu) by another close friend of the house, Hayley Benton-Gates. Gates recently took home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her feature-length debut Atropia (2025), produced by Luca Guadagnino. ‘Shooting a fragrance campaign is so different to shooting a fashion campaign. It’s a beautiful fusion between acting and fashion,’ says Corrin. ‘Hayley in herself is so Miutine,’ continues Corrin. ‘All her work is infused with a wink. It’s very self-aware. It’s very funny. It’s very clever.’

‘Irreverence is a tricky thing to capture… It is a quality, an attitude that is omnipresent at Miu Miu,’ says Gates. ‘I felt the best way to capture this irreverent spirit was to make sure the camera was moving irreverently too.’

A twist on the French word mutine, roughly translating to mean an individual who is youthful, playful, and rebellious, the name Miutine represents the ‘irreverent’ codes of Miu Miu. Mrs Prada chose Dominique Ropion as the master perfumer who would concoct Miutine’s juice. Though expectedly fruity and sweet, Ropion has composed a fragrance that is not overly gourmand or cloying. On the open, you’re hit with a mouth-watering cloud of strawberry – Mara des bois strawberry to be exact, a variety favoured by patissiers for its intense flavour and aroma.

‘The vibrancy and regressive aspect of wild strawberry bring a lively and cheerful dimension to the scent, evoking a sense of joy and spontaneity,’ says Ropion. Next, a brown sugar accord composed of bourbon vanilla extract and a touch of jasmine. Miutine’s base notes counteract what could be too saccharine, as the earthy depth of patchouli oil – comparatively rather savoury – comes into play on the dry down.

‘I think Miutine is a fun scent, but also has a lot of depth to it,’ says Corrin. ‘There are lots of different layers. It’s got that strawberry fruitiness, which is quite young, sweet and playful. But then it has a sophisticated, elegant layer. It’s versatile.

Its bottle, crafted in toffee-hued glass mimicking the texture of Miu Miu’s matelassé leatherwork, is finished with a glossy black cap, in the shape of a blown-up sequin. ‘To me, Miutine represents that very authentic way of living. Which I think is in keeping with the way that Mrs Prada approaches the ethos Miu Miu,’ Corrin concludes. ‘For luxury fashion brands, this irreverence, creative ways of being and working, and free spiritedness is quite a rare thing to be able to capture.’

miumiu.com

An interrogation of femininity has been a part of the Prada project since Miuccia Prada took over the family label in 1978. Her collections have taken the trappings of womanhood and skewed them – handbags and high-heeled shoes, brooches and beehives – each loaded with symbolism and, in her hands, ripe for reinvention. It’s been the same with archetypes, too: flapper girls and businesswomen, nurses, brides and Cinecittà sirens, the fastidiously dressed women of the Italian bourgeoisie – all have received the Prada treatment, which is at once intellectual and impulsive. She has spoken of her love of clichés – in these well-worn tropes, Mrs Prada has long seen only possibility: to make the ugly beautiful, and the beautiful ugly, that most Prada of gestures.

‘Raw Glamour’ was the title given by Mrs Prada and her co-creative director Raf Simons to their A/W 2025 collection for Prada, presented in February amid an imposing multi-level scaffold structure erected by OMA in Fondazione Prada’s hangar-like Deposito space in Milan. Here, as models traversed the maze-like show set at speed – hair dishevelled, faces stripped of make-up – there appeared new urgency to the project.

Dressing for pleasure: A/W 2025’s subversive glamour

‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada, noting that the world was entering ‘a very black moment... a difficult time’. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

It led the pair to radically rewrite and recontextualise the tropes of glamour. Much of this was done through proportion – the nipped, ladylike contours of 1960s dresses were sized up so they hung off models’ bodies or torn away at their edges, almost violently. ‘The idea of feminine beauty is often about constricting movement, so we wanted these clothes to be about liberation. Which is about fashion, but it is not just about fashion,’ said Simons. ‘Glamour was something we were attracted to, instinctively,’ added Mrs Prada, who envisioned ‘fur’ coats that erupted into strange protrusions at the collar (the ‘fur’ was actually dyed shearling); pointed, high-heeled pumps left raw at the seams; queasy floral prints that suggested 1960s curtains and upholstery; and blouses in-set with creases, while bows, charms and buttons served as girlish adornment. The effect was immediate and electrifying; a glamour released from perfection and constriction, a femininity for our times.

Raw glamour could well have been the byline of the A/W25 season. Fur coats, blouses, bullet bras, brooches, crimson-red lips – everywhere was a heady, perfume- scented whiff of feminine glamour, its well-worn motifs ricocheted into the now. Women prowled a simulacrum of a red-walled public toilet at Valentino (in sickly-sweet layers of lace, ruffles and bows, to a soundtrack by Lana Del Rey, herself a master of disruptive feminine glamour); at Acne Studios, leggy Helmut Newton-esque glamazons clashed with the cocooning dress codes of the wilds of northern Sweden (the enormous faux fur coats and boots were inspired by teddy bears); while at Marni, in what was Francesco Risso’s final collection for the house, a heady take on the salon show saw models wander through a hand-drawn imagining of a Milanese café in colourful faux furs, patchwork silk dresses and giant floral corsages. Risso had worked with the Nigerian artists Slawn and Soldier throughout the process of designing the collection in a kind of shared creative studio. ‘It was such an intense and freeing experience,’ says Risso. ‘I wanted the art to pervade everything and for people to feel like they could get drunk on these clothes.’

At Fendi, a collection of irreverent Roman glamour saw ‘fur’ coats constructed from shearling, which was then painstakingly dyed to look like fox, mink or sable. Silvia Venturini Fendi likened it to how her mother and aunts had revolutionised Fendi a generation before by stripping fur coats of their linings or turning them inside out – a provocative act at the time – which spoke to the changing needs of a woman’s wardrobe. ‘They were considered crazy to try and demolish a status symbol,’ she said, noting the nonchalant way in which women treated furs at the time as the ultimate expression of glamour, whether slinging them over the back of a chair or allowing stoles to drag along the floor behind them. ‘It was from them that I learned to appreciate the value of ideas, more than the real economic value of things.’

And at Miu Miu, Mrs Prada’s conundrums continued with a collection she described as ‘an evaluation of the feminine’. For the occasion, the Palais d’Iéna was wrapped in yellow-green moiré, while the collection featured brooches, stoles and bullet bra tops (inspired by the 1950s bombshell, they were sharply pointed at the chest). Meanwhile, a longtime fascination with the Italian bourgeoisie – particularly that of her native Milan – appeared in a mood of dishevelled decadence, from skewiff beehives and crumpled ribbed stockings to mannish overcoats, strangely folded at the chest and slumped along the shoulder line.

‘The typical accessories of femininity: the bra, the brooches, the fur. The question is, what do we retain of femininity? Does it help in this really dangerous moment?’ said Mrs Prada after the show. Her inquisitions were in part rhetorical: she knows that to search for answers for the world’s ills in clothing will always be futile. Instead, this was about a kind of reclamation: she spoke about these elements of glamour becoming ‘bold and powerful’, stripped of cliché but not of appeal.

Here, we present a series of the season’s looks that interrogate such notions of glamour. They are captured on a grand staircase, a location commonly used in film and literature for sweeping entrances and dramatic departures. Is our protagonist descending or ascending? Is she entering the room or leaving it? Is she alone or being watched? And if she is, how will she be seen? In Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rebecca (based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier), the narrator’s descent down the staircase at Manderley prefaces a moment of terror: the realisation that she has, unwittingly, dressed in the same gown as Rebecca de Winter, her husband’s late wife and thus a symbol of her own inadequacy. Admonished by her husband, the brooding Maxim de Winter, her face shifts from the pleasure of dressing up to a realisation of how such clothing – here, a corseted white gown adorned with flowers and layers of lace and tulle – is writ with connotations and, when hifted in context, can become a weapon.

Each of these A/W25 looks delight in such contradictions, capturing both glamour’s undeniable seductive appeal – a base desire to dress up, to adorn oneself – as well as its power to disrupt and confront. ‘To me, glamour is not a sexy dress – it’s the opposite,’ elucidated Mrs Prada after the Prada show in Milan. ‘It’s an interior point of view. Glamour is about feeling important.’

A version of this story appears in the September 2025 Style 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

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

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

‘Proudly modern and minimal’ is how Miu Miu describes its refurbished London store, which opened yesterday evening (12 June 2025) with the latest iteration of the Miu Miu Club, the Italian house’s ephemeral riff on a private members’ club (after a tour, guests were shuttled in Miu Miu-branded taxis across town to historic north London nightspot Koko for dinner, drinks, and a performance from Little Simz).

An extension of sorts to initiatives like Miu Miu Women’s Tales (a commissioning platform for women-led short films) and the more recent Miu Miu Literary Club (which runs at Salone del Mobile), Miuccia Prada envisions the space as a site of ‘cultural exchange, conversation and the gathering of a spirited and intelligent, thoughtful community’.

Miu Miu New Bond Street: the Wallpaper* tour

Located in its longtime position at the corner of New Bond Street and Bruton Street, the newly renovated store’s most distinct design feature is its grid-like industrial metal floor. Stretching across the ground floor, it gives the otherwise minimal space a strange, almost dreamlike feel, evocative of the house’s cinematic runway sets at Paris Palais d’Iéna each season (a mood compounded by the brightly-lit ceiling and just-blue walls).

Furniture is also minimal: the only interruptions to the otherwise sparse space are two display cases in vivid ‘shocks’ of yellow and green, while a contemporary pale blue sofa sits amid shelves of footwear. Upstairs is warmer: the industrial metal floor is replaced by wooden parquet and a vast high-pile rug, while the ceiling is made up of undulating wooden squares, adding to the feeling of intimacy.

The opening coincides with what has been a blockbuster past year for Miu Miu, with retail sales in 2024 rising 93 per cent and defying the market downturn elsewhere in luxury fashion. Sales continue to be buoyant into 2025: for the first quarter, The Prada Group – the conglomerate which owns Miu Miu – reported sales were up 60 per cent year on year. Part of a wider retail refresh, the new London store is expected to set the aesthetic tone for other upcoming openings.

Alongside a comprehensive array of product – spanning ready-to-wear, bags, shoes and eyewear – the store’s launch will also feature a limited-edition Miu Miu Upcycled collection, created in collaboration with costume and production designer Catherine Martin. Martin, who previously collaborated with Miuccia Prada on the wardrobe for Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 movie The Great Gatsby, also directed her first short film, ‘Grande Envie’, to launch the collection.

‘It works so well because we are all interested in a rigorous and exacting intellectual process which deals with the human experience today,’ says Martin of her longtime collaboration with Miuccia Prada, which continued this year with the show set for Prada’s A/W 2025 mens- and womenswear shows. Lining the floor of a scaffold structure in the Fondazione Prada showspace, Martin’s art nouveau-inspired motifs adorned a specially commissioned carpet.

The Miu Miu Upcycled collection will be previewed in the London store, which is open now.

Miu Miu Bond Street, 150 New Bond Street, London, W1S 2RH.

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

The ten best low-pro sneakers for men and women

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

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

As is so often the case, it was fashion soothsayers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons who seemed to distill the mood of the season with their A/W 2025 collection for Prada, positing a ‘raw glamour’ – a subversive interrogation of the tropes of feminine elegance, from ‘fur’ coats to 1960s-style dresses, which Mrs Prada said chimed with a growing unease about the state of the world. ‘It is not my job to be political but when you open a newspaper – oh my God!’ Mrs Prada said after the show. ‘Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

Nostalgic glamour – largely twisted or disrupted – ran throughout the season in evocations of ’fur’ (almost exclusively faux, or cleverly manipulated shearling), bra tops and pussybow blouses, celebrating an unconventional, dishevelled beauty. The carved or sculpted waistline also emerged as a trend throughout the month – though in the hands of designers like Sarah Burton, who made her debut at Givenchy, the silhouette was stripped of connotations of confinement. ‘[It’s about] strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy,’ she said. Elsewhere, cocooning and concealing silhouettes protected against the elements – whether real or existential – while upside-down and back-to-front silhouettes reflected our topsy-turvy moment.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss selects the trends and takeaways from the A/W 2025 womenswear shows, which concluded earlier this week in Paris.

Designers explored a ‘raw glamour’

‘Raw glamour’ was the term coined by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons to describe their A/W 2025 womenswear collection for Prada. ‘Glamour was something we were attracted to, instinctively, and its connection to femininity,’ said Mrs Prada on a show which interrogated notions of conventional beauty – all the way down to the dishevelled bed head hair by Guido Palau. Typically feminine silhouettes – like 1960s-style dresses – were blown up in size as if sizes too big, or came creased and sliced-away raw at the hem. Meanwhile tropes of feminine elegance – like fur coats or ladylike handbags – were subverted in provocative style, the former into strange forms with protusions around the neck or trapped under plastic (‘fur’ was actually shearling – more on that later). ‘It is not my job to be political but when you open a newspaper – oh my God!’ Mrs Prada said after the show. ‘Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

A similar mood was struck at Miu Miu – where Mrs Prada works solo – seeing the designer propose a wardrobe of undone Milanese glamour, where similar hallmarks of femininity, from the 1950s-pointed bra to ‘fur’ stoles and brooches, were warped and disrupted. ‘These accessories of femininity – bras, furs, brooches – they are things we have had forever. Are they relevant today? Do they lift us up?’ she said of the collection, which played out amid a set entirely covered in girlish yellow moiré. A similar mood ran throughout the season: at Valentino, Alessandro Michele’s louche, eclectic vision of glamour – sheer lace bodies, satin bra tops and bows, more ‘furs’ and feathers – played out amid a surreal ‘public bathroom’ (models tottered around the space, gussying themselves up in the toilet mirrors as if in a nightclub restroom), while Francesco Risso’s Marni playfully riffed on the salon show with high-colour faux furs, patchworked dresses and 3D flower adornment. At Acne Studios, pussybow bodysuits and slashed scarf dresses – straight out of a Helmut Newton photograph – were worn with fuzzy ‘fur’ coats, their construction inspired by that of teddy-bear limbs.

Textures and prints got animalistic

The proliferation of ‘fur’ this season was unavoidable, appearing in various iterations, from candy-striped at Gucci, two-toned at Marni, to mink-grey at Giorgio Armani. Almost exclusively faux or crafted from cleverly manipulated shearling, the by-product of meat and dairy farming (an exception was Gabriela Hearst, where the sustainably conscious designer had crafted a coat from second-hand mink to prevent waste), its use suggested both Prada’s ‘instinctual attraction to glamour’ and a desire for protection (indeed, some uses of the material were almost primitive in their cut). Highlights included a series of incredible ‘fur’ coats and stoles at Fendi’s 100th anniversary show which had the illusion of fox, mink or sable but were actually shearling – a paean to the house’s brand of Roman elegance – while at Rabanne, tassel-like ‘tails’ hung from coats and dresses. The animalistic mood extended into print, both Dolce & Gabbana and Saint Laurent featured leopard spots – the latter under a slick of transparent resin – while at Duran Lantink, zebra, cow, python and leopard prints met in an unconventional mélange (in a playful flourish, the model Leon Dame was entirely body-painted in black and white zebra stripes).

The waist was accentuated

‘McQueen is about a waist,’ said the Irish designer Séan McGirr at his A/W 2025 show for the British house, after a trip into the archive had drawn him towards Lee McQueen’s amped-up ‘hourglass’ silhouette – accentuated shoulder, narrow-waist – which captures the clash of power and eroticism which ran through his collections. McGirr’s riff was lithe and elongated, with extra-long sleeves, a corseted waistline and rounded, armour-like shoulders. ‘I took a lot of pieces from the archive, especially tailoring, and reworked them in a way that made sense for today.’

Meanwhile former McQueen designer Sarah Burton’s acclaimed debut at Givenchy – which also began with a return to the archive, inspired by a lost trove of Hubert de Givenchy’s 1952 sketches – saw her meticulous eye for tailoring create carved-waist blazers and overcoats with a wide, amplified shoulder line that was without constriction. ‘I want to address everything about modern women,’ she said. ‘[It’s about] strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it.’ At Miu Miu, wool tailoring was cleverly constructed with a fold under the chest – the result was a narrowed, though not restrictive, waistline – while at Balenciaga, meticulous pattern-cutting saw ‘fur’-hooded nylon parkas whereby the quilted exterior had been reworked to recall a corset or bodice.

Things got turned back to front, or upside down

When Celine Dion wore a white John Galliano tuxedo to the Academy Awards in 1999, she landed on numerous worst dressed lists. Turns out the Canadian chanteuse was simply ahead of her time: this season, several designers turned garments back to front – a fitting uniform for our topsy-turvy times. Most committed were Paris-based duo Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha, whose A/W 2025 collection for fledgling brand Zomer saw almost every look turned upside-down or back-to-front resulting in a kind of opposites day in clothing form (even the run of the show went backwards, starting with the finale). At Givenchy, Burton presented a more refined take with a sculptural tailored jacket which fastened along its back, while at Hodakova – the buzzy LVMH Prize-winning label run by Ellen Hodakova Larsson – trousers were turned upside down and recut into dresses (belts still ran around the waistline, which was now the hem). Meanwhile at Issey Miyake, performers contorted themselves into surreal forms as part of a collaboration with Erwin Wurm and his ‘One Minute Sculptures’ – a reflection of the playfully surreal collection, in which shopping bags became tops and trompe l’oeil prints saw dresses printed on dresses.

Looks were cocooning, wrapped or concealing

The want for protection, to be covered up, wrapped and cocooned is nothing new for the winter season, though for A/W 2025 the current state of unease – referenced by numerous designers this season, from Miuccia Prada to Rei Kawakubo – no doubt contributed to a renewed desire to be protected against the elements (whether the everyday or the existential). Most strikingly, this came in the idea of concealment: several designers created silhouettes this season which obscured the hands, whether the jaunty kangaroo pockets on dresses at Issey Miyake – it made the models appear to be clutching their hands to their chests – or Rokh’s long, cape-like silhouettes which entirely enveloped the hands of the wearer.

At Hermès, Nadège Vanhée presented a collection which moved between a determined sensuality – she also carved the waist in sinuous leather dresses – and something softer and enveloping, figured in coats with enormous collars, or leather jackets with soft double-faced cashmere linings. A similar tenderness was struck at Sacai, whereby Chitose Abe said she was thinking about the act of wrapping: as such, the silk foulard became a motif, inspiring the cut or dresses or inset into a blazer. Meanwhile at Comme des Garçons, a liberated A/W 2025 collection – which Kawakubo said was a celebration of the ‘small but mighty’ – saw enormous sculptural ‘gloves’ wrapped around the hand like a boxer’s gloves or lobster claw. It spoke to the idea that concealment could be as much about armour as comfort – a mood reflected at Junya Watanabe, where leather jackets were cut with giant spikes or had a plate-like construction, like a beetle’s shell.

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

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

‘I realised I was of great value, but sensed at the same time I was worth nothing at all, unless I was useful.’ These are the inner thoughts of a white matelassé leather handbag with gold hardware by Miu Miu, thoughtfully expressed in a new short film by British director Joanna Hogg that will premiere in London tonight (13 February 2025).

Autobiografia di una Borsetta is the 29th commission from Miu Miu’s ‘Women’s Tales’ initiative, set up by Miuccia Prada 15 years ago as a platform for female-led films, and which has featured previous works by the likes of Agnes Varda, Chlöe Sevigny, Lynne Ramsay, Miranda July and So Yong Kim.

Joanna Hogg on Autobiografia di una Borsetta, her new film for Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales

Hogg’s creatively energetic offering, set in Italy, cleverly places Miu Miu’s ‘Wander’ handbag in the starring role, from its beginnings at the factory to its series of subsequent owners that include a bourgeois teenager and a female assassin. ‘I wanted it to be funny and I wanted it to be sad. And in 23 minutes that’s quite hard,’ Hogg says.

The film subtly weaves Prada-isms throughout. ‘I was really interested in that,’ says Hogg, who is wearing a neat velvet blazer and cardigan with wonderfully imposing spectacles as she unpicks her filmmaking processes over a pot of tea in Mayfair. There was no formal brief from Miu Miu, nor direct dialogue with Mrs Prada during the making of the film, though Hogg says she did approve of her eventual ideas.

‘I don’t know her [Mrs Prada] personally. I’ve met her a couple of times at events. But I was interested in representing what I knew, in a kind of almost spiritual sense in the film.’ I suggest to Hogg that there are lines of dialogue, such as the one that opens this article, which sound like Prada talking backstage after a fashion show. ‘I don’t know if you can quite unpick it as cleanly as that, but the way she is, or what I understand of how she is, is definitely in there,’ Hogg smiles.

It was also important to put herself – and some of her own ‘baggage’, she quips – within this film. ‘That’s partly why I make films, in order to feel like I’m exploring something. There’s a lens looking out and something very much looking inside of myself.’

Hogg’s critically acclaimed, meticulous body of work is often an exploration of upper-middle-class families and complex, layered relationships. It is autobiographical and novelistic. There is never a conventional script – Hogg produces a document that the actors interpret. She grew up in Kent, studied film at the National Film and Television School during the 1980s and then worked in television. Since 2008, she has made six feature films; her most recent was 2022’s ghostly masterpiece, The Eternal Daughter, executively produced by Martin Scorsese, and starring childhood friend Tilda Swinton, who also appeared in Hogg’s graduate film Caprice in 1986 and The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021).

While Hogg never rewatches her films (‘I just see too many things I want to change’), and baulks at the notion that they might be recognisably ‘Joanna Hogg’ for fear of being pigeonholed, there are arguably recognisable visual tropes in her work. One signature is a long pulled-back shot that allows the action to unfold at seemingly its own pace (‘I am very interested in the way people move,’ she says), while her background in photography often announces itself in the way she frames certain shots so that they almost resemble a painting.

There are various touches in Autobiografia di una Borsetta that are classic Hogg, such as the posh bohemian clutter of the family villa at the film’s start and a beautiful shot of the handbag sat on an ironing board, looking out of an apartment window captured in a soft wash of natural daylight. But in the spirit of always wanting to push herself, she has played with a faster pace and rhythm in this film, while for the first time, she took on the role of cinematographer as well as director. And despite a layer of melancholia – fashion can be fleeting after all – the film’s biggest departure is perhaps a sense of witty, tongue-in-cheek humour.

