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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

louisvuitton.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton brings the beach to Paris 

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

The Dior show invite is a disco ball

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

The Dior breakfast? Perfectly packaged strawberries 

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

The story behind the Louis Vuitton set

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

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

'Sampled and remixed' classics at Dior

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

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

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

Meryll Rogge debuts menswear

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

Acne Studios is here to dress the Personality Hire

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

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

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

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

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

The story behind the Dior soundtrack

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

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

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

Rick Owens gets wet 

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

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

Sarah Burton’s debut menswear presentation for Givenchy

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

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

A closer look at Dior’s latest menswear collection

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

IM Men looks to bamboo for inspiration

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

Julian Klausner continues to delight at Dries Van Noten

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

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

Behind the scenes at Dries Van Noten

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

Junya Watanabe puts his riff on streetwear

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

Studio Nicholson hosts its first-ever runway show

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

Hermès evokes the spirit of the Gaucho

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

Backstage with Willy Chavarria

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

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

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

One hundred years of Lanvin menswear

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

Soshiotsuki debuts at Paris Fashion Week Men’s

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

Backstage at Studio Nicholson

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

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

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

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

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

At Celine, Michael Rider is creating the clothes he loves

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

Sacai closes out the week

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

The Spring/Summer edition of Men’s Fashion Month takes place each year in the heat of June, with stops in Florence (for historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo), Milan and Paris outlining what men might be wearing a year or so ahead (Spring/Summer collections arrive in stores between January and March). This coming season looks to be one of consolidation and brand-building, as a new raft of designers settle into their roles – Jonathan Anderson at Dior, for example, will show his third menswear collection – and other houses look to steady themselves amid an increasingly tremulous luxury market influenced by outside forces, like the war in the Middle East and rising fuel costs.

Though there remains a hopeful outlook, with plenty of intriguing moments taking place across the month. These include Simone Rocha’s headline act as guest designer at Pitti Uomo, marking her first-ever menswear show, while American designer Thom Browne will make a surprise appearance at Milan Fashion Week this season (previously, he has shown as part of the menswear calendar in Paris), alongside Ralph Lauren and Paul Smith, who both return to show in the Italian city. Further afield, and off-schedule, Zegna will show in Los Angeles, following last summer’s runway show in Dubai – a sign of the Italian house’s ambition for international expansion (the Zegna group reported a rise in net profit of 20 per cent in 2025, bucking market trends).

Here, everything that Wallpaper* knows about Men’s Fashion Month so far.

Pitti Uomo (16-19 June 2026)

Pitti Uomo, which takes place each season in Florence’s Fortezza da Basso and locations across the city, has invited acclaimed Irish designer Simone Rocha to be this summer’s guest designer (she follows in the footsteps of Raf Simons, Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose, as well as brands like Givenchy, Jil Sander and Off-White). For the occasion, Rocha will hold her first-ever dedicated menswear show – previously, it has appeared as part of her womenswear collections – in an as-yet-unannounced location in the city. ‘I would like to thank Pitti Uomo for their generous invitation to present my first independent menswear show on the men's calendar,’ she said in a statement, elucidating that she will use the opportunity to show ‘the length and breadth of [her] menswear proposition... [and] a new chapter in my work and world.’

Elsewhere, there will be shows from DSM Kei Ninomiya – the everyday line from Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe-led concept store Dover Street Market – and Copenhagen-based label Sunflower. At the main fair, which takes place at the Fortezza da Basso, there will be the usual line-up of brands showing their latest menswear collections – among them Herno, Caruso, Guess and Brunello Cucinelli, the latter which will also host its twice-yearly opening dinner on the evening of 16 May at the cloisters of the Santa Maria Novella church, a World Heritage Site.

Milan Fashion Week Men’s (19-23 June 2026)

In Milan, a somewhat quiet schedule – partly down to Zegna decamping to LA, and other brands, like Gucci, going co-ed during womenswear – nonetheless features a handful of impactful moments. These include Prada (co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have long had a knack of defining an entire season with their runway shows), Dolce & Gabbana (fresh off an appearance in Devil Wears Prada 2), Paul Smith (the British designer has made Milan home of his runway shows for a number of seasons) and Ralph Lauren, which will also return after showing in the city earlier this year.

Elsewhere, Thom Browne will host a special runway show on the afternoon of Monday 22 June, shifting from his usual spot on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (the American brand has a strong red-carpet presence, so expect a typically starry front row). Showing that same day is Giorgio Armani, who will move from early afternoon to evening, closing out the week’s proceedings at 6pm on Monday night.

Paris Fashion Week Men’s (23-28 June 2026)

The release of the Paris Fashion Week menswear calendar comes with a handful of surprises: notably, a Saint Laurent show on the opening Tuesday afternoon (23 June), a Celine show on the final Sunday (28 June), and presentations from Givenchy and Meryll Rogge (it will mark the first menswear presentation under Sarah Burton at Givenchy; meanwhile Rogge is making her debut on the men’s schedule).

Elsewhere at Paris Fashion Week Men’s – the final and longest leg of the month – there will be the latest show from Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton (expect a blockbuster happening on the opening night at 9pm) and Jonathan Anderson’s third menswear outing at Dior, following a high-profile debut Cruise show earlier this month in Los Angeles.

Hermès, meanwhile, will replace its usual show with a presentation as the house transitions to its new menswear creative director, Grace Wales Bonner (she replaces Véronique Nichanian, who held her final show last season). Rick Owens, Lemaire, Dries Van Noten and Willy Chavarria are all slated to show as usual, while the usual roster of Japanese designers who choose Paris to show each season – including Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Issey Miyake – will present their latest collections throughout the week.

Each season, designers must grapple with fashion’s unique balance of pragmatism and fantasy – clothes you can wear, yes, but also those that can thrill, transport, excite. It is why, when it comes down to defining the trends and takeaways of a given season, juxtapositions can be found here, too.

Take, for example, this A/W 2026 season, which culminated this past week in Paris after stops in Milan, London and New York. On the one hand, there was a prevalence of black – a colour that suggests a certain seriousness, or sobriety – on the other, Muppets-bright faux fur and shearling dominated the runway, suggesting an altogether more liberated mood. The same could be said for what seemed to be the season’s defining garments, the slip dress and the tailored suit – both loaded with connotations – or the lived-in layers of Prada’s A/W 2026 collection versus the levity and romance of Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore ready-to-wear collection for Dior.

Here, Wallpaper* unpacks six of A/W 2026’s defining trends and takeaways – ones that begin to set a blueprint of how we might dress for the season ahead.

Layering ultra

Prada’s A/W 2026 show had a novel conceit: instead of the usual 40-or-so models, there were just 15, each wearing four looks in an impressive act of quick changing (such was the power of the illusion, when Bella Hadid appeared just a minute or so after she'd left the runway, I wondered if perhaps she had a secret twin). Largely, this was achieved by clever layering, with models stripping away garments to reveal what lay beneath – a metaphor, said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, for the changing demands of a woman’s life. ‘As a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself,’ said Mrs Prada of the collection, where an anorak might have been layered over a cocktail dress; an organza skirt removed to expose a pair of bloomers. ‘You make choices, you decide who you want to be.’

Indeed, it is a way of dressing that feels particularly attuned to the demands of contemporary life – not least the changing weather, which was in full display over fashion month (the early days of Paris Fashion Week were so warm for early March that the discarding of items of clothing was necessary). Aside from Prada, collections this season felt particularly richly layered: at Celine, polo-neck sweaters were worn beneath a silk shirt, which was in turn worn beneath an overcoat (Michael Rider added plenty of accessories to the collage, too, from belts and enormous scarves to blankets grasped in the hand) while at Acne Studios, blazers were insouciantly hung over the shoulder via the use of clever in-built straps (the idea of layering was enhanced by a pile-up of clashing checks). At Loewe, parkas were constructed with extra collars, hoods and shaggy shearling trims (some layers could even be inflated like beach lilos), while Rabanne, Chanel and Valentino favoured vivid amalgams of colour, embellishment and texture, often achieved through placing one garment over another. In the respective shows, it made for some bold looks, but one could imagine teasing these pieces apart and wearing them – or indeed layering them – with your own wardrobe.

Black out

It might seem trite to call black a trend: after all, this is a colour that never goes out of style (so much so, it is the colour all others are compared to – such and such is the new black). However, the prevalence of the hue on this season’s runway was noticeable – not least at Fendi, where Maria Grazia Chiuri embraced the colour for her first Fendi collection, presented in Milan. By our count, around three-quarters of the 81 looks were majority black, a stark departure from Silvia Venturini Fendi’s primary-hued S/S 2026 collection last season. Though it didn’t feel dour: instead, it allowed the collection to straddle both a uniform sleekness – lean tailoring, flight jackets, and the like – and something more sensual in textures of lace, silk and crepe. Part of the choice, she said, was a riposte to the kind of attention-grabbing collections she sees as becoming the norm. ‘I think we must be pragmatic,’ she said. ‘Fashion is not entertainment. Fashion is a job. I am that kind of designer.’

A similar mood was struck by Peter Copping at Lanvin, where the languid glamour of the 1920s and 1930s inspired sculpted tailoring and sinuous gowns, many in textures of black, from lustrous vinyl and silk to dramatic faux fur, while at Saint Laurent, a stream of black Le Smoking-inspired tailoring introduced Anthony Vaccarello’s femme fatale for the season. Balenciaga, Issey Miyake and Gucci also had large sections of black in their respective collections, though it was Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons who was most adamant about the colour’s creative – and indeed revolutionary – potential. This season, save for a short interlude in saccharine pink, the rest of the Japanese brand’s A/W 2026 collection was all-black. ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ said the Japanese designer. ‘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.’

Fun ‘fur’

Fashion has long revelled in its contradictions and, if black dominated several of the runways, a more colourful countercurrent ran alongside. There was the bold yellow floor at Loewe (and equally pop-hued collection); Matthieu Blazy’s lustrous metallic palette at a triumphant Chanel; or the bold flashes of electric blue hosiery at Jil Sander, where Simone Bellotti, in his sophomore collection, sought creative liberation and ‘abandon’. Bolder still, though, were the flashes of brightly hued faux fur and shearling – or indeed fabrics which mimicked their shaggy textures – which appeared throughout the season, lending a sense of play that my colleague Jason Hughes, Wallpaper* fashion & creative director, affectionately described as a ‘Muppets mood’.

So there were Louise Trotter’s bold, shaggy silhouettes at Bottega Veneta, constructed from various fabric innovations from pulled threads of silk (they evoked fur, or shearling), or high-pile velvet manipulated to look like astrakhan; Junya Watanabe’s collaged silhouettes, where alongside crunched-up Mylar blankets, curtains and licence plates were bold panels of soft toy-like faux fur; or Loewe, where degradé shearling was trimmed ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’. These ‘fun furs’ made a case for dressing outside of your comfort zone, or simply giving your outfit – even if it is all-black – a single colourful (and fluffy) flourish.

Slip on

In our March 2026 Style Issue, we identified the slip dress as one of the S/S 2026 season’s defining garments, particularly those that recall 1990s minimalism. For A/W 2026, the garment returned to the fore, albeit reimagined in an unconventional manner. Take Loewe, for example, where nighties – like those you might find in a Marks & Spencer four-pack, complete with the tiny bow on the chest – were recreated in rubber, cleverly 3D-printed in various primary hues (for men, a version came as a top with long sleeves). The result was something playful and a little surreal – a reflection of the collection itself, which was defined by a feeling of experimentation. ‘For us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ said Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the American designers behind the collection.

A similar, if more overtly sensual, approach came at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello constructed a series of garments from sheer lace coated in silicone (he talked about the technique giving ‘structure’ to the traditionally delicate material, with ‘fragility becoming force’). Meanwhile, at Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada also explored the juxtaposition of delicacy and toughness, something the deep-thinking designer said was inspired by the contrast between the ‘smallness of the body... and the vastness of the [world] which surrounds us’. The latter came in trapper hats, shearling-lined parkas and hefty, bubble-soled shoes; the former in a series of sheer organza slip dresses adorned with sequins, crystal embroidery and scalloped trimmings.

New romantic

Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore ready-to-wear collection took place in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries, where a runway had been constructed around one of the circular fountains, its surface dotted with Monet-esque water lilies (or, at least, very real-looking reproductions). In the bright spring sunshine, it made for an idyllic scene, one backdropping a collection of romance and lightness, from Belle Époque ruffles and feather-trimmed outerwear to floral appliqué and bow adornment (completing the look were polka-dot pumps or shoes decorated with lily pads). ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ he said of the free-spirited mood. ’Now I feel free to release it from that.’

Throughout the season, designers mined this feeling of contemporary romance, defined by levity and play. At Matthieu Blazy’s own sophomore ready-to-wear collection for Chanel, looks were richly textured and adorned – from crystal flowers to golden butterflies, or the multitude of illusory tweeds and trompe l’oeil fabrics – though never felt heavy. Meanwhile, ruffles and lace became defining motifs, appearing everywhere from Alaïa (dropped-waist peplum dresses with layers of raw-edge ruffles) and Bottega Veneta (fronds of ruched fabric reminiscent of shearling that emerged from beneath tailored fabrics) to Simone Rocha, where sheer lace and organza were delicately embellished with crystals. One inspiration for her A/W 2026 collection was a fairytale from her native Ireland – Oisín and Niamh's journey to Tír na nÓg, the Celtic land of eternal youth and beauty.

Power move

The Saint Laurent show began with eight dark-coloured suits in a row: some double-breasted, others single, each with a sloped shoulder and narrowed – though not constricted – waistline. Anthony Vaccarello said it was about proposing a new power suit, one influenced by ‘severity of the 1970s and 1980s’ but with new fluidity and ease. ‘[They are not about] a clichéd projection of power,’ he said via the collection notes. ‘[But] a quiet and fluid conversation between the parameters of femininity and masculinity.’ Indeed, the show ended with his riff on Le Smoking, Yves Saint Laurent’s tuxedo cut for a woman’s body and one of his defining creations (it celebrates its 60th anniversary this year). Worn by model Loli Bahia, it was cut with the same fluid line as the opening looks – ‘the attitude more insouciant shrug than swagger’.

It was a season of great tailoring across the board, particularly in Paris. At Givenchy, Sarah Burton said reuniting with her tailoring team from Alexander McQueen had brought new sharpness to her suiting this season – there were some great blazers with cut-in lapels and gently sculpted waistlines – while the highlights of Copping’s Lanvin came in jackets with plisséd panels on the back, which gave a dramatic (though not restrictive) hourglass silhouette. If largely tailoring this season followed these contours (wide-shouldered; narrow-waist; fluid in construction), an opposition came in a more streamlined proposition from the likes of Fendi, where narrow suiting had a uniform feel, or Hermès, where contouring equstrian-inspired blazers recalled those worn for dressage competitions.

A review of the beauty looks from the A/W 2026 season, which finished in Paris earlier this week, contains a surprise: a lot of it was a mess. That’s not a put-down. Rather, the intriguing messiness of the season was deliberate, with even some of the most consistent purveyors of sleek, minimalist beauty, like Hermès and Alaïa, featuring hair that had a ‘I just got out of bed’ quality.

A similar look was seen on the Prada runway, with models in smudged raccoon-eye make-up and hair in half-done ponytails that had strands haphazardly escaping. The show had a novel concept: 15 models, wearing 15 looks, with each model changing four times throughout the show to create a new composition of the previous look. The beauty complemented the idea by suggesting a woman always in motion, always in a rush, too busy to refresh her make-up or even redo her ponytail over the course of the day.

The best beauty looks of A/W 2026

In New York, Collina Strada took messy hair to the next level with hairstylist Mustafa Yanaz giving models bed-heads that looked like they took many sleepless nights to achieve. While in London, the teased, matted hair at Simone Rocha was paired with punk details in, of all places, the eyebrows, such as multiple eyebrow rings and a black-pencilled eyebrow that curved dramatically at the edges. The result was an unkempt, delinquent appearance that complemented the bow, taffeta and glitter-heavy femininity of the clothes.

Yet, when it comes to this season’s messy beauty, no one did it better than the contingent of Japanese designers who show at Paris Fashion Week each season. At Comme des Garçons, hair by Takeo Arai and headpieces designed by HIZUME, combined to create a fascinating, strange beauty, with matted worms of hair – for lack of a better term – emerging from what looked like ripped sheer tights or oily bird’s nests.

At Yohji Yamamoto, black lips were paired with excessively gelled, Siouxsie Sioux-style hair. While at Junya Watanabe, hair stylist Eugene Souleiman and make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench created plastered-down, finger-wave wigs and streaming black eye makeup for a memorable 1920s-flapper-after-a-really-terrible-night look.

A similar look was also seen on the Saint Laurent runway, although more sleekly done, with hair gelled to helmet-like perfection and a flawlessly executed smoky eye and dark red lip (here, though, the inspiration seemed to be the severe beauty of Helmut Newton’s photographs of Saint Laurent in the 1970s). Demna’s first Gucci show also featured contoured cheeks, saturated red lips, and fanned-out smoky eyes. The most noteworthy saturated lips and smoky eye combination, however, was perhaps those at Tom Ford, where the velvet lips engineered by Lucy Bridge were so richly pigmented they looked almost fake.

Speaking of fake, there were those like Matières Fécales and Rick Owens who ostentatiously subverted beauty conventions with the use of prosthetics. The Matières Fécales collection, which satirised the style of the one per cent, translated the ideas behind its clothing into fake black eyes and faces practically deformed by plastic surgery.

While Owens, always one for bold beauty, built on the codes he’s been developing for years with make-up artist Daniel Sällström, to create eyes obscured by colour contacts and extra-long fake lashes that were emphasised by painterly strokes of neon eyeshadow. Sällström was also the make-up artist behind Vaquera’s white painted faces and multi-winged cat eyes, which combined to create a kind of modernised 18th-century aristocrat. The show also featured one model with lime-green pubic hair, which was, if nothing else, memorable.

But when it comes to the most memorable beauty look of the A/W 2026 runways, the winner might be a brand that was more playful than provocative. We are, of course, speaking about one of the most lauded shows of the season: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore ready-to-wear outing at Chanel.

As the show progressed and the clothes transitioned into more iridescent evening wear, the subtle beauty of the runway looks began to take an iridescent sheen as well. Models’ slicked-back hair appeared covered in a glittery, chromatic coating with matching metallic eye make-up, while one particularly noteworthy look featured long, mermaid-style pastel locks with matching pastel eyeshadow. All in all, a shining end to the season.

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

miumiu.com

It still remains relatively rare for a designer to deliver a ‘goodbye’ collection when departing a fashion house: more often, when the announcement is given, they have already exited, and their successor is waiting in the wings.

There have been some exceptions in recent times. At Hermès, menswear artistic director Veronique Nichanian rounded off a 38-year-long tenure with a celebratory runway show this January; in July 2025, Demna held a final haute couture collection at Balenciaga before heading to Gucci; and, in June 2024, Dries Van Noten said goodbye to his eponymous label with a finale collection shown on a glimmering silver catwalk (before an enormous disco ball was lowered for the after-party).

Pieter Mulier’s swansong at Alaïa

And, despite fashion’s short attention span – and voracious desire for the new and the next – it still feels a more satisfying ending for both designer and viewer. It is a chance for the former to revel in what they have created, and for the latter to express their appreciation.

As was evidenced yesterday evening at the former Fondation Cartier in Paris, where Belgian designer Pieter Mulier held his swansong runway show for Alaïa after a five-year tenure. Hired in 2021, four years after the death of the house’s namesake designer Azzedine Alaïa in November 2017, he would be the couturier’s successor (the time between was overseen by an anonymous in-house team). His time at the house has been defined by commercial expansion and critical acclaim, a veneration of house codes – architectural construction; body contouring silhouettes; superlative craft – with a resolutely modern eye.

Speaking to Wallpaper* in 2022, he would call it a search for ‘modern beauty’. ‘I like the idea of working with a small but devoted team of highly skilled technicians and dressmakers – it’s a reminder of the purest form of fashion,’ he said. ‘It’s a big problem if you make clothes without knowing the people who will help you to build them. And also without knowing who is wearing them. The women who wear Alaïa are not static works of art, but are active in society, working, running, busy with children. I want to create clothes that carry this idea of a modern beauty, always in movement.’

It was an idea he echoed in a letter distributed to attendees before last night’s show. ‘This collection is not about me,’ he wrote. ‘It is about the Alaïa team – our family – and an expression of all we have learned, and felt, and loved across the past five years.’ An exhibition of portraits by Japanese photographer Keizo Kitajima of the Alaïa atelier and staff served as the show’s prelude. ‘His photography, like the work of Alaïa, affects and shapes those who see it,’ Mulier continued. ‘[Keizo] has created a series of portraits of the people who have created this collection. In turn, this collection is itself a portrait of Alaïa.’

Watched on by designers Raf Simons and Matthieu Blazy, the A/W 2026 collection was one of intimacy (guests were within touching distance of garments) and reduction, an expression of simplicity that Mulier, despite some of his more experimental recent collections, said was at the heart of Alaïa. ‘This collection is about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress?’ he elucidated 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.’

This search for perfection infused the collection, which began with a series of tank dresses, 1990s in flavour and engineered to cling to the body, while equally meticulous suiting and lean double-breasted overcoats demonstrated tailoring prowess. Contouring knit sweaters were worn with elongated jersey skirts, while more dramatic silhouettes came in trapeze-style overcoats and flared peplums and ruffles, which appeared on jackets and gowns (albeit in Mulier’s graphic, contemporary style). The Alaïa hood – a house signature – emerged in scarves which looped over the head and across cocooning overcoats.

Such was the clarity of his vision, looks were often repeated, appearing in new colours, fabrications or lengths. Mulier said that repetition was ‘very Alaïa’. ‘He would do one skirt fifty times, and the last one was the best one – the same, same, the same. This collection is a bit like that, trying to be perfect, even though perfection doesn’t exist.’

The show culminated with a rousing standing ovation from the packed room – for Mulier himself, but also for the atelier, who joined him for an emotional finale bow. ‘I feel quite empty and happy at the same time,’ he admitted as journalists crowded around him for the post-show scrum.

Mulier will likely take some time off before he begins his next role as creative director of Italian powerhouse Versace on July 1. There, he will take over from former Miu Miu design head Dario Vitale, who succeeded Donatella Versace in 2025, but only lasted a single season. The appointment came after Versace was purchased by the Prada Group for €1.25 billion in a landmark deal, which was completed in December 2025.

‘When we considered the Versace acquisition, we identified Pieter Mulier as the right person for the brand,’ said Lorenzo Bertelli, Versace’s executive chairman, at the time (Bertelli is the son of Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli and has held various roles within the Prada Group). ‘We believe that he can truly unlock Versace’s full potential and that he will be able to engage in a fruitful dialogue with the brand’s strong legacy. We are excited to begin this journey together.’

Stay tuned to our live coverage from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026 here.

The Tuileries Gardens in Paris, first constructed by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564 and later renovated in 1664 by Louis XIV in its formal French style, has long proved fertile ground for the wandering flâneur seeking artistic inspiration and enlightenment – from Édouard Manet to Oscar Wilde; Claude Debussy to Victor Hugo.

And this afternoon, Jonathan Anderson – the Northern Irish designer and creative director of Dior – was the latest creative mind to be seduced by the gardens’ charms, using the Tuileries to stage his A/W 2026 womenswear collection for the Parisian powerhouse. In bright spring sunshine, the show set had been erected around one of the park’s lily-pad strewn ponds (here, those water-lilies were clever imitations); across its centre ran a contemporary imagining of the Tuileries’ tree-lined Grand Allée, a site of promenade since the gardens opened to the public in 1667.