During Hogg’s research for Autobiografia di una Borsetta she attended the Miu Miu show in Paris in October with her film’s main star literally in her hand, an experience she said she absolutely loved. ‘It was a sort of ideas feast for me, looking at the shape of a shoe or a skirt,’ she enthuses. ‘I was actually filming the show through the handbag and establishing some of those visual ideas that I was then going to incorporate in the film.’ One of the reasons she chose the ‘Wander’ in the first place, she explains, was because ‘I saw the handle like an eye’. During the filming, she also placed an iPhone inside the bag to capture her heroine’s experience from a different visual viewpoint.

When she was very young, five or six, Hogg recalls, she was ‘quite a flamboyant dresser’; her two favourite colours were purple and orange. The character Lucky, whom Swinton plays in Caprice, a sort of surrealist romp through a woman’s magazine, was based on Hogg. ‘I was obsessed with fashion magazines; I did have tower blocks of magazines in my flat and I took them very seriously, but at the same time, I realised that perhaps they weren’t really helping my confidence. Although Caprice maybe seems like a piece of fluff, it was actually…’ She pauses. ‘I haven’t seen it for a long time… I can’t bear to watch it, it came out of quite a lot of soul searching.’ Her relationship with fashion now, she says, is still often fraught. ‘I do worry, am I wearing the right thing for the situation? I do think about it, I am quite vain in that way.’

Costume design is an integral part of her work. There are countless fashion moments in Hogg’s films, from Viv Albertine’s character D in Exhibition in an ensemble created from fluorescent tape, to Tom Burke’s Anthony in The Souvenir sporting colourful floppy bow ties and pinstripes, and Honor Swinton Byrne playing Julie (based on Hogg) in the same film, wearing vintage Vivienne Westwood, originally worn by Hogg in the 1980s.

In Autobiografia di una Borsetta she worked with Grace Snell, the costume designer she has collaborated with on her last few films. ‘My conversations with Grace are very much about what would these characters wear?’ The pair decided that a group of travellers wouldn’t wear Miu Miu because they’re anti-materialists, while they decided that it would be fun to make the assassins a bit bling. ‘It was great to have these different stories to play with, but hopefully always at the service of the character. To show something about the person,’ she muses. ‘What we wear is very revealing.’

Autobiografia di una Borsetta, by Joanna Hogg, is available on Miu Miu channels on the evening of 13 February and available to stream on MUBI from 23 February, 2025.

2024 was a year of fashion ephemera, whereby designers spoke not only through the clothing they showed on the runway, but the objects which they chose to populate their universes. The result was a conveyor of printed publications, furniture, artist collaborations, edible produce and collectable invites, which were often as intriguing and illuminating as the collections themselves.

Here, we look towards seven objects which tell the story of fashion in 2024, none of which are items of clothing or accessories. Some speak of a newly intimate relationship between fashion and design, like Sabato De Sarno’s reissue of an Enzo Mari classic for Gucci, while others – like Willy Chavarria’s enormous American flag – symbolise an engagement with the wider political landscape. Others are simply gleefully surreal: Blonde Ambition Madonna wigs at Dolce & Gabbana, JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness, or a series of giant cats at Dior Men.

Collated by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, together they provide an unconventional but illuminating portrait of style in 2024.

Bottega Veneta’s beanbag animals

Matthieu Blazy said he wanted his S/S 2025 collection for Bottega Veneta to capture the ‘power of wow’, mining a mood of childlike wonder for a vibrant collection which featured animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs, plays on corner-shop plastic bags, crocheted flowers and enormous tailoring, as if a child was playing dress up in their parents’ clothing. It captured a new mood of eclecticism that pulsated through the season – from Prada to Louis Vuitton – and was presented in Milan amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. Inspired by Zanotta’s Sacco easy chair, each guest had a different animal – from yellow chicks to killer whales and foxes – with Blazy saying that he was inspired by the scene in E.T. whereby the titular extra-terrestrial conceals himself in a closet full of soft toys. Looking through a child’s eyes, said Blazy, allowed him to take a creative leap. ‘In a kid’s world everything is possible. You can really approach reality in a different way.’ It would also prove to be his final show for the house: last week, he was announced as the new artistic director of Chanel (at Bottega Veneta, Louise Trotter will take the helm). Read more.

Gucci’s reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar

Since the beginning of his tenure as creative director of Gucci, Sabato De Sarno has forged links with the design world: in 2023, just after his appointment, he collaborated with a slew of Italian furniture titans to reissue their most memorable pieces in his own signature shade of oxblood ‘Ancora’ red (the project included designs by Piero Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Tobia Scarpa, and more). It fit with a wider embrace of the design world from fashion in 2024 – proved by the numerous houses which took over this year’s Salone del Mobile – and was complemented later in the year with a reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar, which served as the invite for De Sarno’s S/S 2025 womenswear show in Milan. It reflected a collection he described as about ‘a precise moment in time... a moment to seize and live to the fullest. This collection is a tribute to those moments, and an invitation to stop, seek your own moment.’ Read more.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Madonna wigs

It was perhaps Milan Fashion Week’s worst-kept secret: Madonna, the queen of pop, would be turning up to Dolce & Gabbana’s S/S 2025 show (she is a longtime wearer of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s high-voltage clothing). Arriving clad in a black veil and evoking the house’s brand of Sicilian glamour, the show itself would prove an ode to the musician, with each and every model clad in a Blonde Ambition-esque wig and wearing riffs on Madonna’s signature outfits, including Jean Paul-Gaultier’s pneumatic cone bra. It was a reminder of the fashion show as entertainment, a joyous celebration of a figure who has long defined pop culture – indeed, fashion. ‘Madonna has always been our icon. It’s thanks to her that a lot of things in our lives changed,’ the designers said, embracing a clearly emotional Madonna at the end of the show.

JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness

In one of the more unexpected – and yet somehow totally fitting – fashion collaborations of 2024, JW Anderson united with Irish stout producers Guinness for a capsule collection which first appeared as part of the brand’s S/S 2025 menswear show this past June in Milan. Encapsulating Jonathan Anderson’s eye for the idiosyncratic, historical Guinness advertising adorned sweaters and T-shirts in the playful capsule. ‘I’ve always been obsessed by Guinness and their brand,’ he said. ‘I think they are still today one of the greatest advertisers... I’ve always wanted to be able to show some of it, because in fashion we think we are so radical but actually, Guinness was way before all of that.’ It made for perhaps 2024’s best fashion party: a celebrity-filled Guinness-on-tap booze-up at buzzy London pub The Devonshire, purportedly the best pull of Guinness in town (we drunk responsibly, of course).

Hylton Nel’s cats at Dior Men

‘Homepsun monumentalism’ is how Kim Jones described the work of South African potter-artist Hylton Nel, who provided the inspiration behind his latest collection for Dior Men. On the runway, Nel’s playful, naive cat sculptures – which feature hand-drawn motifs and anthropomorphic elements – were blown up to enormous size, while the collection itself the artist’s work became pins, embroidery and intarsia knits. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ Capturing not only the veneration of homespun craft which has run throughout the year’s collections, but it was also one of a slew of art-led show sets, from Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted living room for Acne Studios to Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work to backdrop Burberry’s S/S 2025 show in London. Read more.

Miu Miu’s ‘The Truthless Times’ newspaper

Miu Miu‘s S/S 2025 show took place amid a set created by London-based, Poland-born artist Goshka Macuga, evocative of a printing press. Over the ceiling ran moving conveyors of hundreds of hanging newspapers: copies of ‘The Truthless Times’, a satirical publication dreamt up by Macuga to capture the disorientating times in which we live (‘Endings Unending as Future Moves to Past’ ran one of the purposely impenetrable headlines). ‘The struggle for truth and meaning in contemporary society,’ said Macuga of the installation, which also featured a short film of sparring lovers amid a futuristic printers (the work was also part of Art Basel Paris 2024 later in the year, supported by the brand). Miuccia Prada responded with a collection which looked towards youth – a ‘period of absolute truth.’ ‘It’s a reaction to an era of overstimulation and over-information, simplicity in clothing may offer clarity and precision, and serve as an honest frame of character,’ elaborated the ever-perceptive designer.

Willy Chavarria’s American flag

Willy Chavarria’s S/S 2025 show was titled ‘América’ – a nod, said the designer, to the immigrant communities who take on the weight of the country’s labour (Chavarria is of Mexican-American descent). Taking place on Wall Street – a temple to American commerce – the show’s runway was backdropped by an enormous American flag. It was given greater significance by the then-looming American election, which would take place two months afterwards in November (as guests left they were given a sticker to remind them to vote). ‘Given the time that we're in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine light on the people who make this country work, and also celebrate immigration and those people who have built the country and are still the backbone of the country,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time, reflecting a wider mood at New York Fashion Week whereby designers grappled what it meant to be an American designer today. ‘We haven't had the opportunities or the benefits that a lot of our white brothers and sisters have had. It's about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Read more.

In ‘Tales & Tellers’, interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga reinterprets Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales film series for Art Basel Paris 2024’s public programme, putting the films into today’s context alongside Elvira Dyangani Osestaged.

Currently staged at Palais D’Iéna with Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, the first commission in the Women’s Tales series was The Powder Room by Zoe Cassavetes, shot in 2011, while the most recent, Laura Citarella’s El Affaire Miu Miu, was released last month. Miu Miu has commissioned 28 films in total, by artists and directors including Agnès Varda, Miranda July, Naomi Kawase and Chloë Sevigny. The films all feature clothing by the brand, but they also show a wide swathe of female viewpoints from around the world, drawing on a variety of women’s experiences. They communicate messages from the direct to the esoteric, featuring the fashion but putting the filmmaking first.

‘First of all, it was very interesting to see the diversity of people who have produced these movies and so many different topics from all over the world,’ says Macuga. ‘It marks ten years of history. You can already see this progression of how society has changed, how we have changed in the way we relate to women's topics, and how the identities of women have evolved within this time as well. Then I questioned how to deal with such material and how to enhance all these different narratives that exist within it.’

The films take on the ideas of the loneliness of the modern age through the story of a young skateboarder, perceptions of the Middle East in Haifaa Al-Mansour’s The Wedding Singer and notions of femininity in I Am the Beauty of Your Beauty, I Am the Fear of Your Fear by Tan Chui Mui. In ‘Tales & Tellers’, the entire back catalogue is activated through live performance.

‘I very much wanted to look at the characters individually, and [also] as a group, and create this concept of a community. So, I extracted different characters from all these amazing films, and I created a situation where they all come together so they exist on their own, but there are moments when they come together and it becomes a dialogue and then, of course, the audience becomes part of it as witnesses and custodians of these tales. So, each character is, in a way, extending the idea of the tale back into real life.’

The performers, dressed in Miu Miu, move fluidly through the space sometimes individually and sometimes collectively, bringing elements of the films to life. Staged in keeping with the films’ storylines, each installation engages with the audience in a different way. You must pick up Varda’s film out of a box of fabric and play it on an iPad, you should sit at a dressing table and look into Cassavetes’, and July’s is on an iPhone that could have been left on a seat. Some require you to lean and others to submit as the characters move around you blending identities and narratives.

Tapping into the building’s history as a public forum, Ose has organised a talks programme with some of the directors and participants with a brief not to talk about their work, but to discuss their lives delving deeper into the realities women share. Also on view in the auditorium are all the films, screened in their entirety throughout the day.

Participating too is artist Sophia Al-Maria, who created a film for Miu Miu’s S/S 2024 catwalk show in Paris. In revisiting her work in this activation she discovered new things within it, expanding on the facilitating nature of working with the brand: ‘It was a really special experience because making films in the art world on this scale is impossible so I was able to work on film which I was really grateful for, cast who I wanted and play with subject matter which was important to me.’

‘Tales & Tellers’ will be on view from 16-18 October 2024, free of charge to the public and accompanied by a newspaper, The Truthless Times. Says Macuga: ‘Hopefully it will inspire other platforms to also create places for women to have a continuation in speaking and dealing with their issues. I guess in art things evolve and change and there's always the next thing we to move onto but without jeopardising what has come before.'

‘Miu Miu Tales & Tellers’ will be on view 16-18 October 2024 at Palais D’Iéna, miumiu.com

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

Soft touch (top left)

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

Match point (top right)

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

Parallel lines

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

Glossed over

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

Back out

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

Hands on

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

Tied up

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

Fine feather

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

Slim chance

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

Hood times

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

Second skin

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

Buckle up

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

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

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

You will likely have encountered Veronica Ditting’s work, even if you do not know her name. The highly influential creative director and designer – who comes with a string of awards to her name – conceived the distinctive original design for The Gentlewoman (she worked at the magazine for 12 years, from when it was founded, leaving in 2021) and has worked on a slew of projects for brands including Maison Margiela, The Row, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co and Hermès. For the last, she guest art-directed Le Monde d'Hermès magazine, one of the industry’s highest accolades.

A new exhibition in Kyoto, Japan celebrates Ditting’s career so far, particularly her work in printed matter, the medium for which she is best known. Titled ‘Folio Folio Folio: Print by Veronica Ditting’ (until 28 July 2024) and taking place at the city’s ‘ddd gallery’, the exhibition – curated by London-based design historian Emily King – spans two decades of print projects including books, magazines, exhibition design and other ‘printed delights’. These include The Gentlewoman – memorable covers shown as the exhibition include those featuring author Zadie Smith and gymnast Simone Biles – as well as a series of printed ephemera created for the launch of Hermès’ beauty line.

‘Folio Folio Folio: Print by Veronica Ditting’ at Kyoto ddd gallery

For the latter, process images of the ‘colour chapters’ show how Ditting achieved the ’intense and beautiful’ combinations of colour by manipulating physical pages to see how she could replicate it on-screen. Meanwhile, a slim, narrow book echoes Pierre Hardy’s design for the Hermès lipstick. These works – among several others – are displayed in the exhibition on custom stands created by the Veronica Ditting Studio, while a series of vivid large-scale images by Beijing-born photographer Qiu Yang capture models, dummies and proofs in graphic style. The process images were photographed at Ditting’s home in the Barbican, London.

Here, as the exhibition continues in Kyoto, Wallpaper* catches up with Ditting about the career-spanning project.

Wallpaper*: How did this exhibition come about? Do you have a link with Kyoto?

Veronica Ditting: ‘ddd gallery’ in Kyoto is one of the few galleries in the world dedicated to graphic design, alongside its sister gallery ’ggg’ in Tokyo. While their online presence is sparse, I have been aware of some of the shows at the gallery over the years. Then in autumn last year, London-based design historian Emily King asked me if I’d consider a solo exhibition at ddd. Emily had curated a show about British graphic designer Alan Fletcher [a Wallpaper* cover artist] at ggg back in 2008 and she’s kept in touch with the team ever since.

Without being fully aware what I was actually committing to, I pretty immediately said yes. The chance to work with Emily in an in-depth manner and to finally visit Japan – my first time – in such an engaging manner seemed too good to be true.

W*: How has it been to see your work collated in this way? Do you enjoy looking back on past projects?

VD: These days, I mainly work in fashion and it seems like we never pause and reflect. Everything is always about moving forward. Taking the time to go back into my archive and look back on projects has for the most part been quite joyful, and at times also confronting.

For months, Emily and I would meet at my Barbican office, deep-diving into my archive, working on the selection and phrasing the approach to ‘Folio Folio Folio’. As a creative director, my work covers many different aspects – from image-making to graphic design. Therefore a show could take many shapes depending on the approach.

Given the context, we decided to primarily focus on graphic design and particularly on printed matter. You could say the exhibition is a celebration of printed matter and everything it entails. Maybe in a different space it would be a significantly different exhibition.

W*: When it comes to print design, why is it a medium you have gravitated towards? What is it about the physicality of print that is appealing?

VD: Working closely with printers and bookbinders is something I treasure deeply. Print is the aspect that is most closely related to craft within our practice. At the start of my career, I would even press-pass business cards [‘press pass’ refers to the process of travelling to the printing press to run final checks while your project is being printed]. Obviously I don’t have that type of time commitment any longer, but realising how much you can influence at the press has fine-tuned my eye.

When Emily and I started discussing what the approach at ddd could be, we fairly quickly decided to focus on the physicality of my works; a lot of them have a specific construction or folding technique applied to them.

Over the course of many months, my team built display stands by hand, each specifically designed for the pieces on show. 155 in total! Standing at various heights and angles, these stands allow several vantage points on the pieces. The display emphasises the materiality and three-dimensionality of the works, essentially creating a topography that visually underlines the fundamental characteristics and sensibility of the pieces.

W*: What are some of your personal highlights from the exhibition?

VD: It’s hard to pick favourites, but I would say one of the highlights which works really well in the space and the display method is the Hermès Beauty chapter. I’ve been working with Hermès since 2015 on different projects and with the Beauty métier since 2019. In the exhibition, all press publications and invitations created since are shown. The specific ratios and the publications chapter pages are revealed in a significant manner. The communication for the women’s ready-to-wear department of Hermès also stands out as all of the pieces relate to the aspect of construction and folding.

Then two early projects come to mind. In 2008 I designed ‘Andy’, a newspaper to accompany the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Working to an extremely tight deadline and budget, I decided to concentrate on Warhol’s appearance in popular media such as advertising campaigns and editorials. The newspaper shows Andy modelling and acting on TV shows. Footnote images and fun facts are scattered throughout the publication, in the middle of the publication is an index of all people mentioned in its pages. It was an expansion of my graduation project, and these visual devices anticipated the information layering that became a central feature of The Gentlewoman magazine.

Another highlight is the publication A Study on Colour by Dutch artist Katja Mater, published in 2009. It shows Katja’s photographic series ‘The Human Colour Wheel’, an experimental work partly inspired by Isaac Newton’s colour theory and partly by Katja’s own formulations. Designed in close collaboration with Katja, the publication was one of my first projects touching upon art direction and commissioning. It’s a humble publication, but still meaningful to me.

W*: Tell me about the photographic project by Qiu Yang, and how that came about?

VD: Twelve large-scale posters photographed by Qiu Yang show work-in-progress material from my archive. Models, dummies, proofs and design sketches are included and each image relates to a specific focus of my practice. All [of them] are photographed at my office and home in the Barbican. Qiu and I studied together at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and have been collaborating ever since on different types of projects. He documented some of my projects last year and the way he lights and frames my projects feels appropriate. Significantly, the posters speak to the commissioning of images, which is a pivotal aspect of my work as a creative director.

One poster shows a vast amount of dummies created for the Hermès women’s ready-to-wear runway shows. When asked to create a new classic invitation for the shows, I considered both the moment the card would be received and when the invitee would be rushing from show to show. Significantly, the design is small enough to fit into a bag or pocket and rigid enough not to bend in transit. During the design process, we eventually arrived at an innovative construction involving two small rigid cards held together with a sheet of paper. Flipping the invitation open reveals a colour or texture related to the design direction of the particular season. In the exhibition space, the super-large posters are installed on the walls, giving a sense of the process behind the designs on display in this exhibition and also of their tactility.

’Folio Folio Folio: Print by Veronica Ditting’ runs at Kyoto’s ’ddd gallery’ until 28 July 2024.

studioveronicaditting.com

Workwear has long been the bedrock of men’s fashion, endlessly riffed upon, honed and upgraded – from the classic denim shirt and jeans, adopted by cowboys and miners in the American West, to chore jackets, cargo pants, and hi-vis jackets. This sense of utility was seen throughout the S/S 2024 collections – from Prada’s danger-red pocket-covered gilet, a play on the uniforms of security details, to Givenchy’s khaki bombers, Celine’s camo-adorned pants and hardy suede jackets at Miu Miu.

Utilitarian men’s fashion gets an upgrade for S/S 2024

The season’s functional mood is captured in a series of carefree combinations by Italy-born, London-based stylist Nicola Neri and photographer Luca Strano, who is based between London and Milan. As seen in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), this series of portraits puts the utilitarian aesthetic in the hot seat – leaving you with a blueprint of how to upgrade the everyday this spring and summer.

Models: Tom Davison and Milo Boaten-Rolfe at Xdirectn, Oscar Young at Premier, Rea at Milk Management, Zakaria Dau at PRM, Mason Marchetti and Yertai Abdibekov at Next London. Casting: Miro Raynov. Hair: Kanae Kikuchi at Haco+ using Instant Icon. Make-up/grooming: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Summer Spirit and Hydra Beauty Micro Serum Lip. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistants: Domizia Salusest, Farid Ghimas. Fashion assistant: Hope Palmer. Hair assistants: Takuro Watanabe, Rio Shimmaki. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

A mood of escape and discovery infused the S/S 2024 womenswear collections, with designers taking a round-the-world odyssey – both real and imagined – to create a series of striking, craft-rich looks which offer a dramatic and colourful riposte to the banality of the everyday.

Here, as seen in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands worldwide now), photographer Nicolas Kern, Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes and Dutch model Bente Oort take a trip to the otherwordly landscapes of the Canary Islands, capturing the season’s best looks amid the archipelago’s unique vistas and volcanic black-sand beaches. 

From Matthieu Blazy’s pom-pom-adorned dress for Bottega Veneta – which appears on the limited-edition cover of the March 2024 Style Issue – to the cocoon-like wrapped forms of Issey Miyake, or the intricate embellishments that adorn looks from Isabel Marant, Feben and Carven, it makes for a series of electrifying ensembles which capture the mood of offbeat elegance set to define the S/S 2024 season ahead. Enjoy the trip. 

S/S 2024 womenswear looks for escape and discovery

Model: Bente Oort at Platform Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Daniele Falzone at Blend Management using Davines. Make-up: Jimmy Owen Jones at Julian Watson Agency. Photography assistants: Francesco Colombo, David Gimenez. Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt. Post-production: Ink. Local production: Studio Volca.

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

Today (9 February 2024) Miu Miu has announced its exclusive worldwide partnership and licence agreement with L’Oréal Groupe for the creation, development, and distribution of a luxury beauty line. This follows the launch of Prada Beauty, in 2023, with L’Oréal. As Benedetta Petruzzo, Miu Miu’s CEO, says in a statement: ‘We are excited to announce this partnership with a distinctive and leading beauty player such as L’Oréal. This new chapter will sustain the brand’s growth and help to further untap Miu Miu’s full potential in the category.’

Miu Miu beauty is coming in 2025

Having worked with Coty to bring its inaugural fragrance to market in 2015 (a collaboration between Miuccia Prada and nose Daniela Roche Andrier, simply called Miu Miu Eau de Parfum), the scent offering from the brand has remained minimal ever since.

This partnership is set to change all that. Cyril Chapuy, president of L’Oréal Luxe added: ‘Over the past years, we have successfully established a very strong partnership with Prada teams. We are now thrilled to welcome Miu Miu and unleash together its outstanding potential in beauty. With its unique positioning, fuelled by limitless creativity and experimentation, Miu Miu will perfectly complement L’Oréal Luxe’s portfolio of iconic brands and reinforce our worldwide leadership in fragrances.’

We’ll have to wait and see how the beauty products will look and perform, as they are set to debut in 2025. Wallpaper* predicts that the design and formulations will be in keeping with the playful spirit inherent to the codes of Miu Miu, which is often referred to as Prada’s ‘little sister’ brand.

miumiu.com

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

In fashion: the best of S/S 2024

Wander lust: Ferragamo (top left)

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

Enquire at ferragamo.com

Globe trotter: Bottega Veneta (top right)

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

Enquire at bottegaveneta.com

Fluid forms: Dior Men

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

Available at dior.com

Craft union: Prada

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

Enquire at prada.com

Great lengths: Dries Van Noten

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

Available from driesvannoten.com

Big picture: Chanel

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

Enquire at chanel.com

Track record: Wales Bonner

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

Enquire at walesbonner.net

Action packed: Miu Miu

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

Available at miumiu.com

In proportion: Burberry

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

Enquire at burberry.com

Escape route: Hermès

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

Enquire at hermes.com

Crystal clear: Gucci

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

Enquire at gucci.com

Tunnel vision: Loewe

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

Available from loewe.com at selfridges.com

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

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

These sculptural hair clips are ten practical yet decorative design solutions for days when high-maintenance styling feels like a bridge too far. Whether an oversized barrette crafted in patent leather courtesy of Miu Miu, a structured red ribbon by Ferragamo, or a rose made from Prada’s Re-Nylon fabric and finished with the house’s iconic enamel triangle, each is a welcome distraction from a less-than-perfect coiffure and an alternative to more formal hair jewellery. 

The hair clips can be worn pinned in bangs or used to part a growing out fringe, added to cropped cuts or gelled locks, or as a tool to nonchalantly pile loose strands on top of your head in the middle of a working day. And, each has the Wallpaper* stamp of approval.

Ten sculptural hair clips

1. Sacai

Chitose Abe, creative director of Sacai, began her career as a pattern cutter at Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe, which explains the angular and slightly irregular shape of this claw clip, a continuation of the Japanese brand's ready-to-wear codes. This version is crafted in polished silver-tone brass, but Sacai also makes a gold-tone iteration. And, both have more than a touch of modernism about them. (Think: Constantin Brâncuși or Barbara Hepworth).

Sacai Silver S Hair Clip, £345, available at ssense.com.

2. Completedworks

Trust London-based jewellery brand Completedworks to produce a barrette hairclip that is akin to a wearable sculpture. Made in gold vermeil, the clip is designed to fit seamlessly over a ponytail, creating the illusion of the folds of a scrunchie. In fact, the barrette is part of the brand’s ‘Fold’ collection, which is inspired by Georges Perec’s writings on the everyday; particularly ‘that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance’.

Completedworks gold-plated hair clip, £395, available at net-a-porter.com.

3. Celine

The Celine Triomphe motif dates back to 1973, designed by the founder of the Parisian fashion house, Céline Vipiana, as a ‘symbol of renewal’, and inspired by the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. Hedi Slimane, currently artistic director of Celine, has celebrated this symbol to full effect, particularly on leather accessories and in this claw clip made from acetate and steel, which feels distinctly architectural in form.

Celine, Triomphe large hair claw in acetate and steel, £325, available at celine.com.

4. Re-comb

Re-comb produces hair accessories out of recycled plastic waste from the fashion and beauty industries. Whilst predominantly known for its tooth combs, it also makes clips, such as these large hair barrettes. The mixture of materials used provides the accessories with a veined effect, which is rather reminiscent of sculpted marble.

Re-comb large clip, £18.50, available at re-comb.com.

5. Katya

The third collection from London-based hair accessory brand Katya is inspired by a butterfly gently landing on petals. Made from durable yet light high-gloss cellulose acetate, and designed to work with thicker and longer hair, the newly launched Mariah clip can be worn in ponytails or twisted chignons (or even playfully clipped to bags and clothing, if you so wish).

Katya Mariah claw, £34, available at katya.world.

6. Prada

Prada launched its Re-Nylon initiative in 2019, an endeavour that sees plastic collected from the ocean (such as discarded fishing nets) recycled, purified and regenerated into fabric. Since then, it has been masterfully sculpted by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons across clothes, footwear and accessories, such as this hair clip. Made with a leather tab and Plexiglas pin, here, Re-Nylon takes the form of a rose, recalling the ready-to-wear floral motifs that Mrs Prada and Simons so adore.

Prada rose-embellished Re-Nylon hairclip, £580, available at matchesfashion.com.

7. Miu Miu

Recent Miu Miu runways have celebrated bad hair days, with autumn/winter 2023 providing a particularly chic take on dishevelment. (Guido Palau used balloons rubbed on hair to create static, frizzy strands, that were then set in place with hairspray). It's no wonder, then, that the Italian brand knows good hair accessories, including this oversized barrette clip in patent red leather, emblazoned with a three-dimensional Miu Miu logo.

Miu Miu leather logo hair clip, £280, available at harrods.com.

8. Hermès

Hermès first introduced its Chaine d'Ancre motif in 1938, and it remains a source of inspiration for Pierre Hardy (creative director of jewellery, beauty and accessories) to this day. Here, the motif forms the centrepiece of this hair clip, where the signature links are blown up to large, almost inflated proportions in either a matte black or gilt finish.

Hermès Tri Maillon GM hair clip, £510, available at hermes.com.

9. Ferragamo

Since taking the helm of Ferragamo in 2022, Maximilian Davies has solidified a particularly vibrant shade of red as one of the signature house colours. (It can be seen across campaigns, ready-to-wear and accessories, such as the Hug and Hobo bags). This hair clip is another example of the shade in action, this time on a soft silk ribbon that nods towards the history of the Italian label through a riff on the Vara bow.

Ferragamo Vara soft bow hair clip, £ 310.00 available at luisaviaroma.com.

10. Sophie Buhai

Los Angeles-based brand Sophie Buhai draws upon modernist design history, emphasising organic and sculptural forms across handcrafted jewellery and accessories. The same applies to this cellulose clip in the shape of a shell, which is part of Buhai’s most recent collection inspired by the natural beauty of the sea.

Sophie Buhai fan Shell tortoiseshell acetate hair clip, £260, available at net-a-porter.com.

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

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

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

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

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

Courrèges

Dolce & Gabbana

Dries Van Noten

Acne Studios

Hermès

Wooyoungmi

Ferragamo

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

Givenchy

Alexander McQueen

Carven

Isabel Marant

Bottega Veneta

Miu Miu

Paul Smith

Fendi

Dior

Prada

Balenciaga

Marni

Valentino

Loewe 

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

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

And with that, another year in style reaches its end – one as ever filled with a 365-day schedule of around-the-world runway shows, designer debuts (and just as many exits), blockbuster fashion exhibitions, books and movies, and an exciting new vanguard of international fashion talent defining what style means today. Alongside, the usual slew of must-have garments and trends that achieved cultural (and social media) ubiquity – from Miu Miu going trouser-less to ‘quiet luxury’ entering everyday parlance. Phew.

Here, as the year draws to a close, here is the story of fashion in 2023, as captured in pictures from the pages of Wallpaper*.

The story of fashion in 2023, as captured in Wallpaper*

Julien Dossena paid ode to Paco Rabanne’s legacy

Paco Rabanne, the Spanish couturier whose chainmail and metal creations helped define 1960s ‘Space Age’ fashion, died this past February, aged 88. The following month Julien Dossena – who now leads his eponymous house, Rabanne – provided a ’coda to the couturier legacy’ as part of his A/W 2023 collection, which ended with five archival dresses created by Rabanne. ‘Spanning five decades, these dresses will signal the innovative craftsmanship that defines the timeless and totemic women of Paco Rabanne,’ read the collection notes. ‘He left behind so much, all those radical moments of modernity,’ Dossena told Wallpaper* in the September Style Issue. ‘When you wear Rabanne chainmail, it’s really a feeling. There is a sensation between the garment and the skin.’

One of Dossena’s own chainmail creations was photographed by Sophie Tajan in the same issue, which celebrated Dossena’s landmark ten years at the brand.  ‘Now, there’s a perception of the brand that is completely different,’ he said. ‘First, it was the industry insiders that were sceptical about what Rabanne could be. Then we got them on side. Now, Rabanne is going mainstream. I can feel the evolution.’ 

Matthieu Blazy completed his ‘Italian trilogy’ of shows at Bottega Veneta

An extraordinary trio of collections marked Matthieu Blazy’s assured debut at Bottega Veneta, where he was appointed creative director after the exit of Daniel Lee in 2021. Deemed his ‘Italia’ trilogy, the three shows – each taking place in Milan – aimed to capture what the designer deemed ‘the alchemy of the street’, seeing the quotidian (from white tank tops to plaid shirts and blue jeans) rendered in imaginative new fabrications. Case in point, his array of ‘trompe l’oeil’ pieces, where a garment might appear to be created from cotton, denim or wool but were actually crafted from delicately hand-painted or dyed leather in the Italian house’s famed atelier. 

The final chapter took place in February 2023, perhaps his boldest expression of the essence of the house yet – a stream of unexpected elements, whether knitted ‘wool’ boots which looked like socks, flannel pyjamas in featherweight nappa leather, or ties which appeared to have been crafted from raised-texture ostrich leather (they too were actually embossed goatskin). The result was what Blazy called ‘a strange carnival, a crowd of people from anywhere and everywhere’. This particular look was taken from Wallpaper’s September Style Issue, photographed by Alessandro Furchino Capria and part of The Glossary, in which Dal Chodha broke down A/W 2023’s ‘extra-ordinary’ looks.

Coco Chanel’s expansive body of work was lauded at the V&A

In October, the V&A granted Wallpaper* a rare look inside the museum’s extraordinary Chanel archive in anticipation of its latest blockbuster fashion exhibition, ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’. A wide-ranging exploration of the designer – who is perhaps best known as ‘Coco’ Chanel – and her oeuvre, it celebrated the French couturier’s role in reshaping the contemporary woman’s wardrobe. ‘It’s about chic, simple clothing, looking at movement and the body. These elements she creates – the jersey, the little black dress, the suit – these are the things she comes back to time and again and refines them,’ said its curator Oriole Cullen. 

Here, a silk tulle, satin crêpe, chiffon and lace dress from S/S 1930 by Chanel is photographed by London-born Oskar Proctor, selected by Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes. 

Sarah Burton said goodbye to Alexander McQueen after three decades

After over two decades at the British label, Sarah Burton announced her departure from Alexander McQueen this September. At the beginning of October in Paris – surrounded by the vast fabric works of Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz – she presented an emotive final collection, inspired by ‘the female anatomy, Queen Elizabeth I [and] the blood red rose’. Closing with house muse Naomi Campbell, it ended with a rapturous standing ovation (in December, she won the Trailblazer Award at The Fashion Awards 2023).  

It was also an ode to house founder Lee McQueen, who she first worked with in 1996 as an intern after graduating from Central Saint Martins. She would go on to become the designer’s right-hand woman, becoming head of womenswear in 2000 and later becoming creative director after his death in 2010. Her astute collections married McQueen’s knack for provocation and drama with emotive elements of handcraft, often inspired by ancient British folklore and ritual. She will be succeeded by Irish designer, and fellow Central Saint Martins graduate, Seán McGirr.

Miu Miu went trouser-less

In 2022, we named Miu Miu’s sawn-off micro mini one of the definitive fashion moments of the year – entirely ubiquitous, much copied but never equalled. This year, Miuccia Prada continued her knack for capturing the zeitgeist with an altogether more daring item: the knicker, worn on the runway with tights, cardigans and heels (including memorably by actor Emma Corrin, who donned a bejewelled pair). It was part of an A/W 2023 collection the designer described as exploring ‘ways of looking’. Here, the distinct look is photographed by Dham Srifuengfung in the  November 2023 Art Issue of Wallpaper*.

‘I am always interested in how people look at things, their consideration… why people are attracted to certain ideas, why others repulse them,’ she explained. ‘[This collection is about] how fashion and fashion design can change perceptions, of things we think we know. It’s an invitation to reconsider.’

Willy Chavarria helped put American fashion centre stage

In Wallpaper’s August ‘Made in the USA’ issue – a celebration of creative America – we photographed a new class of American designers defining the country’s creative landscape. Among them was Willy Chavarria, a California-born designer who is fast becoming one of American fashion’s most distinct voices. Here, his work is photographed by New York-based photographer Davey Adésida.

Marrying archetypal American garments – he would work at a slew of the country’s best-known brands, including Ralph Lauren, before starting his label – with the elegant austerity of ecclesiastical dress and the dress codes of the Mexican-American community of which he is a part, he would be named CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year, as well as Designer of the Year at the Latin American awards two days prior. 

Nicolas Ghesquière marked ten years at Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière defines his tenure at Louis Vuitton – which began in 2013 – as a dialogue between ’fashion and time’, his defiantly postmodern collections hopping between eras and references, from the far-off future to the court of Louis XIV. ‘The rapport between those two elements remains fundamental to my work,’ he said in 2020. ‘I have always looked to marry silhouettes, techniques, memories, and impressions from the past with the latest technology to create fashion for today that speaks to the future.’

2023 saw Ghesquière’s own brush with time: ten years as womenswear creative director of the Parisian house, a relative lifetime in the near-constant entries and exits of designers at the city’s other maisons. And that’s not it: in November, it was announced that the designer had signed a contract for five more years in the role. Vive la Ghesquière.

Conner Ives lead fashion’s new vanguard

In January’s ‘The Future Issue’ of Wallpaper* rising photographer Jessica Madavo photographed fashion’s new vanguard – a group of international designers presenting a new way to dress (from biofabricated materials to upcycled gowns). Among them was young American designer Conner Ives, who earlier this month would go on to win the BFC Foundation Designer Award at The Fashion Awards 2023.

‘I don’t want this to just be a flash in the pan,’ he told Tilly Macalister-Smith of his approach, which is largely defined by taking vintage clothing and reformulating the garments into his distinct 2000s-tinged designs. ‘We are trying to change so much. I want to blow apart our idea of what sustainability is.’

Daniel Lee debuted at Burberry (and began his transformation of the house)

Daniel Lee’s arrival at Burberry was no doubt the year’s most-anticipated designer debut, with curious editors moving en masse to London’s Kennington Park this past February to see if he could replicate the magic touch which saw him transform Italian house Bottega Veneta (he had exited that role the year prior).

An astute collection saw the Yorkshire-born designer mine the eccentricities of British dress codes with pieces which spanned enormous trapper hats, mallard-print shirting and riffs on the house’s ’Equestrian Knight’ logo, which has since become the emblem of Lee‘s vision for the house (as well as a distinct shade of Burberry blue). Here, from later in the year – photographed by Daniel Riera in Wallpaper’s December issue which captured the season’s offbeat tailoring – a suit from Lee’s Spring 2024 collection for the house, featuring a gleefully warped take on traditional British houndstooth.

Quiet luxury entered everyday parlance 

If 2022 saw designers embrace the outré and the surreal, 2023 saw an altogether more subdued trend, ‘quiet luxury’, enter everyday parlance. It referred to the kind of understated, slogan and logo-free garments popularised by the uber-rich protagonists of Succession – which itself came to a much-talked-about end in 2023 – from layers of cashmere and classic camel overcoats to sportier wool caps, gilets and hoodies. Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, Max Mara, Hermès, The Row and Zegna were some of the labels which best epitomised the changing mood, defined by their conspicuousness (but easily identifiable for those in the know). 

And, if the expression itself – alongside its tabloidy synonym ‘stealth weatlh’ – has since become overused marketing speak, there is no doubt that fashion did indeed eschew theatrics in favour of pieces made to last: cue a stream of wear-forever tailoring, cocooning merino and cashmere knits, and richly luxurious shades of brown, beige, ivory, grey and burgundy on the runways of New York, London, Milan and Paris. Here, a faux-fur coat Ferragamo coat captured by Valentin Hennequin as part of our October enveloping outerwear story, encapsulates the year’s bourgeois mood. 

While Jonathan Anderson won the year’s fashion plaudits

‘Some years are different,’ said Jonathan Anderson on Instagram earlier this month after his Designer of the Year win at The Fashion Awards 2023, which followed a win for International Designer of the Year at the CFDA Awards in November. The plaudits followed a year of acclaim for the Northern Irish designer at both his eponymous label JW Anderson and at Loewe, where a mood of reduction infused his ever-imaginative riffs on the archetypal elements of a wardrobe. 

There were many highlights – a memorable collaboration with choreographer Michael Clark at JW Anderson, or the skewed ’fish eye’ proportions of his S/S 2024 men’s and womenswear collections at Loewe – though these apparition-like printed gowns from his A/W 2023 collection, inspired by the works of Gerhard Richter, remain imprinted in the memory. One of them appeared in the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographed by Georgia Devey Smith.

Dystopian herbariums, destroyed disco balls, serene meadows: this season’s best runway sets were a surreal trip through time and space. From the return of Prada’s oozing curtains of slime to artwork-adorned catwalks – including a smattering of Lynda Benglis sculptures at Loewe – we run through the best-designed show sets of S/S 2024 fashion month. 

Best in show: S/S 2024’s dramatic runway sets

Acne Studios

Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johansson drafted Austrian artist Lukas Gschwandtner – best known for his pillow-like sculptures which evoke the shapes of women reclining in historical portraiture – to collaborate on the Swedish brand’s S/S 2024 show set. Capturing a mood of ‘after-hours liberation’, the ecru canvas-covered space featured an enormous deconstructed disco ball as well as Gschwandtner’s ‘soft furnishings‘ which were scattered about the space. ‘[We were thinking about] soft furnishing that you sink into – you almost become them,’ he told Wallpaper*.

Read the story behind the Acne Studios S/S 2024 set. 

Miu Miu

A new video installation by Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria provided the backdrop to Miuccia Prada’s latest collection, which explored ‘a rationale of beauty today’. Titled Gravity & Grace, the short film featured stunt woman Ayesha Hussain as a pair of ‘archetypal twins’ fighting each other with crossbows and swords in what Al-Maria called ‘an epic battle over POV’. ‘There is a theme of questioning what is real and what is not,’ she told Wallpaper*.

Read the story behind the Miu Miu S/S 2024 set.

Loewe 

Jonathan Anderson once again populated the Loewe runway with a series of sculptures by Lynda Benglis, following a trio of fountains by the American artist that backdropped his menswear show earlier this year. The large, twisting forms in metallic gold and silver were cast from manipulated pieces of clay; in the collection itself, they were reflected by jewellery created in collaboration with the artist’s studio. ‘She doesn’t need to use words, she's using something which is physical,’ Anderson said. ‘There’s something of her that I see in this collection – the attitude, the confidence.’ 

Sportmax

Drawing inspiration from Czech artist Krištof Kintera’s ‘Postnatural‘ works, which depict dystopian imaginings of botanical herbariums, the Sportmax showspace was intersected by a fluorescent-lit glass vitrine filled with colourful tropical flowers and plants. It provided a reflection of the collection’s experimental, science fiction-infused mood: from strange padded forms and sculptural silhouettes to austere white shift dresses recalling medical uniforms. 

Louis Vuitton

The as-yet-unnamed site of a vast Louis Vuitton project on Champs-Élysées – rumours are circulating are that it will be a hotel from the house – provided the setting for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest womenswear collection. Still a building site, the former art nouveau bank was entirely covered in orange material, with a matching orange runway, grandstand seating and enormous light fixtures. Part of a continuing collaboration with Hollywood set designer James Chinlund, the house describes the setting as ‘simultaneously familiar and new’, a mood of disorientation captured in the era-hopping collection itself.

Prada

Following the house’s menswear show held this past June, Prada’s womenswear showspace – created in collaboration with AMO – saw a stainless-steel runway divided by dripping curtains of slime. ‘An environment of liquid partitions intertwined with elements of industrial architecture,’ described AMO of the setting, which provided the backdrop for a collection of material richness, from featherweight diaphanous dresses to tassel, eyelet and crystal adornment, each a demonstration of Prada’s decades-long commitment to craft. ‘We tried to make the best out of our work, to make beautiful things, for today,’ said Miuccia Prada, who co-creates the house’s collections with Raf Simons. ‘That may sound banal, but it is the truth.’ 

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy described his fourth collection for Bottega Veneta as a fantastical round-the-world odyssey, ’a journey of transformation and escape’ in which he imagined his protagonist for the season picking up elements of dress from journeys around the globe. The tiled setting – in part recalling those found around a swimming pool – reflected the mood, adorned with a world map playfully populated with illustrated penguins, sardines, crabs and roosters. 

Saint Laurent

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Eiffel Tower at night – complete with shimmering light show – this season’s Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello show set comprised a series of monolithic stone and marble walls and sleek cuboid benches. ‘A modernist set of kaleidoscopic, mineral surfaces, affording views of the Eiffel Tower while highlighting its soft elegance,’ described the house.

Givenchy

Matthew M Williams’ latest collection for Givenchy was staged inside a new work by architect Gabriel Calatrava for the Collaborative Architecture Laboratory. An enormous inverted tent – affording views of Paris’ L’École Militaire at each end – the monochrome white interior was a reflection of ‘the collection’s themes of ease and elegance,’ said the house. Each of the set’s elements was rented or reusable. 

Burberry

Daniel Lee chose Highbury Fields – a historic slice of green space in north London – to present his much-anticipated sophomore collection. For the occasion, a Burberry-check-adorned tent was erected in the park; inside, a series of park benches covered with Burberry blankets provided the show’s seating.

Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri continued a tradition of collaboration with women artists on her show sets this season. For S/S 2024, it was Italian artist Elena Bellantoni, who created a video installation that parodied sexist depictions of womanhood in advertising from the 1960s to the 2000s. ‘It is about breaking out of a semantic grid,’ the house described of the piece, which was displayed on vast LED screens around the space. 

Also see our highlights of the recent S/S 2024 runway shows:
Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024
Milan Fashion Week S/S 2024
London Fashion Week S/S 2024
New York Fashion Week S/S 2024

Autumn fashion for art lovers: as Frieze London 2023 takes over town this week, photographer Dham Srifuengfung and Wallpaper* fashion director Jason Hughes capture a series of curated ensembles for cultural influencers and artistic types, backdropped by London gallery David Zwirner.