A walk in the park: Dior A/W 2026 by Jonathan Anderson

Indeed, Anderson said this was a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’ in such public settings, a preoccupation of Louis XIV and the aristocracy of his reign. He also invoked the poet Charles Baudelaire, and his 1857 poem À une passante (To a Passer By), in which the narrator observes a mourning woman in a Paris flea market. Struck by what he sees as her innate nobility and ‘majestic’ grief in a ‘lightning flash’ of a moment before she disappears into the crowd, it would immortalise the figure of the flâneur – a detached but voracious observer of the changing city that critic Walter Benjamin said epitomised the modern 19th-century experience.

Anderson, who began the role as sole creative director of the house in June of last year, could also be deemed something of a flâneur: in one viral video posted to social media, he is captured by an anonymous observer wandering the banks of the Seine alone, smoking a cigarette, while recent Instagram posts have seen him capture quotidian moments observed while traversing his adopted city, like the stacks of love-heart padlocks attached onto the poles of a bridge, or the ducks which wander the Tuileries gardens. Though if a flâneur is someone who knows the city intimately (as Benjamin argued in The Arcades Project), Anderson was keen to assert that he retains an outsider’s eye.

‘I will always feel like a tourist in Paris,’ he told designer and podcaster Bella Freud in a conversation which aired before the show’s start. ‘But sometimes being a tourist is quite good, because you see the thing, you kind of edit.’ ‘I suppose it’s a way of finding the things that attach you to a city,’ she added, to his agreement. ‘Especially Paris, it's so grand, it's so composed.’

The idea of the pleasure garden – one which Anderson said also had very British connotations, too – lay at the root of the collection, the idea of dressing up to enter the thrum of city life (indeed, as he noted, in 1667, when the Tuileries opened, there were strict dress codes as to what you could wear inside). ‘A walk through the park becomes a performance,’ was the tagline to the A/W 2026 collection, conjuring a ‘panoply of Parisians... each dressed to play a part, whether mundane or spectacular.’

It made for a collection of eclectic elements; a modern riff on the 19th-century promenade. Several pieces found their roots in historical dress: ruffled Belle Époque gowns were abbreviated into mini skirts replete with bouncing trains (these millefeuilles of frills and ruffles returned throughout, including beneath a flared riff on the house’s Bar Jacket); regal brocade jackets came with peplum hems and rows of fabric-covered buttons; while a pair of dramatic lace gowns had a feeling of deconstruction, as if torn and destroyed by time (indeed, their edges were left frayed).

Others were a play on Parisian bourgeois tropes: scarves were slung across fabrics which mimicked heritage tweed, blazers were adorned with big gold buttons, and shearling jackets were reimagined with wiggly, wave-like hems. But there was a satisfying levity, too, even prettiness – flowers bloomed from dresses, jeans were adorned with crystals, and the polka dot became a defining motif. Even last season’s shrunken Bar Jacket was loosened up: here, an iteration of the Dior classic came in oversized proportions, and was worn with voluminous matching pants.

It felt like a designer gaining confidence in his position, one no doubt bolstered by the overwhelmingly positive critical reception to his first couture show in January. There, he favoured a similarly freewheeling approach: ‘I think the idea of designing things is to make people want something they didn’t want,’ he said at the time. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt at Dior, it’s just about putting ideas out [there].’

Anderson is a designer who has always excelled best when working intuitively and without restriction; here, the collection was created, from start to finish, in under a month. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ he said. ’Now I feel free to release it from that.’

Stay tuned to our live coverage from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026 here.

Paris might mark the final stop of fashion month, but such is the weighting of the season that several of its biggest shows are yet to come (Paris Fashion Week has a crammed nine-day-long schedule, nearly double the length of its counterparts in New York, London and Milan). Among them: Dior, which will begin proceedings on Tuesday afternoon (3 March 2026) with Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore womenswear show for the house, and Chanel, where Matthieu Blazy will present his own second act (both showed acclaimed collections during haute couture week in January). Others who are relatively new in their tenures include Michael Rider at Celine (the American designer will show on March 7), Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier (March 8), and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe (March 6).

There will also be a swansong: Belgian designer Pieter Mulier will present his final collection at Alaïa, the culmination of a five-year tenure defined by commercial expansion and critical success, honing a vision of what he calls ‘modern beauty’. Having taken over from Azzedine Alaïa after the couturier’s death, his next move is the Italian fashion house Versace, where he succeeds Dario Vitale, who only lasted a single season.

There is, of course, plenty to look out for besides. Saint Laurent will hold its usual Tuesday evening show (3 March 2026) in what is sure to continue Anthony Vaccarello’s veneration of silhouette and form; Issey Miyake will look to continue its brilliant run of shows under design lead Satoshi Kondo (March 6); and shows from Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton will close out fashion month on Tuesday (March 10). There will also be the usual slew of avant-garde labels, from Paris and beyond: Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Matières Fécales (among others), will all show collections filled with ideas across the course of the week.

Here, the Wallpaper* editors on the ground will be offering a real-time look at standout moments of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026 – from behind-the-scenes glimpses to access to the shows, presentations and parties. Stay tuned.

The Dior invite is a pair of miniature Tuileries chairs

Despite a handful of smaller independent labels showing yesterday, the Dior show this afternoon – taking place in the historic Tuileries Gardens – marks the definitive start of Paris Fashion Week. It is a moment made all the bigger by the creative director at its helm: the voraciously creative Jonathan Anderson, who will show his sophomore womenswear ready-to-wear collection for the house. After a brilliant couture collection this past January, which referenced the curves of Dame Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics and a posy of cyclamen gifted to him by former Dior creative director John Galliano, expectations are high.

The show invite for this season is an appealing pair of miniature green outdoor chairs, a reproduction of those which are scattered about the Tuileries Gardens – a longtime gathering spot for Parisian locals and tourists alike. ‘I will always feel like a tourist in Paris,’ he told designer and podcaster Bella Freud in a conversation which aired before the show’s start. ‘But sometimes being a tourist is quite good, because you see the thing, you kind of edit.’ Jack Moss

A first look at the Dior show set

‘A walk through the park becomes a performance,’ said Jonathan Anderson of his A/W 2026 collection for Dior, which was staged in Paris’ Tuileries Garden this afternoon. The show set, built over one of the gardens’ ornamental lily ponds, was a contemporary reimagining of the tree-lined Grande Allée, a traditional site of promenade and gathering. Jack Moss

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

The Tuileries Gardens in Paris, first constructed by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564 and later renovated in 1664 by Louis XIV in its formal French style, has long proved fertile ground for the wandering flâneur seeking artistic inspiration and enlightenment – from Édouard Manet to Oscar Wilde; Claude Debussy to Victor Hugo.

And this afternoon, Jonathan Anderson – the Northern Irish designer and creative director of Dior – was the latest creative mind to be seduced by the gardens’ charms, using the Tuileries to stage his A/W 2026 womenswear collection for the Parisian powerhouse. In bright spring sunshine, the show set had been erected around one of the park’s lily-pad strewn ponds (here, those water-lilies were clever imitations); across its centre ran a contemporary imagining of the Tuileries’ tree-lined Grand Allée, a site of promenade since the gardens opened to the public in 1667.

Continue reading our review of Dior A/W 2026 here.

Saint Laurent channels 1970s cinema

‘Structure and construction’ were the focus of Anthony Vaccarello’s latest collection for Saint Laurent, presented last night, which played out amid a ‘streamlined dream of modernist glass, wood and leather’ with an enormous bust – a recreation of one found in Yves Saint Laurent’s own Paris apartment – at its centre.

The collection itself had an equally cinematic sensibility, where ‘intimacy and vulnerability’ were captured in a use of lace, coated in silicone to hold its structure, alongside latex macs, slips and giant chubby ‘fur’ coats. On the mood board? Actress Romy Schneider in the 1971 movie Max et les Ferrailleurs, who Vaccarello called this season’s protagonist.

The show began, though, with a stream of tuxedos – riffs on ‘Le Smoking’, arguably Yves Saint Laurent’s most enduring design, which turns 60 this year. In single and double-breasted iterations, Vaccarello said that their sloped-shoulder construction and feeling of fluidity were a rejection of the women’s suit as a ’clichéd projection of power’ but a ‘liberating sense of ease’. His version of ‘Le Smoking’ in its purest form closed the show, its ‘attitude more insouciant shrug than swagger,’ as Vaccarello described. Jack Moss

At Courrèges, Nicolas Di Felice muses on time as he marks five years at the French house

The invitation to Nicolas Di Felice’s latest show for Courrèges was an alarm clock, its hands set to seconds before 10:30am, the time that the A/W 2026 presentation began this morning. Indeed, the passing of time was on the Belgian designer’s mind this season: the show marked five years since he began his tenure at Courrèges, during which he has transformed the fading French house with sleek and sensual riffs on André Courrèges’ 1960s Space Age designs that, despite intriguing experimentations in fabric and form, are designed for the everyday. Such was the case here: amid a sparse reimagining of a Parisian street, he created a wardrobe to take the Courrèges woman from dawn to dusk, and back again (she likes to party). Cue signature vinyl sets and cut-out bodysuits, raised-collar jackets and skirts with protruding sculptural waistlines, as well as more playful details, like leather handbags moulded to appear as if their contents were poking through, and dresses made from organza versions of Paris metro billets. It ended with a finale in which every look was recreated in white. ‘It was André Courrèges’ favourite colour,’ Di Felice said backstage. ‘To him, it expressed lightness, purity.’ Jack Moss

The invite to Pieter Mulier’s final Alaïa show is a make-you-own leather bodice

This evening at 9pm Paris time, Belgian designer Pieter Mulier will show his final collection for Alaïa – a swansong which will mark the culmination of a five-year tenure at the house, where he succeeded the namesake couturier, Azzedine Alaïa. It will no doubt be this evening’s most sought-after ticket: Mulier has honed a vision of ‘modern beauty’ which has resulted in commercial expansion and critical acclaim (as well as numerous memorable red-carpet moments). So it is fitting that the invitation is a keepsake: the pieces for a leather bodice, delivered to attendees in a box with instructions on how to put it together. ‘Swan song... only love,’ Mulier captioned a picture of the constructed invites on Instagram today. His next move? Creative director of Versace, taking over from Dario Vitale. Jack Moss

Julian Klausner channels an eclectic beauty at Dries Van Noten

A sequel of sorts to his menswear show in January, Julian Klausner channelled a mood of eclectic beauty at Dries Van Noten this season with an A/W 2026 collection which featured a heady amalgam of colour, print, jacquard and embellishment. Shown at Paris’ Lycée Carnot, the kaleidoscopic looks were reflected off a vast mirror at the end of the runway.

Meanwhile, a coming-of-age spirit emerged in garments evocative of school and college uniforms, from duffle coats and piped-edge blazers to varsity jackets. Vivid piled-up knitwear and denim added to the spontaneous, freewheeling mood. Jack Moss

The show set at Acne Studios was a series of colourful rooms

This afternoon, Acne Studios transformed the historic nave of Le Collège des Bernardins with a series of intersecting rooms, each with different colour walls, carpets and archways, recalling classic Parisian salons and apartments. The illusion was best when you looked down the runway to see the various rooms at once – a surreal, hall-of-mirrors effect which backdropped a typically vivid collection from the brand, who will celebrate this evening with a performance from current campaign star Robyn at a party titled ‘Robyn and Friends’. Jack Moss

Pieter Mulier holds his swansong show at Alaïa

Watched on by fellow designers Raf Simons and Matthieu Blazy, last night in Paris, Pieter Mulier presented his final collection for Alaïa at the former Fondation Cartier (it was preceded by an exhibition of works by Japanese photographer Keizo Kitajima, capturing the entire Alaïa atelier and team). It would mark the culmination of a critically acclaimed five-year tenure, which saw him succeed house founder Azzedine Alaïa, following the couturier’s death in 2017 (Mulier started four years later, in 2021, after a stewardship by an in-house team).

Encapsulating the idea of ‘modern beauty’ which has characterised his time at the house, the A/W 2026 collection was defined by a feeling of reduction: simple, body-contouring dresses met trapeze-shaped outerwear, while peplums, ruffles and hoods – albeit in Mulier’s graphic, contemporary style – evoked house codes. The intimate show featured a line-up of house muses, from Mona Tougaard to Alex Consani, and was rounded out by a rousing standing ovation. Mulier’s next move? Creative director of Italian powerhouse Versace, where he takes over from Dario Vitale.

‘[It is] not my Alaïa, [but] our Alaïa,’ said Mulier. ‘I am proud that I am a part of the history of this house – and this house will be a part of me, forever.’ Jack Moss

A closer look at Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior collection

Earlier this week, Jonathan Anderson showed his sophomore womenswear ready-to-wear collection for Dior in Paris’ Tuileries Garden. The gardens – constructed by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564 and later renovated in 1664 by Louis XIV before becoming a public park – also inspired a collection which was about ‘seeing and being seen... [where] a walk in the park becomes a performance’. Cue riffs on Belle Époque silhouettes, alongside a rich amalgam of fresh, nature-inspired flourishes – from lily-pad footwear and fronds of feathers to floral jacquard and appliqué. Wallpaper* returned to the water-lily strewn showspace today for a closer look at the collection – swipe through above to see what we found. Jack Moss

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

Rabanne gets ‘a little louche’

Julien Dossena was in full character-development mode for Rabanne this season, and the character in question is one of insalubrious repute, or, as the brand puts it: ‘a little louche’. A take on modernist femininity told through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of slip through unbuttoned blouse, a hint of lace underneath a more conservative skirt, and pussybows left suggestively undone. Countered with vintage-inspired T-bar heels, tea-dress florals, and clashing knitwear, the effect was, to quote Dossena, ‘slightly shady, somewhat unknowable, but definitely confident and in control’. India Jarvis

Rick Owens’ show of strength

Picking up where his menswear collection of the same name left off, ‘Tower’ once again saw Rick Owens play with ideas of strength and protection, and a high-performance fibre called kevlar which is purportedly five-times stronger than steel. Flight jackets and mantles were made using heavy-duty fabrics – demonstrating Owens’ ongoing commitment to responsibly sourced materials such as ZDHC-certified washed denim and boiled wool traceable all the way back to its source. Marlene Dietrich was the season’s muse, her spirit translated through a ‘steeliness’ and ‘grit’, which will be immediately familiar to the brand’s disciples. India Jarvis

Loewe A/W 2026 was ‘an expression of joy’

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s sophomore collection for Loewe – featuring menswear on the runway for the first time – was an exercise in ‘joy, experimentation and play,’ the American designers said. Cue blow-up outerwear, supersized parkas and colourful latex slip dresses, playing out amid a show set populated by Cosima von Bonin’s soft-toy sculptures of clams, octopi and dogs. ‘For us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ they said.

It resulted in a collection laden with optimism and fun: pastel shearling, gradient-trimmed ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’, bouclé coats made from looped lacquered leather, and allusions to inflatables. ‘It is the idea of play as rigorous experimentation and problem-solving, moving between instinct and experience,’ they continued. ‘Between a devotion to craft and its endless opportunities for innovation… propelled by boundless curiosity.’ Jack Moss

An assertion of resilience at Givenchy A/W 2026

‘How can we put ourselves back together in the world we’re living in’ is a question which feels particularly potent this fashion month, and one which Sarah Burton placed front and centre of her third Givenchy show. The answer, Burton suggests, is through an assertion of resilience, and an unerring celebration of the best of what humanity has to offer, namely its creativity.

This was hinted at through luscious tailoring bolstered by collars and headpieces which could have come straight from a Flemish Old Master, the simplest of velvet dresses cut with great thigh-high slits, and leather accents seen across pockets and neck ties. Clothes which speak absolutely to the ‘power of reflecting one’s own identity out into the world’. India Jarvis

Hermès A/W 2026 unfolded in a moss-strewn ‘liminal realm’

Nadège Vanhée said her A/W 2026 womenswear collection for Hermès was about conjuring a ‘liminal realm’, between day and evening, earth and space. Setting the scene was a transportative showspace erected in Paris’ Garde Républicaine: lit by two glowing orbs (through which models would later emerge), it was entirely covered in a dewy layer of moss and vegetation, while a sleek runway hovered and wove its way across the surface.

It lent the collection a sleek, vaguely futuristic feel – albeit one rooted in the superlative acts of traditional craft that have long defined the Parisian house. There were streamlined, body-contouring jackets and bodysuits in leather, technical knit sweaters, and quilted silks adorned with prints of cloud-strewn skies. Visible zips were a recurring motif; serving for both function and adornment, they sliced across the chest or ran down the length of dresses.

Other pieces riffed on equestrian attire – the north star of the house, which began by creating equestrian attire in 1837 – like sleek ‘cycling’ shorts that were actually cut-away jodphurs, or neat, double-breasted blazers evoking dressage competition jackets. Jack Moss

Issey Miyake let clothes speak for themselves

Satoshi Kondo’s offering yesterday for Issey Miyake was a treatise on a familiar tension for a designer: that of ‘creating’ vs ‘allowing’. How to navigate ‘the relationship between deliberate intervention in design and the absence of it, the unfilled space,’ or, in other words, the artists’ hand and its necessary sympathy with the inherent beauty of material.

The resulting collection, summarily titled ‘Creating, Allowing’ but divided into nine different chapters, saw fabrics cut into typically avant-garde shapes – large enough that their unique characteristics were evident and otherwise un-interfered with. These shapes made their impression on the negative space too, but the most important impact was made through the human frame, distilling ‘the notion of minimizing design intervention and leaving the form-making to the wearer’s own body’. India Jarvis

Michael Rider refines his vision at Celine

Presented this afternoon in a sunlit white space at Paris’ Institut de France – dotted with a series of modernist speakers – Michael Rider continued to hone his vision for Celine with a breezy A/W 2026 collection for men and women.

Building on the wardrobe of refined, uptown-inflected essentials he has established so far at the house, the collection also featured bolder flourishes – from vivid moments of colour to animal prints, metallic fabrics and giant sequins. Silk also featured, lending the collection an easy, fluid line, while accessories were typically desirable – from miniature accordion handbags to plimsols.

Marking his sophomore on-schedule Paris Fashion Week show, Rider joins a number of designers in the nascent stages of their tenure – earlier this week, Jonathan Anderson showed his second womenswear show for Dior; tomorrow, it will be the turn of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel. Jack Moss

Victoria Beckham’s muse was Tamara de Lempicka

Last night, Victoria Beckham took us to the southernmost of Paris’s arrondissements, to present her A/W 2026 collection at Cité internationale universitaire de Paris, a residential complex which hosts around 6,000 of the French capital’s student population. The foundation was conceived in the 1920s – the same period in which Beckham’s seasonal muse, the painter Tamara de Lempicka was reaching her creative heights.

De Lempicka’s portraits of modern women through the Machine Age offer much in the way of inspiration, sartorially speaking. Her statuesque subjects wear marvellous folds of fabric, rendered through bold, geometric planes of colour, close to the face. Beckham played upon this geometry with a collection which focused heavily on tailoring, or ‘anatomy-enhancing suiting,’ with playful constructive details: extended pockets on tightly fitting trousers, or blazers with intriguingly wonky necklines.

Her palette was largely neutral, but with the occasional uniform-colour, khaki and Air Force blue, or turquoises and oranges taken straight from The Girl, and Portrait of Ira P (both 1930), respectively. The ‘sense of dimension’ and ‘optical depth’ integral to clothes which borrow from Art Deco was achieved through sheer crystal organza and ‘crinoline shell garments’, and that unmistakably Art Deco line was suggested through pattern cutting – a bomber-shaped jumper in leather with a thick wool turtle-neck, met the upper torso in a deep-V, and a one-shoulder velvet dress connected to its bubble skirt via a sloping, ovoid drop waist.

Beckham also introduced the Sloan bag, a top-handle design ‘crafted in aged leather and croc-embossed leather in rich heritage jewel tones, the bag is constructed with folded side gussets that reflect the light and create shadows in motion.’ India Jarvis

‘Comme day’ delivers some Paris Fashion Week highlights

The Saturday of Paris Fashion Week is colloquially known as ‘Comme day’, not only because Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo shows her latest Comme des Garçons collection in the late afternoon, but also because Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya – two other labels in the Comme des Garçons roster – also present their collections, often in the same show space. It is a day considered by many to be a highlight of the month: few other designers have such a uniquely liberated approach to design as this trio, which remains defiantly avant-garde.

This season felt particularly strong, beginning with Junya Watanabe this morning, who presented a collection titled ‘The Art of Assemblage Couture’. A riotous collage of colourful fake fur, wigs, curtains and other detritus, silhouettes drew on mid-century haute couture – from opera coats to ballooning gowns – while the models served up a mini melodrama on the runway. Tossing garments over chairs and posing their way down the runway, faces streaked with run mascara, it was pure entertainment – a real contender for the show of Paris Fashion Week so far. Watanabe said it was driven by ‘pure creative instinct’, and the same could be said of Noir Kei Ninomiya, whose cage-like constructions were adorned with levitating flowers, while hair had been cleverly constructed into the forms of leaping big cats and bears.

Meanwhile at Comme des Garçons, the closing act of the day, Kawakubo delivered a series of typically provocative forms – from those draped in tulle to reveal the strange protrusions of pillow-like padding beneath, to intriguing pile-ups of ruffles and tassels. Save for an interlude in candy pink, the show was near-entirely in black. Her explanation was simple: ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ she said in a typically sage-like 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.’ Jack Moss

Balenciaga's ‘Euphoria’ collaboration was a search for ‘the tension between darkness and light’

Last night Pierpaolo Piccioli presented ‘ClairObscur’, his second collection for Balenciaga, and a collaboration with Sam Levinson, creator of HBO Original’s multi award-winning teen drama Euphoria.

The collaboration played out across screens at a show space on Avenue Champs-Elysées, which featured preview clips from the series’ third season, which will air to the public in mid-April. In attendance for the A/W 2026 event were stars from HBO’s catalogue, including Rachel Sennott (I Love LA) and Hudson Williams (Heated Rivalry). ‘The installation and experiential space represent a refraction and reflection of principles central to Levinson and Piccioli – of truth, compassion, affinity and above all humanity,’ a statement from Balenciaga detailed. India Jarvis

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

Duran Lantink presents a smoke show at Jean Paul Gaultier

Detective, cowboy, raver: Duran Lantink’s sophomore collection for Jean Paul Gaultier featured an eclectic ‘line-up of characters’ dressed in the Dutch designer’s surreal, sculptural silhouettes.

One figure on the moodboard was Marlene Dietrich, who the designer said was a master in subverting tropes: ‘dominant, sexy and graceful, the ultimate hybrid’. She inspired the tailored silhouettes which opened the show, while her face appeared on a dress installed with smoking dry ice – a nod to her signature habit.

‘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

Seán McGirr's latest Alexander McQueen show was a psychological drama

Yesterday evening, Seán McGirr transported guests out to the west of the city and to the Paris Tennis Club, though any traces of its playing courts had been removed and transformed into a sleek, futuristic box, intersected by a series of semi-sheer curtains. The Irish designer said he had been thinking about the feeling of being on view: ‘We’re always on; always curating, consuming, performing and being watched,’ he said, a point hammered home by the invitation, a postcard of an eye glaring from beneath a mask. One inspiration point was the 1995 film Safe by Todd Haynes – the story of a wealthy Los Angeles housewife’s descent into health paranoia – channelled here in Valley of the Dolls hairdos and hints of the saccharine, from trapeze baby-doll dresses to lace and floral adornment (there were also romper shorts, bows and peplums – the latter a growing trend of the week). Contrast came in sharply-cut tailoring, ‘bumster’ trousers and chainmail, as well as masks, which segued from the bejewelled to the eerie. Jack Moss

Laura and Deanna Fanning go birdwatching at Kiko Kostadinov

This season at Kiko Kostadinov, designers Laura and Deanna Fanning began by asking: What can we see when we really pay attention to our surroundings? They gave the example of looking out of a window in a major city – Paris, London, Tokyo and Los Angeles were all name-checked – and seeing not only the urban sprawl, but also evidence of nature, whether fluttering herons, swans or parakeets. It led, they said, to a collection about the ‘observer and the observed’: garments came with numerous pockets for tools to support ‘the act of looking’, whether notebooks, pens or binoculars, while prints recalled greenery and undergrowth, as if for camouflage. Typically intriguing colour combinations – a signature of the pair – were taken from Cindy Sherman’s 1993 photo essay, ‘Fitcher’s Bird’, and jewellery also had an ornithological appeal (pendants were shaped like bird’s eggs). Completing the scene was an installation by American artist Oscar Tuazon featuring a series of white ‘nestboxes’, from which models appeared – an echo of the brand’s menswear show earlier this year. Jack Moss

The Chanel show set is under construction

A first look at the show set for Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore ready-to-wear collection for Chanel at Paris’ Grand Palais this evening – one of the week’s most fervently anticipated moments (his joy-filled debut last October was perhaps S/S 2026’s standout show). Unfolding across a glittering floor, the space is populated by a series of enormous primary-coloured cranes – part-Toy Town, part (chic) construction site. Stay tuned for our thoughts from the show.

At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy does it again

This evening in Paris, Matthieu Blazy held his sophomore ready-to-wear show for Chanel, presenting a liberated, colour-soaked collection that built on his joyful debut last October. ‘I just wanted to have fun,’ he said at the time.

Taking place at the Grand Palais, which had been installed with a series of enormous primary-coloured cranes and a glittering floor, the A/W 2026 collection seemed to channel the joy of dance. Lady Gaga’s Just Dance rang out on the soundtrack, overlaid with clips from ‘Billy Elliot’, while the collection spanned easy, dropped-waist dresses, jersey gowns and roomy blazers (each a nod to house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel). Meanwhile a series of gleaming, colour-saturated looks were matched with slicked-back metallic hair.

Elsewhere, typically vivid embellishment – a longtime Blazy signature – added layer upon layer of richness, from floral appliqué and fronds of feathers to chequered chainmail and high-shine accessories. Jack Moss

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

Much of the idle chatter this Paris Fashion Week has revolved not around runway shows, nor the usual conjecture about which creative directors are in (or out). People aren’t even talking about last night’s parties, or how little sleep they’ve had.

Instead, the question is: have you been to the Chanel store on Rue Cambon yet? Or, the concession in Le Bon Marché? If you have, what did you buy? (And sometimes: do they still have my size?). Because it was there, on Thursday (5 March 2026), that the first arrivals from Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection, presented last October, began to hit shelves. Such has been the furore, Vogue Business and The New York Times have reported on the phenomenon (in the latter, one interviewee likened the mood on the shop floor to The Hunger Games); by Sunday, pieces were already turning up on the front row.

So, when it came to Blazy’s sophomore runway show for Chanel, presented at the Grand Palais yesterday evening (9 March), it was likely that the 1000 or so guests were already making their shopping lists (all the more so as a large number of the runway show’s seats were taken up by Very Important Customers – i.e. those who spend the most in store in a given year). And there was certainly plenty to desire here: a fashion pick-and-mix of gleaming metallic court shoes and sock-like two-tone boots; Chanel tweeds recut in the proportions of an oversized lumberjack shirt or in shimmering tinsel-like fabric; alongside the simplest of black jersey dresses, like the one that closed the show (jersey was one of the fabrics that Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel pioneered, favoured for its ease of line and lack of constriction).

Continue reading our review of the show here.

‘A new folklore’ at Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton’s A/W 2026 collection took place amid a show set by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, an abstracted natural landscape where rolling green hills had become sharp, sci-fi peaks. It set the scene for a collection which Nicolas Ghesquière said was a musing on nature: ‘mountains, forests, plains,’ and the clothing traditionally used to traverse them, reimagines in the designer’s idiosyncratic, genre-bending style. So there were enormous wide-shouldered jackets, which slotted on the body like sheaths (he said these ‘extreme’ silhouettes were meant to appear as if shaped by the elements); bags which hung on leather staffs like bindles; or enormous woven headpieces which felt as much for ceremony as protection. Indeed, Ghesquière said that he wanted to hint towards traditional dress – and the rituals that surround it – though here, like the set, abstracted into futuristic forms. ‘It is not an escape from our realities, but an echo of them,’ he said via the collection notes. ‘A new folklore, for the future.’ Jack Moss

Gillian Anderson and Chloë Sevigny walk for Miu Miu

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. India Jarvis

Read more about the star-studded cast here

When architecture firm Maxwell and Tuke was commissioned to build The Blackpool Tower in the late 1800s, its brief from the Lancashire seaside town’s mayor was to create a near replica of the Eiffel Tower, then recently erected in Paris. Appropriately dubbed ‘The Eiffel Tower of the North’, the steel and cast-iron structure was home to a menagerie and aquarium, a ballroom and a circus, the glitz, glamour and grandeur paying homage to Parisian spectacle through British eyes. Artist David Hoyle, who grew up in Blackpool during the 1960s and 1970s, recalls regular visits to the attraction, where he would watch the likes of resident clowning duo Charlie Cairoli and Paul Freedman perform. ‘The circus was a huge influence on me,’ he says over a phone call. ‘Towards the end of the show, it would fill up with water. The clowns, Charlie in particular, used to frighten some children because of their make-up. But to me it was just amazing and out of this world.’

In 2026, another Paris-Blackpool connection has materialised for Hoyle, who now stars in a series of short videos for Mugler. The French haute couture and ready-to-wear label was founded by late iconoclast Manfred Thierry Mugler in 1974, with a debut collection titled ‘Café de Paris’. The avant-garde fashion house, which the designer and artist built to escape a reality in which he never felt he belonged, similarly became an escapist beacon for those pushing against the status quo. Among them was Hoyle, whose queer adolescence collided with the rise of Thatcherism. ‘Thierry Mugler made a big impression on me,’ he says. ‘The theatricality of the garments… You learn what a costume can do; it can change you. I mean, in your private life, you know, you might be on your knees. But put a costume on, and you’re liberated.’

Hoyle developed his signature form of satirical cabaret in the gay clubs of Manchester and London through ‘anti-drag’ character The Divine David. ‘I suppose I called myself that because I do have a belief that all of us contain some form of divinity,’ says Hoyle, also noting the influence of Bette Midler’s stage persona The Divine Miss M. ‘But it was tongue-in-cheek, really.’ Gaining a cult following, Hoyle was tapped by Channel 4 to host his own shows, The Divine David Presents (1998) and The Divine David Heals (2000), which saw him sport signature Divine David garb – appearing as though Elsie Tanner from Coronation Street had a nasty in run in with a Blackpool circus clown – and deliver surrealist social commentary against the backdrop of a psychedelic greenscreen. (Hoyle would later ‘kill off’ The Divine David at Streatham Ice Rink, in a funerary spectacle called ‘The Divine David on Ice’).

Miguel Castro Freitas, appointed Mugler’s creative director in 2025, after the departure of Casey Cadwaller, is a huge admirer of Hoyle, for ‘his wit, disruptive spirit, and glamour’. ‘[They are] aspects that are all essential to Mugler, as well,’ the Portuguese designer says in a press release for the new video series, which brings The Divine David back to life on film. ‘It was such a lovely surprise hearing from Miguel,’ Hoyle says. ‘We connected via my manager, Tim, over a Zoom call. He explained how he’d followed my work for years and vowed to collaborate with me one day, and his new role at Mugler was the perfect opportunity to make it happen.’ Hoyle was ‘given free creative rein’ over the direction of the videos, which were shot by his long-time creative partner Lee Baxter, with Manchester-based drag artist Liquorice Black responsible for ‘styling and coiffure’. ‘We were a really great local creative team,’ adds Hoyle, explaining that everything was shot in the UK’s North West. ‘I was very grateful to Mugler for allowing me to make the films there; there’s no reason why high-quality work can’t be produced outside of London,’ says Hoyle.

The final three films of the nine-part digital series drop in increments this week (23-28 February 2026). In each one, The Divine David explains ‘how to’ wear Mugler’s ‘The Wardrobe of Identities’, the brand’s pre-S/S 2026 collection, for a variety of scenarios, ranging from the commonplace to the absurd. For example, embarking on a cruise or travelling to Pluto. ‘Getting to wear those clothes… I have to say, it was incredible,’ says Hoyle, calling out the ‘butter satin’ gown featured in ‘Episode VI’ as a standout piece. ‘The script was written around the pieces in the collection, and the idea of wearing something so beautiful and exquisite to go foraging for mushrooms or to take a bus.

‘The times that we’re living in, you couldn’t make them up,’ says Hoyle. ‘I’m old enough to remember going on marches in the 1980s. And entering the 1990s, you really felt that you were going towards a more progressive future. But at the moment, we seem to have hit some sort of brick wall.’ Hoyle’s perspective on the role fashion plays during times of sociopolitical unrest is largely optimistic, however. ‘To me, fashion is a sort of antidote to evil,’ he muses. ‘I think it’s always served that purpose. It has its problems, as everything does. But I think that the fantasy of it, the escapism, the ability to play around and have a laugh, is so important. And, as with the series we’ve made with Mugler and Miguel, I find the fashion world very encouraging of creativity, allowing space to be idiosyncratic and a bit off the wall.’

Mugler A/W 2026, Freitas’ second runway collection for the house, will take place on 6 March during Paris Fashion Week. Will Hoyle be making an appearance on the FROW? ‘Oh, we need to discuss that, Nicky, but we’ll see!’ he says to Mugler’s global comms director, also on the call. ‘But it would be nice if possible, as I love Paris. There’s nothing better than sitting at a café on a boulevard somewhere, or in Montmartre. I’ve been a few times with Lee [Baxter]. We just sit together in silence and just watch all the beautiful, eccentric people go by.’

mugler.com

Tomorrow marks the beginning of New York Fashion Week, which, in turn, heralds the start of a month-long A/W 2026 season of shows, with subsequent stops in London, Milan and Paris. It looks to be a season of (relative) calm: after 15 creative directors made their debut for S/S 2026, the coming weeks look set to see designers hone their visions as they settle into their roles (as such, A/W 2026 looks to be defined not by the ‘debut’, but the ‘sophomore’ show).

That said, the debuts continue, most notably in Milan, where Gucci will hold its first runway show under new creative director Demna (last season, as an introduction, he presented a short film starring Demi Moore and Edward Norton), Maria Grazia Chiuri will show her first collection for Fendi, and Meryll Rogge will debut at Marni. And those shows aside, the schedule across the month remains busy – not least in Paris, where an eight-day schedule cements the city’s status as the world’s style capital.

Here, on the eve of a new season in style, everything you need to know about Women’s Fashion Week A/W 2026.

New York Fashion Week (11–16 February)

A slight reshuffle of the New York Fashion Week schedule means that this season is front-loaded: on the opening day, three of the city’s biggest names – Proenza Schouler, Coach and Tory Burch – will all present their A/W 2026 collections, moving forward from their usual slots later in the week. Proenza Schouler will likely command the most attention: this season marks the runway debut of Jamaica-born, New York-based designer Rachel Scott as creative director, following a soft-launch presentation last season. She comes with plenty of experience: after roles at Costume National, Elizabeth and James and Rachel Comey, she founded her own label, Diotima, in 2020. She has since won the CFDA American Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2024 for her work at the brand, which held its first runway show last season to wide acclaim (it was one of Wallpaper’s highlights of the season). Alongside her new role at Proenza Schouler – where she takes over from founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez – she will continue to work on Diotima, showing her latest collection on Sunday.

Elsewhere, New York’s usual banner names return: Michael Kors will show on February 12, Calvin Klein on February 13, and Eckhaus Latta on February 14. Surrounding them are some brilliant rising names: we are big fans Zane Li’s fledgling label LII, which marries 1990s minimalism with architectural construction and a bold colour palette, while Ashlyn, led by Yohji Yamamoto alumnus Ashlynn Park, is evolving into one of New York’s most intriguing young labels with its reimagining of historical silhouettes and straddling of Japanese and Parisian codes (she recently won the 2025 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund). Other moments to watch out for are Nicholas Aburn’s sophomore show as creative director of Area, and the latest runway show from Khaite, which – if previous runway shows are anything to go by – will come with cinematic scenography conceived by founder Catherine Holstein and her architect husband Griffin Frazen.

London Fashion Week (19–23 February)

London Fashion Week seeks to continue the momentum built last season under new British Fashion Council CEO Laura Weir. Proceedings begin on Thursday evening with the graduating class of Central Saint Martin MA program – long an incubator for fashion’s rising stars – while on a similar track, Fashion East will continue a two-decade-long tradition of showcasing a trio of on-the-rise designers (this season, Jacek Gleba and Louis Mayhew will return after their debuts for S/S 2026, joined by Traiceline Pratt’s GOYAGOMA). Other rising names on the schedule to look out for include Lucila Safdie, Selasi (the Ronan McKenzie-run label will hold its first on-schedule runway show) and Oscar Ouyang, while the more established Chopova Lowena and Talia Byre will both show their latest collection in a presentation format. Conner Ives, whose ode to the women of pop was one of last season’s highlights, will also show on the closing on Monday.

Elsewhere, expect shows from longtime London Fashion Week stalwarts: these include Simone Rocha and Erdem, while Roksanda is taking the season off to instead hold an intimate dinner with the BFC. There are some returning names, too: Julien Macdonald will bring his brand of typically outré glamour with a runway show on Saturday afternoon, while Joseph will host its first runway show under Mario Arena, who came to the British label in 2024 after stints at Nanushka and JW Anderson. Last but not least, Burberry will close out the week on Monday evening – expect the usual high-wattage happening with an eclectic star-packed front row.

Milan Fashion Week (24 February–1 March)

A new energy permeates Milan Fashion Week as Gucci makes a welcome return to the runway in its first show under new creative director Demna (if his Balenciaga shows were anything to go by, expect spectacle), while Fendi shakes off a period of flux as Maria Grazia Chiuri takes the helm of the Roman powerhouse (they will show on Friday and Wednesday respectively). Meanwhile, Belgian designer Meryll Rogge – who worked at Marc Jacobs and Dries Van Noten before starting her own eponymous label – will also make her debut as creative director of Marni, showing on Thursday evening.

Elsewhere, Milan continues to be dominated by its legacy names (the schedule is light on rising talent), which will host their usual blockbuster runway shows across the week. These include Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani (the latter will be co-ed, having skipped Men’s Fashion Week), Max Mara, Tod’s, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Prada – the latter long a barometer for the season’s trends – while at Jil Sander and Bottega Veneta, Simone Bellotti and Louise Trotter will show their sophomore collections after acclaimed debuts last season. We look forward to seeing their visions evolve.

Paris Fashion Week (2–10 March 2026)

As ever, Paris Fashion Week continues to dominate: a packed eight-day schedule cements its status as the world’s style capital. Though perhaps this season can be seen as one of relative calm – after the frenzy of big-name debuts last season, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior, A/W 2026 will see this new class of designers settle into their roles and hone their visions. Other designers hosting their sophomore ready-to-wear shows this season include Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier, Miguel Castro at Mugler, and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe.

Elsewhere, expect the usual line-up of the Paris’ storied houses – among them Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Celine – alongside those who travel to the city each season, including the Japanese avant-garde (among them Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake and Noir Kei Ninomiya) and a slew of international labels, from Miu Miu and Stella McCartney to McQueen. Meanwhile, an energetic and eclectic line-up of younger designers completes the schedule, including Julie Kegels, Hodakova, Vaquera, Matières Fécale and Niccolò Pasqualetti.

A fitting finale

Bill Prince, editor-in-chief

A rare standing ovation greeted the conclusion of Véronique Nichanian’s autumn-winter 2026/27 menswear show at Hermès last weekend – a fitting tribute to her 38 years leading the house’s men’s offer. The moment was capped by a showreel of her work over the years and a performance by one of her favourite artists, Paul Weller. It was a privilege to be present and witness the passing of the baton to Grace Wales Bonner, who shows next year. In the meantime, we bathed in a final walk defined, as ever, by the designer’s precision and elegance – a tutorial in contemporary tailoring that came with more than a flash of Véronique’s rock ’n’ roll spirit, with its inclusion of blush shearlings and high-shine crocodile suiting.

Modernism on the move

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

This week involved a bit of travel at the architecture desk. First, I visited Villa Beer, the newly reopened Viennese modernist classic by Joseph Frank and Oskar Wlach. What a treat it was to explore this rare 20th-century gem (as well as pay a visit to Hermann Czech’s beautiful miniature icon, the Kleines Café in central Vienna, where I bumped into none other than Mr Czech himself).

On Wednesday, meanwhile, I hopped on a preview tour of the upcoming Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. The Belgian capital has seen nothing like it – until November 2026, that is – when this significant (40,000 sq m) cultural destination will open, complete with an architecture centre, art galleries, public plazas, hospitality offerings and a playground by Assemble. Set in a former Citroën factory and showroom from the early 20th century, the building has been reimagined by a trio of collaborators: EM2N, noAarchitecten and Sergison Bates architects.

The project is nothing if not ambitious, and its authors are passionate about becoming an active and inclusive presence in the city’s urban realm. 'We are creating a museum where the centre of gravity won’t be the exhibitions,' said its managing director, Yves Goldstein, at a press conference held within the structure’s advanced building site. 'It will be the public space. We want to create a public space.'

A blues-beating ritual

Tianna Williams, staff writer

After what seems to be the longest January in history, I am grateful that we are inching closer to spring. Though the cold, wet months are not for the faint of heart, I have recently been trying to shift my perspective and embrace 'the cosy'. This includes journaling, sipping warm drinks and eating pastries in weather that can only be described as grim.

Central to this is a good candle (I have been thoroughly enjoying Ashley & Co’s Tui & Kahili scented candle, as well as their Coffee Date lip balm), your favourite mug (I love Nkuku), and blank pages on which to jot down your thoughts.

A world of craft

Anna Solomon, digital staff writer

A trip to Paris Design Week a couple of weeks ago yielded many beautiful destinations, but one stop has lingered: Astier de Villatte. Located on the Rue Saint-Honoré, just behind the Jardin des Tuileries, the boutique is an enchanting space devoted to ceramics, perfume and books. Astier de Villatte feels suspended in time, its old-world interior a higgledy-piggledy assemblage of objects that wouldn’t feel out of place on Diagon Alley.

The brand’s world also encompasses a letterpress printing atelier in l’Haÿ-les-Roses – one of the last in the world still printing books using lead – a publishing house and a perfume workshop. Founders Benoît Astier de Villatte and Ivan Pericoli have built its reputation almost entirely through word of mouth – relying on people who, like me, are so charmed by this shrine to craft and tradition that they can’t help but pass the story on.

A Portobello pit stop

Jamilah Rose-Roberts, social media editor

Last week, while wandering through Portobello in search of secondhand books and old cameras, the need to eat crept in slowly. Portobello has a way of doing that through all the walking and browsing. What I was craving was breakfast that felt solid and well made – somewhere I could sit, eat properly and carry on with the day.

Almost by accident, I stumbled upon Cleanse Juice Bar and Kitchen, a health café tucked neatly on the vibrant street, offering everything I was craving. The space is light-filled and unfussy, and the food leans into organic, fresh, carefully prepared ingredients.

Breakfast here feels super restorative. Vibrant bowls layered with seasonal fruit, grains and seeds arrive looking alive, with flavours that are clean and well balanced. The juices taste purposeful rather than sweetened – each one clearly built with care for the body. There is a sense that ingredients matter, that provenance is part of the pleasure. I recommend their Moroccan tea, which is delicious.

In a neighbourhood overflowing with choice, Cleanse Juice Bar and Kitchen feels dependable and consistent. If you are nearby and want a good breakfast, coffee, or buildable bowl, stop in – it is well worth it.

A quieter men’s season allowed fashion to ease into 2026, with a handful of standouts shining through an otherwise pared-back schedule. At Pitti Uomo 109, Hed Mayner took the coveted guest designer slot with an intriguing show that revelled in ‘wrongness’, then two hours north in Milan, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada transformed Fondazione Prada into the ruins of an Italian palazzo to backdrop a collection that grappled with the past. Paris, which now makes up the bulk of the menswear schedule, had a renewed sense of energy, seeing Jonathan Anderson stage an expressive sophomore menswear collection for Dior, and Pharrell Williams debut an unusual architectural project with a Tokyo-based vacation rental company Not a Hotel.

Still, a number of collections may have slipped under the radar – particularly from brands that chose to unveil their new collections off the official calendar, or via lookbook rather than a show. Here, we highlight the best collections you might have missed from the A/W 2026 menswear season.

JW Anderson

What links pop queen Kylie Minogue, fashion editor Tim Blanks, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers, Queer) and creative director Mark Kalman? They are all, apparently, friends of Jonathan Anderson. It's no secret that the Irish designer has been incredibly busy over the past year with his landmark appointment as Dior’s new creative director – he is the first to oversee menswear, womenswear and haute couture – so runways at his eponymous brand have paused for now. Instead, Anderson has cleverly leaned into his rich visual world through imagery, tapping up a ‘close-knit circle of friends, long-time collaborators, and acquaintances‘ to star in playful lookbooks.

The latest of these was released last week, its series of impulsive portraits by Heikki Kaski comprising perfect internet fodder, seeing the unlikely crew of creatives pose in Anderson’s A/W 2026 designs, laughing and climbing out of baskets. The collection itself is typically witty and idiosyncratic – from a tote bag reading ‘Porn’ to motifs of cars and botanics – with several pieces riffing on previous greatest hits. Or, in the brand’s words, ‘the deranged, twisted classics JW Anderson stands for’.

Wales Bonner

Grace Wales Bonner has long favoured a beautiful shoot over a runway, though she did make an exception last season, staging a special Paris presentation to mark ten years of her brand. Titled ‘Jewel’, it explored the figure of the Black dandy through an eclectic, emotionally charged wardrobe rooted in British sartorial traditions – essentially, the language that has defined a decade of her celebrated work.

Released this week, a new series of serene visuals shot by Malick Bodian sees her return to an image-first format. Set within sun-strewn modernist buildings, the collection takes cues from the ‘elemental simplicity’ of modernist architect Balkrishna Doshi. Always balancing the ‘practical and the sensual’, the collection also channels the meditative rhythms of ragas (spiritually charged Indian compositions designed to evoke particular moods and moments of day), specifically those written for the morning. Alongside fresh iterations of her ongoing Adidas collaboration, the clothes this season move fluidly between cultural touchpoints – Bengal-stripe shirting and fine merino knits made with John Smedley, brooches of panga panga wood crafted in Botswana by Beullah Serema and Peter Mabeo, and indigo linen tuxedos from Savile Row.

Using modernist design as a framework to share ‘optimism across cultures’, the collection is ultimately one of ease – something Wales Bonner may very well be seeking in the lead-up to her anticipated debut as Hermès’ new men’s creative director, which the designer has over a year to prepare for (indeed, as the morning raga reminds its listener, there’s no need to rush).