Spanning the quotidien – a Miu Miu hoodie, a classic Bottega Veneta overcoat, slouchy Zegna trousers – and the surreal – Loewe’s sprouting metal wings, a furry Sportmax suit – it is a recipe for impactful dressing for cultural excursions this autumn and winter.

In the background, the colourful compositions of Brazilian artist Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias line David Zwirner’s walls as part of an exhibition that took place in the gallery in September 2023, the artist’s first solo exhibition outside his home country. Here, his bold approach to colour and texture provides a fitting backdrop to this autumn’s wishlist wardrobe.

Autumn fashion, photographed at David Zwirner London

Models: Chieloka at Xdirectn, Thijs Leushuis at Chapter Mgmt, Sona at Majin Scouting, Gem Refoufi at Present Model Management, Kiran Farebrother at Premier Model Management, Yangying Long at The Hive Management, Jordan Djadi at Storm Management, Lars Baena Boer, and Aramish Mangi at Viva London. Casting: Hien Le at Diller Global. Hair: Maarit Niemela at Frank Agency using Amika. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at Saint Luke using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale Le Sérum. Photography assistants: Jed Barnes, Coco Bagley. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Sabrina Leina, Ady Huq. Hair assistant: Aimeric Aimot Make-up assistant: Ruby Yu. Production assistant: Minna Vauhkonen. Photographed on location at the David Zwirner gallery, London, W1.

This article appears in the November 2023 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The classically inspired proportions of Auguste Perret’s 1939-built Palais d'Iéna in Paris – ‘a hymn to concrete’, as it has been described – were the starting point for Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria’s latest project, a video work that provided the backdrop for the Miu Miu S/S 2024 collection shown during Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024 earlier this week. The rationalist building, which now houses the French government’s Economic, Social and Environmental Council, has been the venue for Miu Miu’s shows for several years, transformed by the Italian house season on season.

‘The space of Palais d’Iéna was the starting point – I often start projects by thinking through the architecture,’ Al-Maria tells Wallpaper*. ’Classical brutalism was a wild concept to me – I wanted to make the classical brutalist space even more surreal and multiply the dimensions the audience could view the show within.’

Artist Sophia Al-Maria for Miu Miu S/S 2024

As such, interspersed between the space’s various columns, a series of screens showed Al-Maria’s latest work both prior to the show – a moody cloud-filled sky, suggesting an approaching storm – and during the show itself, where images swerved from a samurai sword-wielding female protagonist to strange, futuristic versions of the Palais’ pillars. The accompanying notes described the film’s setting as ‘a landscape of technological ruins, an imaginary history invented inside the Palais d’Iéna’.

Al-Maria said she first got involved with the project – one of several recent ‘interventions’ of the Miu Miu show space by contemporary artists – after her work was displayed as part of the 2023 exhibition ‘Everybody Talks About the Weather’ at Fondazione Prada’s Venice outpost. Titled The Future Was Desert, her film featured ‘delirious, post-apocalyptic dreamscapes’ set amid the Gulf Region and explored themes of environmental devastation, fossil-fuel dependency and the geopolitical complexities of the region.

‘I knew we had shared interests in human history and deep time,’ says Al-Maria of her affinity with Mrs Prada’s work. ‘There is a theme of questioning what is real and what is not, and in response to this extremely real experience of questioning the present moment, I wrote a sort of ”episode recap” of a fairytale about this [idea].’

As such, the film, titled Gravity & Grace, is described by the house as ‘an old story with a new twist... a fairy tale ending (of the world) about a court jester and a royal guard who can’t agree if life is a tragedy or comedy’. Both characters (‘archetypal twins’) are played by stunt woman Ayesha Hussain, fighting with swords and crossbows in what Al-Maria calls ‘an epic battle over POV’. A soundtrack is with an original piece by Melbourne-based band Divide and Dissolve, arranged by Asma Maaroof, Daniel Pineda and Joshua Fay.

As for the film’s link with the collection itself – which saw Mrs Prada explore ‘a rationale of beauty today... exploding, redressing’ – Al-Maria describes ‘a serendipitous symmetry‘, despite not seeing the full collection prior to creating the film. ‘I was transported when I saw a few of the looks. It felt as if a sensation that I have felt in the air around experiencing the present moment was suddenly embodied and enrobed in [the pieces].’

The S/S 2024 collection was a typically intriguing collection from Mrs Prada, who said she was inspired by ’radically expanding’ notions of beauty. ‘Instead of rigid paradigms, there is a radical expansion, a rich plurality,’ explained the collection notes. ‘Not beauty, but beauties, an embracing of unique characters, the joy of life.’ Looks let moments of glamour clash with the everyday: a golden brocade dress sat over a simple sweater and shirt, a lace petticoat with a blazer. Elsewhere, recent signatures of the house – abbreviated mini skirts, exposed logoed waistbands, elements of sportswear – continued to be riffed upon by the designer.

‘The surreal mixed with the quotidian,’ says Al-Maria of what Miu Miu encapsulates for her. ‘The everyday with a twist.’

miumiu.com

Last stop, Paris. Fashion month concluded with Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024, a nine-day schedule that spanned shows from the city’s blockbuster houses – Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent among them – alongside a series of new arrivals in the fashion capital.

These included a one-off Marni show from Francesco Risso, seeing the Italian house present its latest collection in Karl Lagerfeld’s former private residence; a Paris debut from Peter Do who has previously shown in New York (and features in our recent Wallpaper* USA 300 guide to creative America), as well as the first collection from former Lacoste creative director Louise Trotter at Carven. 

Elsewhere, there were returns to Paris Fashion Week from Maison Margiela and Mugler, as well as a raft of younger labels – highlights included Duran Lantink, Kiko Kostadinov and Vaquera, each bringing their distinct, energetic style to the week. 

Here, in the Wallpaper* round-up, is the best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024.

Best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024

Miu Miu

A typically intriguing show from Miuccia Prada provided an apt closing act to a season that has largely centred on an exploration of the quotidian wardrobe, seeing real garments reimagined in various ways – from the pragmatic to the strange. It is a mode of design that has long defined Miuccia Prada’s collections at both Miu Miu and Prada, her work often reconsidering archetypal garments in unfamiliar ways (on numerous occasions she has noted being drawn to pieces traditionally considered ugly, driven by a desire to make them beautiful). For this season’s show – which continued several hallmarks of recent seasons, including super-abbreviated mini skirts, low-slung underwear-bearing waistlines and an influence of sportswear in polo shirts and swim trunks – she said she was inspired by the ‘radically expanding’ concept of contemporary beauty which is nonetheless infused with historical influence. 

‘This collection is a search for a reflective definition, a reactive address of beauty for modern times,’ she said via the accompanying notes, presenting the collection on a cast which included the musician Troye Sivan, former house muse Rosemary Ferguson, and Priscilla actress Cailee Spaeny, who closed the show. As such, flourishes of glamour clashed with the mundane: a petticoat white lace skirt was worn with a slouchy Harrington jacket, a glorious gold brocade dress over an everyday sweater and shirt, while a pair of vertiginous heels hung out of a model’s handbag (on her feet were moccasins, as if exchanged in search for comfort). Meanwhile, a video work by Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria – in which a samurai sword-wielding female protagonist traversed what the house called ‘a landscape of technological ruins’ – was played on numerous screens around the Palais d’Iéna OMA-designed show space. ‘Instead of rigid paradigms, there is a radical expansion, a rich plurality,’ the collection notes concluded. ‘Not beauty, but beauties, an embracing of unique characters, the joy of life.’

Duran Lantink

If Amsterdam-based designer Duran Lantink initially rose to prominence for his pieced-together upcycled garments – which would sometimes feature the labels of two brands stitched together as a signature – recent seasons have seen the 2023 Andam special prize-winner divert towards a laser-focus on silhouette, creating strange but satisfying forms which teeter between art and fashion. Particularly amid a season of relative restraint and pragmatism, it has made hiim one of Paris Fashion Week’s most exciting prospects, and there is certainly some satisfaction in encountering a designer who has taken a longer path towards honing his style (his eponymous label was first founded in 2016). For S/S 2024, Lantink said he was thinking about ‘shape’: denim hotpants were transformed bulbous forms which recalled rubber rings and sat low at the waist – a silhouette which ran throughout, on jersey skirts or narrow bra tops – while dresses had a exaggerated hourglass silhouette. Watersports were a vague theme, with swim trunks layered over trousers or wetsuit-inspired chaps over a pair of jeans, while other archetypal garments – low-slung chino pants, striped silk pyjamas, double-breasted tailoring – were gently remoulded by Lantink into unfamiliar new forms. Where this fascinating designer goes next is anyone’s guess, though in a week filled with more well-established names, he nonetheless stood out as one of the best. 

Chanel

The modernist Villa Noailles, a Robert Mallet-Stevens-designed hilltop residence in the southern French town of Hyères, provided the starting point for Virginie Viard’s latest Chanel collection. Commissioned by Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, a pair of wealthy art patrons, the home would host gatherings of the international avant-garde – from Jean Cocteau and Eileen Grey to Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst – amid its angular architecture and serene gardens (in more recent years, it has been home to the Hyères fashion festival, which celebrates emerging design talent and is sponsored by the house). 

Here, it set the scene for a breezy and desirable riviera-infused collection that Viard described as ‘an ode to liberty and to movement’. The villa’s outdoor spaces – ‘from its cubist chequered garden to its sunken flower beds’ – were a particular inspiration, emerging in geometric, striped and patchwork motifs that ran across the collection’s various riffs on tweed tailoring. Influences of sportswear also ran throughout: striped pullover jumpers recalled rugby shirts, suiting came in technical neoprene, while lightweight matching two-sets – some adorned with colourful flowers – were cut with an easy, sinuous line. Layers of black organza used across skirts, blouses and frilled-collar dresses, swathes of lace and abbreviated baby doll silhouettes provided a more sensual contrast. ‘Sophistication and informality, the tweed throughout the collection, sportswear and lace: I tried to bring one thing and its opposite together in the coolest way possible,’ Viard explained. ‘And the gardens and swimming pool of the Villa Noailles, that exceptional setting, lend themselves to that rather well.’

Maison Margiela

An exhilarating show from John Galliano – held at the recently inaugurated Maison Margiela headquarters in Paris’ 16th arrondissement – saw the designer explore the idea of an ‘inherited wardrobe’ in typically outré style. Presented on models who stomped and contorted their bodies down the gleaming white runway, the co-ed collection saw a pile-up of elements, many of which were deconstructed in ode to house founder Martin Margiela’s signature technique. Galliano once again looked towards the characters of Count and Hen, two fictional star-crossed lovers whose ongoing adventures have provided the impetus behind the designer’s recent collections. Here, he imagined them leaving in a 20th-century English port on a journey towards America, he ‘the son of an impoverished aristocratic line’, she the daughter of ‘an industrial family of pretence’. So set the scene for ripped-away bustier tops, diaphanous sheer organza gowns with exposed silk slips beneath, or slouchy overcoats and jackets out of which vast white collars emerged (the latter, said Galliano, was designed to recall ‘the nonchalant body language observed in archival imagery of mauvais garçons’). Other gowns had laminated elements, preserving drapes and creases ‘as if flattened by the pressure of a suitcase’, while skirts came with frayed edges which in their plurality reminded of feathers. Together, it was an electrifying spectacle – no-holds-barred fashion that was a riposte to restraint.

Louis Vuitton

The site of a new Louis Vuitton project, a vast city block-spanning location on Paris’ Champs-Élysées shopping street, provided the setting for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest womenswear collection for the house (the rumour is that it will become the future Louis Vuitton hotel). Entirely covered in orange plastic – with grandstands of orange seating and a matching runway – the former art nouveau bank, current construction site, had been transformed for the occasion by James Chinlund, a Hollywood production designer with whom Ghesquière has been working for a number of seasons. ‘Simultaneously familiar and new,’ said the house of the space, a reflection of Ghesquière’s wider project at the house, whereby familiar reference points are clashed and amalgamated in his distinctly postmodern, time-hopping style. This season, Ghesquière noted he has been thinking about packing – the exterior of the new Champs-Élysées space is designed to recall one of the house’s signature trunks – which lent the collection both a feeling of eclecticism and lightness, as if various belongings had been piled-inside a suitcase for a summertime trip away. There were the billowing opening looks, a series of lightweight blouses and track jackets worn with full-length layered skirts, while other garments riffed on Parisian bourgeois style – a perennial Ghesquière reference – in tweed jackets and skirts, decorative chain jewellery and prints reminiscent of those found on silk scarves. Accessories, meanwhile, recalled the tourist: one bag was shaped like a camera, another evoked a miniature Louis Vuitton trunk dotted with stickers from various world destinations. Together, it was a heady, seductive mix – one which elicited a standing ovation from the gathered crowd as the designer took his final bow.

Stella McCartney

For one day only, Marché Saxe-Breteuil – a food market in Paris’ 7th arrondissement – became ‘Stella’s Sustainable Market’, its array of stalls showcasing a slew of innovators in the field of sustainability, from circular fabric platform Nona Source to Mabel Industries, which creates leather from apple waste. Others hinted at the mood of the season, like a second-hand record stall, the designer noting that she had looked towards family as inspiration for the summer collection – her own ‘roots in music, her parents’ relationship and shared wardrobes, and the care for our fellow creatures and Mother Earth they instilled in her’, the collection notes described. As such, the collection had a suitably rock and roll sensibility: micro shorts – some bejewelled – were worn with enormous men’s blazers on top, crochet dresses were inset with glimmering mirrored discs, while vintage Wings merchandise was interspersed to recall Paul and Linda McCartney’s days on tour. The designer spoke of the idea of exchange – how a garment might have passed between her and her mother, and then to her own daughter – which lent the collection a mood of freewheeling eclectism. McCartney’s own commitment to sustainability was found throughout, whether the use of a world-first seaweed-based yarn Kelsun or a new leather made from the by-product of the Veuve Cliquot champagne harvest, which here was used to create a new version of McCartney‘s signature Frayme handbag.

Valentino

Alongside a troupe of interpretative dancers who writhed rhythmically in pits of sand and mud, British musician FKA Twigs provided the live soundtrack for a Valentino show which looked towards the liberated female body for inspiration. A series of cut-out garments – adorned with flowers or motifs evocative of Baroque ceiling mouldings or picture frames – revealed flashes of skin beneath, while other gowns were adorned with nude mermaids. The idea of nakedness ran throughout, creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli saying such elements were not ‘provocation’, but rather an expression of 'a personal sensuality, a vital interrelationship of cloth and body.’ As such, languid gowns gently traced the line of the body – some cut-out across the stomach or slit high on the leg – while other dresses were abbreviated, ‘the skin itself becoming a fabric’. More grounded garments included riffs on T-shirts and jeans, the latter recalling Piccioli’s elevation of the garment to the realms of haute couture this past June. Here, he called them ‘honest garments’, chosen for their ‘direct engagement with the body’. It made for a sensual collection nonetheless defined by a feeling of ease: clothing ‘honouring bodies, a physicality, and the feminine’.

Akris

Illustrations of bright red poppies provided the backdrop for Albert Kriemler’s latest Akris collection, which the designer said was an ode to the creative act and the imagination. He noted inspiration from Austrian textile designer Felice ‘Lizzi’ Rix-Ueno, who worked in the early 20th century as part of the Vienna Workshop. Kriemler said he was particularly drawn to her concept of ‘Fantasie’: ‘For her, it meant demonstrating imagination to achieve originality and that only inner creativity will lead to one’s identity, truly believing in the expressive possibilities of craft,’ he said. ‘I very much relate to her idea of craft as momentum. This collection is a dedication to Lizzi.’ As such, Rix-Ueno’s illustration of poppies became appliqué on a tulle mini dress, while other motifs by the designer ran throughout, adorning billowing shirt dresses or languid silk crepe blouses. Elsewhere, the collection captured a mood of ease and lightness in sheer organza blazers, various riffs on the white cotton shirt, and tops, dresses and skirts adorned with elegant trailing tassels. 

Balenciaga

The opening look of Demna’s latest collection for Balenciaga – presented in a vast room hung with red curtains suggestive of theatre – was worn by the designer’s mother, Ella. The Georgian designer, who last season stripped his collection back to the essence of clothes making, this time looked towards a more intimate inspiration – his friends, family, and husband BFRND, the latter closing the show in upcycled bridal attire and also providing a soundtrack Demna likened to ‘sonic couture’. Other friends walked the runway, too – the critic Cathy Horyn, who has been an avid supporter of the designer’s work, his PR director Robin Meason and ex-tutor Linda Loppa among them – as well as a series of muses, including nightlife impresario Amanda Lepore, who captures Demna’s brand of subversive glamour (here, she wore a skintight lace gown contoured to her Monroe-esque curves). 

There was no doubt a personal resonance to placing his inner circle on the runway – particularly after a tumultuous past year for the designer and house – but the gesture also spoke of Demna’s desire to get back to the roots of his Balenciaga project. Here, house signatures were renewed: there was warped oversized tailoring worn with knife-point pumps, plissé dresses in twisted floral prints, enormous bomber and biker jackets, hoodies and sweat suits, combat trousers and utility jackets, and plenty of idiosyncratic accessories – from passport-shaped purses to totes evocative of supermarket shopping bags. It ended with a series of gowns, inspired by those in the house archive, here creased and twisted into strange new forms, or appearing as if doused with water. Demna said that in hindsight he didn’t like last season because it felt ‘scared’. Here, with a defiant collection, he reclaimed a look which is all his own. 

Alexander McQueen

After over two decades at the house – having worked with Lee McQueen as his right-hand since the late 1990s, before becoming creative director in 2010 after his death – Sarah Burton presented her final collection for Alexander McQueen in Paris (Seán McGirr would be announced as the house’s new creative director days later). In the transgressive spirit of the house, she looked towards ‘the female anatomy, Queen Elizabeth I, the blood red rose,’ as well as the works of Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, whose vast fabric sculptures adorned the space and recall blood and body parts (‘a powerfully creative artist who refused ever to compromise her vision’, Burton said). The collection was filled with the designer’s hallmarks: sculpted leather bodices sat over tasselled gowns, sharp, wide-shouldered tailoring was stitched with crimson embroidery, while more delicate sheer gowns dripped with shimmering crystal adornment. The show closed with house muse Naomi Campbell walking the wooden runway in a dramatic silver gown, before Burton took her own final bow to an effusive standing ovation – a demonstration of the esteem to which the designer continues to be held. 

Comme des Garçons

‘To break free of the gloomy present, I hope to present a bright and light future,’ said Rei Kawakubo of her latest collection for Comme des Garçons, which saw the Japanese designer embrace colour and adornment over 18 extraordinarily constructed sculptural looks. Frilled collages of pattern and print – some recalling chopped-up Renaissance portraiture – encased the body in typically enveloping forms; other ‘gowns’ were decorated with enormous collars and bows. Twisting hologram fabrics, edged with explosions of tulle, wrapped the body and suggested parties and gifts, while cartoonish sneakers – a collaboration with French performance-wear brand Salomon – were studded with glimmering crystal and floral trinkets. To close the show, the models returned to the runway en masse, bumping against each other in the darkness. Partygoers decked out in their fineries? A plotting coven? Kawakubo’s work always teeters on the precipice of ideas. 

Hermès

The scent of a meadow filled the Hermès show space at Garde Républicaine, here transformed with undulating mounds planted with real reeds, grasses and wildflowers (all will be replanted in various projects after the show, the house noted). It provided an apt setting for French creative director Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s latest outing, which was inspired by the early bloom of spring: ‘an impromptu picnic, unhurried chatter, birdsong, a lack of constraints.’ It lent the collection a feeling of liberation and lightness: a leather skirt was laser-cut with motifs reminiscent of linens or tablecloths, breezy checkered dresses recalled the shape of an apron, while lightweight layers included crisp cotton and washed silk twill. As is often the case with Vanhee-Cybulski’s collections, a seductive undercurrent ran throughout in sinuous silk knits which traced the line of the body, or bra tops worn with high-waisted leather skirts. ‘Light, free, open, solid,’ said the house. ‘[Clothes] made to protect but not to hide, to envelop but not to hinder… they follow your sensibilities, your inclinations, your desires.’

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

Andreas Kronthaler said that this season began with an exploration of the late Vivienne Westwood’s personal wardrobe, one imbued with infinite memories and recollections for the designer, who married Westwood in 1993 and worked alongside her as a creative partner for several decades. Insistent that it was ‘not a retrospective’, he instead wanted to mine Westwood’s intuitive, spontaneous way of dressing: ‘always the opposite of everybody else,’ he elucidated. ‘She understood how to make the best of herself.’ The collection was accompanied by specific references to past collections – from a sequin cotton dress inspired by the S/S 2012 ‘War and Peace’ collection to a linen jacket and shorts drawn from S/S 1994’s ‘Café Society’ show – here reimagined in Kronthaler’s freewheeling, contemporary style. Playful devil horns, pinned-on badges and towering platforms recalled Westwood’s own irreverent approach, while pannier-hipped moiré dresses – including the one worn by Westwood’s granddaughter Cora Corré to close the show as the season’s bride – had an elegant simplicity. 

Noir Kei Ninomiya

There is an undeniable magic to Japanese designer Kei Ninomiya’s Noir collections, which draw the viewer into a kind of guessing game: what, exactly, is each remarkable garment made from? The shimmering anemone-like ruffles, edged with tiny spikes, gathered to create the skirt of a dress or looping sculptural top? The stamen-like adornments covering dresses and hoods, bouncing hypnotically as the models walk? As is tradition, Ninomiya does not elaborate on his process; instead, he simply said that the season’s theme was ‘black and white – from darkness to light’, the collection traversing dark hooded figures in laced-up leather bodices, delicate white tulle shirts worn with pleated black skirts, towards the extraordinary expressions of craft which closed the show. It lent the collection the feel of a fairytale – a march out of the dark and into the light by a designer whose work is pure fashion alchemy.

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe’s latest collection began with a series of sculptural forms in black. There were pointing spikes and enormous folds and twists; long structured cuboids which jutted outwards like fabric girders. Some recalled the neatness of origami, while others were more chaotic in design. ‘Creating objects, not clothes,’ Watanabe elucidated in typically brief notes sent by email. As the collection went on, the abstract forms began to transform into more recognisable garments: a series of leather jackets, some bursting into enormous spikes, others deconstructed and sitting cage-like over the body. A motocross jacket became a patchwork leather dress; a denim jacket was elongated and given a ruff-like collar, while the classic tweed suit was de- and reconstructed into elegant, geometric silhouettes. Objects, maybe, but clothes too – these were the building blocks of a wardrobe, exploded and remade in Watanabe’s inimitable style.