Our Legacy

Leaning into the brand’s less-is-more Scandinavian genre of cool, Our Legacy’s latest collection is dryly titled ‘Just Clothes’. The brand has long avoided the circus of fashion week and, as it does every season, has elected to unveil the new offering through a series of sharp, studio-shot images. Subtly reworking the staples that have made Our Legacy a global cult, the design team started by asking themselves, ‘What makes a pure garment?’ Removing the fizz of trends, their answer is meticulously refined uniform that can be layered and reconfigured in manifold ways: clean-cut outerwear, insulating bomber jackets, elevated denim, workwear-inflected shirting, timeless knits and leather goods embellished with the brand’s ubiquitous silver hardware. In a statement released alongside the visuals, Our Legacy describes it as ‘a necessary retreat from fashion’s ever-amplifying noise’.

Av Vattev

The fluid dress codes of British rock stars – from Mick Jagger’s romantic pirate shirts to Roxy Music’s eclectic tailoring – have fed the moodboards of Italian-born designer Antonio Vattev since he founded his namesake brand in 2018. Since then, he has not only built a cult following but dressed a new generation of pop icons, including creating tour looks for Charli XCX and Troye Sivan in 2024. This season, though, he looked from music to dance, and the figure of Soviet-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961. Vattev drew on the dancer’s ‘liberation, sensuality, and understated chic’ both on and off the stage (his rehearsal wear inspired wrapped polos and beanie hats with the lace-up closure inspired by his viral ‘Viper’ cardigan). New for this season was a greater focus on craft: a newly developed ‘python’ textile was crafted from leather petals, each one hand-applied in a process taking hours of work. The starting point for the unique textile was an appearance by Nureyev on The Dick Cavett Show, wearing a python-pattened outfit.

Kartik Research

Marking his sophomore show on the Paris Fashion Week calendar, New York–based designer Kartik Kumra presented his latest collection for Kartik Research in a stately Paris hôtel particulier. Twisting a couturier’s salon-style display through a South Asian lens, seats were wrapped in Kantha fabric and rooms lined with handmade Jaipur rugs, while Kartik’s signature neroli scent filled the space. The collection looked to the refined dress codes of Ahmedabad in the 1970s, a city known as a site of artistic gathering in India. Handwoven textiles – some ornately embroidered, others expressively patchworked – formed silhouettes that merged traditional dress with Western tailoring. Rather than elaborate on the dreamlike narratives of the clothes themselves, the designer used the show notes to address the realities of trade in India at the present moment.

‘The US administration’s decision to impose a 50 per cent tariff on India a few months ago has rippled through the ecosystem in ways that are both abstract and brutally specific,’ he said. ‘We have the relative privilege of being a brand. We can follow the money, shift focus, and try to sell more in Asia to cushion a slowdown in the US. But these are fabric vendors, embroiderers, loom artists, dyers. Their access is narrow, their margins thinner […] Sitting with this reality has crystallised something for me. We need to build something back home with its own gravity. Something not permanently tethered to Western demand cycles, policy swings, or distant administrations. Something that pulls people in rather than constantly reaching out.’

For the runway highlights of men's fashion month A/W 2026, see our reports from Paris, Milan and Pitti Uomo.

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

Hermès

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

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

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

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

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

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

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

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

Willy Chavarria

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

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

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

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

Junya Watanabe MAN

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

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

IM Men

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

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

Amiri

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

Dior

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

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

Lemaire

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

Auralee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

louisvuitton.com

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

Welcome to Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2026

Paris marks the closing leg of menswear month, though we are far from its conclusion: over six busy days, it will provide perhaps our most definitive view of the A/W 2026 season ahead. Shows from the likes of Dior (where Jonathan Anderson will reveal his sophomore menswear collection for the house), Louis Vuitton (expect the spectacular from Pharrell Williams) and Hermès (where Véronique Nichanian will hold her swansong after 37 years), will set the tone for what’s next in menswear.

Elsewhere, expect a roster of thought-provoking – and likely experimental – collections from Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens, Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto, who represent the week’s avant-garde. We are also excited to see the return of New York-based designer Willy Chavarria – part of the Wallpaper* USA 400 in 2025 – and the arrival of Magliano, the eponymous label of Luca Magliano, who draws on his native Bologna’s history of protest and subculture in his provocative collections (he has shifted from Milan this season).

Add to that a line-up of presentations, parties and openings, and we look set for a busy six days ahead. As ever, the Wallpaper* editors will be on the ground – stay tuned here for a first look at the standout moments of Paris Fashion Week Men’s.

At Auralee, Ryota Iwai finds joy in winter

‘What makes winter joyful?’ asked Ryota Iwai with his latest Auralee collection, which marked the first runway show of Paris Fashion Week Men’s. Staged at Musée de l'Homme – its position gives a dramatic view of the Eiffel Tower out of its floor-to-ceiling glass windows – the answer came in a melange of textures (coats with fluffy innards; featherweight sheer shirts; buttery leather with the slightest sheen) and motifs that suggested comfort, like garments which recalled plaid blankets, or appeared well-loved with wear. But it was colour that, as ever, Iwai excelled – soft beiges and blues met bolder hues of yellow, signal red and rich purple were used to ‘conjure moments of warmth, joy, and a luminous sense of happiness that lingers in the eye and the heart,’ as the designer described. JM

Pharrell Williams reveals new ‘living concept’ Drophaus at Louis Vuitton

Cementing his multi-hyphenate status, this evening in Paris, Pharrell Williams used his latest menswear show for Louis Vuitton to reveal his latest project – a prefabricated home in glass and wood, which he titled ‘Drophaus’. Made in collaboration with Not a Hotel – a Japanese company which creates architect-designed vacation homes – the ‘timeless future living concept’ sat in the centre of the showspace, backdropping the A/W 2026 collection.

Constructed from wood and compacted glass – and surrounded by verdant, Japanese-style gardens – Williams says he designed the structure to recall a drop of water. ‘I grew up around water, I’m drawn to it, I build and create my best work close to it,’ he told Wallpaper*. JM

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

Highlights from the first night of Paris Fashion Week Men’s

Yesterday evening marked the start of Paris Fashion Week Men’s, kicking off with two very different shows in the French capital. Ryota Iwai opened the week with a restrained co-ed display for Auralee at Musée de l'Homme – where the glittering silhouette of the Eiffel Tower was visible through the windows – revealing a collection that sought levity, ease and joy in the oft-depressing depths of winter. Then Pharrell took fashion crowds to the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the west of the city, where a sleek house constructed from wood, glass and a Japanese garden set the scene for a collection that explored menswear codes through the decades. Stay tuned through the week for our picks of Paris’ standout shows.

READ: The standout shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2026 – as they happen

Acne Studios celebrates 30 years with a love letter to denim

Launched in Stockholm in 1996 with 100 pairs of raw denim jeans, Acne Studios has managed to maintain a youthful heart through three decades of business. At the turn of such a milestone, its core identity has been on the mind of founder Jonny Johansson, though the designer has cleverly resisted getting too nostalgic. Instead, his A/W 2026 collection – presented with an intimate display at the brand’s Paris headquarters this morning – asked how young men today want to dress and move through the world.

The collection revisited the straight-legged denim staples that made Acne Studios a global force, reimagining them through the lens of a younger generation through ripping and taping motifs that symbolise a subversion of the past. Mixed in with these denim pieces, vintage-inspired tailoring celebrated the ageless ceremony of dressing up, seen through double-breasted blazers and slender and precise wool outerwear – shapes that never go out of style. ‘Heading into 2026, I began thinking about these last 30 years,’ Johansson said in a statement released with the collection. ‘You start off as the young brand; then suddenly, you have a legacy. Ours has formed from exploring the soul of denim and what this means to us. Denim has an eternally youthful identity, while being worn in such a way that its surface speaks to lived experience.’ OB

A closer look at Dior’s A/W 2026 show invitation

Ahead of his sophomore men’s collection for Dior, Jonathan Anderson sent attendees an ornately pleated white collar finished with silk grey ribbons. Perhaps hinting at themes of historical dress, clues as to what his A/W 2026 show might explore also came via Instagram, where the designer shared a video of a man running through the streets of Paris to a plaque commemorating French couturier Paul Poiret (filmed by rising image-maker Jessica Madavo) and a series of curiously textural accessories that included a stone necklace and a wooden rose bangle. What all this might mean shall become clear at the Musée Rodin in less than an hour. OB

Jonathan Anderson shows his second menswear collection for Dior

For his sophomore menswear show for Dior, Jonathan Anderson imagined a troupe of ‘aristo-youths’ in a collection which played on codes of ‘history and affluence’ in the designer’s always-idiosyncratic style.

The work of French couturier Paul Poiret – and his famous dress-up parties – inspired the fluid line of sequinned silk vests, meeting undone riffs on the bar jacket in denim and luminous yellow wigs. Meanwhile a sense of opulence emerged in enormous furry cuffs and dramatic caped silhouettes for what the designer described as a collection where ‘old and new collide with spontaneous ease’. JM

At Solid Homme, a study of the modern man’s alter egos

Like many of Paris’ historic buildings, the Maison des Métallos has gone through several identity changes through the eras – it was once a musical instrument factory, then a metalworkers union, and now stands as a performing arts centre. The building’s layered past made it the perfect stage for Korean designer Madame Woo’s latest Solid Homme collection, which explored the multiple identities worn by the modern man. Presenting a study of several complex characters, the collection included a barista who codes through the night, an accountant who builds furniture after hours, and a creative director who returns home to be a dad. Looks themselves were vibrantly hued – bright primary shades, colour block pastels and deep neutrals – while styling shuffled up smart and casual garments to create a series of impulsively arranged looks. It was, said the brand, ‘one wardrobe’ made for ‘many lives’. OB

IM Men was a study in colour and form

Presented at Paris’ Collège des Bernardins this morning, IM Men’s latest collection was a vivid study of colour and form that imagined the movement from dusk to dawn. ‘Moments when something begins, and when something ends,’ described the brand, which is part of the Issey Miyake family. As such, the collection shifted from a poetic opening act in black and white towards vivid expressions of colour, while silhouettes reimagined formal codes in expansive new forms. JM

Rick Owens makes steamy display at Palais de Tokyo

Rick Owens has used the Palais de Tokyo as a stage for all manner of theatrical spectacles over the past decade, making models wade through the site’s fountains or walk beneath perilous swinging balls of fire. This afternoon, the American designer’s latest fantasy was staged indoors at the historic museum where, inside a steam-filled room, he presented a collection titled ‘Tower’. A series of tough, industrial figures emerged through the fog in looks that twisted military archetypes through Owens’ structured, body-accentuating codes: ‘bloated’ police boots, action-ready bodysuits made from kevlar fabric (used in modern armour), and transformable outerwear cut from waxy cowhides sourced in Japan. In his distinctive show notes (which are always written in caps) the designer spoke of the fraught times we are living in. ‘The world around us is impossible to ignore so the only way is parody,’ he observed, offering the collection up as a ‘prayer for love and hope.’ OB

Dries Van Noten’s A/W 2026 show was a coming of age

Julian Klausner said that his A/W 2026 collection for Dries Van Noten, presented last night in Paris’ 14th arrondissement, was about a ‘coming of age’ moment – ‘not in a dramatic or romantic way, but praising the joy of new beginnings,’ he elaborated in the collection notes. Imagining his protagonist leaving home with clothing from the past – something passed down from their grandfather, or a sweater from childhood – what followed was an expressive and eclectic collection unafraid of print and colour (both are hallmarks of the house). Reviving motifs from the Dries Van Noten archive alongside vivid stripes, fairisles and chevrons – often patchworked into a single garment – there was a joyful feel to the offering, which was nonetheless bolstered by beautiful tailoring and overcoats (the latter narrowing at the waistline or with caped silhouettes), as well as some very desirable accessories, like a brogue with the proportions of a low-pro sneaker. JM

Catch up on the latest shows

Over the past few days, Paris has witnessed a slew of shows from some of the industry’s most significant names. Following Jonathan Anderson’s expressive tribute to French couturier Paul Poiret, held at the Musée Rodin on Wednesday – where a crew of neon-haired ‘aristo-youths’ walked to the yearning vocals of rockstar McGee – yesterday a global group of designers were behind the most talked about moments. The design trio behind Issey Miyake brand IM Men staged a poetic display that used the spectral colours of dawn as a springboard for inventive riffs on formal dress, while Rick Owens presented a dystopian ‘parody’ of combat uniforms in a smoke-filled room at the Palais de Tokyo. Dries Van Noten’s new creative director, Julian Klausner, closed out the day with yet another elegant and texturally inventive outing, recalling the feeling of a ‘coming of age’ moment – ‘not in a dramatic or romantic way, but praising the joy of new beginnings,’ he said following the show.

Catch up on more of the best shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2026 here.

A closer look at Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior collection

Today in Paris, a re-see at Dior’s HQ allowed editors to look at Jonathan Anderson’s latest men’s collection up close. Using tales of couturier Paul Poiret’s infamous dinner parties as a starting point – where Paris’ young artists would play dress up during La Belle Époque – the Irish designer crafted yet another deeply referenced and texturally eclectic collection for the French maison, which was revealed on Wednesday. As always with Anderson, details were where the magic lied – neatly pleated stiff white collars, brass belts in the shapes of antique mirror frames, shearling cuffs exploding from formal tailored coats, and prince-like bejewelled epaulettes on the shoulders of casual plaid shirts. OB

Willy Chavarria stages musical in a martial arts dojo

It was no ordinary runway show for Willy Chavarria this afternoon in Paris – instead, the American designer staged a musical epic that unfolded in a judo dojo on the outskirts of the city. Tales of love, loss and high drama defined the spectacle, which featured performances from the likes of Mahmood, while Julia Fox, Romeo Beckham and Goldie walked the runway. Alongside his signatures – namely, riffs on everyday workwear and uniforms – there was also a mood of nostalgic elegance to 1950s-inspired silhouettes. Ultimately, Chavarria said this was a collection about connection – like those everyday encounters on a city street. ‘The connection between us is powerful. We are in this together,’ he said. ‘All of us.’ JM

Kiko Kostadinov hits refresh with a study of ‘construction and material’

There was a feeling of refresh to Kiko Kostadinov’s latest collection: presented on the sunlit upper floor of Le Grand Plateau – a former university in Paris’ 5th arrondissement – the Bulgaria-born, London-based designer said that he wanted to ‘return to the primary language of construction and material’. As such, there was an almost uniform-like rigour to the season’s tailoring (though clever moments of drapery reminded of Kostadinov’s always-offbeat approach to pattern-cutting), which evolved towards the collection’s closing act, a series of sinuous coloured looks in striped knit and nylon designed to ‘transform on the body’. American artist Oscar Tuazon’s white-box sculptures provided the show’s backdrop and seemed to reflect the season’s mood: minimal and architectural in their construction, they still had an intriguing strangeness – much like the work of Kostadinov himself, who remains one of London’s most compelling talents. 'This is a collection that is happy being challenging,’ he said. ‘An emphasis on creating clothes that actually bring something new to the wardrobe.’ JM

A close look at Celine’s latest menswear collection

In place of a runway show this season, American designer Michael Rider presented his latest collection for Celine in the house’s headquarters on Rue Vivienne (from the windows of the presentation space you could see the atelier below; the idea was to feel like you were walking into an impromptu fitting above). Buoyed by Celine-branded sandwiches and popcorn, guests explored the collection via a series of playful milieus, from enormous stacks of jeans and sweaters to a snake-like swirl of shoes (arranged, satisfyingly, in colour order), while looks from the collection hung on walls. Like his previous outings for the house (he debuted earlier this year, in June), it is a vision of Parisian style through an American’s eyes, mixing insouciant French glamour with moments of preppiness (for the latter, cue college sweaters, colourful silk ties and shirts, slippers and loafers). The result was something totally fresh and desirable – we wanted every piece. JM

Véronique Nichanian holds her swan song runway show for Hermès

‘Clothes for today and forever,’ described Véronique Nichanian of her A/W 2026 menswear collection for Hermès, which marks the French designer’s swan song at the house after a record 38-year tenure (she is the longest-running creative director of a major fashion house).

Taking place at Paris’ Palais Brongniart this evening, the show was a continuation of the thoughtful, considered approach to menswear she has honed during her time at the house – one that eschewed theatrics or ephemeral trends for collections which allowed clothing to speak for itself.

For her, the magic is found in a change of a centimetre on a pattern piece, an obscure colour shade, or what she would call the ‘sensuality of fabric’ (material innovations were at the heart of her Hermès project). Here, she riffed on menswear archetypes in her effortless style, from duffel and rain jackets to the tuxedo – several of which were inspired by pieces from her previous collections.

It ended with a rousing, minutes-long standing ovation – a testament to an extraordinary career. JM

Chitose Abe’s A/W 2026 collection for Sacai was about ‘breaking free’

This season, Chitose Abe said she was thinking about the idea of ‘destruction’ – ‘destroying and dismantling in order to create,’ as the Japanese designer described this morning. An image of Muhammad Ali was on the mood board: for Abe, he was emblematic of the ‘freedom associated with breaking free’, and in the show space a destroyed stud wall looked as if it had been punched through by an enormous fist (or, at least, been taken to with a hammer). In the collection, this figured through undone tailoring – unknotted ties hung around models necks – while hybrid silhouettes (a Sacai signature) met typically eclectic fabrications, from spliced shearling ‘fur’ to those adorned with sewn-on safety pins, buttons and studs. A sample from Queen’s I Want to Break Free rang out over the soundtrack: [It’s about] freedom of design, freedom of thinking [and] freedom of being,’ she concluded. JM

At Wooyoungmi, Madame Woo conjures icy South Korean winters

‘South Korean winters are cold,’ said Madame Woo as a preface to her A/W 2026 collection for Wooyoungmi, conjured in the Paris showspace with a faux-fur runway evocative of a fresh layer of powdered snow. The designer said she had been thinking about winters past, both in her native Korea and beyond: here, Edwardian double-breasted tailcoats were edged with astrakhan (or, at least, an illusory faux fur version), as were waistcoats, while more contemporary iterations of cold-weather attire – from faux-fur lined puffer jackets and elongated windbreakers – provided a counterpoint (such juxtapositions between modernity and tradition are found throughout Madame Woo’s work). Meanwhile playful flourishes came in the enormous beanie hats that teetered on models’ heads, oversized furry gloves, and a colourful clash of fairisle knits. JM

The S/S 2026 season will likely take some time to metabolise. It was fashion’s changing of the guard moment – no less than 14 designers presented debut collections as the newly installed creative directors of the industry’s biggest brands – and with this seismic shake-up came a feeling of noise. Strident social-media comments; opinions formed in moments; debates as to what constitutes the essence of a particular fashion house, and whether this or that designer captured it – lines were well and truly drawn. Duran Lantink’s divisive opening act for Jean Paul Gaultier on Sunday afternoon became something of a lightning rod: drawing ire from social-media users, it prompted questions as to how we engage with fashion online.

‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ said Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta and the Milan Fashion Director for Perfect magazine, in a much-reshared Instagram post. ‘I am a designer and I know that these creatives work hard to get these collections out. It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything... Why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Fashion week S/S 2026: the key takeaways

It was why the finale of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel debut on Monday evening felt joyful not only for the model Awar Odhiang twirling across the runway to the sounds of ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ in a gown that descended into thousands of colourful chiffon feathers, but the fact that a weight felt like it had been lifted. Save for a handful of exceptions (Fendi is yet to announce its new creative leadership), that final debut meant that the line-up of designers at fashion’s major houses is set, and likely for some time – no more speculation or gossip, hearsay or rumour. Now, after their opening gambits, these designers must be left to hone their vision – after all, a debut is only the beginning.

Despite this, it has been a strong season of shows, with plenty of big, bold ideas sitting alongside propositions for a real-world wardrobe. There is no doubt that this new class of designers have brought with them a fresh energy: thematically, the idea of freedom emerged again and again, of dressing on your own terms. It's why this season’s trends feel equally liberated – designers gave into romance (albeit rewritten in distinctly modern terms), were unrestrained in their use of colour, and created distinctive silhouettes to match (from the ultra-streamlined to the panniered).

Here, we break down the trends and takeaways from the S/S 2026 shows, which concluded earlier this week in Paris.

The idea of freedom was on designer’s minds

A feeling of eclecticism has run through recent Prada collections, seeing co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons favour the bold and intuitive over strict thematics – a response, they say, to the uncertain, algorithmic times in which we live. This season, they talked about wanting to liberate clothing from ‘hierarchies’, shuffling simple workwear uniforms – a longtime Prada inspiration point – with colourful flourishes of eveningwear, from ballooning taffeta skirts to opera gloves. The result, said the pair, was a ‘new elegance’ – unconventional, instinctual, free. ‘In the combination of the different elements, in this idea of composition, there is a choice and freedom, authority and agency for the woman wearing them,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is fashion that is connected inherently to the world, with a meaning and usefulness. How to face the world, and how to survive.’

Again and again, the idea of sartorial freedom appeared in this season’s collections: at Ferragamo, Maximilian Davis channelled the liberatory dress codes of the 1920s (‘this was a moment where women were creating a new femininity... it was a celebration of freedom, a reclaiming of self’) while at Bottega Veneta, Louise Trotter’s debut collection looked towards Laura Braggion, Bottega Veneta’s first female creative lead, in its expressive use of colour and texture (as young woman, she was a part of Andy Warhol’s Factory). ‘I was imagining her journey – her freedom of being an Italian woman, an archetypal Italian woman, moving to New York,’ she said post-show. ‘It was a liberation for her. And that's really what I wanted to capture – a feeling of liberation.’

A similar mood was struck at Chanel (Matthieu Blazy was inspired by the ‘modernity and freedom’ of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel’s designs), Loewe (the collection’s bold, graphic line drew on the work of artist Ellsworth Kelly) and Hermès (titled ’Free Rein’, Nadège Vanhée referenced the untethered wild horses of Carmague). Through it all, there was an invitation to dress on your own terms, and without restraint.

Kaleidoscopic colour ran throughout

With this exploration of freedom came an equally liberated use of colour, as designers embraced bold, unapologetic hues in what was the most colourful fashion season in some time – a response, perhaps, to the feeling of bleakness elsewhere. This was a trend not restrained to a single city: in New York, Rachel Scott made a powerful impression with a debut runway show for her label Diotima which drew on the energetic spirit of carnival – a vivid, painterly palette spanned bright red, sky blue and cerise across anemone-like ruffles and tassel flourishes – while London saw colour-saturated outings from Erdem, Talia Byre and Burberry (a hot pink whipstitched leather jacket provided the latter’s closing look, with creative director Daniel Lee looking towards the dress codes of 1960s and 70s musicians).

As the season continued, a more graphic use of colour emerged: Simone Bellotti’s debut collection for Jil Sander featured bold primary hues of red and blue throughout; when viewed against the crisp white walls of Jil Sander’s Milanese HQ, they took on the feel of contemporary artworks. At Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s debut for Loewe, a work by Ellsworth Kelly set the tone: hanging in the entranceway of the showspace, Yellow Panel with Red Curve (1989) inspired the ‘chromatic intensity’ of the collection (zingy hues of yellow, electric blue and orange featured throughout). Stripes also appeared in the former Proenza Schouler designers’ collection, another recurring motif through the season, like at Dries Van Noten, where Julian Klausner – already proving himself as much of a master colourist as the label’s eponymous founder – presented a vivid collage of print and colour, from bold yellow stripes to abstracted polka dots, spirals and harlequin diamonds, blown up is size.

Designers evoked the time-worn and well-loved

The idea of inheritance was unsurprisingly on the mind of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel – after all, his debut for the house sees him take on the legacy of not one but two fashion greats: Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld. Originally inspired by the love affair between Gabrielle Chanel and British polo player Boy Capel, and the way she would borrow his jackets and shirts, the idea of passing garments between people – or indeed through generations – was one of the throughlines of the collection. That, he said, is the luxury of a house like Chanel, ‘the worn familiarity of the truly chic, items feel passed down and utilised,’ as he described. In the collection, this was figured in garments which appeared to be unravelling at their edges (the hanging ‘threads’ were actually minuscule strings of beads), while the 2.55 quilted handbag had been cleverly manipulated to appear battered and worn.

Indeed, the idea of the time-worn and well-loved run through the season: at Tory Burch in New York, cardigans seemed to be disintegrating at the sleeves, while other garments were purposely crumpled and creased. ‘I wanted something familiar and worn, but uber-chic and elevated,‘ she said after the show, noting that such fabric manipulation took months of experimentation despite their illusion of ease. At Coach, garments were weathered and worn – creative director Stuart Vevers said he was inspired by seeing vintage, decades-old Coach bags carried by young people on New York’s streets – while at Loewe, some of the more washed-out hues looked to reference fabric left out too long in the sun.

There was a mood of modern romance

Taking place at the Louvre Palace, the opulent summer apartments of Anne of Austria, Queen of France provided the backdrop for Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection for Louis Vuitton, an attempt to capture ‘the boundless freedom of the private sphere’. In its evocation of nightwear and lingerie – as well as flourishes of beaded floral embroidery, satin ruffles and enormous bows – the era-traversing collection captured a mood of romance that ran through the season, one which was influenced by history but distinctly modern in construction and anything but saccharine.

At his debut womenswear show for Dior, Jonathan Anderson evoked the pannier waistline – another surprising trend of the season, particularly as it coincided with the opening of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at the V&A – as well as bows, lace necklines and shoes adorned with twisting satin roses. The Irish designer said he was interested in the ‘tension’ between fantasy and reality: ‘past converses with the present, the bold with the calm, the grand with the commonplace,’ he said. Similar juxtapositions ran through Simone Rocha’s S/S 2026 collection in London, a designer who has long contrasted sweetness and subversion. Her crinoline skirts were purposely skewiff; ruffled-edge bags were shaped like pillows, while panels of clear vinyl sat atop delicate silk gowns.

Meanwhile, at Givenchy, Sarah Burton rallied against the idea that power dressing for women means simply donning a man’s suit. Instead, she sought to find authority in the feminine, from pearl-adorned bra tops to frilled mini dresses which flared like tutus. ‘I was looking at female power,’ she said. ’And how to empower women through archetypes of the feminine, an iconography of the female.’

Bold silhouettes signalled new chapters

Like this season’s prismatic palette, designers were equally expressive when it came to shape and form: spanning the playful, the sculptural and the streamlined, silhouettes echoed the month’s liberated spirit. There were Nicholas Aburn’s bold party dresses at Area, constructed from blown-up streamers, enormous pailettes or a shaggy mass of glimmering tinsel (such was their size, they transformed the proportions of the body); Louise Trotter’s undulating fibreglass tops and dresses at Bottega Veneta; or the hiked up shoulder line of Satoshi Kondo’s latest collection for Issey Miyake (the Japanese designer said he imagined the garments having a conscious of their own).

Contemporary riffs on pannier waistlines and crinoles ran through the season, including at Alaïa, where Pieter Mulier continues to define a powerful vision of womanhood with an eye to the contours of the body. ‘This collection is reduced, sculptural. Precise. Yet there is also an extremity to it, in heightened colours, bold shapes. Uncompromising,’ he said. Perhaps most extreme, though, were the bold forms of Duran Lantink’s Jean Paul Gaultier debut – like in his collections for his (currently paused) eponymous label, garments were exaggerated into almost cartoon-like proportions, riffing on the house’s signatures, from the sailor hat to trompe l’oeil prints. They may not have been for everyone, but in their audaciousness, they captured S/S 2026’s mood of abandon.

It’s been a rollercoaster of a fashion season, which concluded with the final day of Paris Fashion Week yesterday. An unprecedented number of debuts took place at fashion’s biggest houses – so many that it was, at times, hard to keep track – from Jonathan Anderson’s fantasy-inflected first take on the Dior woman to Matthieu Blazy’s joyful start at Chanel. With these blockbuster moments dominating much of the airtime, some intriguing displays from independent brands may have flown under the radar – from beautiful imagery to bookshop takeovers, museum displays and travels across the pond, these talented designers are doing things their own way.

Here, we select the best collections you might have missed from the S/S 2026 season.

Stefan Cooke

Stefan Cooke and Jake Burt have taken pleasure in doing things their own way over the past few seasons, opting to host relaxed gatherings rather than get caught up in the stress of producing runway shows. Last season, they invited friends, editors (and pets) to Burt’s east London shop, Jake’s, to try on pieces from their A/W 2025 collection. Amid jumper-swapping and chatter, an enormous cake by baker Louis Thompson provided a convivial centrepiece. This season, the pair took over Tenderbooks on Cecil Court, presenting their S/S 2026 collection with a newspaper-style lookbook and window display shot by Angus Williams. There was no cake this time, but generously filled ice buckets of beer (Thompson, however, did make an appearance as a model in the lookbook). The collection itself saw the pair’s unmistakable wardrobe take on skin-baring, thrown-together configurations – men in ecru trenches paired with tracksuit bottoms and ballet flats; women in chainmail mini-dresses and glam-rock boots, drop-waist pleats and chevron-detailed cinched jerseys. It made for an off-kilter but easy offering from two designers who somehow just get better season after season.

Lucila Safdie

Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2021, Argentina-born Lucila Safdie has used her brand to explore various ideas of girlhood, drawing upon the worlds of cinema, literature and Tumblr to craft clothes that skew saccharine fantasies with the wearable edge of the real women in her life. While most young designers are caught up in personal fantasies, already Safdie has grounded herself in a community – outside of the studio, she hosts a well-attended monthly film club, screening features that have inspired her world.

This season marked Safdie’s first appearance on the London Fashion Week calendar, and she used the opportunity to do something quite unusual. Inviting editors to the Soho Review gallery, the designer staged a teen bedroom scene where her models – impervious to their visitors, as teenagers so often are – lounged on beds and tried on her S/S 2026 designs in mirrors. The collection used Helen Rappaport’s book The Romanov Sisters as a starting point, translating its tragic tale into a 2010-coded wardrobe that brought together Peter Pan-collared jersey polos, frill-edged shorts and cut-out cotton dresses in girly hues of pink, white and grey. It was a clever and distinctive introduction to the designer’s world, marking the arrival of an intriguing new storyteller in the city. We’re looking forward to seeing what she does next.

16Arlington

Marco Capaldo enjoyed a season off the schedule, turning up to cheer on friends at their displays instead (the designer attended Chopova Lowena and Conner Ives in support). Presenting his S/S 2026 collection with a sleek, pared-back lookbook circulated online, this season Capaldo was thinking about an ineffable quality of glamour that stretches through decades. 1920s lingerie, 1940s sleepwear, 1970s shirting and 1990s pencil skirts formed the framework of his collection, creating points of intrigue through an assemblage of tactile textures and embellishments – from a delicate brown feather trim floating from oversized trench coats to a dress formed of glimmering strands of sequins. These were clothes, said the brand, ‘made to be worn; to be seen in movement; to be enjoyed’.

Federico Cina

Italian designer Federico Cina named his S/S 2026 collection ‘Sottovoce’ – meaning to speak in a low or hushed tone. In keeping with the word’s dulcet spirit, he chose to forgo the circus of a runway show for something quieter during Milan Fashion Week. Inviting guests to Fondazione Sozzani, the designer created a ‘silent landscape’ where models gently embraced before paper backdrops, while others interacted with the cool blue set, slipping their arms into paper jackets affixed to the walls. The clothes themselves explored ideas of fragility and structure through workwear silhouettes and crisp tailoring in a palette of blue, white and grey, inspired by the muted paintings of Bologna-born artist Giorgio Morandi. The soothing presentation, said Cina, was about pausing to contemplate what it means to ‘inhabit a place, a body, a garment, the world’.

Vaquera

Over the past decade, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee have established Vaquera as one of the most original forces in New York’s fashion scene. As the brand turned ten, they promptly upped sticks to Paris – keen, it would seem, on retaining their underdog status. This season, they were thinking about ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste, presenting a cast of unruly, expressively dressed characters in an intimate showspace covered in draped curtains.

Proposing the idea that there’s a right place and time to wear anything, this season their typically berserk wardrobe mixed up romantic 18th century dress, square-shouldered two-piece sets of an 1980s bent, and surreal patchworked lingerie, worn with sneakers that were the product of a new collaboration with Nike – a sign of the ever-rising popularity of their witty, anti-glam aesthetic.

‘We moved to Paris this summer – iconically the centre of “good taste”,’ said the pair. ‘But what does that mean? When you start to see the world through our lens, you realise that these categories don’t exist… We are always examining why we are still doing this brand after so many years. The answer we always come back to is joy.’

Hodakova

Ellen Hodakova Larsson has hit her stride. ​​Marking her second Paris display since winning the LVMH Prize last year, the Swedish designer showed her S/S 2026 collection in the stony 1992 extension wing of the Musée Bourdelle. This season, as ever, saw a merging of stories from the designer's rural upbringing with scattered references of personal artistic intrigue. Using an array of salvaged materials from Swedish small towns (vintage bed linens, leather furniture covers, and umbrella boning), the collection looked to three different makers for inspiration – Donatello’s 1440 woodwork of Mary Magdalene, the architectural metalwork of sculptor Claes Oldenburg, and the heritage thatch work of Joar Nilsson, who helped her make several of the collection’s straw-woven pieces. From this melting pot, a highly original wardrobe emerged, spanning bulbous outerwear in heavy leather, furry shapes that recalled mittens, and her first experiments with shoes, which arrived in rounded, toe-capped shapes with sturdy wooden heels. It made for a rich, textural study in form and material – and yet another glimpse into Larsson’s endlessly interesting world.

August Barron

Shown at Gare des Mines in Paris, August Barron’s S/S 2026 collection marked a new era for Bror August Vestbø and Benjamin Barron – their first since rebranding from All-In to a portmanteau of their names, and a new chapter across the pond in Paris (where they’ve been based for less than a year).

The collection continued the duo’s signature approach to character dressing, this time channelling the suburban housewife of 1950s America through a lens of ‘subversion and desire’. Inspired by Japanese bondage magazines in which women’s clothing appears caught mid-undress, garments were suspended in moments of ‘tension and release’ – shirts and cardigans lifted and frozen above the chest, double-layered hoodies revealing lace bras beneath, and dresses twisting across the body as zippers sliced through midriffs.

Styled by longtime collaborator Lotta Volkova, the show saw models – including photographer Petra Collins – bounce animatedly through the space, ruffling the heads of onlookers on the front row. August Barron might have moved on from All-In, but their irreverent spirit, evidently, remains intact.

Much has been made of the ‘Great Fashion Reshuffle’ this past season, which saw as many as 14 creative directors debut their first collections at some of the industry’s biggest houses. While the clothes were, of course, the main attraction, the S/S 2026 shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris also counted a number of striking beauty moments among them.

Notably, this season pointed to shifts that are happening in beauty and fashion more generally, as the line between the two industries continues to blur and many fashion brands are branching beyond the traditional categories of make-up and hair to explore how fragrance, skincare and wellness can create novel new experiences of their clothes, both on the runways and off.

The best unconventional beauty moments of S/S 2026

For the most part, the beauty looks this season were kept relatively simple, with minimally made-up faces and slicked-back or classically blown-out tresses dominating the runways. There were a few notable exceptions: Rick Owens complemented his operatically gothic designs with eerie black contact lenses, while Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela outfitted models in logo mouthpieces that gave them a root-canal-ready appearance.

At Alaïa, Pieter Mulier combined his fluid designs with cascading, knotted hair extensions, while The Row featured sinuous up-dos held together with various combs. Meanwhile the unabashed sensuality of Haider Ackermann’s S/S 2026 collection for Tom Ford featured lacquered lips in different colours, designed by make-up artist Lucy Bridgeto match the runway floor. Not long after the show, Bridge was announced as the brand's first-ever global make-up artist, a fitting move for both Bridge and the brand, who share a penchant for opulent, cinematic glamour.

One wonders whether the appointment marks a new era for Tom Ford Beauty, which set a new standard for luxury in the industry when it launched in the early 2000s with lipsticks that cost a then unheard of $50 and the launch ‘Black Orchid’, a now-iconic fragrance made from one of the darkest, most elusive flowers on earth (and which was recently the subject of a new campaign starring Tilda Swinton). The brand’s shock factor when it comes to beauty has since mellowed, but with Bridge and Ackermann at its helm, could this now change? It will need to, if Tom Ford Beauty wants to stand out in a market that in the past five years alone has become saturated with new lines from luxury houses, including Hermès, Prada, Dries Van Noten, Celine, Rabanne and, most recently, Louis Vuitton.

The proliferation of beauty brands by fashion houses is a testament to the increasingly symbiotic relationship between the two industries, and this season proved that that relationship is poised to grow even closer. The most notable example of this is the launch of Coperni’s C+ line, a collection of skincare-infused activewear that is designed to deliver a blend of probiotics and prebiotics to the wearer. ‘We are rethinking the connection between clothing and the body,’ said designers Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer in a press release. ‘Beyond covering, protecting or expressing, garments can now care for, nourish, and support the body where it feels most alive. That vision gave birth to carewear: a new category of clothing with a new role to play.’

Whether skincare-infused clothing will take off is yet to be seen (although the success of Skims’ ‘collagen yarn’ face mask suggests it might), but New York brand Eckhaus Latta also incorporated skincare into its latest collection, with models walking down the runway in limited-edition eye masks designed by skincare brand Dieux.

When it came to fragrance, Vaquera released a scent designed with Comme des Garçons Parfums a few days before its Paris show. The brand's first fragrance is 'a scent that feels like a perfume you once knew, then forgot, and have just stumbled upon in the back of a clearance shelf'. Designed to evoke the feeling of being young in the 1990s-early 2000s, it recreates the scent of perfume ads in 1990s fashion magazines, the scent of freshly shampooed hair, and ‘the secret of your childhood car’s air conditioning’.

London-based brand Chopova Lowena pumped its runway with a rotation of its three fragrances, which it launched earlier this year, adding to the high-energy atmosphere of the show’s cheerleader-inspired collection. Its designers are certainly not the first to incorporate fragrance into their collections – Willy Chavarria perfumed Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse with Parfums de Marly’s Haltane fragrance for his A/W 2024 collection and Demna frequently tapped scent artist Sissel Tolaas to perfume Balenciaga's shows when he was still creative director of the house (including a scent of antiseptic, blood, money and petrol for its S/S 2020 show).

For his first show at Gucci this season, however, Demna played with beauty in a different way, spoofing wellness culture in The Tiger, a film that accompanied the collection and saw stars Demi Moore, Edward Norton and more falling down a psychedelic wormhole after taking a ‘homopathic, collagen-based root-infused vitamin tincture’.

Unlike with fashion, runway shows these days hold little sway when it comes to the beauty trends we see on the street. Beauty’s trend arbiters tend to be celebrities and influencers, and while certain beauty moments can go viral (cue Pat McGrath’s glassy skin for Maison Margiela), the beauty looks that stand out from the shows tend not to seep into the culture at large (McGrath’s at-home glassy skin mask did not find wide commercial success).

This season, however, hinted that the relationship between beauty trends and the runway might be changing. Not because fashion brands are presenting make-up and hair looks that people want to recreate at home, but because they are finding novel ways to bring other aspects of the industry – namely skincare – to the public and using fragrance to amplify the experience of their clothes. As wearable wellness becomes increasingly popular, it will be interesting to see if major fashion houses start incorporating developments in skincare, fragrance, and wellness into their collections moving forward, dissolving the line between what we typically think of as beauty and fashion.

The invitation for Pierpaolo Piccioli’s debut show for Balenciaga was a Walkman and a cassette tape, which, when played, reverberated with the sound of a beating heart. Its pacing thud could perhaps be read as a sign of nervous anticipation – earlier in the week, Jonathan Anderson used an Adam Curtis short film to capture the weight of expectation these big-house debuts place on designers – though with Piccioli, the heartbeat spoke to something more elemental.

‘The heartbeat is the rhythm we share, the pulse that reminds us we are human,’ he wrote in a letter released just prior to the show, which took place yesterday evening. ‘For every heartbeat there is a name, a moment, a gesture. This collection comes from that place of love and connection. It is as much mine as it is of those who lived it with me-in every way. Perhaps with a different pulse, but always with the same soul.’

Pierpaolo Piccioli puts poetic stamp on codes of Balenciaga

At Valentino, where he was creative director from 2008 – first alongside Maria Grazia Chiuri, from 2008-2016, and then solo until his departure last year – his collections were defined by this heartfelt approach, where expressions of contemporary romance met a generosity of silhouette and a vivid use of colour, inspired by both the women around him and the work of house founder Valentino Garavani. This was perhaps most evident in his haute couture collections, which distilled his vision: one even took place on the Spanish Steps in Rome, a theatrical, kaleidoscopic display that saw gowns bloom with roses and feathers, or adorned with sequins. The names of the seamstresses who created each gown were stitched into the lining – a reminder of the intimacy of their craft.

It has made him one of fashion’s best-loved designers, a reputation further bolstered by his personal charm and affability. So as guests arrived at last night’s show, held in the cross-shaped lobby of Kering’s HQ on Paris’ Rue de Sèvres (the luxury conglomerate that owns the house), there was a palpable sense of anticipation, and plenty of goodwill. His supporters were out in force, including longtime muse Anne Hathaway and, in a surprise showing, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. The appearance marked her first fashion show since marrying Prince Harry, and a rare appearance on European soil.

Though despite the occasion, there were no signs of nerves here. Instead, the designer looked to the house’s archive with a laser focus, honing in on Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1957 ‘Sack Dress’, a loose, trapeze-like cut that opposed the waist-defining shapes of the era. Reinterpreting this silhouette in his clean, contemporary style, Piccioli played with its proportions, shortening the shape into tunic tops worn with slim press-front trousers, or elongating into a gown (the original style falls just beneath the knee). ‘Not homage, but recalibration,’ read the collection notes. Everyday components of a woman’s wardrobe – from shirting to overcoats – were also reimagined through references to the house’s archive, twisted and transformed by a manipulation of volume, with cocooning and ballooning shapes appearing throughout.

Elsewhere, flourishes of embellishment provided a throughline to Piccioli’s previous work, from appliqué flowers to the feathered hem of a dress, as did a vivid use of colour. Meanwhile, tougher looks in black leather – like a series of T-shirts and capes slashed just below the chest – and shielding bug-eye sunglasses were a nod to his subversive predecessor, Demna (the handover between the pair has been amicable, with Piccioli attending Demna’s final show earlier this summer).

The show ended with a standing ovation for the deep-feeling designer, who once again led from the heart – the only way he knows how. ‘What brought me here has been a journey [of] emotions, pushing me forward with force-not only teaching me, but revealing parts of myself I hardly knew,’ he said. ‘[I] ‘embraced unpredictability, the endless days, and the act of working with the heart – letting it lead, learn, and act on its own.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson was as much a cultural curator as he was a clothing designer. At Dior, the Parisian house where he presented his debut womenswear collection this afternoon, he looks to be forging a similar path. Entering the purpose-built showspace, guests were greeted by an inverted pyramid protruding from the ceiling – not unlike modernist architect IM Pei’s audacious entranceway for the Louvre, just a short walk away across the Jardin des Tuileries – which a card left on each attendee’s seat credited to the Italian film director Luca Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi (Anderson worked with both on Queer as the 2024 movie’s costume designer; here, they were responsible for ‘scenography’).

Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior womenswear collection recodes the archive

As the show began, the pyramid transformed into a screen for a specially commissioned film by British director Adam Curtis, best known for his documentaries on individualism, power, and the collapse of 20th-century ideologies, including The Century of the Self, HyperNormalisation, and the recent 2025 series Shifty, which examined late-20th-century Britain under Conservative rule. Collaging archival footage in his atmospheric style, the short film gathered moments from the house’s near-eight-decade-long history, from clips of Christian Dior himself to collections from the designers at the house who followed, including John Galliano and Maria Grazia Chiuri, which flashed across the screens at the show’s start (interspersed horror movie scenes lent the feeling of anxiety that pulsates through Curtis’ work).

Beneath the pyramid’s point was the box guests had received the week prior, containing the show’s invitation – a plate of walnuts rendered entirely in china, inspired by ceramic curiosities Anderson had discovered in the house’s archive. The illusion was that the footage was emerging, genie-like, from inside. ‘Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, which is part of the collective imagination, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box,’ said Anderson via the collection notes. ‘Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.’

Anderson described his approach as having an ‘empathy’ for the past, though the film’s end – a shuddering rush of crackled footage before the screen turned a bright, optic white – was symbolic of a clean slate, a shedding of the weight of history. ‘Change is inevitable,’ he said in typically direct manner, presenting a collection which took elements of the archive and refracted them in his inventive, idiosyncratic style, warping archival silhouettes into strange and intriguing new proportions. Like the Tailleur Bar suit, which was shrunken and cropped in size, with a minuscule, abbreviated pleated skirt, while another riff on the nipped-waist Bar jacket scooped up at the front, as if tied like a bow. Indeed, the bow was a recurring motif: a series of bow ties (worn with matching shirts and skirts) reflected the subversion of formalwear in Anderson’s menswear collection for the house back in June, while hourglass dresses looked like they had been constructed from twists of fabric, tied at the end with bows.

A sense of theatricality came in dramatic cornette-style headwear and face-covering trims of lace inspired by another archival design. Micro-mini skirts were constructed from frothy mille-feuille layers of fabric, while the distinctive cantilevered waistline of Christian Dior’s 1952 La Cigale dress seemed to inspire the sculpted silhouette of trapeze dresses and double-breasted overcoats, which folded cleverly across their front. More grounded in reality were mini leather skirts (an abbreviated silhouette ran throughout), slouchy suede handbags with metal ‘Dior’ hardware embedded in their straps, and pointed pumps adorned with the house’s signature ’C’ on one foot, and ‘D’ on the other. Anderson said the collection was built on this ‘tension’ – between fantasy and reality, ‘dressing as a way to become a character on the stage that is life’.

More so than the menswear show earlier this year, there was a clarity to Anderson’s vision, which seeks to imagine the tropes of Dior – namely, an architectural construction combined with a mood of femininity and romance – in a sharp, contemporary style. This is only becoming clearer as he builds out his universe: alongside the collaborations with Guadagnino and Curtis, his trio of muses – and new house ambassadors – Mia Goth, Greta Lee and Mikey Madison, were in attendance today and watched on from the front row. The bolder looks on the runway might be more suited for their upcoming red carpet appearances than the everyday, but Anderson – a strong-willed designer who brims with confidence – knows that to build a brand requires bravery, vision and instinct, rather than safety. It’s how he built Loewe into a mega brand – now, with Dior, and the eyes of the world watching, this unwavering approach continues. Call it his New Look.

Stay tuned for live coverage of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2026

Acne Studios doesn’t have a shiny new creative director to debut in Paris, unlike several other houses, but the Stockholm-based brand still has plenty still to celebrate. Next year (2026) will mark 30 years since the label was co-founded by Jonny Johansson, who has steadily guided the brand with a holistic approach shaped by his scattered interests in art, architecture and contemporary culture. Celebrating the staying power of this multifaceted vision, today he stages his S/S 2026 show inside the 13th-century Gothic church Collège des Bernardins in Paris’ 5th arrondissement. True to form, Acne Studios has once again looked beyond fashion’s tight circles to collaborate with an unexpected artist on the show’s set (past collaborators include Jonathan Lyndon Chase and Lukas Gschwandtner).