Victoria Beckham

In Karl Lagerfeld’s former residence on Rue de L’Université, the air misted with Suite 302 – one of the designer’s three just-launched fragrances – Victoria Beckham presented an assured collection which continued the exploration of deconstruction which began last season. Tailoring – perhaps the designer’s strongest element – was sawn off at the sleeve to reveal the white interior of the shoulder pad, while an elongated moiré overcoat was left open at the back to expose its lining beneath. Other tailored blazers were gently padded, lending a feeling of both structure and softness. Dresses, meanwhile, were inspired by ballet – which Beckham said she had taken lessons in throughout her childhood – seeing ethereal silk and organza dresses meet elongated jersey gowns, instilled with sculptural hooped elements. Slouchier cardigans, worn with knit leotards, recalled the rehearsal studio. ‘With the dancer’s simple uniform as its point of departure, the wardrobe illustrates the intrigue movement,’ read the collection notes.

Issey Miyake

Presented at a former campus of Paris’ Sorbonne University, Issey Miyake’s latest collection was titled ‘Grasping the Formless’. A brief, poetic set of collection notes asked attendees to ‘think of a flag fluttering in the sky’, a mood of lightness and movement reflected in the show’s opening act: an interpretative dance and music performance presented amid a series of floating white plissé paper sculptures. Satoshi Kondo – who creates the collection alongside the Issey Miyake design team – elaborated that he was thinking about the idea of a flag being in endless movement, its changing forms never quite the same in a given moment. In the collection itself, this was explored in light, transparent layers with undulating surfaces. The dramatic opening looks saw models wrapped and hooded as if cocooned – a reference to tube-like dresses shown as part of Issey Miyake’s S/S 1998 collection – while further dresses in the lightweight fabric had sculptural flourishes at the cuff. A series of blown-up tailoring, supersized across the shoulders, followed, while floating, semi-sheer plissé dresses recalled the show’s mise-en-scène. The show closed on a series of twisting, intricately layered looks – accessorised with wide-brimmed undulating hats – imbued with Kondo’s lightness of hand.

Loewe

The idea of pragmatism – real clothing, made for the demands of life – has run throughout this fashion season. It was a word that Jonathan Anderson chose to describe his latest womenswear collection, presented on Friday morning at Château de Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris, where a vast Loewe-branded grey box had been constructed in the historic castle’s courtyard. ‘A stringent proposal of daywear,’ said Anderson of the collection, which was presented alongside loaned works by American sculptor Lynda Benglis. ‘A pragmatic one.’ 

The collection began, he said, with a reconsideration of the silhouette which defined his menswear outing this past June: elongated wide-leg trousers and jeans which sat ultra-high on the waist, worn with tucked-in shirts and cropped knitwear, designed to give the appearance that you were looking upwards at the model through a fish-eye lens. Such combinations continued in the womenswear collection with a series of high-rise jeans and suede trousers; after the show, Anderson said he’s previously ‘had a tendency of running away from silhouette. This time, it was quite nice to explore it further – it was a newer process for me.’

It was through such plays on proportion and form that Anderson subverted the everyday: the opening look was a kind of cardigan, here reimagined as an enormous open-knit poncho studded with fist-sized gobstopper buttons. Other knits were the opposite: slim, super-sheer polo shirts, later elongated into dresses, traced the line of the body and exposed skin beneath. A classic V-neck sweater was worn with a prim button-down blouse and frilled skirt; in another look, it was amplified to enormous size, making it slip languidly off the model’s frame. Such oppositions, elucidated Anderson, evoked a tension between restraint and release which ran throughout the collection: ‘a reflection on being uptight, and the sensuality that breaks it all down,’ he described. 

Such pieces also spoke to the idea at the heart of Anderson’s work: the idea of taking familiar elements and re-shaping them into something new, strange, seductive. The choice of works by Benglis became an apt metaphor: the large twisting forms, in metallic gold and silver, were cast from manipulated pieces of clay moulded by the artist’s hands. For the show, Anderson had collaborated with Benglis on jewellery, including a series of dramatic cuffs which provided miniature, wearable versions of the sculptures in the room. ‘She doesn’t need to use words, she's using something which is physical,’ he said. ‘There’s something of her that I see in this collection – the attitude, the confidence.’

‘There's a subversiveness to this collection: when you look at it it’s very civilised, and [then] suddenly there’s a sexual seduction,’ he continued. ‘Which for me was like Lynda’s work. You approach the sculpture, you read the title, and then you’re like… ah.’ 

Schiaparelli

Daniel Roseberry‘s second ready-to-wear collection for Parisian haute couture house Schiaparelli continued to mine the mood of glamour and excess of the 1980s that ran through his debut, shown in February 2023. Wide shoulders reigned supreme across nipped-waist tailored dresses and tailoring, draped evening gowns came with enormous puff sleeves, while gobstopper gold jewellery ran throughout. Odes to house founder Elsa Schiaparelli’s distinct brand of surrealism provided further adornment, including lip-shaped broaches, eye-shaped earrings, and motifs recalling dripping nail polish bottles, as well as the evocation of the lobster – perhaps Schiaparelli’s most famous motif (this is the first time Roseberry has used the sacred symbol, which was introduced by Schiaparelli in 1937). Elsewhere, nods to the insouciant elegance of the French Riviera came in a blown-up riff on white Chanel-style tweeds, Breton-striped tailoring and knits, alongside elements delivered with a wink – like a sequined swimsuit or skirt decorated with a ‘Schiaparelli’-branded fish. Carpenter-style jeans, meanwhile, provided a grounded counterpoint. ‘From head to golden toes, Schiaparelli ready-to-wear is an exercise in making the everyday come to more vivid, more surprising life,’ said Roseberry. ‘I have found that the more familiar the item – a crisp white shirt, a fluid trench, a black smoking blazer – the more joyful it is to rediscover it anew when combined with the house codes, which often reveal themselves as secrets.’ 

Rick Owens

A note sent to attendees prior to the latest Rick Owens show – held in the forecourt of the Palais de Tokyo and complete with plumes of coloured smoke and confetti – saw the designer explain that this season’s collection was a musing on the idea of ‘joy as a moral obligation’. He used Björk as an example, having attended a concert by the Icelandic musician earlier this month. ‘Her intelligent, life-affirming energy made me kind of embarrassed of my own mopey adolescent pessimism,’ he wrote. ‘And hers wasn’t a Disney escapist obliviousness, but a concerned and thoughtful trust in moving forward. She expressed hope.’

It marked a shift from recent seasons, whereby Owens has spoken of feeling troubled about creating fashion collections in a time of world crisis, like the ongoing war in Ukraine. Here, accompanied by a remixed version of Diana Ross’ latest single ‘I Believe in Love’ – a song he called a ‘hymn’ for the season in its suggestion of faith and optimism – he tried a different approach, proposing a collection of cautious hope infused with moments of dark, seductive glamour. Sculptural draped leather gowns came in the designer’s signature black and slate grey – narrowed at the waist for a defined silhouette – while more liberated moments of colour came in distinct shades of red and pink he called ‘tender’ and ‘exultant’ respectively. Leather opera gloves became stoles that wrapped around the back, while sheer hood-like veils conjured both glamour and mourning. Finally, his ‘duvet donuts’ – vast swathes of padded fabric that wrap the body like a quilt – came this season in elegant silk organza and Italian tulle. 

‘I suppose I express resignation,’ the designer concluded. ‘My default setting is to propose a more sombre sobriety respectful of an ailing and struggling world observing a war. My enthusiasm is more tempered and suspicious – but I try to express the hope for joy while cautioning empathy and responsibility.’

Givenchy

Following on from a strong menswear outing in June (see our Paris Fashion Week Men's S/S 2024 highlights) – which riffed on school and college uniforms in elevated style – Matthew M Williams continued to make steps at Givenchy with a resolutely dressed-up womenswear collection that captured the delicate elegance of Hubert de Givenchy’s evening-wear in the American designer’s own contemporary parlance. Williams called it an exercise in opposing the ‘rigid and the relaxed’, seeing tailoring and overcoats – gently curved across the wide shoulder line and inspired by the shape and texture of a man’s tuxedo – juxtaposed with featherweight gossamer dresses that draped on the body, held in place with fine straps and embellished with fans of lace, twisting fabric flowers and dainty strings of pearls (a reference no doubt to the house’s most famous patron, Audrey Hepburn). A section in black, meanwhile, recalled the colour with which Hubert de Givenchy’s oeuvre is most synonymous, while vividly hued hosiery – stretched over the top of stiletto-heeled pumps – met softer pastel and earthy shades, the latter created using a mud-dying technique which dates back to China’s Ming Dynasty. 

Chloé

Gabriela Hearst chose to end her tenure at Parisian house Chloé with a breezy summertime offering held on the banks of the River Seine – an apt swansong for the Uruguayan designer whose time at Chloé has been defined by a largely laid-back approach, elevated with the use of luxurious, sustainable fabrications (talking to Wallpaper* in 2022 she likened it to creating a simple Caprese salad, ‘you need to be working with the best ingredients, great tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella’). Here, she looked towards the botanical world for inspiration: calla lilies inspired the elegant line of a leather skirt and trench, curved seams and gently flared sleeves emerged from images of orchids, while dresses came decorated with naive three-dimensional flowers. The inspiration point spoke to Hearst’s commitment to preserving nature – sustainability is at the heart of everything she does – while also encapsulating the free-spirited femininity that has defined Chloé since its advent by house founder Gaby Aghion. Befitting the mood, Hearst danced her way onto the runway at the end of the show, surrounded by musicians from Rio de Janeiro’s Mangueira samba school which was founded to provide opportunities for women to participate in the art form. And, though Hearst might have left the runway at Chloé, it is certainly not the last we will see of the designer: as well as continuing her namesake label from New York, she has also recently worked on a capsule collection for the Atelier Jolie, the just-launched fashion label of Hollywood star Angelina Jolie (her last Chloé project). Watch this space. 

Rabanne

Models wandering into the desert yonder has emerged as a minor theme this Paris Fashion Week (see: Courrèges), with Rabanne’s Julien Dossena sending out a series of nomadic looks across a powder-strewn runway that demonstrated the house’s extraordinary level of craft – particularly metalwork, which remains its founding material (‘He was just in love with metal’, Dossena previously told Wallpaper* of its founder, the late Paco Rabanne, ‘to him, it symbolised the next civilisation’). Brilliant diaphanous chainmail mini dresses were adorned with metal tassels and paired with woven leather gladiator boots, while metallic embellishment was used throughout – whether zig-zag beadwork, swathes of sequins or variously shaped metal paillettes, from perfect discs to those which recalled the elongated line of a feather. 

Elsewhere, draped silhouettes – many of which wrapped around the body and over the head like a hood or head scarf – recalled those worn by desert dwellers, here crafted from rustic wool and hemp (a nod, said the designer, to the work of American textile artist Sheila Hicks). The collection – which Dossena explained was inspired by the idea that visions of the ‘far-off future’ are so often infused with references to ancient civilisation – comes at a point when the growing Parisian house is building its own path ahead. Earlier this year, as part of a ‘one-brand’ strategy, it dropped ‘Paco’ from its name, redesigned the house logo and launched the new Rabanne Beauty line, led by American make-up artist Diane Kendal. Amid all this, Dossena’s ever-evolving vision for the house continues to shine. 

Dries Van Noten

‘Unfamiliar familiar’ was how Dries Van Noten described his latest womenswear collection, which saw the designer take well-worn inspiration points – namely sportswear and men’s tailoring – and reinterpret them in a freewheeling manner he called ‘spontaneous and free-thinking’. There was no doubt a sense of normality to the season’s garments, which largely consisted of wardrobe classics – trench coats, blazers, shirt dresses and the like – though here their proportions were blown up or shrunken in a manner that transformed them entirely (other pieces, like a series of rugby shirts, were reshaped to twist strangely around the body). Likewise, an ever-astute use of embellishment and print lent a feeling of collage: a classic trench was delicately decorated with hanging pearls and beads, sporty trims ran along the edges of blazers or looped the waist as a belt, while shimmering paillettes adorned lightweight skirts and blouses. If the season so far has been defined by designers putting their spin on the elements of an everyday wardrobe, this was a collection that proved when it comes to making the familiar unfamiliar, Van Noten is still a designer leading the pack. 

Acne Studios

After the ‘brutal magic’ of last season – which saw a melange of distressed, destroyed and floral-adorned elements set against a supernatural forest created in the space by Shona Heath – Jonny Johansson mined a feeling of reduction for his latest Acne Studios womenswear collection. Backdropping the show with a sparse ecru-canvas-covered set created in collaboration with Austrian artist Lukas Gschwandtner, Johansson said he wanted to conjure a mood of ‘after-hours liberation’ with a collection of sleek, dressed-up pieces nonetheless instilled with elements of deconstruction he called ‘elevated industrial’ (as if to set the mood, an enormous disintegrating disco ball sat at the end of the runway). Johansson had drawn inspiration from British artist Katerina Jebb’s Physical Evidence of a Woman, a series of scanned images of stilettos, fake eyelashes and pairs of tights; here, they became abstract prints across the collection. ‘These artefacts are something that I feel is almost lost today, they feel dated, yet they are still there. So we used them as prints and subverted them,’ he explained. ‘The industrial mood comes mostly from my passion for denim and the many ways we can manipulate this amazing fabric. [But] it also comes from the idea of a construction site: things are unfinished, a work in progress. I wanted to convey the beauty of that.’

Marni

An inflatable row of seating snaked through the gilded baroque interiors of Karl Lagerfeld’s former private residence on Rue de l’Université, which provided the setting for Francesco Risso’s latest show. It continued a series of travelling shows from the Italian house, whereby international locations – including New York and Tokyo – have replaced its native Milan. Prior to the show, Risso explained the particular choice of venue, calling it ‘the home of a witness and devotee to the most ephemeral architecture of real illusion that is fashion’, setting the stage for a collection that the designer said evoked memories of coming to the city as a teenager and discovering the unique magic of Parisian fashion. As such, there was no doubt an influence from the city’s history of haute couture: surface embellishment was embraced with typically wild abandon, seeing gowns adorned with thousands of collaged or three-dimensional flowers (the latter crafted from tin cans), while dramatic silhouettes jutted outwards at the hips to recall panniers. Other looks provided a playful riff on Parisian bourgeois style, whether colourful chequered suiting with clashing sweater vests, or a shrunken mohair jumper worn with flared suede pants. At heart, though, this was a collection about the joy and delight fashion can evoke – something that Risso says has been informed by his recent world tour. ‘A quest for joy, through dedication, a blooming meadow beyond the windows, to lose yourself in,’ he said in a note left for attendees. ‘Paris, la ville baroque – there you are.’

The Row

It is not always so easy to get your five-a-day while at fashion week – a hurried pomme frite is perhaps the closest one gets to a vegetable – so thanks go to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen who generously provided a veritable farmer’s market of fresh produce post-show, from delicate bunches of grapes to tomatoes and mange tout for attendees to take away in a brown paper bag. The simple joy of the gesture speaks to the pair’s wider aim at The Row, where they create seductively beautiful clothing which is nonetheless instilled with the pragmatism needed for a woman to undertake the demands of day-to-day life. Presented here in a sunlit Parisian salon, the S/S 2024 collection continued the ongoing evolution of the label, comprising not simply the beautiful, gently oversized trench coats, tailoring and shift dresses one expects from the designers, but also a series of draped-on-the-body gowns which – perhaps down to the setting – suggested the refinement of haute couture. Elsewhere, there was an evocation of spa wear: outerwear was cut to envelop the body like a robe, towels were slung across the shoulder, while footwear comprised an undeniably luxurious riff on hotel slippers. 

Courrèges

Theatrical trickery saw models at Nicolas Di Felice’s latest outing at Courrèges crack and shatter the white plaster runway with their footsteps, a feat achieved by a series of air-filled fireman’s hoses under the runway that, as they deflated, allowed for the moon-like surface above to be broken under the model’s heels. Breaking new ground proved an apt metaphor for this season’s inspiration, in which Di Felice – who has instilled Courrèges with a mood of sleek, youthful cool – imagined a woman leaving university and walking out into the desert-like yonder inspired by ‘empowering tales of female pioneers’. It lent a greater fluidity to the silhouette this season, rendered here in asymmetric shirt dresses, open at the collar and crossing gently over the body, an oversized, flared-sleeved riff on the house’s signature vinyl jacket, and lightweight, body-skimming dresses. A toughness and severity remained, however, in sliced-away silhouettes, zip-off hemlines or futuristic plastic bodices that recalled the construction of safety glasses. Armour and protection were also conjured – albeit in glamorous style –  in the collection’s final look, a glimmering chainmail poncho with matching floor-shattering pumps.

Saint Laurent

Pioneering female aviators Amelia Earhart and Adrienne Bolland provided the inspiration for Anthony Vaccarello’s latest Saint Laurent collection, which saw the designer soften the amplified silhouette of recent seasons in a move towards simplicity and pragmatism – nonetheless infused with the insouciant sophistication that has become his signature at the house. The collection began with a trio of flight suits in canvas cotton, a utilitarian style here nipped at the waist with a leather belt and worn with piles of bangles, gloves and typically vertiginous knife-point pumps. Such a juxtaposition – of typically functional silhouettes with gestures of glamour – ran throughout, with Vaccarrello riffing on cargo pants and skirts, vintage flight hoods and trench coats in earthy shades of olive, camel and maroon. Vaccarello also took on Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Saharien’ safari jacket, first introduced in the late 1960s by the designer and inspired by uniforms in northern Africa, where he grew up. It was a sensation: a garment of masculine power remade for a woman’s body, Saint Laurent capturing a spirit of both empowerment and seduction that would define his oeuvre. Over half a century on, Vaccarello continues this mantle. ‘Assertive sophistication,’ the designer described of the collection’s mood. ‘Liberally taking elements from a men's wardrobe and making them lastingly feminine.’ 

Dior

Italian artist Elena Bellantoni created the immersive show set for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest collection, a video installation that aimed to disrupt the sexist depictions of womanhood in advertising from the 1960s to the 2000s. Titled ‘Not Her’, the work – commissioned by Dior for the show – saw Bellantoni create 24 new advertisements, ironically riffing on the archetypes of these ads, from housewife to air hostess, in a series of self-portraits. ‘It is about breaking out of a semantic grid,’ the house described of the piece, with Bellantoni adding that it’s a ‘response to the dominant stereotype: it’s not her, she’s no longer all that.’ In the showspace, the works were displayed on vast LED screens reminiscent of the split-flap displays found in airports and train stations.

It spoke to Grazia Chiuri’s continuing project to reimagine Dior through a feminist lens, collaborating largely with female artists on her collections and using her shows to highlight notable women from history. Last season (see Paris Fashion Week A/W 2023), she looked to rework feminine silhouettes of the 1950s in a collection inspired by Catherine Dior (house founder Christian Dior’s sister, and purported inspiration behind the enduring ‘Miss Dior’ fragrance) and French singers Édith Piaf and Juliette Gréco; here, Chiuri began with a similar desire, to weave past, present and future for her contemporary imagining of empowered femininity. ‘A reflection on the meaning of the present,’ she mused in the collection notes. 'A present in which past and future must coexist simultaneously... [a celebration of] the rebels who have asserted their independence in the face of a masculine world and challenged its system.’

This season, Chiuri looked toward the witch, a cultural archetype that for centuries was used to punish women, though here the designer sought a different narrative, recasting the supernatural figure as a ‘custodian of the knowledge of the mother-goddess, who passes on the science of plants and respect the time of nature’. Chiuri had been informed by the work of anthropologist Michela Zucca, who in a preview film describes the witch as ‘a pluriform figure, a leader figure... a woman who knows about nature more than others’ in medieval societies. As such, Chiuri noted inspiration from dress of the Middle Ages, woven subtly through the largely black and white collection in wide, décolletage-bearing necklines, chainmail-inspired knits and wrapped asymmetric shirting, while a more contemporary note was struck in masculine, oversized tailoring, slouchy parka jackets, and elements of deconstruction.

Elsewhere, nods to nature came in a version of the house’s floral ‘Mille-fleurs’ pattern here rendered in a darker, X-ray-style print, while typically intricate embroideries recalled phases of the moon, healing herbs and mythical animals. Midcentury Italian artist Alberto Burri’s Matterist works, meanwhile, inspired worn or destroyed fabrications across a series of shredded dresses (‘tears, lacerations and combustion’, as the house described). The latter provided a through line to the previous, A/W 2023 collection, where creased and mottled finishes gave a feeling of dishevelment Chiuri called ‘at once strong and fragile’ – the marks, perhaps, of a woman’s life pushing against the grain.

Peter Do

Having previously shown his collections in New York – where earlier this month he showed a debut collection as creative director of Helmut Lang – Vietnam-born, New York-based designer Peter Do chose to decamp to Paris this season, making his debut in the French fashion capital on Tuesday morning (26 September; the show also included ten looks from the busy designer’s collaboration with American retailer Banana Republic as well as accessories from a project with At.Kollektive). ‘This season, we want our work to speak for itself,’ said Do via the pre-show collection notes, presenting a collection of elegant tailored silhouettes with suggestions of subversion – like tailored trousers slashed along the front to reveal a stockinged leg beneath, or abbreviated blazers cropped to just beneath the chest. A contrasting languidity came in simple elongated white shirting or subtly sheer organza vest tops and dresses that were draped across the body. Together, it provided a satisfying opening to the week: proof that Do’s New York-infused cool translates. 

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024.

In recent seasons, there are few garments that have proved quite as ubiquitous as Miu Miu’s sawn-off micro-mini skirt, shown as part of the Italian house’s S/S 2022 collection and riffed upon in the seasons that followed (including an equally viral mini tennis skirt and matching polo for A/W 2022).

It placed the Italian fashion house – founded by Miuccia Prada in 1992 as the playful and provocative counterpart to Prada – squarely as the centre of the contemporary fashion zeitgeist, with shopping app Lyst naming it Brand of the Year for 2022. It’s a defining role the house has continued into 2023: this past February in Paris, for her A/W 2023 collection, the designer proposed librarian-style cardigans, low-slung pencil skirts (the waistband of Miu Miu-branded tights revealed beneath), and models with purposefully ruffled hair. The runway images immediately flooded social media. 

Introducing Church’s x Miu Miu

‘[This collection is about] how fashion and fashion design can change perceptions, of things we think we know,’ Miuccia Prada said of the collection, which played on quotidian dress codes. ‘It’s an invitation to reconsider.’