This season, the label turned to Brooklyn-based artist Pacifico Silano for the job. Well-regarded in New York’s art scene but little-known on a global stage (with only a few thousand Instagram followers), Silano creates languidly homoerotic works from archival printed matter dating between the Stonewall riots and the height of the Aids crisis. Two facts of his youth have shaped his practice. His parents owned an adult novelty store called Undercover Pleasures in the 2000s, and so niche pornographic titles were somewhat a part of life growing up. However, it was when Silano’s uncle died of an Aids-related illness when he was a young child – a loss his family largely avoided discussing – that he became deeply engaged with America’s mishandling of the Aids epidemic, using his gesturally fragmented work to trace threads of longing, loss and queer legacy left in its wake.

Acne Studios S/S 2026 runway set, a collaboration with artist Pacifico Silano

Working from his Brooklyn studio, in practice this sees Silano re-photograph forgotten 1970s and 1980s ephemera and gay erotica, ignoring explicit content to hone in on small details, such as gym weights on a floor or skin exposed beneath unbuttoned denim. Weaving collective histories into a colour-saturated new present, the resulting works form suggestive meditations on desire, erasure, and the fragility of queer history in print culture. For Acne Studios, the artist has drawn upon his archive alongside newly created works, which are suspended through the stony arches of the church, creating an atmosphere that evokes the moody intimacy of a ‘cigar salon’.

‘This is my first time working with Acne Studios and also my first time dipping a toe in the fashion world,’ he says. ‘Acne Studios has this incredible ability to take something familiar and make it feel radical again, whether it’s denim, tailoring, or a silhouette. That really resonates with my own process because I’m always asking, how can I reframe what already exists so it speaks to this moment? Acne Studios doesn’t treat fashion as just clothing. It’s part of a bigger cultural conversation – about art, identity, and expression. That’s exactly how I approach my work.’

While the artist’s practice is image-based, the challenge of translating his work into a show setting wasn’t as difficult as one might think. ‘I really like to think of photographs as objects of desire, I’m always considering how they can take up physical space,’ he explains. ‘I have been wanting to do an installation of my work with this beautiful dark wood panelling from the 1970s for a couple of years now but couldn’t find the right venue for it. During our first meeting, Acne Studios shared some references that were this exact idea I had been dreaming of. It felt like kismet, like I was supposed to do this with them.’

The artist’s work sets a stage for an S/S 2026 collection that is, the brand says, an exercise in ‘breaking down archetypes’. Grounded in Acne Studios’ core of denim and functional outerwear, this season boundaries between men’s and womenswear wardrobes are blurred to propose a ‘strong, androgyne energy’. Shuffling and twisting wardrobe classics, transposed suit jackets are worn with sharp uniform shirts; lumberjack flannels are tucked into gauzy slip skirts; and couture lace is sliced and stitched into second-skin shapes that play with the meaning of precious materials. ‘Strong, playful, poised and most of all free, these women have been here all along,’ said the brand. ‘Only now, as Acne Studios advances towards its 30th year, they are leading us into the next chapter.’

Silano wanted to create a set that reflected the collection’s states of toughness and tenderness. He hung fabric samples on the walls of his studio and began collaging new works inspired by their eclectic textures and hues, printing these new scenes onto aluminium panels to be installed in Paris. ‘I wanted to create works that balanced stereotypical masculine depictions with more quiet, sensitive and evocative imagery,’ he explains. ‘They might seem contradictory at first glance, but the longer you spend with these works the more you see how they feed off one another.’

With the brand’s birthday approaching, Johansson has been thinking not so much about clothes but – as ever with the unconventional designer – about the constellation of thinkers and creatives who have inspired him through the years. ‘I’ve always felt that creativity is perhaps about being able to see the world in a way you didn’t realise could be seen,’ he said. ‘There are people who can do that to you – they make the world feel different, they stand out and tell you a new story.’

Brought to life with Johansson’s studio team, musical contributions from Robyn and Yung Lean, and Silano’s evocative world-building, the S/S 2026 show is a celebration of this hive of interdisciplinary creation that has long fuelled Acne Studios as it steps into the next decade. ‘This has been an incredible learning experience for me,’ says Silano. ‘It’s made me reinvestigate my archive and my artistic practice through a new lens. I’m so used to working alone in my studio, doing everything myself. To be in dialogue with the Acne Studios team and to create this visual experience together has been incredible.’

Stay tuned for live coverage of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2026

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

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

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

Chanel

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

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

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

Thom Browne

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

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

Miu Miu

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

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

Sacai

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

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

Chloé

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

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

Jean Paul Gaultier

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

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

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

Valentino

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

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

Akris

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

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

Celine

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

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

Balenciaga

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

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

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

Vivienne Westwood

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

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

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

Junya Watanabe

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

Maison Margiela

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

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

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

Hermès

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

Alaïa

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

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

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

Givenchy

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

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

Victoria Beckham

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

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

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

Issey Miyake

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

Loewe

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

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

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

Schiaparelli

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

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

Carven

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

Rabanne

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

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

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

Acne Studios

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

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

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

Dior

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

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

Lanvin

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

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

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

Courrèges

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

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

Dries Van Noten

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

Stella McCartney

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

It is set to be a definitive fashion season: with stops in New York, London, Milan and Paris, over a dozen designers will make their debuts as creative directors of some of the industry’s most well-known houses, among them Chanel (Matthieu Blazy), Balenciaga (Pierpaolo Piccioli) and Bottega Veneta (Louise Trotter). Add to that numerous sophomore collections – from Sarah Burton’s Givenchy to Jonathan Anderson’s first womenswear collection for Dior – and the S/S 2026 season looks set to provide our most comprehensive view of the future of fashion in some time, following a turbulent couple of years defined by a merry-go-round of creative director departures and arrivals. With these upcoming collections, the industry looks to settle the ship.

In anticipation, and ahead of New York Fashion Week, which begins tomorrow (11 September 2025), we straw-polled the Wallpaper* style editors about their most anticipated moments of the month. And, while the blockbuster debuts appeared in everyone’s lists, there remains an appetite for the under-the-radar – from Talia Byre’s first runway show proper in London (contributing fashion writer Orla Brennan says she’s one of a handful of younger brands in the city ‘gaining momentum’) to Diotima in New York, where founder Rachel Scott hosts her own debut runway show, made all the more of an event after her recent appointment as creative director of Proenza Schouler.

‘While I am of course looking forward to the big-name debuts – I was a huge fan (and shopper) of Matthieu Blazy’s Bottega Veneta, so I’m excited to see his vision for Chanel – I am most intrigued by a more under-the-radar appointment, Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander. He takes over from Lucie and Luke Meier at the house, coming from Bally, where his (brief) tenure was full of great pieces – his collections took wardrobe archetypes and transformed them with satisfyingly strange, off-kilter details, from asymmetric hemlines to flourishes of faux fur. From the few hints that we’ve seen so far (and some rumours from Milan), Bellotti seems perfect for Jil Sander, looking to bring back the mood of reduction and rigour that defined the house’s namesake designs. He’s showing on Wednesday (24 September) in Milan – I’m excited to see what this new chapter brings.

‘In Paris – which is full of great shows this season – my eyes will be on Celine, where Michael Rider will show his sophomore collection for the house (and first on the ready-to-wear schedule). I was really impressed with his first show, which was held during haute couture week earlier this year, all the more so when I went to the re-see the next day – taken apart from the runway, it was full of fashion hits, especially the accessories. My favourite? A version of the house’s ‘Phantom’ bag, complete with a smiley zipper face.’

‘There’s an almost overwhelming onslaught of newness this fashion month – as Orla outlines below, 15 creative directors will make their debut over the month, many of them at fashion’s best-known houses. While I am of course excited to see what these debuts bring – Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel will no doubt be a highlight – there is plenty more to fashion month from designers both emerging and established. In New York, I’ve enjoyed recent collections from Eckhaus Latta – it feels like the American label has hit its stride again – while I’ll be travelling to Brooklyn for Rachel Scott’s debut runway show for her label Diotima, which has previously only shown via presentation (it will be all the more exciting after the announcement that she is the new creative director of Proenza Schouler, taking over from founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who are heading to Loewe). Scott is a testament to taking your time: she worked for over a decade in Milan for brands like Costume National before returning to the United States to start her label.

‘In London, Talia Byre will host her first full-scale runway show – at the magazine, we've been big fans of her work for some time – while Paolo Carzana, currently part of Sarabande, has made a name with thoughtful, craft-focused collections shown in unexpected locations (one was held in the garden of his own Hackney home; another in a tiny Farringdon pub). I’m looking forward to seeing where he chooses next. There’s of course plenty to look forward to in Milan and Paris – as ever, Prada will be my highlight in the former (I have been a dedicated fan for decades – few fashion houses have such consistently thought-provoking collections), while at the latter I look forward to Duran Lantink’s debut show for Jean Paul Gaultier (the Dutch designer’s collections under his now-paused eponymous label have been a highlight of recent seasons – he will no doubt carry this energy to his new role). Hopefully, after what has felt like some seasons of stasis in fashion, with creative director positions now filled and in motion, this will be the one where a new vision falls into place.’

‘There’s a sense that this fashion month could be the most exciting in years, with no fewer than 15 creative directors unveiling their first collections. I expect the big house debuts will take up much of the conversation in the coming weeks, so I’d like to mention a few rising designers not to miss. In New York, FIT graduate Zane Li will stage his first runway show after two seasons of sharp, architectural collections under his label LII, until now presented only via lookbooks. Over in London, the perennial hub of fledgling talent, I’m most looking forward to seeing CSM graduate Oscar Ouyang’s off-kilter, earthy knits appearing on the runway as he joins the Newgen cohort.

‘It’s also nice to see designers with a few years under their belt gaining momentum. Talia Byre is joining the official schedule after hosting intimate shows in small London galleries and candlelit restaurants, and I’m looking forward to seeing whatever evolution of shadowy London cool Aaron Esh will likely produce this season. I’m also intrigued by the late-night spectacle Dilara Findikoglu is planning for Sunday – her invitation, a medieval brass choker with a lock and key, is the only (very on-brand) clue so far. As for the blockbuster shows, like everyone else, I’m curious to see what fresh ideas Matthieu Blazy will bring to Chanel. It’s the season’s closing event, and – with any luck – will be worth the wait.’

‘Despite Paris being the epicentre of designer debuts this season, the one I’m most excited to see is Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta in Milan. She’s been dropping hints as to what we can expect (see her first campaign pulling in collaborators of the house past and present) and so far, so very good in my opinion. Bottega has been one of the most influential fashion brands of the last decade under Daniel Lee and Matthieu Blazy and it’s fantastic to see a talent like Louise being handed the reigns. I have high hopes!’

‘In terms of fashion, I’m a big fan of the south London-based label KNWLS, so it will be exciting to see what designers Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault have planned for their debut show in Milan – rumour has it that they are plotting something special.

‘There are bound to be plenty of outstanding beauty moments over the month – there's always great hair and make-up at Simone Rocha in London, Prada in Milan, and Dries Van Noten in Paris. But even more intriguing will be how the slew of new creative directors address beauty in their opening collections – Pierpaolo Piccioli had some incredible beauty looks while at Valentino (the Kaia Gerber bouffant, for example), something he’ll hopefully replicate at his new role at Balenciaga.

‘Finally, beauty will no doubt be central at Louis Vuitton – the house recently launched its ‘La Beauté’ beauty line, led by Pat McGrath. I’m sure the show – which takes place during fashion week – will have an impactful look to show off these incredible products, and maybe even tease a few upcoming additions to the line.’

Stay tuned to Wallpaper.com for more from Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2026.

Amid the heady hedonism of the 1990s, fashion shows transcended from industry showcases to cultural touchstones. Designers became celebrities. Models became super. Fashion houses became global luxury brands. The fashion show, catapulted into mainstream culture thanks to the rapid advance of technology, was a powerful catalyst for image creation and dissemination. Against this backdrop, Alexandre de Betak founded his Paris-based production company Bureau Betak. Over three decades, he revolutionised the very concept of fashion communication.

Alexandre de Betak stepped away from Bureau Betak three years ago. The company is now co-helmed by Bénédicte Fournier Beckmann, Paco Raynal and Guillaume Troncy, and it’s very much business as usual (in so far as this business is ever quotidian).

How Bureau Betak transformed the runway show

‘We work as a collective with strong creative and production teams everywhere, made stronger by our shared experience,’ says Fournier Beckmann. For our interview, it’s fitting that the trio are beamed by a screen from their Parisian offices. A fashion show today is experienced live by a 1,000-or-so people, but it is devoured by millions virtually, via a plethora of media platforms and posts.

Today, Bureau Betak employs around 100 people across four offices in Paris, New York, LA and Shanghai. It is best known for the production of fashion shows for some of the world’s biggest brands, but its creative tentacles are far-reaching across events of all shapes and sizes, from brand activations and parties to exhibitions and keynote speeches. ‘We are like the fairies in the background,’ says Troncy. ‘We make ideas happen.’

It’s a modest statement because Bureau Betak is actually a meticulously skilled outfit that understands how all aspects of its involvement connect: first imagining, then creating and communicating the codes of a house, its designer and their collection. The volume of its productions has mushroomed. ‘When we started,’ says Fournier Beckmann (who, together with Raynal, has been at Bureau Betak since its infancy), ‘we would do four shows a year for a brand; now we do between eight and 12 a year – and they only get bigger.’ Until relatively recently, this was called fashion show production. Today, this is more like conducting the orchestra for a single track in the canon of a brand, and ensuring that it plays out pitch-perfectly to a febrile, global audience, first live and then in ripples that continue until the next show drops.

‘Our job does not stop at delivering a set,’ Troncy says. ‘In many ways, it’s just the start. The live event is when the magic happens and what will travel the world.’ A show must be impactful and memorable for its physical audience and professional photographer bank, but it must also translate effortlessly on to the phone cameras of everyone in attendance, too. Beyond the ‘owned assets’, this is how the majority of people see a collection for the first time nowadays. ‘We’ve been looking at our sets through our own camera phones for about 15 years,’ Fournier Beckmann says. ‘The feeling, the lighting, the staging – everything must look as good as possible from any angle. A show goes worldwide in five seconds.’

At the A/W 2025 shows earlier this year, the team transported us (metaphorically) to a louche weekend at an English country house for Burberry; through the dawn of time with artist Robert Wilson for Dior; into a maze of glossy red bathroom cubicles for Valentino; and inside a glowing onyx monolith for Saint Laurent. ‘The scale and speed may have changed, but the way we work is very similar to how we’ve always worked,’ Raynal explains. ‘We begin in conversation with the client and from this we interpret a brief. It is not always a precise one. It could be a single word, a picture, a conversation. We then present our vision of the interpretation of their brief to the client. Once we get approval for the vision, we work out how to achieve it. We are careful to work within an allocated budget. Every bit as important as the show itself, is what happens after the event – not just to the brand assets, but to the physical elements too. We take the eco-responsibility of our projects very seriously.’

Operating at the sharper edge of an industry not celebrated for its sustainability credentials, Bureau Betak has been a pioneer. In 2020, it was the first production agency to be awarded 20121 certification for sustainable event management. Better Betak launched in 2022 as an open platform for recording observations, sharing solutions and identifying commitments towards more sustainable event management within the luxury sector. It is an impressive core of the company’s mission rather than a green-tinged add-on, and is clearly heartfelt by the trio, who wax lyrical about ever-better practices being a key ingredient to their success.

Ultimately, though, they agree that certain primal, human qualities are what define their practice and reputation. ‘We are dealing with human relationships essentially: emotion, trust, support, passion and memory,’ Troncy says. Raynal adds, ‘Our currency is emotion and memory. These can never be delivered by a computer. A render might look beautiful, but it feels soulless – the emotional connection is absent. We believe wholeheartedly in the power of human creativity.’ That vital trust between brand and agency is hard-earned, not just by staging shows smoothly, but by creating magic. Troncy describes the feeling of Alessandro Michele’s S/S 2023 show for Gucci, where 68 pairs of identical twins were flown in to model. A wall divided the identically dressed twins for the show, and was only raised at the end when the twins took each other’s hands for the finale. ‘At first, there was a gasp and then the entire room was crying,’ says Troncy. ‘AI could never do this.’

Indeed, Raynal points out that event production is not simply confined to fashion, but is a fundamental part of humanity: we are, by our very nature, show-offs. ‘This job will exist forever,’ he says. ‘The need for ceremony and events is part of any empire, from the Egyptians to the Romans to Louis XIV – bringing people together to celebrate is a nothing new, it is part of life. Tools change and context evolves, but the need to stir emotion and create a memory [that] endures.’

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

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It’s the end of a busy – and very hot – menswear season in Florence, Milan and Paris. Over a packed-out schedule in the fashion capitals of Europe, designers across the board sought various modes of escapism, and a desire to unwind – largely via seeking the sunlit shores of a holiday – seemed to be the pervading mood.

Paul Smith’s love letter to European marketplaces made for a standout debut in Milan; Anthony Vaccarello imagined a nostalgic trip between Paris and Fire Island; Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed the ‘easiest collection’ they’ve ever made; and a theme of pyjama silhouettes at several houses, from Dolce & Gabbana to Armani, suggested many simply dreamed of going to bed.

Two debuts made for the most talked-about shows of the season – Julian Klausner’s sublime first menswear collection for Dries Van Noten, which offered up an insouciant portrait of summertime ease; and, of course, Jonathan Anderson’s landmark start at Dior, which, among various clever ‘decoding and recoding’ of the house’s vast archive of designs, went back to the reason he became a designer: the simple joy to be found in dressing up.

But between the blockbuster shows, a handful of quieter off-calendar presentations flew under the radar. Here, we look back at some of the best collections you might have missed from the S/S 2026 menswear season.

S/S 2026 menswear: the collections you might have missed

Martine Rose

There was a dearth of happenings in London this season after the British Fashion Council removed the city from the June slot (February and September fashion weeks are now co-ed). But there was one very, very good off-calendar outlier: Martine Rose. Showing ‘salon-style’ at the least glamorous of locations – a Job Centre off Lisson Grove, which she adorned with swathes of cream frilled curtains – her S/S 2026 collection offered up a love letter to Kensington Market and the unique mix of independent stalls and creative upstarts that have long called it home.

Strange, sexy, and every inch Rose’s ruefully original signature, the collection twisted high street uniforms and notions of British dress. Harrington jackets, electrician’s utility trousers, tracksuits, kilts and barber shop capes all got the Rose rework, so that they were either suctioned close to the body or chopped and layered into skewiff shapes. Inviting 20 local market stallholders to join the rows of fashion editors, the event felt – as ever with the designer – like a celebration of London and its eclectic pockets of life.

Post Archive Faction

If you haven’t heard of PAF, it’s probably because you’re not into technical gear. The South Korean brand is part of a new wave of designers pushing performance wear into avant-garde new territory. The brand is the brainchild of Dongjoon Lim and Sookyo Jeong, who studied industrial design and architecture respectively, and as such they do things a little differently. Their philosophy centres on a set of evolving uniforms that are divided into three distinct categories: ‘right‘ (conservative), ‘centre’ (intermediary), and ‘left’ (experimental). The kind of brand you might have spotted in the stands at Pitti Uomo in previous years rather than on the runway, the duo were the underdogs among the three guest designers selected for the annual display in Florence.

The display they produced, however, quietened any questions over their place at Pitti. Marking a surprising departure from their utility signatures, the collection was instead rooted in formality, opening with a series of sharp, contemporary tailored looks in inky blacks and mottled greys that gave way to lighter shapes in cutting-edge performance fabrics. Showing the pair can take on traditional menswear codes while still coaxing new beauty from a baseline of sportswear shapes, it was a grown-up, ambitious display from two designers working entirely on their own terms.

Our Legacy

This season, Our Legacy did away with the idea of a runway altogether, instead staging a Swedish Midsummer celebration in the heart of Milan. Blending Scandinavian tradition with Italian charm, the laid-back affair at Pizzeria Stella was complete with a leafy maypole and flower crowns for guests. Marking the brand’s 20th anniversary, the S/S 2026 collection it celebrated – released with a pared-back lookbook – emerged from a journey into the Our Legacy archives. Resisting nostalgia, creative director Cristopher Nying described the collection as a ‘mixtape of B-sides’ rather than a roll call of greatest hits through which he has subtly reflected on the ‘moments and memories’ that have shaped the past two decades. Sleek tailoring, slouchy knits, leather accessories and ‘cunning twists’ on wardrobe staples leant into Our Legacy’s language of understated style. Quietly marking 20 years of astute, wearable design, the collection seemed to say Our Legacy is more interested in what comes next.

Mordecai

‘It’s zen but make it technical’ reads the epithet found in Mordecai’s Instagram bio. It’s a mantra that perfectly captures the spirit of designer’s Ludovico Bruno latest collection, which explored his lifelong passion for martial arts. Highlighting the ways the combat sport of Judo balances both force and intimacy – where fighters embrace, hands dig into flesh, and bodies tumble as one – the resulting collection elevated the uniforms of the sport with a technical lightness gained from his years spent designing in-house at Moncler. Shown at a dojo in Milan on a cast of real athletes from wrestling and karate schools, the presentation was a display of the designer’s sensitive approach to bold design ideas – and a standout presentation of the week in Milan.

Magliano

A sabbatical is a period of leave most commonly associated with academia, where professors are granted time off after years of research or service to their department. Young designer Luca Magliano is neither an academic nor decades into his field, but even so, the fashion industry’s relentless churn can wear on designers’ energy and resources. Many are pushing back with creative answers to the official schedule, and the ‘sabbatical’ film the Bologna-born designer produced instead was one such of these solutions. Shown at a central Milan movie theatre dubbed ‘CineMagliano’ for the evening, the film was shot by British director Thomas Hardiman, best known for his 2022 breakout indie Medusa Deluxe – an offbeat thriller-comedy set within the chaotic world of a hairstyling competition. With a shared taste in stories of the surreal, Hardiman and Magliano made a perfect pairing.

Showcasing a character-led take on the designer’s ‘f-d up classics’ for S/S 2026, the film the pair produced told the story of a ragtag crew of fricchettoni – an Italian term for a bohemian, hippy kind of outcast – on a boat from Sardinia to Tuscany. Drawing on nautical themes old and new, the collection featured outerwear cut in 1950s noir silhouettes, roughed-up tuxedos that looked hastily packed, flag dresses, swim goggle-inspired sunglasses, and lace-up boots that took after the Titanic era. It was a fun, memorable alternative to a runway – and proof that Magliano is a designer with more than a few tricks up his sleeve.

Sanderlak

Sander Lak made the most low-key of debuts during the Paris shows this season. After a five-year hiatus following the closure of his cult Antwerp brand Sies Marjan in 2020, the Brunei-born designer is back with a label under his own name. Shown via a smattering of in-person appointments in Paris, Lak’s new venture hinges on a particular concept – one collection per year, inspired by one specific place.

Aiming to capture a ‘feeling of home’ through clothes that reflect the ‘mood, textures, and everyday rhythms’ of a given location, the first is a tribute to Los Angeles. With relaxed, unisex silhouettes in soft knits and well-cut denim made for year-round wear, the collection brought together cosy textures – cashmere, cotton, and shearling – in sun-bleached shades the show notes described as ‘corn masa, ocean eyes, desert sage, and strawberry milkshake.’

‘There’s something about the light in LA that always gets me,’ Lak said in a statement. ‘It’s soft yet harsh and dry, and it settles over everything in this quiet way.’ An easy, wearable offering crafted with heart, the understated debut was the work of a designer who knows exactly what he wants to make, and what he wants to wear.

Sacai

Eschewing the runway for a clean, studio-shot look book this season, Chitose Abe’s proposition for S/S 2026 was one of simplicity. Its name – ‘Everyday All Day’ – related the wearable ease of the offering, which fused everyday staples with the formality of tuxedo suiting. Bringing a deconstructed whimsy to collaborations with all-American brands Carhartt and J.M. Weston, the silhouette this season was billowing – Japanese-style barrel trousers, cleverly constructed voluminous sleeves, and oversized shirting – while Abe’s knack for fusing disparate modes of dress shone in outerwear that hackneyed workwear jackets with blazers. Worn with bohemian T-bar sandals, the collection tossed out ideas of formality and casualness in favour of simply wearing whatever feels good. Alongside the visuals, the brand has invited Canadian painter Geoff McFetridge – a New York Times contributor who got his start painting West Coast skate culture in the 2000s – to create a series of soft, cinematic artworks immortalising the collection on canvas.

Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker’s work is unmistakable. Charged with a vague air of the unsettling, his black and white images feel suspended from time itself, as if they could have been shot 60 years ago or just yesterday. Preferring to hone in on body parts rather than faces, figures are abstracted into sculptural forms, limbs rove freely from their owners, and cult fashion items are captured with a cinematic suggestion of kink (Kooiker is drawn to textures like shiny rubber, scratchy hair, and skin-pricking sharp points). The artist’s latest project is, given this particular world, a little surprising.

Opening at the Palais Royal today (26 June), it sees the photographer turn his camera on 42 students from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where he taught photography for 25 years (up until fashion work took over in 2020). Titled ‘2025’, the project marks new territory for Kooiker in two ways – it focuses on a specific moment in time, unlike the eerie timelessness of his broader practice; and it features myriad faces, marking his most extensive portraiture work to date. It was the result of a commission by Acne Studios’ magazine offshoot, Acne Paper, marking the first exhibition hosted within its new permanent gallery space, Acne Paper Palais Royal.

Paul Kooiker turns his lens on 42 art students for the launch of Acne Studios’ new gallery space, Acne Paper Palais Royal

‘They gave me carte blanche to do what I want,’ Kooiker says, speaking over video call just hours after finishing installing the show. ‘I think that's quite strong from a brand, to give that kind of challenge to artists. What I like about Acne Studios is that it's very broad in its thinking – its approach to culture, music, art, design, and, of course, fashion. I enjoyed that this didn’t have to be related to fashion or to the brand itself. It’s just a private project.’

The urge to create something rooted in the present, Kooiker says, came as a response to the heightened and difficult times we’re living through. He wanted to mark this year by capturing the faces of young artists who are bravely pursuing their dreams in the face it all. ‘It was important for me to pay tribute to people who choose to go to an art school at a time like this,’ he explains. ‘That’s also why I chose Rietveld for this project. It’s an international school, people come from everywhere, and it’s known for its anarchistic way of teaching. Students really have to do it themselves.’

After five years away from the university, Kooiker returned to its halls over a series of days, selecting art students at random to shoot in corridors and classrooms. ‘I didn't have a discussion before about who they are or what they study,’ he says of the impulsive process. ‘Afterwards, I would have a little talk with them about which department they are in and what they are doing. But before it was a very quick decision to make a portrait. It's kind of a way of working that I love. I think you get something very honest.’

Gathered side by side in rows, the resulting images recall the feeling of a yearbook or school portraiture. It’s a kind of photograph that feels universal – one that we’ve all likely sat for before – where bright eyed portraits capture the tender point just before adulthood, and everything still lies ahead. ‘I liked playing with this kind of tradition,’ says Kooiker of the format, which he has approached in his arresting, black and white style. ‘These images are always kind of amazing, because they’re so innocent in a way. It's something special.’

When it came to curating the space at the Palais Royal, Kooiker started by requesting the gallery paint the walls a specific tone of grey. It’s the same shade that coats the halls of the university, made famous by its namesake architect, Gerrit Rietveld. ‘It's kind of strange for an art school,’ he says. ‘But his idea was that grey is not finished. Black is a finished colour and so is white – but grey, things can still change. I’ve always thought that was a beautiful idea.’

Guests filled the space yesterday evening for the show’s preview, finding a grounding moment amid the spectacles of the Paris men’s schedule. Forty-two faces gazed into the busy room, frozen in expressions of fresh-faced possibility, defiance and hope, despite the uncertainty of the world they will soon step into. ‘What I hope is that these faces return to you a few days after the show, that maybe it kind of stays in your head after you leave,’ says Kooiker at the end of our call. ‘It's a big thing to ask, but I hope it makes a lasting impression.’

2025 by Paul Kooiker is on view at Acne Paper Palais Royal until 27 July 2025

Read more news in our live reports from Paris Fashion Week Men’s, and our round-up of the shows

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

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

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

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

Craig Green

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

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

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

Hermès

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

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

Dior Men

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

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

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

Willy Chavarria

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

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

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

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

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

Junya Watanabe MAN

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

Rick Owens

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

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

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

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

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

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

Amiri

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

IM Men

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

Wales Bonner

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

Hed Mayner

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

Lemaire

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

Auralee

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

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026

And so begins the final leg of men’s fashion month, which, after stops in Florence – for the Pitti Uomo menswear fair – and Milan, arrives in Paris this week with a packed six-day-long schedule. Proceedings will begin on Tuesday with a blockbuster opening day: both Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton will show their S/S 2026 collections, where you can expect starry front rows and visual spectacles (the slightly more understated Japanese label Auralee will be sandwiched in between).

Though it is Jonathan Anderson’s debut collection for Dior – where he now heads up the Parisian house’s womenswear, menswear and haute couture collections – on Friday afternoon will provide the week’s most anticipated moment. This past week, Anderson has released a handful of teasers: photographs of Lee Radziwill and Jean-Michel Basquiat by Andy Warhol, overlaid with the Dior logo, a series of book bags adorned with the title pages of Dracula by Bram Stoker and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and a series of silver pin cushions. Today, the brand posted a video of French football star Kylian Mbappé in a grey Dior suit.

‘As I started out on this journey, I kept returning to these photographs of Basquiat and Radziwill who are both, for me, the epitome of style,’ Anderson said in a statement on Sunday (22 May 2025). ‘Kylian Mbappé is the voice of a generation and an inspiration to many people in the world of sport and beyond,’ he added today. Curious? So are the Wallpaper* editors – when we asked them what they were looking forward to over Men’s Fashion Month, all of them chose his debut as the moment to watch out for.

Other notable moments include ‘Temple of Love’, a retrospective of Rick Owens’ work at Paris’ Palais Galliera (its opening will coincide with the designer’s S/S 2026 menswear show), buzzy American designer Willy Chavarria’s sophomore show in Paris (he shifted from New York last season), and Grace Wales Bonner’s return to the runway (expect a typically poetic, and reference-rich, outing). Rounding out the schedule are shows from Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe MAN, and Hermès, among others.

Alongside our daily report on the shows, to bring Paris Fashion Week Men’s to life this season, the Wallpaper* editors on the ground will be offering a real-time look at the weekend’s happenings – from behind-the-scenes glimpses to access to the shows, presentations and parties. Stay tuned. JM

A first look at the Saint Laurent show set

The set for Saint Laurent’s S/S 2026 menswear show, which takes place in the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection this afternoon. Featuring an enormous circular pool filled with floating porcelain bowls – an installation titled ‘Clinamen’ by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – sets the stage for a collection which Anthony Vaccarrello says is about ‘a suspended moment, somewhere between Paris and Fire Island, where escape becomes elegance.’ Jack Moss

Saint Laurent transports from Paris to Fire Island

‘A suspended moment, somewhere between Paris and Fire Island, where escape becomes elegance,’ is how Anthony Vaccarello describes his S/S 2026 collection for Saint Laurent, shown in Paris this afternoon.

Taking place around an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – comprising a circular pool filled with floating porcelain bowls – the collection saw abbreviated shorts and pyjama sets meet wide-shoulder shirts, ties, and diaphanous layers of silk and nylon, channelling what Vaccarello described as a ‘subtle sensuality’.

In part, he said it was a ‘tribute to a lost generation, to the artists – [Larry] Stanton, [Patrick] Angus, [Darrel] Ellis – who gave a face to silent desires,’ referring to the figures lost to the Aids crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, who sought Fire Island as a refuge. Jack Moss

Pharrell Williams and Studio Mumbai’s giant game of Snakes and Ladders for Louis Vuitton S/S 2026

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

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

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

READ: How Pharrell Williams staged a giant game of Snakes and Ladders for his latest Louis Vuitton show

The best shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s so far

Fashion editors arrived in Paris yesterday for the first day of the city’s men’s shows. Both of the big spectacle events of the day were held at Parisian art world landmarks. Anthony Vaccarello’s romantic tribute to Fire Island – and the circle of underground queer artists who frequented the New York idyll in the 1980s – unfolded within the concrete circular rotunda of Bourse de Commerce. Later in the day, at Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams had his fun outside of the Centre Pompidou's colourful edifice, laying down a colossal game of Snakes and Ladders (a game originating in ancient India) upon which he presented a collection that took inspiration from recent travels to Mumbai. In between, cult Japanese menswear brand Auralee held a beautifully understated display at the National Archives Museum in the Marais. Exploring the subtle change in seasons from winter to spring, it marked ten years of designer’s Ryota Iwai’s quiet language of sophistication. Orla Brennan

Catch up on more of the standout shows from Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026 here.

Acne Studios channels ‘geeky confidence’ for S/S 2026

Offering a reprieve from the runway schedule, Acne Studios invited guests to see its S/S 2026 collection up close and personal at a relaxed presentation in the brand’s recently opened Paris headquarters. The collection was, aptly, a study of casual menswear codes – proposing a ‘spontaneous and unbothered’ way of dressing through a mish mash of sharp sportswear, academia-inflected knitwear, and slimline silhouettes that rang of vintage shop treasures. ‘We keep exploring and rebuilding the emblematic codes of the menswear wardrobe,’ Jonny Johansson, Acne Studios creative director, said in a statement. ‘This time, it’s with a geeky, quietly confident attitude that beats perfection by far.’ Orla Brennan

At Lemaire, a collection ‘alert and worn with confidence’

Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran – co-artistic directors of Lemaire – have always worked through intuition rather than strict thematics, favouring the ongoing creation of a wardrobe which allows for expressions of personal style. This season was no different, seeing the pair build a collection from disparate inspiration points – from work, utility and westernwear to mid-century-inspired tailoring and more romantic gestures in silk and tulle. A cohesion was found in their distinct design language, which has always been defined by a level of restraint and good taste. A little more sensually charged than in recent seasons (a play with exposure of the body ran throughout), Lemaire and Tran said they wanted the collection to feel ‘alert and worn with confidence’, a feeling echoed in a rousing live soundtrack by musicians Valentina Magaletti and Zongamin. Jack Moss

Tatras’ East-meets-West presentation at the Palais de Tokyo

East met West at Tatras’ S/S 2026 presentation at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo this afternoon, a metaphorical journey which reflects the label’s roots (it was founded in Italy by a Japanese entrepreneur, and continues to mine both countries for inspiration). Playing out amid a set curated by Mehdi Dakhli, the ‘raw concrete underbelly’ of the gallery was interrupted by serene Japanese Shoji screens, while a delicate white tree – the colour chosen for its symbolic link with ‘purity and renewal’ – sat on a meditative circular pool. The collection itself sought similar juxtapositions, seeing utility wear – from boiler suits to cargo pants and hiking jackets – meet something more wistful, evoked in satin and nylon taffeta (washed to give the appearance of wear), voluminous draped jersey and moments of floral print. Meanwhile duvet quilting, a Tatras signature, appeared in lightweight new iterations, made for the warmer summer months. Jack Moss

‘Balenciaga by Demna’ catalogues the designer’s decade at the house

A new Paris exhibition catalogues Demna’s decade at Balenciaga, marking the Georgian designer’s swansong at the house before departing for Gucci in July.

Opening today to coincide with Paris Fashion Week Men’s at Kering’s historic headquarters on Rue de Sèvres, the ‘resumé’ exhibition spans clothing and ephemera from his tenure, which began in 2015. Memorable items include ‘pantashoes’, crisp-bag clutches and NASA-branded space jackets, as well as sculpted tailoring and dramatic haute couture creations.

Playing out on a giant cross, the exhibition begins with an initial rejection letter for an internship at Balenciaga while still a young designer, before turning full circle and ending with the all-black face-covering look he wore to accompany Kim Kardashian to the Met Gala in 2021. Throughout, Demna’s voice tells the story behind each creation.

The exhibition, ‘Balenciaga by Demna’, runs until July 9 and is open to the public by registering at Balenciaga’s website.

IM Men looks towards Japanese ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda

For its sophomore Paris Fashion Week show this morning, IM Men – part of the Issey Miyake umbrella of brands – looked towards the pioneering Japanese ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda for inspiration. As such, the show opened with a trio of masked dancers, their wrapped forms – which were wheeled in before coming to life through movement – supposed to evoke Kamoda’s expressive works. ‘Bold and uninhibited’ is how the IM Men team described Kamoda’s oeuvre, though it could equally apply to the collection itself, a vivid amalgam of intriguing fabric manipulations, wrapped and twisted silhouettes, and playful accessories – like a series of surreal sunglasses with multiple lenses jutting from each side. Jack Moss

Rick Owens speaks to Wallpaper* as he opens ‘Temple of Love’ retrospective

‘Rick Owens, Temple Of Love’ at Paris’ Palais Galliera is no typical retrospective. A meditation on a singular career, it spans the iconoclastic designer’s Los Angeles beginnings on Hollywood Boulevard to the present day, featuring over 100 of his silhouettes, which often defy categorisation but are entirely his own.

‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, “You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!”’ the designer told Wallpaper* ahead of the show’s opening. ‘She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it! A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

Previewing after his S/S 2026 runway show at Palais de Tokyo this evening (26 June) – just across the road – at the exhibition’s heart is the idea of love. ‘I felt that love is the best word to put out there,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’ll help manifest something.’

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

Julian Klausner makes sublime menswear debut for Dries Van Noten

A sublime S/S 2026 collection from Julian Klausner marked the designer’s menswear debut for Dries Van Noten, having shown his first womenswear collection earlier this year after the departure of the brand’s namesake. Broad brushstrokes of colour – clashing reds and pinks, vivid stripes, boldly coloured stripes, a gleaming melange of sequin embellishment – met a wardrobe of insouciant summertime ease, from an array of shorts (from cycle-style to billowing silk) to sleeveless knits, sarongs and breezy oversized shirting (some overlaid with floral or nipped-waist tabard tops). In its rich composition of elements and astute use of colour, it felt right out of the Dries Van Noten playbook, though there is certainly a sharp new vision emerging, one that is all Klausner’s own. Jack Moss

Acne Studios opens permanent gallery at Palais Royal with Paul Kooiker show

Commissioned to mark the launch of Acne Studios’ new permanent gallery, photographer Paul Kooiker was given free rein by the brand to explore a subject of his choosing. He decided to return to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie – where he taught photography for 25 years – photographing the faces of 42 students in a candid, human style that marks a departure from the abstracted studies of the body he is best known for. Created in response to the uncertainty of our times, the series honours the courage of ‘people who choose to go to an art school at a time like this.’ Opened today at the new Acne Paper Palais Royal space, the exhibition runs until 27 July 2025. Orla Brennan

READ: Paul Kooiker photographs the students of Gerrit Rietveld Academie for Acne Studios

Rick Owens stages a ‘Temple of Love’ for his S/S 2026 menswear show

Staged on the monolithic forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo earlier this evening, Rick Owens erected a ‘Temple of Love’ for his S/S 2026 menswear show, seeing models descend from the industrial scaffold structure and into the water below.

‘Temple of Love’ is also the name of a retrospective of the American designer’s work taking place at the Palais Galliera across the road, which opened this evening to coincide with the show. ‘Love is a word really worth promoting right now,’ he said in a letter distributed to guests.

Of the exhibition, which spans his Los Angeles beginnings to present day, he told Wallpaper* he was embracing the term ‘retrospective’. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant – how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

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

Catch up on the best shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s so far

Paris Fashion Week Men’s continued yesterday with an impressive run of shows: first up, IM Men, where the Issue Miyake brand looked towards pioneering Japanese ceramicist Shoji Kamoda for inspiration (in the label’s typically lighthearted style, it began with a trio of dancers acting as Kamoda’s creations, first wheeled into the space before jumping into life). Later, there was a sublime debut menswear collection at Dries Van Noten from Julian Klausner which – in its broad strokes of colour, print and embellishment – cemented his position as a worthy heir to the brand’s namesake. Finally, there was a typically theatrical outing from Rick Owens, who erected a ‘Temple of Love’ in the forecourt of the Palais de Tokyo, in a show which coincided with the opening of a new retrospective of his work at the Palais Galliera.

Catch up on more of the standout shows from Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026 here.

A first look at Jonathan Anderson’s gallery-like show set for Dior debut

A first look at the show set for Jonathan Anderson’s hotly anticipated Dior debut this afternoon. Reminiscent of the ‘velvet-lined interiors’ and parquet-lined floor of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie museum, it features two paintings by 18th-century French painter Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, which Anderson describes as ‘modest yet beautiful’. The first depicts a bunch of flowers in a Delft vase, the other a bowl of ripe red strawberries. ‘At a time when art was often concerned with excess and spectacle, Chardin revered the everyday, trading grandeur for sincerity and empathy,’ read the collection notes. Jack Moss

Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior was all about the joy of dressing

The wait is over – earlier this afternoon in Paris, Jonathan Anderson showed his S/S 2026 menswear collection for Dior, which marked his much-anticipated debut as creative director of the storied fashion house.

Playing out in a gallery-like set, two still-life paintings by 18th-century French artist Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin set the tone for a collection which explored and reworked codes of affluence and grandeur. ‘At a time when art was often concerned with excess and spectacle, Chardin revered the everyday, trading grandeur for sincerity and empathy,’ read the collection notes.

As such, looks comprised a dishevelled take on formal dress codes – from Donegal tweeds and cable-knit sweaters to British regimental neckties, schoolboy jumpers and military jackets, as well as riffs on tailcoats and the Bar Jacket.Ultimately, Anderson said it was about the joy of dressing up and making something your own: ‘a way to reinvent oneself and the moment, looking at what is old to shape new guises, allowing empathy to define elegance.’

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut: ‘bringing joy to the art of dressing’

Kiko Kostadinov transports to imaginary island town for S/S 2026

Opening the penultimate day of Paris Fashion Week Men’s, Kiko Kostadinov’s latest collection transported to a surreal ‘island town… small and hard to place, at a remove from the outside world.’ Evoked in a Parisian carpark through a series of glowing rooms – one in which the floor was covered with sand – Kostadinov imagined a collection which unfolded through the day, from work in the morning to an evening out (on the back of the collection notes, it fastidiously catalogued ‘a day in fabrics’, with a to-the-minute time for every material in the collection). The eveningwear tailoring at the end of the show was a highlight – whether adorned with surrealist brooches or with slanted, double-breasted buttons, cut in the designer’s off-kilter style. Jack Moss

A closer look at Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut

A closer look at Jonathan Anderson’s S/S 2026 collection for Dior Men, which marked the Irish designer’s debut at the Parisian house – from porcelain plate topped with eggs which served at the show’s invitation to book bags adorned with the title page of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, as well as reworked references to the house’s archive. ‘You have to decode and recode Dior,’ said Anderson prior to the show. ‘Modernity can be found by not being scared of the past. Everything has to rebirth from itself.’ Jack Moss

Hermès’ summer in the city

‘Summer in the city,’ is how Véronique Nichanian described the mood of her S/S 2026 collection for Hermès, which – fittingly – unfolded on a sweltering afternoon at Paris’ Palais d’Iéna.A typically astute collection of lightness and ease, the collection featured airy, open-weave leather across shirts and trousers, crisp, technical canvas and lightweight shirt jackets – ‘neither quite blousons nor quite windbreakers’. Meanwhile playful totes featured monkey motifs, and open-toed sandals came with rope-trimmed soles. Jack Moss

Catch up on the best shows of the weekend

Today marks the end of a packed menswear season full of fresh starts, intelligent collections and sweltering temperatures. On Friday, the fashion world – along with fans who screened the show, World Cup-style, in bars – paused to witness Jonathan Anderson’s landmark debut for Dior. But it was back to business as usual yesterday, with two very different shows standing out as the day’s highlights. Kiko Kostadinov transformed a Parisian car park into a fictional island, imagining a day unfolding in this quiet place through a wardrobe that twisted the ‘trusty sometimes unexpected things’ we put on when alone. Later in the day, Hermès’ Véronique Nichanian showcased her 37 years of expertise at the house with a seductively breezy collection that simply paid ode to ‘summer in the city’. The final act of the season is Craig Green, who is set to close out the week with a display at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts later this morning. If the London designer’s track record is anything to go by, it will likely make for a poetic and original finale to a busy S/S 2026 season. Stay tuned for more. Orla Brennan

Catch up on the standout shows of the Paris Men’s S/S 2026 season here.

Craig Green pays tribute to the psychedelic era of The Beatles

‘Wide eyes draw new light, uncovering new contours,’ read the collection notes for Craig Green’s S/S 2026 outing, which looked towards the psychedelic colours and textures of the late 1960s and 1970s – including a series of streamer-like looks made from prints derived from vintage bed sheets, while delicate illuminated glasses were constructed from the lights used in dolls houses.

The Beatles were another influence, particularly their late psychedelic oeuvre of the end of the 1960s. ‘What they achieved was almost like a miracle,’ the London-based designer said backstage, having returned to show on the Paris Fashion Week schedule after a hiatus. ‘The amount of albums they were putting out, the amount of work they were doing. It’s almost otherworldly; it’s the joy of doing things.’ Jack Moss

Wooyoungmi makes formalwear for soaring temperatures

Elegant menswear made for the hot, sticky summers of South Korea was the proposition at Wooyoungmi’s S/S 2026 collection this afternoon in Paris, which was shown at the stately Maison de la Chime just south of the Seine. Transforming the cumbersome rigour of tailcoats and suits through a clever array of lightweight fabrics – cotton poplin, silk, and superfine lycra – a series razor-sharp silhouettes were crafted to allow the body to breathe in soaring city temperatures. Mixed in with these more formal shapes, turn of the century gentleman’s bathing suits inspired skin-tight, scoop necked tops and ultra short shorts, expressed in balmy colours the designer described as capturing the ‘ecstasy of summer.’ Orla Brennan

After a smattering of off-schedule shows in London this past weekend, including outings from Martine Rose and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 officially commences today in Florence (17 June 2025) with the opening of the 108th edition of the city’s historic menswear fair. In surging mid-30s heat, this season’s guest shows will include a no-doubt colourful outing from Homme Plissé Issey Miyake at Villa Medicea della Petraia on the slopes of Monte Morello on Wednesday evening, before eyes turn to Milan on Friday, seeing the latest collections from Prada, Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana shown amid a slew of presentations, showrooms and (much-needed) aperitivo.

The final stop is Paris, where – despite a packed six-day-long schedule – it is Jonathan Anderson’s debut show for Dior which will absorb the fashion world’s attention (the former Loewe creative director is now overseeing Dior’s menswear, womenswear and haute couture). Indeed, when the Wallpaper* style editors and contributors were straw-polled on what they were most looking forward to this menswear month, everyone put his inaugural collection for the Parisian house at the top of their list. But there was plenty more – read on for everything the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to at Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026: what the Wallpaper* editors are looking forward to

Jason Hughes, fashion and creative director

Like most people in fashion, I’m most looking forward to Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior on the Friday of Paris Fashion Week – I was a big fan of his work at Loewe, where he created such a universe around his clothing. I own a lot of pieces he designed there, so I’m excited to see what he has in store. If it’s anything like his work at Loewe – or indeed his work at eponymous London label JW Anderson – it will shift the fashion needle, and have us all wanting something new.