Included in the collection were pairs of double monk-strap shoes and brogues, a collaboration with historic British footwear brand Church’s that has been revealed in full today (24 August 2023) in a new campaign. A play on a perennial classic, the glossy black and tobacco leather styles will no doubt become one of the season’s most-desired styles, cut with a rounder, broader shape than the original Church’s styles from which they took their inspiration. Sporty moulded rubber replaces Church’s classic smooth-leather soles.

‘[The collaboration] infuses the formality of the heritage brand with the free spirit the Miu Miu name represents,’ says the house.

The accompanying campaign mines this feeling of juxtaposition: models recline on patterned ’gentleman’s’ armchairs, their shoes resting on the Miu Miu-designed upholstery and striking typically idiosyncratic poses. Coloured tights are worn throughout, setting a blueprint of how to wear the style during the season ahead.

‘Miu Miu’s signature play between the traditional and the contemporary is upheld,’ the accompanying blurb continues. ‘The reassurance of the familiar is at once celebrated and subverted – undone - to create something new.’

Church's x Miu Miu products will be available in to preorder on miumiu.com from August 29, 2023 and in Miu Miu stores from September 6, 2023.

miumiu.com

Paris Fashion Week A/W 2023 took place in the city this week, its arrival marking the end of a month-long fashion tour that has previously seen stops in New York, London, and most recently, Milan. 

Long synonymous with style and craft – Paris is home to the historic ateliers of storied maisons like Dior, Saint Laurent and Givenchy – the city hosted shows from both established houses and rising names, from home and abroad. 

This season came complete with designer debuts (Ann Demeulemeester and Nina Ricci both have new creative directors in Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Harris Reed respectively), runway returns (Alexander McQueen returned to Paris after showing in London and New York in recent seasons; Paco Rabanne and Y/Project also made a return to the womenswear season) and rising names, like Vaquera, Ester Manas and Weinsanto, which brought new energy to the week.

Alongside were new collections from the wide gamut of designers and houses that have long called Paris Fashion Week home – Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, Saint Laurent, Loewe, Hermès, Valentino, Givenchy and Miu Miu among them.

Here, the best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2023.

Paris Fashion Week A/W 2023: the highlights

Y/Project

Closing Paris Fashion Week for the season, Belgian designer Glenn Martens – who showed a sexually liberated collection for Diesel earlier in the month in Milan – said his latest Y/Project collection had been informed by George Frideric Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga, which he had been listening to throughout its creation. In particular, he picked out the line ‘let me weep over my cruel fate, and let me sigh for liberty from the choral aria, which for him captured not simply pain, but ‘serenity and solemnity’ – words the designer chose to describe the collection itself, which reflected the emotion of the collection’s soundtrack (in English, Lascia ch’io pianga translates to ‘let me weep’). ‘We decided to try and do something beautiful,’ said the designer after the show, describing a continuing focus on technique; here, that emerged in intricately layered denim jackets (the appearance was that of a concertina), sheer gowns over which frayed denim spiderwebbed with the elegancy of traditional embroidery, and intricate hook-and-eye fastenings. Of course, elements of subversion – for which Martens is known – remained, notably in the evocation of Lars Von Trier‘s 2009 erotic horror Antichrist (Lascia ch’io pianga runs over the movie’s prologue) in sliced-up pornographic screenshots which adorned garments throughout.

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada said that her latest Miu Miu collection was about ‘ways of looking’. ‘I am always interested in how people look at things, their consideration… why people are attracted to certain ideas, why others repulse them,’ said the designer of the collection, which was presented with a starry cast that included musician Ethel Cain, Zaya Wade (daughter of Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union in her runway debut), and actors Mia Goth and Emma Corrin. The latter walked the runway – a raised platform ‘to aid observation’ which ran through the Palais d’Iéna space – in a pair of crystal knickers and a beige turtleneck jumper, setting something of a blueprint for the collection which combined the banal (marl grey hoodies, knit sweaters, classic overcoats) with frissons of glamour and subversion. Like the Miu Miu-branded hosiery which peeked above the waistband of mid-length skirts (some looks saw cardigans tucked into tights for a playful take on layering), or sheer polka-dot dresses which were purposely rumpled and allowed glimpses of underwear beneath (rumpled too was the hair, which was lightly dishevelled, while round tortoiseshell glasses and handbags carried in the crook of the hand lent an eccentric, bookish air). Touches of adornment came in flowers stitched onto sheer knit cardigans and skirts. ‘[This collection is about] how fashion and fashion design can change perceptions, of things we think we know,’ Miuccia Prada added. ‘It’s an invitation to reconsider.’

Chanel

The camellia is a perennial emblem of Chanel, a flower beloved by house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel after purportedly being inspired by a performance of Alexandre Dumas’ La Dame Aux Camélias (she began by wearing silk versions of the flower; later, it would feature in her designs and in the decor of her home). A blown-up version of the flower – which has come to represent a feeling of simplicity and purity intrinsic to the house – appeared in the centre of the show set for Virginie Viard’s latest ready-to-wear collection at Grand Palais Ephémère (a real version appeared on attendees’ seats). ‘The camellia is more than a theme, it’s an eternal code of the house,’ said the designer. ‘I find it reassuring and familiar, I like its softness and its strength’. As such, the camellia adorned several of the collection’s looks, whether woven into the house tweed and adorning an overcoat, blooming across handbags and tailoring as a 3D embellishment or recalled in the plumes of white feathers which emerged from a knitted jumper and skirt. Viard said the collection had a feeling of romance, evoked here not just in the floral motifs, but in the generous asymmetric cut of overcoats and dresses, flouncy skirts and shades of pink which recurred in the latter half of the collection. More masculine elements – wide lapels, elongated and oversized overcoats – provided a counterpoint. ‘The faded colours, the dusky pink, the crafted pieces, the touches of 1960s and 70s, a certain English vibe, the comfortable, enveloping coats, the authentic materials, make the collections more real, and more charming too,’ said Viard. 

Louis Vuitton

‘What is French style?’ was the question Nicolas Ghesquière posed with his latest collection for Louis Vuitton. Staged in the gilded salons on the upper floors of Musée d'Orsay – a former train station and landmark of Beaux-Arts architecture – the space was interrupted with a starkly contemporary set by French artist Philippe Parreno in collaboration with Hollywood set designer James Chinlund (last season, they created a vast ‘monster flower’ for Ghesquière’s previous show at the Louvre). Here, their spiked black runway – its surface recalling paving stones or cobbles – featured a number of speakers, creating a series of immersive ‘sound illusions’ by Academy Award-winning composer Nicolas Becker as the show went on. From honking car horns and clacking heels to the sounds of aeroplanes overhead, it was meant to evoke the feeling of being on a Parisian street – an apt setting for Ghesquière’s exploration of the ‘ineffable magnetism’ of French dress codes, which he said was ‘paradoxical... sophistication with a dilettante’s air’. Indeed, in Ghesquière’s typically expansive style, the collection captured the insouciance and elegance of French style – thrown-on tailoring, cocooning overcoats, ladylike handbags and gloves – opposing a feeling of effortlessness with extraordinary feats of craft (in particular, intricate beading, embellishment and jacquards, which recalled the traditions of Parisian haute couture). Jolts of futurism, a hallmark of Ghesquière’s work, appeared throughout – like a pair of light-up glasses (evocative in shape of a welder’s mask) or the sculptural shape of the collection’s gowns. ‘The maison is a vessel sailing through time, guided by the winds of savoir-faire, technique, discovery and artistic ideals,’ said the collection notes. ‘The French touch never fails to captivate.’

Valentino

Pierpaolo Piccioli titled his latest collection ‘Valentino Black Tie’ – an exploration, the Italian designer said, of the perennial dress code. Here, his desire was to liberate it of connotations with strictness: ‘an instruction can become an invitation… archetypes can be re-imagined, and a power in the familiar can come from its rediscovery in a new context’, he said via the collection’s notes. The nexus of the collection was his teenage daughter, who had recently raided Piccioli’s wardrobe for a suit and tie, which she then wore for an evening out with friends. This mood of experimentation informed the collection’s looks, all of which featured a literal black or white tie: whether worn with a classic buttoned-up white shirt, tucked under a striped jumper or over a draped red dress. As ever, dramatic flourishes of embellishment and craft ran throughout the eclectic collection – comprising both mens- and womenswear – from the usual feathered plumes (adorning a jacket or sprouting from a pair of military-style boots) to cut-outs, shimmering paillettes, or the thousands of crystals which decorated a sheer, robe-style gown towards the end of the show. ‘Signifiers are re-appropriated, transforming into different garments,’ said the house. ‘The tie is untied, unfettered, sliding between the form language of clothes, between day and evening.‘

Akris

Akris continued its celebration of 100 years in business with a show titled ‘A Century in Fashion Part II’ (last year at the Palais de Tokyo the brand presented the opening part with a collection interspersed with archival designs). This time, creative director Albert Kriemler looked towards a formative decade, the 1970s, with a collection which sought to capture the era’s liberatory spirit. ‘An unexpected find in the archive, three boxes of 1970s paper patterns, made me think of a woman’s new sensibility towards freedom of movement and freedom of choice to celebrate the second act of Akris’ 100 years,’ said Kriemler in a statement. In particular, he recalled the year 1972, when his father Max Kriemler stopped making the aprons for which the Swiss brand was originally known and opened an atelier for women’s tailored suits and coats. ‘[He] brought Italian menswear masters and their knowledge of double-face to us. He felt there was a need for change… [for] the woman who moves, a woman with a voice.’ As such, tailoring and outerwear were a focus: whether a raglan-sleeve tweed overcoat, nipped-waist double-breasted or three-button suiting (the latter in golden pearlised suede) or the array of 1970s-tinged shearling coats that sat alongside. Another reference to the era came in the collection’s prints: a 1976 floral motif by Zurich-based silk company Abraham, found in the Akris archive, was reworked throughout. 

Balenciaga

After the house’s advertising scandal in November 2022, creative director Demna said that his latest collection for Balenciaga sought a feeling of reset – a return to his own lifelong love affair with making clothes (a note from the designer recalled having a pair of trousers fitted by a neighbouring tailor as a child; the collection’s invitation was a selection of pattern pieces used to construct a tailored jacket). In opposition to the usual theatrics that have previously surrounded his shows – last season saw a vast pit of mud through which models trudged – the space in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping centre was the neutral colour of toile, a simple twill fabric used to create a sample garment. ‘Fashion has become a kind of entertainment,’ the designer said. ‘But that part often overshadows the essence of it, which lays in shapes, volumes.’ As such, the collection riffed on elements which first brought Demna to prominence at both Vetements and Balenciaga: off-kilter tailoring (here, oversized tailoring had belt loops along the hem, as if cut from a pair of trousers), warped silhouettes (a biker jacket sat high and hunched on the shoulder; other pieces appeared as if a chest plate was being worn underneath), and elements of subversion and kitsch (jeans appeared like another pair had been sewn on top; high-heeled ‘tight’ shoes gave the appearance models were walking on tip-toes). It ended on a stream of couture-level gowns, richly embellished and with amplified rounded shoulders. ‘In the last couple of months, I needed to seek shelter for my love affair with fashion and I instinctively found it in the process of making clothes,’ he said. ‘It reminded me once again of [its] amazing power to make me feel happy and truly express myself. This is why fashion to me can no longer be seen as entertainment, but rather as the art of making clothes.’ 

Lanvin

Bruno Sialelli said that his latest collection was a return to ‘the joy of making, of discovery and rediscovery’. It spoke to a wider mood this season of designers eschewing theatrics in favour of considered design and craft; in the collection notes, Sialelli evoked the words of Swedish-American sculptor Claes Oldenburg as an explanation of sorts. ‘Making things, what fun,’ reads the extract, taken from Oldenburg’s 2012 ‘Still Life Exhibition’. ‘An ordinary grey shelf, that occupies a wall of the studio, lay me in the shelf and let the thirsty eye decide, each one a description of ingredients that have attracted me.’ The collection itself was a reflection of Sialleli’s own preoccupations, his ‘thirsty eye’: elements inspired by the 1940s and 1980s, a rich array of fabrications (velvet, devoré and wool gazaar all featured), and moments of embellishment, like delicate crystal flowers which adorned languidly glamorous dresses. ‘The collection is a rediscovery of French elegance and exuberance,’ said the house. ‘The very soul of Lanvin.’

Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton marked her return to Paris Fashion Week with an in-the-round collection which the designer said drew on the idea of anatomy – ‘human anatomy, the anatomy of clothing, the anatomy of flowers’, each one rooted in the history of the brand, and perennial touch points for its founder Alexander McQueen. It figured in an exploration of tailoring, a series of pin-sharp silhouettes which infused the classic black suit with elements of subversion: Naomi Campbell opened the show in a corseted tailored jumpsuit in black wool barathea (first developed for men’s mourning clothes in the mid-19th century), wide-leg tuxedo trousers came with built-in heels (‘heeled trousers elongate the leg: the bumster in reverse,’ said Burton), and a sleeveless bustier dress had a double-breasted fastening, meant to evoke an upside-down suit jacket. ‘The foundations of fashion, cut on the body and inspired by the body within… the classic subverted, turned inside out and upside down,’ Burton elucidated. Elsewhere, the designer looked towards the evocative shape of the orchid, its form adorning trench coats and dresses, and providing inspiration for the dramatic silhouettes of the intricate ruffled and beaded gowns which closed the show. ‘The most prominent motif in the collection is the orchid, in its rarer forms cultivated but, after the daisy, the most common flower,’ said Burton. ‘It thrives in the air, resists being rooted and grows in the wild. Extraordinarily beautiful and infinitely adaptable, the orchid mimics both predator and prey. In the language of flowers, the orchid is a symbol of love.’ 

Ann Demeulemeester

Ludovic de Saint Sernin said that his debut collection at Ann Demeulemeester – the brand originally founded by its namesake in Belgium in 1985 – was an exploration of ‘authorship and autobiography’, a literary analogy that the young designer extended to the collection’s looks. Each one, he said, ‘was a heartfelt sentence… ideally written with a quill, or a feather: a detail Ann loved.’ Indeed, the feather appeared in the collection’s opening look; crafted from leather, it doubled as a narrow black bra top that ran across the model’s chest (a white version closed the show). The idea of exposure has been explored in Saint Sernin’s work at his eponymous label – he will often feature underwear, or entirely sheer garments, in his collections – here melded with riffs on Demeulemeester’s archive for a stripped-down take on the brand infused with ‘sensuality, silhouette, ambiguity’. ‘Writing a letter is always about the sender just as much as it is about the receiver. It’s an encounter, an exchange,’ said the designer of the anticipated debut. ‘It’s an intro, a preamble, and as such, to be continued.’ 

Hermès

Sensuality infused Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s latest collection for Hermès, which she noted was about attempting to capture a feeling of warmth – a mood echoed by the show space, carpeted in deep orange, which had a cocooning effect. The collection began with the designer thinking about hair (Vanhee-Cybulski had cut her own red locks into a bob since last season), particularly in the palette, which spanned shades of red (‘amaranth, falun and fire’), copper, brown, gold and ‘blond’ beige. Oftentimes, these colours made up the entirety of a look  – ‘enveloping and warm, monochrome silhouettes unfold in their winter tones,’ said the collection notes – all the way down to the accessories, including the over-the-knee square-toed boots and satin riding caps which recurred throughout. A rich coalescence of texture defined the collection: shearling overcoats had been cleverly trimmed to give the appearance of fur, beautiful belted trench coats were cut from alpaca wool, while gently shimmering lamé knits lent a subtle glamour. The collection closed on a slew of plissé dresses – perhaps the collection’s highlight – which draped elegantly across the shoulders and sleeves. It made for a collection that spoke to Vanhee-Cybulski’s innate understanding of the intimacy of clothing – one not unlike the relationship one has with their hair. ‘From lanyards to tresses, the clothes come alive, bobbing and flowing with the suppleness of locks of hair.’

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

An intimate salon-style presentation – attended by the brand’s close circle of friends, muses and family – marked the first show since the death of Vivienne Westwood in December of 2022. The designer’s inimitable presence was felt throughout the collection’s looks, which saw husband Andreas Kronthaler draw on memories of her life – in particular, her roots in the north of England (Westwood was born in Tintwistle, near Derbyshire; a private funeral was held there in January). ‘In everything we show, I thought of you and where you came from,’ said Kronthaler, who presented garments rich in Westwood-isms – slashed-away tartan, Rococo-style prints and brocade, corsetry, crinolines, tweed tailoring and petticoats all featured in  Kronthaler’s usual eccentric amalgam. Of the latter, he said: ‘petticoat skirts were your absolute favourite… I’ve made some for you, all different, so pretty, so girly, so really woman.’ In an emotive gesture, Westwood’s granddaughter, Cora Corré modelled the collection’s final look: a white lace bodice worn with a pair of tiny sparkling devil horns and a typically towering pair of platform boots. ‘You once said to me that you can take everything away, just leave me my platform shoes because one can’t do without them,’ Kronthaler said. ‘Maybe the most important thing you ever taught me was to put the woman on a pedestal.’

Loewe

Jonathan Anderson’s latest show took place on the eastern edge of Paris in Château De Vincennes, a grand royal residence first built as a fortress in the 12th century and known as a place of sanctuary thanks to its fortified walls. Within those walls, a vast white box had been erected in the central courtyard providing the show space; inside, more boxes in various colours by Italian artist Lara Favaretto, compressed blocks of confetti created in the same process as stomping grapes to make wine. Such was their construction, each came with its own guard – should they be touched, they threatened to disintegrate entirely. 

If not intentional, such a frisson – construction versus deconstruction, perfection and collapse – seemed an apt metaphor for Anderson’s work, which has long teetered on such boundaries. Recent collections at Loewe and JW Anderson have seen a move from surrealism to reductionism in an attempt to distill the essence of his work into its purest form; this season, the designer said, continued this movement with a collection that captured ‘an idea of elementality: one piece, and that’s it, reduced to the bluntest shape possible’. White shift dresses – cut with blunt precision – were printed with blurred Gerhard Richter-style apparitions of other garments from previous seasons (‘a memory that fades or returns’); other pieces had a trompe-l’oeil effect to appear creased or distorted (like one fitted cardigan, which after the show Anderson revealed was actually a sticker). Vivid simplicity defined others: a doll-like flared mini dress came in moulded leather, classic V-neck sweaters and cardigans with gently warped silhouettes, while other garments appeared like a piece of fabric had been picked up and held onto the body by its wearer. ‘[I was thinking about that] childhood thing of wrapping yourself up in a duvet,’ he said.

‘It’s the idea of looking at realities – that in the room it looks like one thing, then we have an audience online that sees it a different way,’ Anderson explained of his pursuit for visual clarity. ‘I think it’s about: how do you get newness when you go in store? It’s my greatest obsession at the moment – how do you make collections that are not for right now but in six months? How do you reinforce a language but not get trapped by a language that you built?’

Victoria Beckham

The invitation for Victoria Beckham’s sophomore Paris show – presented once again in the cloisters of Val-de-Grâce church – featured a photograph of actress Drew Barrymore in a silk head scarf from the brand. The look, Beckham said, was a contemporary reimagining of Barrymore’s role as Edith Bouvier Beale (‘Little Edie’) in the 2009 movie Grey Gardens, based on the 1975 documentary of the same name – an exploration of the eccentric, reclusive lives of Bouvier Beale and her mother, two relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The reference, Beckham said, was a perennial influence on her work; here, she said it was the ‘unpredictable glamour’ of Little Edie which inspired a collection rooted in a new eclecticism for the brand, one of ‘deconstruction, customisation and subversion’. As such, the opening looks featured dresses in a collage-like assemblage of pleats and adorned with feathers (later, these same feathers reappeared as a ghostly print in a final series of looks), while other gowns featured elements of faux hair emerging from their hemlines – a nod, Beckham said, to Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa, who utilises human hair in her works. Deconstructed tailoring, meanwhile, was ‘raw and hacked up’, revealing the process behind its construction for a ‘figurative expression of the brand’s artisanal evolution’. ‘I really wanted to celebrate the art of dressing and how clothes are truly transformative,’ said Beckham. ‘The way [Grey Gardens] has been interpreted in the collection is very considered. The result is an eclectic, elegant and sophisticated character, as seen through a modern Victoria Beckham lens.’

Kiko Kostadinov

A typically eclectic outing from sisters Laura and Deanna Fanning began with research on antique underwear – undershirts, petticoats, knickerbockers – the ‘hidden layers’ which provided the support for women under historical gowns and mantles. Here, these tropes were melded with the Fanning sisters’ eye for off-kilter silhouettes and unexpected colour combinations (in part derived from Kiko Kostadinov’s work at the menswear arm of his eponymous label) for a collection they called ‘a veritable floriège of the unfamiliar, both tough and tender’. Henley-style T-shirts – reminiscent of undergarments – were cut with a wavy layered hem trimmed with narrow ruffles, while a profusion of plissé tulle lent romance to skirts and slip-style dresses, as well as adorning what the duo called ‘stovepipe flares’ (their layered form lent them the feeling of a cargo pant). Accessories provided playful adornment: a ‘bowling/driving/ballet shoe pastiche’ paid ode to Formula One driver Lella Lombardi, while the signature Trivia bag (a recurring street-style staple) was reimagined as both a larger chain bag and miniature charm wallet – no doubt satisfying the brand’s growing legion of devoted followers.

Issey Miyake

An intricately folded square of paper lay on each attendee’s seat at Théâtre du Châtelet, the location for Satoshi Kondo’s latest show for Issey Miyake. The gesture was a nod to the collection’s roots in the shape (its title was ‘The Square and Beyond’), using it as a starting point for a typically innovative exploration of form and silhouette. ‘The collection engages with this rational shape and explores beyond to develop garments of striking, unconventional forms,’ the Japanese brand elucidated. As such, compositions of squares appeared as a printed motif across the collection’s asymmetric, irregular garments, while other pieces saw the square rooted in their construction, like repeating checks which were formed in a process of ‘intentional shrinkage’ giving a raised, three-dimensional texture. ‘Progress, turn and bend, meet up, break off, skip, repeat, extend, expand, and rest,’ an accompanying piece of text said of the season’s experiments. ‘Forms and colours, released from the canvas, now speak of freedom with no limit.’ 

Schiaparelli

Since his installation as artistic director of Schiaparelli in 2019, American designer Daniel Roseberry has successfully modernised the historic Parisian house with haute couture collections that connect Elsa Schiaparelli’s surrealist preoccupations with a contemporary sensuality (they have also gained him a phalanx of high-profile celebrity fans). Yesterday evening marked the designer’s first ready-to-wear outing for the house, ‘a long-planned and critical step in our ongoing revival of Elsa’s house’, said Roseberry.

Seemingly working in reverse, the vastness of his last couture show was swapped for an intimate salon on Place Vendôme with less than 200 guests in attendance (traditionally, haute couture is shown in such a close-knit setting; ready-to-wear tends to be presented in larger spaces). It spoke to a desire to retain the feeling of exclusivity associated with the historic house; indeed, the construction of the various garments – the curved line of an overcoat sleeve, the intricacy of a boned corset, golden embellishments of surreal eyes and noses – would not look out of place in Roseberry’s haute couture outings (and, with prices purportedly in the several thousands, ready-to-wear here is by no means mainstream). Nonetheless, it offered an expansive vision for the house, encompassing denim, padded jackets and tuxedo-inspired tailoring, all with the suggestion of 1980s excess. ‘A wardrobe, yes,’ said Roseberry. ‘But a Schiaparelli wardrobe.’

Rick Owens

Recent seasons have seen Rick Owens look towards the ‘vastness and scale’ of Egypt, where the American designer now spends his winters. ‘Measuring the insignificance of contemporary discomforts against that amount of history comforts me,’ he says of its appeal, taking this season’s collection name from the ancient city of Luxor. It follows the brand’s A/W 2023 menswear collection of the same name shown earlier this year; then, Owens noted there was a ‘bitterness’ to creating a collection as the war continued in Ukraine, though adding that it was fashion’s responsibility remain stalwart and do its ‘sombre best’ in the face of crisis.

The women’s collection had a similar mood: ‘Times like these might call for a respectful formality and sobriety with moments of delicacy as reminders of what is at risk and at stake,’ the designer said, remarking ‘how inspiring dignity in the face of aggression can be’. As such, the collection had a brutal glamour, models towering above attendees on an industrial metal runway that snaked through one of Palais de Tokyo’s interior wings (platform heels were typically vertiginous). The clothes, Owens said, were reduced to ‘the simplest of shapes’: bulbous pads of leather which wrapped around the body, knit dresses sliced to above the thigh and elongated on the sleeves, or sculptural puffer jackets adorned with pink or black sequins (another dress was covered in hundreds of dangling sequins, giving the appearance of feathers).

The soundtrack comprised a new song by Canadian musician Peaches, who became a muse of sorts for the season, at least in spirit. ‘The graphic sexuality in her intelligent lyrics over tight brutal electronic beats helped make a generation of feminist women singers revel in as much sexual control as had been traditionally held by their male musical counterparts,’ said Owens. ’Her scrappy resistance and ferocity is an example more relevant than ever.’

Givenchy

Matthew M Williams continued to hone his vision for Givenchy with a collection that sought the same feeling of clarity captured in his last menswear show in January (the optic-white show space suggested a similar feeling of reset). In that show, Williams talked of a ‘new formality’ which he traced back to Hubert de Givenchy; here, the American designer once again looked towards the house founder and his ‘principles of elegance’. In practice, this made for ‘silhouettes from the past but adapted for the present’: a nipped-waist tailored jacket, for example, might become an abbreviated dress, satin overcoats cut wide across the shoulder for an oversized silhouette, elegant full-length gowns reimagined in contemporary fabrications – from sliced-down-the-front raw-edge leather to sheer body-skimming organza in electric shades of pink and green. Streetwear continued to infuse the collection – its influence, Williams said, was part of ‘the dialogue between Parisian chic and American cool’ that he has noted in recent seasons – in idiosyncratic layers of sweat pants, beaten leather skirts and kilts, some adorned with D-rings and studs. It was likely Williams’ most complete womenswear offering yet, encompassing the ‘confidence, comfort and empowerment’ that the designer said he wanted to capture this season. 

Chloé

Gabriela Hearst said her latest collection for Chloé drew inspiration from Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi, a female Baroque painter who was commissioned by the echelons of European society in the 17th century (a landmark exhibition of the convention-defying artist’s work opened in October 2020 at London’s National Gallery). ‘I will show you what a woman can do,’ Gentileschi was quoted as saying on the collection notes, a spirit which informed Hearst’s outlook for the season, embracing the ‘imperative need for women’s stories’. As ever, this was interwoven with the designer’s concerns for the climate, arguing that an increase in women leaders would give new innovation and energy to the field. In keeping with the season’s muse, Hearst noted a Renaissance influence to the silhouettes – a series of tunic-style gowns came with bell or flared sleeves and narrowed at the waist as if held in place by a bodice – here reimagined in black and white, lending a contemporary clarity to the reference. In keeping with Hearst’s sustainable credentials, a low-impact wool gauze was utilised throughout – its ‘ethereal quality a subtle statement of feminine power’ – while other fabrics drew inspiration from Renaissance architecture and highlighted the craftsmanship of the Chloé atelier, like trousers created from an intricate lattice of leather braids or degradé black satin diamonds appliquéd onto wool.

Acne Studios

For his latest Acne Studios collection, creative director Jonny Johansson was thinking about the forest – albeit in the Swedish brand’s typically idiosyncratic style. The show space, created by set designer Shona Heath, evoked the inspiration with a surreal forest of trees adorned with shimmering crystals and strange blooming flora (Johansson said he tasked her to create a space which captured the way a forest is ‘always changing, growing and transforming’). The collection itself reflected the ‘brutal magic’ of the forest and its lore, with elements of distress or decay (several of the pieces had frayed or sliced-away seams), crochet floral adornment and a recurring leaf motif, or the earthy palette, punctuated with ‘toxic’ yellow and pink, rusty orange and a vivid blue reminiscent of Heath’s set. ‘With this collection, I was thinking about the dark winters we have in Sweden, where there are only a few hours of daylight. I wanted to capture the beauty of the darkness,’ said Johansson. ‘Sweden is the kind of place where the city ends abruptly and then the pine forest begins. I’ve always enjoyed the contrast between urban life and nature, the idea that an infinite forest is just around the corner. ‘ 

Paco Rabanne

Julien Dossena marked his return to the womenswear schedule – previously he has chosen to show his collections for Paco Rabanne during haute couture week – with a collection which paid tribute to the eponymous house founder who died in February this year aged 88. In particular, Dossena looked towards the friendship between Rabanne and Salvador Dalí – ‘two Spanish visionaries linked by their radical expression… worlds that were at once magical, mystic and mysterious’. As such, the collection featured a series of works by the surrealist artist (with the participation of Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí), here printed across sliced-away gowns; while motifs reminiscent of his works (like a torn open pomegranate, or a golden telephone) also appeared throughout. Elsewhere, Dossena presented a rich amalgam of texture and embellishment: whether the hairy wool lining of a floor-length overcoat (the appearance was that of fur), shimmering tinsel, or leather melded with the house’s signature diaphanous chain mail. The final five looks were archival creations spanning five decades of Paco Rabanne – a testament, Dossena said, to the late designer’s continuing legacy. ‘These dresses signal the innovative craftmanship that will always define the timeless and totemic women of Paco Rabanne.’

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten’s latest collection came with the simplest of inspirations: ‘the love of clothes… the intimate, tender moments between a garment and its wearer.’ It is an approach which has long defined the Belgian designer’s oeuvre, which has largely eschewed theatrics in pursuit of considered clothing made to exist in the wearer’s wardrobe for decades to come. Though not without gestures of unabashed beauty – Van Noten works with an artist’s eye for colour, form and adornment – figured here in a series of evocative juxtapositions:  ‘large-scale gestures mixed with a focus on the small details… the precious and rarefied with the raw and unrefined,’ as the collection notes described. As such, there was a faded grandeur in layers of washed silks, patchwork brocade, or the raw and undone seams (one floral skirt and dress with hanging threads appeared as if viewing a tapestry from its underside), a contrast to the languid simplicity of the silhouette. ‘The pleasure of fabrics and the life they take on over the years, cherished, used, repaired and given new meaning for today,’ said the house. 

The Row

The considered elegance of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s The Row extended all the way to the pre-show refreshments: plates of broken-up dark chocolate and piles of pears, each one tipped with a drop of red wax on the stalk. The collection itself – presented in a largely unadorned 18th-century mansion on Rue des Capucines – continued to distil the designers’ vision of discreet luxury, figured here in silhouettes which cocooned the body (scarf- and poncho-like adornments recurred through; overcoats were gripped closed in the hand; tailoring was cut with roomy proportions). A sense of glamour came in wrapped off-the-shoulder black dresses and leather opera gloves, while brief flashes of red and orange interrupted the otherwise restrained palette. 

Courrèges

Courrèges creative director Nicolas Di Felice said his latest collection ‘emerged from the curved stance of a body cloaked over a screen’. Indeed, in a now-viral moment from the show – which took place in an optic white box, misted with fog and brightly lit – the first model walked the runway whilst scrolling on an iPhone. The hunched gesture, Di Felice said, informed the collection’s curved silhouette, with garments ‘projecting [their] volume outward to shield the body from the world’ (as such, expansive leather jackets and outerwear were cut wide at the shoulder, their weight tilting slightly forward as if bent over a phone). Soundtracked by a disembodied voice repeating ‘is the sky blue?’, the collection had an air of futuristic ritual in monastic hooded sweaters which cloaked the body and a series of elongated column gowns, worn with vast circular jewellery beneath. ‘A ceremony of light and enlightenment… lighting the way to the other within ourselves,’ described the accompanying notes. ‘Through the dark, through the smoke and mirrors, I see you.’

Saint Laurent

From 1975 to 2001, Yves Saint Laurent showed his haute couture collections on a raised runway in the gilded ballroom of the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris; yesterday evening, the house’s current creative director Anthony Vaccarello recreated the space, albeit in a vast constructed showspace on the Trocadéro. ‘Making the reference newly relevant, Vaccarello has taken symbols of the opulent period – striking bronze chandeliers and a uniquely shaped runway – and inserted them into a radically contemporary black-box setting,’ said the house. It provided an apt metaphor for Vaccarello’s tenure at the house, which is defined by drawing elements from the Yves Saint Laurent archive and reimagining them in his own sharply contemporary style. This season, in lieu of a specific inspiration point, Vaccarello instead looked to continue to hone what he called ‘the essence of classic Saint Laurent style… a potent mix of precision, emotion and reticence’.

It made for a severity of cut and silhouette – the opening pinstripe skirt suit came with enormous padded shoulders for a dramatic shape which was reiterated throughout (‘it all starts with this gesture’) – combined with flourishes of glamour, like sweeping blanket-like scarves, pussy-bow collars, and heavy golden bangles and cuffs. A feeling of ‘emotion’, Vaccarello said, emerged in a ‘dissolution of gendered exclusivity’, with archetypically masculine garments (the tailored blazer, the tank top, the leather bomber) embedded into his woman’s wardrobe, while the use of pinstripe, tartans and glen plaids took ‘on a timeless femininity thanks to a striking lightness’. As is typical of Vaccarello’s work, a feeling of sensuality infused the collection; plunging tank tops, sheer hosiery and chiffon layers explored ideas of concealment and exposure. ‘The Saint Laurent woman exposes her body when she desires and conceals it if she feels like it,’ said the house.

Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri conjured a mood of femininity for her latest Dior collection, which was backdropped by a vast kaleidoscopic artwork by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (the carnivalesque work featured lace, embroidery and crochet and was inspired by flowers in the Dior archive; it continues a tradition of Grazia Chiuri collaborating with women artists on her show sets). ‘A re-reading of the 1950s,’ described the house of the collection itself, which begun with Grazia Chiuri looking back to mid-century designs from the house; in particular, she focussed on three women who have become archetypal of French style: Catherine Dior (house founder Christian Dior’s sister, and purported inspiration behind the enduring ‘Miss Dior’ fragrance), Édith Piaf and Juliette Gréco. Each, she noted, subverted feminine dress in their own way; in the collection, this figured in ladylike silhouettes – nipped-waist gowns, flared calf-length skirts and blouses – released from constriction and imbued with new lightness (a feeling of gentle dishevelment came in creased and mottled finishes). The flower also recurred throughout, inspired by Catherine Dior – who sold and traded flowers after her time as a resistance fighter in France during World War II – here reimagined in hazy floral prints and delicate embroidery. ‘At once strong and fragile,’ described the house. ‘This Dior collection is the very signature of a femininity that goes against the grain.’

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2023.

Physical fashion shows were back with a bang across New York, London, Milan and Paris. Here, we present the best runway sets and venues that stole the show for S/S 2022, from Saint Laurent's womenswear spectacular under the sparkling lights of the Eiffel Tower, to Prada’s cross-continent and time-zone spanning set up. 

Best runway sets, S/S 2022 womenswear

Dior

Adding to the roster of female artists she collaborates with, womenswear artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri teamed up with octogenarian Italian artist Anna Paparatti on a board game-inspired show set. At the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, a runway was formed from a circle of colourful flooring panels set at various levels, and a backdrop boasted artworks resembling dartboards and roulette wheels, recalling Paparatti's 1960s artworks, which alluded to the absurdities of life.

Givenchy

For his first physical runway show for Givenchy, Matthew M Williams took guests to the Paris La Défense Arena, the largest indoor performance venue in Europe, on the outskirts of the French capital, with a stark, art gallery-inspired show set. Here, Williams bathed his guests in the glow of a cinematic sun, by suspending a monumental oculus from the ceiling of the vast space.

Valentino

Celebrating the café culture of Paris, so enjoyed by many guests for the first time in 18 months, Valentino installed rows of wicker dining seating at its Carreau du Temple venue, alongside a vibrant flower stall. The Roman house's show also spilled inclusively onto the streets outside the expansive indoor location, where models strutted and posed in front of diners and drinkers, seated at the city's inviting bistros.

Prada

Talk about a time zone-spanning, continent-crossing runway show. As guests in Milan installed themselves into Prada's regular Deposito venue at the Fondazione Prada, a location lined with geometric blocks of seating, so another audience was getting comfy at Shanghai’s Bund One. The two shows began simultaneously, and were live-streamed onto screens at both locations, with guests taking in models, in physical or digital form, sporting satin dresses and slouchy leather outerwear that riffed on notions of sexy. (Read more about OMA/AMO and Prada’s 25 years of show sets.)

Saint Laurent

After show films set on sprawling sand dunes and icy glaciers, Saint Laurent returned to its signature Trocadéro location in Paris, illuminated by the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower. Here, models walked across a vast runway in lean and seductive silhouettes inspired by Paloma Picasso, lit up by an industrial wall of spotlights. At the show's finale, a waterfall flooded the catwalk, a stunning feat of nature slap bang in the middle of the city.

Moncler MONDOGENIUS

The label staged its latest Moncler Genius collections as part of an immersive phygital live-streamed event spanning five cities: Milan, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul and New York. In Milan, guests watched from a film studio location, as host Alicia Keys appeared IRL, interacting with Shanghai host Victoria Song via a huge screen, and presenting 11 collection films, which were showcased one by one. 

Loewe

Stripping back Loewe’s new show space at Paris’ La Garde Républicaine of ‘bits and bobs’, creative director Jonathan Anderson wanted his S/S 2022 Loewe venue to resemble a ‘blank piece of paper’. This concept allowed the silhouettes in the collection to take centre stage. Here, they entered the stark, pine-swathed show venue from a trapdoor in the ground, a twist on how the viewer usually takes in forms from the feet up.

Hermès

No one cemented the sense of escape served up on the S/S 2022 catwalks more than Hermès, which had a private plane land on the tarmac of its Le Bourget airport show location, an hour from Paris. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski also worked with French artist Flora Moscovici, who created a series of 6m-high abstract panoramas, drenched in sunset tones, which moved as models navigated a circular show space, sporting easy but infinitely luxurious summer silhouettes.

Rejina Pyo

The London-based designer made a medal-worthy splash for her S/S 2022 womenswear show, transporting guests to the Zaha Hadid-designed London Aquatics Centre in Stratford. Here, the audience lined the Olympic venue's swimming pool and at the show's social media-flooded finale, members of the Team GB divers made dramatic twists and turns into the water below.

Miu Miu

For guests keen to get back to the boardroom, Miu Miu served up an office-inspired show set where swiveling Eames office chairs lined a snaking runway at regular show location Palais d'Iéna in Paris. The catwalk was neighboured by oculus-shaped screens, which featured two comedic films by Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani that were also debuted as part of the brand's accompanying live stream on social media. 

Jil Sander

In Milan, Jil Sander bathed guests in a monochromatic lilac haze, in an all-purple show set swathing circular stools, the walls and ceiling. The set design offered a tranquil, almost sophorific setting, for creative director's Lucie and Luke Meier to present a womenswear offering reveling in tactile fabrications, architectural volumes and bold patterns, from tiger print coats to fluid deck chair stripe dresses, crochet polo shirts to androgynous tailoring. 

Coperni

Coperni founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant emphasized escapism for S/S 2022, which a collection that reveled in beach-ready silhouettes, suited for sun drenched shores in Ibiza or Greece. To amp up that out-of-office spirit, the brand swathed its runway with sand, lining the entrance to its catwalk space in Paris with 70,000 tall hemp trees, casting a heady scent around guests sat amongst the verdant shrubbery. 

It’s no secret that a largely digital-only fashion week is a tricky event to master. Fashion shows function on suspense and anticipation, the expectation of an audience, the first foot on a runway, the inaugural beat of a show soundtrack, the force of the catwalk finale. It’s difficult to recreate this suspense through a computer screen. But for Paris Fashion Week A/W 2021, designers living in a city operating through a lockdown and strict curfew pushed on.

They even took advantage of the French capital’s deserted streets, presenting collections and trends for 2021, that celebrated the spirit of the City of Light and the spectacle of the fashion show, with both pared-back, reserved dressing and exuberant, out-out style.

Like many of us, Chanel's Virginie Viard was feeling the urge to hit the tiles and dance all night with abandon. For the Parisian maison's A/W 2021 offering, the brand's merry troupe of models strode through the deserted streets of Paris, before arriving at legendary Saint-Germain-des-Prés nightclub Castel, which opened in 1961, and was beloved by Pierre Bergé, Serge Gainsbourg and Salvador Dalí. Here, the models shed glittering bouclé coats and puffer jackets at the cloakroom and strutted through salons, sporting glittering mini dresses, transparent skirts and androgynous tweed suits. 

There was also an après-ski sensibility, seen in padded camelia-motif jumpsuits, Chanel ‘CC' logo dungarees and fluffy moonboots. Instagram users were strongly inclined towards the label's evening-meets-off-piste chic, and Chanel’s collection reached more than 246 million users, the widest audience of Paris Fashion Week, according to visual marketing software company Dash Hudson.

Miu Miu was also keen for a ski trip, holding its A/W 2021 show on the snow-topped mountains of Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo, instead of its usual AMO-designed show space at Paris’ Palais d’Iena. Models braved the elements in colourful crochet knits and balaclavas, glossy padded jumpsuits, fluffy ski boots and bejewelled dresses. Ski, but with a side of subversive sleek. 

For her debut at Chloé, Uruguay-born New York-based designer Gabriela Hearst celebrated Paris, home city of the brand. Inspired by the location of Chloé founder Gabrielle Aghion's first salon shows, the brand's A/W 2021 film featured models softly striding from Brasserie Lipp (still a firm fashion week favourite) into softly lit cobbled streets. There was a 1960s fluidity to the collection, reflecting the easy elegance of Hearst's own label. Think striped knitted dresses, patchwork coats in scalloped leather, fluid outdoorsy ponchos and a new eco-aware take on the brand's signature ‘Edith’ bag. Hearst is committed to sustainability, and her debut featured recycled fabrics, from cashmere to silks, alongside 50 secondhand ‘Edith’ bags sourced on Ebay and customised with scraps of fabric. 

AMI's Alexandre Mattiussi wanted not only to celebrate the spirit of Paris, but also the joy of a physical fashion show. His A/W 2021 film, Le Défilé, shot by Spanish filmmaker Alvaro Colom, traced excited models travelling to appear on the catwalk, before strolling in a 1990s-inspired spectacle. 'I wanted to pay tribute to the shows I used to watch from that era on Fashion TV,' Mattiussi explained. ‘Shows with an amazing mood and energy, people screaming!' The brand's collection also paid tribute to 1990s minimalism, with its elevated offering of camel coats, shearling jackets, fringed dresses and and optic tailoring. ‘Pieces that are elegant, sexy and chic,' Mattiussi said. ‘Good clothes for real people.'

Coperni also deemed it essential for the show to go on, and the label's founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant presented an IRL drive-thru event at the Great Hall of the Accord Arena in Bercy, reached by 70 guests in a fleet of electric cars. Here too was a sense of 1990s decadence, with a collection that featured nighttime looks including pastel-hued transparent dresses, slouchy suiting, knee-high boots and scuba leggings

The beauty of a digital-first fashion week is its democratic nature. People from all over the world can view a brand's show through a screen, at the same time as an industry insider. However, this apparent unity can mask isolation, with viewers tending to access the experience in solitude. For Hermès' A/W 2021 show, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski stated: ‘Let us attempt to be creative together – albeit from a distance.' This translated into a film directed by Sébastien Lifshitz, encompassing a trio of shows across continents and time zones. It featured an opening performance in New York, choreographed by Madeline Hollander, a catwalk show in Paris, and wrapped up with a final dance performance in Shanghai, choreographed by Gu Jiani.

For Vanhee-Cybulski, movement was key, and her collection was focused on a joyful emergence into post-pandemic existence. ‘It is urgent now to live again, to venture forth into the unknown, to gain a new lease of life,' she said. Pieces acted as high-luxury hybrids, with smart denim suiting, suits cut like parkas, and ponchos with inbuilt scarves. ‘Classifications disappear into the play of fabrics and pleats,' she added.

For the New York element of Hermès' film, Vanhee-Cybulski was inspired by the physicality of women walking in New York. The notion of walking was integral to a number of designers for A/W 2021, who found solace, inspiration and vigour in exploring on foot. ‘I have the best ideas when I jog or walk,' said Akris' Albert Kriemler. The creative director is famous for collaborating with artists and architects, from Imi Knoebel to Geta Brătescu, but for A/W 2021 the brand's Swiss home town of St Gallen was his muse. In a film directed by Anton Corbijn, with whom Akris also teamed up last season, models strode the town’s snow-topped outer streets in grayscale, before gathering inside its medieval Abbey Library in Technicolour.

Reinterpreting the idea of the Akris logo, Kriemler devised topographical map prints that pinpointed the location of the brand's atelier. ‘My grandmother bought the space in 1944,' he said. He also celebrated the material heritage of the town, which was once responsible for 50 per cent of the world's embroidery. Delicate, punch-cut embroideries detailed comfort-focused, contemporary pieces, including neoprene dresses with laser-cut details, double-face cashmere coats and gauzy map-print tops created using stretch tulle.

During London’s several lockdowns, Laura and Deanna Fanning, the sister creative directors behind Kiko Kostadinov’s womenswear collection, took their daily walk around London’s Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Highgate. With the streets largely deserted, they felt a sense of reclaiming the city and its historic sites, but also noted the lack of inspiration felt when people aren’t around. ‘In big cities people become part of the landscape, it’s one of the reasons you live in them,’ they explained. Their strolls led them to Lauren Elkin’s book Flâneuse, which looks at the walking habits of women writers including Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys, and covers Elkin’s own on-foot adventures, from Venice to Tokyo.

The Fannings were inspired by the idea of 'presenting yourself to other people', taking inspiration from the bright hues found in the street style photography of Japanese magazine Street, from the 1990s and 2000s. Bright colours sported by passers-by on Portabello Road in London inspired bold hues, while darker greys and blacks nodded to the weather of Paris. Draped, tailored and layered silhouettes featured chunky striped knitwear, trousers and jackets with panels of colourful faux fur, futuristic stud-detail trainers, and ruffled skirts. Fluid dresses and shirts with voluminous sleeves featured a retro-futuristic 'radius-dot' print inspired by the Polish Op artist Wojciech Fangor. ‘The print references an idea in Flâneuse, of a cartographer drawing a circle on a map and walking around the area within it,' they explained. ‘The clothes are about showing yourself off, not to please men, but for your own pleasure.'

Showing off is not something that's resonated in recent months, but it's clear that as normalcy beckons, so does our desire to dress up. ‘For me it's about having a positive, joyful approach to luxury,' said Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Rosenberry, who in just two years has brought a contemporary humour, playfulness and sense of luxury to the Parisian couture house. ‘It's about heightening the fantasy.' And what a fantasy A/W 2021 was: think classic silhouettes like poplin shirts, trench coats and denim jumpsuits peppered with hammered gold bijoux buttons evoking the 'eye' and 'lock' surrealist motifs of the house, alongside bags and tweed jackets with 3D 'booby' details and second-skin boots with huge flatform heels. ‘We're taking under-designed silhouettes and embellishing them in an intellectual way,' Rosenberry said. ‘I love the perversity of it all'.

Elsewhere, Paco Rabanne's Julien Dossena referred to his A/W 2021 offering as an ‘affirmation of decadence'. In an uplifting film, smiling women soared through the air to Bryan Ferry's Slave to Love, in souped-up 1970s and 1940s shapes, from frill-necked dresses to wide-legged suiting, embellished in swathes of chainmail, rhinestones and tulle. ‘Looks layered with ornamentation transmit resilience to ravishing effect,' read the brand's press release.

‘This collection is an ode to individuality, freedom and change,’ said Lucie and Luke Meier of Jil Sander’s A/W 2021 offering. The collection amped up ostentation, featuring silk dresses with retro interiors prints, slips with delicate lingerie details, shirts with bold floral embroidery, soft capes with fringed sleeves, and necklaces formed from oversized strings of pearls.

Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson was also inspired by voluminous shapes and bold prints, creating pieces for emerging from isolation that are subtly different from the clothing worn before it. Black and white hues nodded to bridal and funeral ceremonies, missed out on in the last year. Fluid dresses had striking floral prints, coats cocooned the body like dressing gowns, and accessories felt protective, including chunky ponyskin boots, XL chain necklaces and warped handbags

Elsewhere, Issey Miyake's A/W 2021 offering was exuberantly innovative. The label looked to the tones of nature, from shadows to sea shells, debuting futuristic clothing in a film directed by Mikiya Takimoto. Its ‘Cliff' pieces featured garments that appeared to ripple across the body in a series of pleated and non-pleated yarns, including long skirts and unlined trenchcoats. ‘Silk Shade' designs featured abstract prints of flowers glowing in moonlight, created using a traditional hogushigasuri dyeing technique and swathed across fluid side-tie dresses. Concentric pleated ‘Monochrome Planet' designs had circular cut-out forms that bought new dimensions to the body.

A/W 2021 also allowed brands the opportunity to refine their output and drill down into their signatures. For Paul Smith, this meant revisting the subcultural silhouettes that have been synonymous with his five-decade creative tenure. As with the brand's menswear offering, shown in January, the designer looked to mod and grunge shapes, with Madness-inspired ankle-skimming suiting in two-tone fabrics, colourful striped knitwear and mackintoshes in blown-up floral prints from the label's archive. There was a relaxed elegance to the offering, which featured blazers paired with knitted trousers, fit-and-flare dresses in stretchy paisely print jersey and silk pyjamas layered with pea coats. ‘I think when winter comes, people will want to put a cool suit on, or a shearling jacket,' Smith explained. ‘After the start of the year in sweats and then flopping into summer, people will need de-flopping!'

Marine Serre also focused on the essence of her label, one synonymous with half-crescent motifs, upcycled fabrics and a fiercely apocalyptic vision of the future. She presented her 'Core' collection through a series of video vignettes online, featuring Serre fans carrying out mundane tasks from their homes in the city or the country, sporting spliced denim and leather, skirts formed from patches of picnic blanket and scarf swatches, and tattoo-print dresses.

Copenhagen-based Cecilie Bahnsen took time to hone her ethereal and intricately crafted pieces. Designs had a whole-wardrobe aspect, incorporating knitwear, cardigans and quilted trenchcoats, alongside her signature cloud-like dresses, imagined with bow details, voluminous sleeves and cut-outs and in overtly tactile fabrics. ‘The collection is so focused on touch,' Bahnsen explained. ‘Giving people a sense of tactility even when there is distance. The feeling you get putting clothing on is really luxury for us.'

Designers were also keen to reflect the reality of life, which in the past 12 months has called for an existence we never thought possible. For Dior's Maria Grazia Chiuri, this meant delving into the disturbing narratives of fairytales, and journeying to the Palace of Versailles, with a film of sinister and uncanny connotations (think nude bodysuit-clad dancers cavorting around spikes and writhing in the woods under moonlight). On the runway in the Hall of Mirrors, models took on changing feminine identities, in body-cinching hooded Bar jackets and mini skirts à la Red Riding Hood, laser-cut leather pinafore dresses and shirts, and pleated evening gowns. Leopard print and plaids allowed models to move between seductive and conservative, playing with their identities, with angular sunglasses and Oblique-print foulard headscarves.

Rick Owens riffed between rage and resplendence, his women's collection an evolution of January's ‘Gethsemane' menswear offering. The show, presented on Venice Lido, where Owens has spent much of the last year (his factory is a two-hour drive away, in Concordia), featured power-shouldered silhouettes that nodded to both sportswear and haute couture. Puffer jackets trailed like capes, body-hugging sequin gowns had voluminous asymmetric sleeves, trailing ribbed knitwear wrapped around the body, and thong swimsuits functioned as ‘self-contained and sealed body coverings'. Owens saw his powerful shapes as a response to fear and anxiety, and a parody of physical male aggression, transforming female forms into ‘architectural bulldozers'.

At Loewe and his own eponymous label, Jonathan Anderson has led the creative charge in terms of finding imaginative alternatives to the runway show. His ‘Show in the News' collection was an evolution of his ‘Show in a Box’ and ‘Show on the Wall’ concepts. The invitation featured a time capsule-inspired metal tin and, inside it, a newspaper emblazoned with the headline ‘The Loewe Show Has Been Cancelled’. ‘I thought it was nice to put a literary backdrop to the collection,' said Anderson in an accompanying video about the design of the show invitation, which also featured a letter opener and an excerpt of Danielle Steele's new novel The Affair. The collection was similarly layered, rifffing on tailoring and soft boyish shapes, voluminous draped dresses and intarsia knitwear, in bold tones and with sequin, tassel, buckle and fringe details. Think suede jackets with soft shoulders, heeled boots with XL debossed clasps, gowns with graphic paillettes and oversized blazers in painterly silks.

After a month-long series of shows – spanning New York to London, and showcasing narrative films and lookbooks, printed matter and the dense reach of digital – Louis Vuitton closed Paris Fashion Week with a celebration of the runway show in its purest form. The brand's A/W 2021 offering, presented in the Denon wing of The Louvre, was resplendent with voluminous and futuristic shapes, which drew on ancient garments and 1980s silhouettes. On a global live stream, models walked to Daft Punk track ‘Around the World’, sporting architectural capes and puffball ruffled skirts, statue-and-cameo-print jackets marking a collaboration with Fornasetti, and richly embroidered A-line dresses. Boots had chunky sculptural heels, and flats resemembled bow-detail gladiator sandals. Presented in a historic setting, the show spanned both the past and present, showcasing fashion for the future – one which viewers around the world are waiting on with wide-eyed anticipation. 

British photographer and Wallpaper* contributor Jason Lloyd Evans has been shooting behind-the-scenes backstage snapshots from the runway shows of the world’s most creative, luxurious and boundary-pushing brands, since the early 2000s. During today's downtime, he’s delved into his enormous photographic archive, which spans cities, creative directors and aesthetic shifts, and spotlit his favourite backstage images from brands including Balenciaga, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Here we reveal these sublime snapshots, which will allow you to indulge in a little sartorial escapism.

Miu Miu S/S 2004

‘This image marks a very different time, when backstage was a much less structured environment.  It represents an unguarded moment and a different perspective to today'. – JLE

Christian Dior Haute Couture A/W 2004

‘Because the backstage area was so small, there was no ‘First Looks' option to shoot the ready-to-wear images.  A few of us were outside and realised the models had to go outside and walk effectively the length of the catwalk out of sight from the guests to get to the backstage ‘line up’. I got my first Sunday Times Style cover from this show by stopping two models for just five seconds.' – JLE

Chloé S/S 2005

‘There was a really great cast of models around this time, always with such a fresh energy, like Daria Werbowy and Gemma Ward. At this time, Chloé was headed up by Phoebe Philo, before she joined Celine.' – JLE

Yves Saint Laurent S/S 2006

‘This image reminds me of how fashion is ever evolving. Stefano Pilati was at the creative helm of the house then, and I had the pleasure of shooting Pilati’s new label Random Identities at Pitti Uomo in January. It was a very hot morning the day of this show at Paris Fashion Week. This first backstage shot as always been one of my favourites.’ – JLE

Balenciaga S/S 2007

‘Nicolas Ghesquière’s shows were always great to shoot. At this time, Balenciaga's venues were always very small and the backstage area was tiny so we never knew what we were going to get to shoot. It was a period when things were much freer and less controlled.' – JLE

Marc Jacobs S/S 2008

‘Marc Jacobs really ruled NYFW during this time. His shows were always the most exciting. This may have been the one that started two hours late!’ – JLE

Alexander McQueen S/S 2009

‘Everyone knows about the intensity and energy of Alexander McQueen and it was always such a buzz to be in his fashion show environment. The amazing storytelling, total theatricality and the commitment of everyone involved in the process was so moving. Everyone was going that extra mile for creating a McQueen's vision and the intensity at those shows was unparalleled.' – JLE

Louis Vuitton A/W 2009

‘Vuitton was a show that was very difficult to get into for backstage imagery, and that time and I never knew if I would get access or not. Here, flash was not allowed but the light was perfect without.' – JLE

Prada A/W 2010

‘Every Prada show is special to shoot. This shot ended up being a cover on Harper Bazaar Australia’s Fashion special. It was really well received and the magazine went on to do the same supplement for a couple of years. They produced a post season magazine which was full of my backstage and beauty shots and was a great record of my month of shows.' – JLE

Jil Sander S/S 2011

‘Working for Jil Sander at this time was amazing. Its then-creative director Raf Simons was really seen as number one and the brand's shows were always so special. This showspace was tiny and I was the only person allowed backstage. It was so special to capture these collections.' – JLE 

Stay tuned for the next installment, covering 2012 – 2020

INFORMATION

lloyd-evans.com

Scene Setting: Screens everywhere? We're used to that nowadays. iPhones are an extension of the human body; and our digitally-saturated minds don’t even have the time to find it disturbing. But when those screens take the shape of stacked vintage televisions as the only light illuminating a darkened catwalk with its pretty images, they suddenly become menacing. That was Miu Miu’s food for thought, delivered through a collaboration with London-based artist and photographer Sharna Osborne. Known for her lo-fi, vintage video-like images, for Miuccia Prada she had filmed an array of colourful flowers, smiling girls and half-naked teenagers.

Best in show: The theme of the collection was equal parts sugar-coated fairytale and gothic nightmare. At Celine, Hedi Slimane has decided to present his most grown-up collection to date, whereas Miuccia Prada has taken over adolescent codes of dressing, creating transparent organza baby doll dresses paired with chunky cardigans and camouflage prints, peppered, of course, with Miu Miu’s trademark sparkling details. Even if the most statement-making pieces in the collection were capes, which came in a variety of wool, velvet, shearling and Barbour-like waxed canvas that will appeal to customers of all ages. As much post-apocalyptic protection as Little Red Riding Hood, they crystallized the spirit of a collection that, in the midst of school climate change strikes, felt very much like a metaphor of our times.

Finishing touches: Along with extra-long, straight hair in platinum blonde and raven black, bags were the most noteworthy accessories. Models dangled from bent elbows, in an exaggerated ladylike manner. Either plain leather or printed with colourful, vintage-looking flowers (the backpack version was also available), they completed almost every look. Elsewhere, thick-soled combat boots, flapper pumps and ballerinas coexisted, in metallic or neon tones, as true Miu Miu classics. 

Mood Board: Any historian worth his salt will tell you that the two key decades of widespread female liberation in the 20th century are the Roaring Twenties and the Swinging Sixties. It is no coincidence then that, sartorially, both eras had a lot in common, chief among them a boyish A-silhouette and cropped hair. Only time will tell whether the #MeToo era will be a revolution leading to more financial, personal and sexual freedom for womanhood... But Miuccia Prada seems to think it will. At the very least, she has been heavily reflecting on those concepts and translating them into pure Miu Miu sparkle.

Best in show: And so flapperish dresses in draped and ruched satin with details on the hips and shoulders made their appearance on the runway along with a selection of Carnaby Street-worthy double breasted leather coats and mini skirts in a palette of blue-grey, black, red, sherbet lemon and bubble gum pink. Although more timeless pieces (pantsuits and pencil skirts worn with cropped sweaters) were also on the menu, the prevalent energy was girlish and self-referential. The ultimate proof of that was the temporary return – after a brief period of retirement – of southern belle Lindsay Wixson, one of the brand's most iconic models in recent years, to the runway.

Finishing touches: If the clothes had a cute appeal, the money shot was in the accessories. Quite literally: bags and shoes encompassing 1970's-style chunky platforms and rockabilly heels, as well as bags, were sprinkled with glitter and crystals, as were the diadems, a kawaii wink to an otherwise punk-infused hair and makeup in which girls alternatively sported extra-long, new wave hair and Vidal Sassoon-ish graphic bobs. At the end of the day, both of those girls, and many more in between, are the brand's potential customers and fans. And this collection is sure to please them all.

Despite covering 1200 sq m, there’s something snug and comforting about luxury retailer Mytheresa’s newly redesigned boutique in Munich. In fact, a sense of feeling ‘at home’ was central to Roberto Baciocchi, founder of Baciocchi Associates, complete renovation of the three-floor space, which originally opened in 1987, and was the brick-and-mortar birthplace of the now renowned e-commerce heavyweight. ‘The boutique is like a living room’, Baciocchi says, with its soft sorbet hues, and plush textiles ticking all the boxes for a familiar yet fantastical feel.

‘I’ve tried to find maximum softness with shapes and fabrics’ Baciocchi – the Italian mastermind behind Prada and Miu Miu’s boutiques explains. The architect, who has also created retail interiors for La Perla and Folli Follie has for Mytheresa custom-designed furnishings in soft, tactile shearling and silk. Pillars are lined with lilac velvet, egg-like seats and poufs are upholstered using fake fur, their plush finishes juxtaposed against satin steel, marble and resin walls and floors.

‘Roberto Baciocchi is a master at understanding how to create a retail space that is true to a brand’s DNA,’ explains Michael Kliger, CEO of Mytheresa. The boutique – which boasts a first floor dedicated to ready-to-wear and established brands, and a basement housing its contemporary and denim offering – is unified by a resplendent marble staircase. ‘The space is both both diverse and harmonious in aesthetic and experience,’ Baciocchi adds.

The Munich space remains Mytheresa’s only brick-and-mortar boutique, and in a nod to its digital counterpart, its redesign features iPads which allow customers to place special orders, or order items from its warehouse. In a further unification between store and site, the boutique, formerly known as Theresa, will be renamed Mytheresa. ‘From our premium powerhouse brands to new contemporary designers, the new space will continue to mirror our curated edit of luxury fashion as seen online,’ Kliger says. ‘It will always remain as the true destination of luxury.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Mytheresa website

ADDRESS

Maffeistraße 3
80333 Munich
Germany

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Mood board: Millennials seem to be the Achilles heel of fashion these days. After years, nay, decades of living in splendid isolation, luxury brands have had an abrupt awakening in a world of e-tailers and direct-to-consumer apps: Snapchat, Instagram and Vine. And so started a desperate bid for the attention of the information-overloaded millennial customer which, so far, has produced mixed results and, is perhaps, too little too late. But today, Miuccia Prada decided the moment had come to harness all the millennial energy into one single show. And she brought out the big guns. Namely, quirky millennial heartthrobs like Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan and stars of Stranger Things in the front row. But that was far from all, as we were soon to find out.

Team work: The show started with enthused screams and whistling which, needless to say, is unusual. The reason? Opening, and clad in a thick, taupe woollen coat and flat biker boots, was Elle Fanning, Dakota’s 19-year-old sister and the star of – among others – Sofia Coppola’s 2017 film, The Beguiled. A catwalk debut for her, although she has a longtime relationship with the brand, having starred in both its S/S 2014 and S/S 2017 campaigns, she’s a sort of gen-z answer to Chlöe Sevigny in the late Nineties. 

Best in show: Yes, the inspiration was retro, but such that is irresistibly appealing to teenagers currently obsessed with Stranger Things and roaming charity shops in search for the perfect oversized Eighties leather jacket. There were campy echoes of John Waters’ 1974 film Female Trouble, but also of masterpieces of the Eighties, teenage movies like The Breakfast Club, with a dash of rockabilly thrown in for good measure. Models including Kiki Willems, Slick Woods, Adwoa Aboah and Lily McMenamy marched to the rocky sounds of Devo’s music, wearing every staple of a high schooler’s wardrobe, from acid washed denim ensembles to puffy-sleeved jackets and coats, colourful leather mini dresses and sexy pencil skirts. Even the palette was unapologetically Eighties, as if it had been taken from a Memphis furniture catalogue. Was the collection nostalgic? Not in its actual pieces, which were decidedly modern reinterpretations. But the show in itself couldn't help but make us somewhat nostalgic of a simpler, funnier, technology free time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scene setting: Seating arrangements at Miu Miu always hold a particular significance. Miuccia Prada never seems to just accept the standard white benches or gilded chairs commonly present in most Paris shows, eschewing them in favour of more creative – and often luxurious – options. There have been brocade sofas. Decadent pouffs. Purple feathered chairs. In one instance, even beds (a very particular kind of guilty please stems from watching a fashion show reclining like a Roman). This time though, guests were seated in a vulgar variety of garden chairs! Yes, the white plastic kind present in every suburban home in the Western world. Why? Well, because her collection was a witty exploration of the kind of clothing that has been present in every suburban teen’s wardrobe since the fifties.

Mood board: Remember Saved by the Bell? My So-Called Life? Grease? Those were the conceptual inspirations behinnd a collection that explored the varying – and often recurring – inspirations of teen girls’ wardrobes. Think grungey oversized lumberjack shirts (the kind that Demna Gvasalia has loved to appropriate ever since he started his brand) thrown over a pleated uniform mini skirt worn with knee-high socks. Who hasn’t seen – or worn – this? That doesn't mean the collection was fully inspired by the very on-trend nineties. There were also prom dresses galore, mostly in fluffy materials and sugary hues. Sixties and seventies-inspired trench coats and short shift dresses. And noughties-influenced dresses worn over trousers. It could have felt gimmicky and literal but, this being Miuccia Prada, it was never going to be like that. Every single piece was bearing the mark of true Miu Miu quirkiness, from hi-tech materials to prints inspired by seventies Italian textile design, to slightly grandmother-esque flower patterns.

Best in show: This was a collection that played essentially on the gender-bending aesthetic, the kind that will see a big manly wool coat thrown over a lacey bubble gum pink voluminous prom dress – accessorised with an orange checkered shirt 100 per cent Miuccia and Birkenstock-type sandals worn over pink socks, that was definitely the show's highlight. Elsewhere, there were graphic knitwears (for the most politically-slash-arty conscious student types out there), skirts with surprising patterns mixing checks and wallpaper-style flowers, and the above mentioned lumberjack motifs in sleeveless shirts, jackets and long dresses. With the layered styling, it all made up for a lot of information. Broken down into commercial pieces, though, it will clearly appeal to the whimsical, girly Miu Miu client.

Scene setting: For A/W 2017, Miuccia Prada covered the interior of the Palais d’Iéna with a fluffy layer of purple fake fur. This thicket of dense fur lined every visible surface, from the grand staircases and balustrades, to the walls and the double rows of seating, acting as an antidote to the grand architectural design of the space, which was built in 1937 by Auguste Perret. A row of huge mirrors lined the walls, and as the show began, they reverberated with the pounding sound of a televised French game show, mixed with De La Soul’s Magic Number.

Mood board: Both the Miu Miu show invite and interior boasted a layer of purple fake fur, and this fabrication was integral to the A/W 2017 collection, which featured colourful coats and cartoonish hats in retro hues. The Miu Miu girl isn’t one for minimalism, and for autumn she’ll be favouring dresses with huge swishing paillettes, telephone or peacock prints and après ski striped nylon coats. Miu Miu’s S/S 2010 collection featured a cute cat print, which prowled over dresses and shirts, and for A/W 2017, this feline friend was interpreted in a more geometric tile print, which featured on silk shirts and matching trousers.

Finishing touches: The collection featured a mix up of historical references, also reflected in Miu Miu’s A/W 2017 accessories: from 1990s-style transparent sunglasses in bright orange (a style signature of the collection’s hip-hop focused soundtrack), to 1920s-era diamanté headbands.