In Milan, it's all about Prada: you can always expect the unexpected from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, from the show set – which in recent seasons has included dripping goo, sci-fi tunnels and surreal officescapes – to the clothes themselves. Elsewhere, I've been impressed by London-based designer Kiko Kostadinov in the last couple of seasons. His idiosyncratic approach to pattern cutting and colour always veers towards the strange, in the best possible way. He’s showing his latest menswear collection on the final Sunday of Paris, closing out Men’s Fashion Month.

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

One of my highlights has actually already happened: a surprise off-schedule show from British designer Martine Rose this weekend in London, held among a maze of ruffled boudoir curtains in an empty job centre close to west London’s Edgware Road (on a lower floor, Rose had curated a market from her creative community of designers, record sellers and magazine publishers). Befitting the show set (‘our version of a salon’), Rose said that the collection was about finding beauty in the unexpected, seeing her trademark underground style (queer and cruising culture have been a longtime reference) softened with flourishes of lace, satin and silk, while silhouettes were shrunken to the body. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched or too tight, a bit awkward but still sexy, I hope,’ she said after the show, tequila already in hand. It was. Weird, sexy, desirable, and entirely on her own terms, it was my favourite collection of hers in some time.

Elsewhere, I'm of course excited for Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut (who isn’t?), while in Milan I join Jason in looking forward to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision for Prada menswear (as ever, it will likely set the tone for the season ahead). An on-schedule Saint Laurent menswear show, on the opening day of Paris Fashion Week, is also on my highlights list, as is a duo of exhibition openings (also in Paris) from two of the city’s boundary-pushing designers: Demna, who will stage a retrospective of his work at Balenciaga prior to leaving for Gucci next month, and Rick Owens’ ‘Temple of Love’ exhibition, which opens at the Palais Galliera on June 28.

Scarlett Conlon, Milan contributor

The big reveal that I’m most looking forward to is, of course, Jonathan Anderson at Dior during the Paris leg of the shows. I’m fascinated to see how he brings the idiosyncratic charm that he has carved out a niche in to the storied French maison.

Elsewhere, with presentations outnumbering shows in Milan, I always love the opportunity that menswear provides to get up and close with the sartorial expertise of the clothes and talk with the designers; Brioni, Tod’s, and Brunello Cucinelli are always highlights, each finding new ways to make their super luxe offering feel relevant and fresh (and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already planned what time I’ll be at the famous parmesan wheel at the latter).

Orla Brennan, contributing fashion writer

Besides seeing what Jonathan Anderson will do with his first collection for Dior – a moment we are all very excited about – I’m most looking forward to Prada. If Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ last few shows are anything to go by, I predict an intriguing show set and cast of interesting (possibly celebrity) characters coming down the runway – plus, of course, their usual agenda-setting fashion, guaranteed to shift what we find desirable.

I’m also looking forward to Wales Bonner’s return to the Paris Fashion Week schedule. The brand isn’t known for big spectacles, but the stories, music and clothes are always so clever and soulful – a testament to the eponymous designer’s superlative world-building ability.

Read the full Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2026 preview here.

Each year, Norwegian outdoor furniture brand Vestre earmarks ten per cent of its production capacity for unconventional, high-ambition collaborations that blend different creative disciplines – an initiative it affectionately calls 'a little madness'. 'We want everybody to think outside the box, to dare to do something that hasn’t been done before,' says Bjørn Fjellstad, CEO of the company known for its sustainability-led manufacturing. 'This madness is a cultural value that really sets us apart – it inspires us as colleagues, but it’s also a great way to test new ideas and push ourselves creatively.'

So far, it’s given rise to projects like The Plus — Vestre’s Bjarke Ingels-designed factory in the Norwegian forest, widely regarded as the world’s most sustainable furniture factory – and the Peace Bench, created in collaboration with Snøhetta, Hydro and the Nobel Peace Center, based on Nelson Mandela’s quote: 'The best weapon is to sit down and talk'. Now, it has produced a new kind of commission: a form-defying bench and mirror by designer Vincent Laine that will be unveiled in Paris this week.

The limited-edition pieces, described as a 'neo-brutalist furniture series', were conceived by Laine under his studio Anagram, in collaboration with fashion designer Willy Cartier. Produced at The Plus, the sculptural works will serve as scenographic centrepieces for the launch of Jacques Cartier Studio, a new fashion brand co-founded by Willy Cartier, debuting at Paris Men’s Fashion Week later this month (24-29 June) – and marking his shift into creative direction.

Made from layered plates of galvanised steel, the bench's rib-like structure takes cues from historic boatbuilding – a nod to the label’s namesake, the 17th-century French explorer Jacques Cartier (Jacques is also Willy’s middle name). Atop this sits a sculpted wooden seat, CNC-milled from pine and designed to appear as a single, fluid form. Although galvanised steel and wood are materials Vestre knows well, this project reimagined them entirely. 'There’s a kind of inversion in the materials,' says Laine. 'The seat becomes liquid – it could be water, or even a garment. From some angles, it almost looks like it’s draped fabric rather than wood.'

Its seven components were assembled and finished by hand, with natural knots and grain celebrated rather than concealed. Achieving that effect was no small feat, even with the help of Påskallavik Snickeri AB, a Swedish woodworking specialist and long-time Vestre partner. 'It was a very tricky project, even though they're extremely talented craftsmen – to make everything look seamless, so you don't see that there are seven pieces, but just one.'

The project, says Laine, marks a new chapter in his practice. Known for precision-driven work for brands like Leica, Hasselblad, and Db, this commission let him experiment with form, emotion and ambiguity. 'It’s like a distant present moment that’s waiting to be witnessed,' he says. 'Something from a near future – just around the corner, but not quite here yet.'

Next week, the bench and mirror will take centre stage in Paris as part of the scenography for Jacques Cartier Studio’s menswear presentation during fashion week. Models will interact with the pieces in a choreographed performance that blends fashion, furniture, and live music – a layered debut that reflects the collaborative spirit behind the project. 'We’ve always wanted to work together on something,' says Laine of his creative partnership with Willy Cartier. 'It felt like a natural point where we could lean into each other’s brands and do something that’s inherently a mix of us.'

For Fjellstad, the project captures everything 'a little madness' is meant to encourage. 'It was something I'd never seen before, and it just immediately sparked an interest,' he says remembering the first time he saw Laine's design. 'From an industrial perspective, it doesn't make any sense, but from an artistic perspective, it's spectacular. The way we combined a rather rough steel material with this beautiful piece of wood – it's something that's never been done before. And when we finally joined the two together, something happened. It was a very emotional moment.' While the pieces won’t go into wider production, he sees them as a kind of test – a way to push what’s possible and embrace what he calls 'calculated madness'.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Read more Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights

On a sunlit Friday morning in Paris, Sarah Burton revealed her vision for Givenchy in a debut collection which explored notions of contemporary glamour and personal style – a nod to house founder Hubert de Givenchy, whose garments found elegance in restraint, a way to highlight the wearer’s character. ‘He is far more than a couturier,’ said his perennial muse Audrey Hepburn, a client and friend of over four decades, who immortalised the Givenchy little black dress. ‘He is a creator of personality.’

Staging the show in the historic Givenchy salon on Avenue Georges V, the pared-back set – seats were made from piles of envelopes, like those used to store garment pattern pieces – provided something of a blank canvas for Burton’s debut, an intimate showcase with just a handful of guests in attendance. It was perhaps the most anticipated moment of fashion month so far: the award-winning British designer, who was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, was appointed by the Parisian house to replace Matthew M Williams in 2024 having left Alexander McQueen after close to three decades at the British house.

Inside Sarah Burton’s Givenchy debut

This, though, was a fresh start. It began, Burton said, the discovery of a rare cache of Hubert de Givenchy pattern pieces – like those which made up the show’s set – which had been long hidden at 8 Avenue de Vigny, the former Givenchy maison, after a recent renovation. ‘It’s my natural instinct to go back to pattern-cutting, to craftsmanship’ she explained, having built a reputation at Alexander McQueen for precise, sculpted tailoring which reflected the contours of the body (at Givenchy, each garment took at least three fittings to perfect). ‘To cut, shape and proportion. It’s what I feel, how I work, and want to do.’

Here, tailored jackets – drawing inspiration from the tuxedo – were broad at the shoulder with a narrow, carved waistline, while inside-out seams and raw edges suggested the act of construction. A similar approach ran through the collection’s outerwear, while a series of bodysuits, pleated at the neckline, showed a similar fascination with form. Sculpted bustiers, a signature of her tenure at Alexander McQueen, featured throughout, on pretty flared mini dresses or a strapless jumpsuit in tailoring wool.

Other silhouettes captured a feeling of flou: a bouncing gown came in in layers of lemon-yellow tulle, trapeze-shaped dresses opened to a square-shaped back, while asymmetric hemlines (shorter at the front, longer at the back) referenced a number of archival Givenchy designs. Suggestions of glamour came in garments constructed from a tangle of pearl and gem jewellery, or a collage of make-up and powder cases. Accessories, meanwhile, came stamped with ‘Givenchy Paris, 1952’. ‘To go forward, you have to go back to the beginning,’ Burton said. ‘To me, that’s about the atelier. It’s the heart and soul of Givenchy.’

But this was also a collection about contemporary femininity which, despite its relatively brief run time, saw Burton seek to establish a comprehensive, occasion-spanning wardrobe for the woman of today. ‘I want to address everything about modern women,’ she continued of the collection, which had both a striking clarity and more evocative undercurrent of romance. ‘[It’s about] Strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it.’

Burton’s arrival at Givenchy comes after a formative tenure at Alexander McQueen, where she took over from the visionary British designer in the wake of his death in 2010, by which time Burton had already spent 15 years at the brand. She first stepped through its doors in 1996, taking up a placement during her studies at Central Saint Martins, and was appointed head of womenswear in 2000. Honouring Lee McQueen’s legacy, her vision for the house merged romance, folklore and forgotten modes of British craft – often plucked from the northern cities and villages surrounding her hometown of Macclesfield.

The news came that she would be leaving Alexander McQueen in September 2024, causing an outpouring of praise for Burton’s tenure and a lament for the lack of female designers in the big seat at luxury houses. She takes up the helm of Givenchy from Matthew M Williams, making her the brand’s fourth designer in the space of a decade – though a sensitive and steady track record makes Burton a shrewd choice on behalf of the house.

Fittingly, there’s still a connection to her mentor in the move. Burton was a young designer at McQueen during his lavish, controversial stint as Givenchy’s creative director between the years of 1996 and 2001, where he shook up the historic house with displays of twisted beauty and headline-grabbing spectacle. As evidenced this morning in Paris, though, Burton’s vision for Givenchy will be distinctly her own. ‘For me, there’s always a juxtaposition to what I do: you have the dress and the tailoring, and I love that this house has both of those things in its DNA,’ Burton said following her appointment. ‘It felt like it was a great place to be.’

Her arrival marks a changing of the tides in Paris – where houses had previously gambled on the ingenuity of young designers, they now seem to be seeking experienced hands. Recent appointments of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, Peter Copping at Lanvin, and Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford all point to a grasp for stability amid a market in flux.

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The A/W 2025 fashion cycle has almost come to an end and with the spotlight having swung from New York to London and Milan and now settling on Paris, last is certainly not least. As the Wallpaper* fashion team arrive in the City of Light, we reveal their favourite spots to refuel.

These ‘if you know, you know’ spots all embody the irrepressible chic of Paris Fashion Week while offering sanctuary from the chaos; where substance takes precedence over style, but where, of course, style is in no short supply. It is Paris, after all.

Where to eat and drink during Paris Fashion Week

Brasserie Emil

While, once upon a time, Paris was safe in the knowledge that it was the gastronomic capital of Europe, with the culinary scenes in London and elsewhere on the up, the French capital is flexing its muscles. One of the spots defending the title: Brasserie Emil, the restaurant connected to the Chateau Voltaire hotel.

The menu encompasses French classics invigorated by Mediterranean touches: yellowtail carpaccio, veal escalope al limone, rigatoni with fresh morels. Of course, you can always plump for a perfectly-executed chateaubriand. The food, prepared under chef Valentin Lambert, is not stuffy or fusty, but honest and elegant, embodying the sort of social dining that Parisians hold dear.

The surroundings are convivial: despite being perfectly placed for dipping in and out of fashion shows in the 1st arrondissement, Brasserie Emil is a far cry from the white-tableclothed dining halls of yesteryear. Staged by Festen Architecture, the restaurant curates an intimate tavern setting with coffered ceilings and period tiling.

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A l'Épi d'Or

A l'Épi d'Or has barely changed since the 1920s when it was one of many bistros surrounding the old Baltard food market. This is the sort of old-fashioned bistro that would delight an American tourist, with a vintage interior of moleskin banquettes and tarnished mirrored walls. The establishment falls under the dominion of restaurant kingpin Jean-François Piège and his wife Élodie, serving elevated classics like salad Niçoise, croque madame, and steak tartare with chips (you know what they say – 'if it ain’t broke...')

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19 Saint Roch

19 Saint Roch is the brainchild of Pierre Touitou, son of the founder of the French fashion label APC, Jean Touitou. If Touitou the younger ever worried about living in his father’s shadow, he need not have: Pierre has become, in his own right, one of the emblematic chefs of the Parisian bistronomy scene.

At 19 Saint Roch, black and white tiles pave the floors and an open kitchen is separated from diners by a stainless steel counter. Dishes are ravishing, both in appearance and taste, laying on big, bold presentations and flavours in dishes such as grouper with cherries and walnuts, duck with giblet salad, and the famous île flottante, where the bobbing meringue is a perfect cube (all accompanied by a robust selection of natural wine).

Touitou’s influences span from the Mediterranean to the Far East; his signature hors d’oeuvre, for example, is lo bak go – turnip cakes modelled on Chinese dim sum. While the food, like APC’s designs, relies on the minimalist elegance native to Paris, it also allows itself a rare flourish, and is less ‘brutalist’ than Touitou’s other establishments.

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Caché

If you want ‘off the beaten track’, the 20th arrondissement cul-de-sac that Caché calls home (next door to the cemetery containing the tombs of Edith Piaf and Gertrude Stein) is about as inconspicuous as it gets. On a semi-derelict alley, in a velvet-, marble- and brass-clad space that echoes the speakeasies of New York, chef Sylvain Roucayrol does one thing – fish – and does it well. Think toro tuna with ponzu, bergamot-seasoned scallop roasted in its shell, and chicory tempura with anchovy sauce; tables of more than four can also order a whole roasted fish. Wine is a big deal, with a sommelier matching drinks with dishes with pinpoint precision. Italian duo Lorenza Lenzi and Gianpaolo Polverino packed in their respective careers in fashion and advertising to open Caché, whose light-filled space was previously their studio.

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Gigi

Gigi Rigolatto occupies one of those coveted pieces of Paris real estate that boasts full-length, close-up view of the Eiffel Tower, located in the city’s ‘golden triangle’ of premium arrondissements, right above the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Despite this, Gigi is not a tourist trap. In fact, it is discreet, intimate and inviting, named after a conceptual Milanese host who transports diners to his native region with authentic gastronomy and irrepressible charisma. The atmosphere at Gigi’s is irrepressible, with live entertainment, photogenic aperitivos and a bellini bar, not to mention a menu brimming with delicacies such as arancini and ossobuco. The interior, which is the work of architect and interior designer Hugo Toro, is soothing and modern with a touch of opulence in the form of flashes of Sienna marble and Roman travertine.

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Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 took over the French city this week with a packed schedule of runway shows from industry titans – among them Dior, Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Chanel and Givenchy, the last marking the much-anticipated debut of former Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton.

Her opening gambit for the storied Parisian house took place on Friday morning (7 March 2025), seeing Burton draw inspiration from a cache of long-hidden patterns by house founder Hubert de Givenchy, reimagining his signatures for the woman of today. ‘I want to address everything about modern women,’ she said. ‘Strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it.’

Elsewhere, Haider Ackermann made his debut at Tom Ford on Wednesday evening (5 March), having succeeded Peter Hawkings earlier this year; Julian Klausner held his first show as creative director of Dries Van Noten at the Opéra Garnier (also on Wednesday), while Alessandro Michele unveiled his sophomore ready-to-wear collection for Valentino in a surreal, red-hued ‘public bathroom’ (those awaiting Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, though, will have to wait until September for his official arrival).

A handful of intriguing younger names also populated the schedule, including LVMH Prize-winning designers Duran Lantink and Hodakova, while the usual contingent of Japanese designers – among them Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya – presented typically thought-provoking collections on Saturday (8 March 2025).

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss – with additional reporting from Orla Brennan – unpacks the best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025.

Saint Laurent

A ‘simplicity of silhouette – as if created with a few pencil strokes’ is how Anthony Vaccarrello described his masterful A/W 2025 collection for Saint Laurent, which replaced Louis Vuitton this season as Paris Fashion Week’s finale. Now adept at visual spectacle – sleek, monolithic runway sets have become a hallmark of his tenure – Vaccarrello staged this season’s show on what he called ‘a grand onyx oval’, the oil-slick black runway surrounded by panels of mineral rock.

The collection itself was an exercise in singularity, the mining of a silhouette over and over: from the broad shoulder and raised neckline of the collection’s opening looks (this season achieved without use of padding, but instead through the garment’s construction) towards enormous full skirted-gowns, which despite their grandeur, recalled nighties or slips (‘I really liked this idea of elasticity, of movement—all to give a sense of freedom,’ he said). A richness of fabric and colour enlivened these singular looks, from guipere lace and richly-hued satin to a plasticky animal-print material achieved by dipping printed cigaline silk into resin. It made for a transfixing closing act. JM

Miu Miu

Earlier this month in Milan, Miuccia Prada – alongside co-creative director Raf Simons – presented an A/W 2025 Prada collection titled ‘Raw Glamour’. ‘We asked ourselves – what is feminine? What is feminine beauty?’ the designer said at the time, conjuring a dishevelled elegance which confronted notions of conventional beauty. At Miu Miu, the designer – here working solo – continued that interrogation of womanhood with a collection which saw her evoke the symbolic markers of feminine dress, from fur stoles and pointed bras to handbags and heels. ‘These accessories of femininity – bras, furs, brooches – they are things we have had forever. Are they relevant today? Do they lift us up?’

The resulting collection captured a mood of bourgeois Milanese glamour: oversized overcoats were worn with a ‘fur’ stole thrown over the arm and ladylike handbag nestled in its crook, delicate ribbed socks worn with shuffling brown loafers, while blazers were pinned with brooches on each side of the chest. ‘I don’t see these things as clichés,’ she asserted backstage, though they were presented here in disruptive manner: from the pointed bra tops which jutted outwards from beneath delicate, sugary knits, to the construction of the tailoring which was folded strangely at the chest or cut to fall purposely off the shoulder (other jackets were cropped as if sliced in half).

Played out in a surreal showspace covered in girlish yellow moiré on a cast which included actress Sarah Paulson and musician Cortisa Star, these ‘accessories of femininity’ were recast as objects of power – a provocative pitch for independence from the perception-shifting designer. ‘We need femininity in this difficult time to lift us up,’ she said. JM

Kiko Kostadinov

Laura and Deanna Fanning staged their A/W 2025 show for Kiko Kostadinov in Brasserie Mollard – a 130-year-old restaurant on Rue Saint-Lazare covered in its original Belle Époque gilded tiling, where guests were seated around white linen-covered tables as if about to have lunch. The charm of the largely unchanged eatery set the perfect scene for the identical twin design duo’s latest collection, which explored the ‘rakish’ spirit of discovering yourself in a new city. Their muse for the season was Vali Myers, an Australian dancer who moved among Paris’ bohemian set in the 1950s, imagining her ‘gallivanting bravely through the city as the sun rises, just a topcoat thrown over a slip’.

The resulting collection was one of the sisters’ sexiest yet. Taking shape around vintage women’s underpinnings, pointed bras and structured crinolines gave the body an angular sensuality, while a louche softness emerged in lingerie-informed abstract paisley appliqués, liquid darted blouses, and ultra-thin knitwear layers that clung close to the skin. Always offsetting the girly with something rougher, the Fannings looked to the rebellious Teddy Girls – working-class teenagers in 1950s London who wore Victorian-era menswear – and the masculine layering of the modern ‘tomboy’. Suiting and shirting came in skew-whiff shapes and piratey stripes, baggy Japanese denim was splattered with paint, and rounded batwing jackets and tiny cigarette trousers were fastened with rope. Textures and colours, meanwhile, were eccentrically mashed – mohair, moleskin, and alpaca came in primary colours merged with earthy tones – while accessories took on ‘personalities’, from a doctor’s bag to a sprite’s pointed cap.

A display of depth and originality, the collection affirmed the sister’s confidence in the Kiko Kostadinov woman they have been building together since 2018 – one that has been embraced by a devoted community of women around the world. ‘We are thinking of women taking up their bodies, being sexual and monumental, strong minded and soft,’ they said following the show. ‘Finding a path for oneself in the in-between of opposites, the way only a woman can.’ OB

Chanel

A monumental installation by Canadian designer Willo Perron, evocative of an unfurled black ribbon – a perennial Chanel signature – backdropped the house’s A/W 2025 collection. Designed by Chanel’s ‘Creation Studio’ as the house awaits the arrival of Matthieu Blazy (the former Bottega Veneta designer will not present his first collection until September), it was a collection designed to ‘alter perceptions’, whether through size and proportion, or illusory tricks. This was largely achieved through reimagining Chanel emblems – from pearls, ribbons and bows to quilted handbags and tweed suits – in imaginative ways, whether enormous pearl necklaces worn like a sash (they were actually handbags), shimmering trompe l’oeil bows, or cleverly layered tweed ‘three pieces’, comprising a shrunken jacket, wrap skirt and loose-cut trousers worn at once. The idea of illusion continued in degradé ‘denim’ shirts and jeans in printed chiffon, while sheer tulle overlays – sitting over tailored jackets and dresses – had a spectral effect. The result was a collection both playfully surreal and reassuringly Chanel, the perfect placeholder as we await Blazy’s much-anticipated ready-to-wear debut next season. JM

Louis Vuitton

Presenting to just 400 guests – a relatively intimate showcase by Louis Vuitton standards – Nicolas Ghesquière staged his A/W 2025 collection for the house at L’Étoile du Nord, the headquarters of France’s national railway, just next door to Gare du Nord train station. ‘Recreating the bustling atmosphere of a Parisian train station – where fleeting moments are shared between strangers, weaving a tapestry of stories’, the designer explained of the roots of the collection, which played out in a set by Es Devlin, featuring rows of colourful metal seating – a surreal play on the furniture of waiting rooms or train platforms – while film projections of the shadows of travellers-on-the-move appeared around the upper windows of the building’s atrium.

As such, the collection itself comprised a series of characters one might encounter at a train station – albeit with Ghesquière’s eclectic, postmodern sheen. There were colourful raincoats and anoraks, some with a sporty Louis Vuitton logo; business-like trenches and pussybow ties; futuristic ‘uniforms’ recalling those of conductors or attendants; while expressions of old-world glamour, from twisting turban headwear to glittering fur coats and flouncy ruffled dresses recalled what Ghesquière called ‘the excitement of 19th-century rail travel… [a world of] adventure and enchantment.’ Bags, unsurprisingly, were a highlight – slouchy holdalls, slung over the shoulder, met violin and hat cases, blanket bags and vanity boxes – while the cover of Kraftwerk’s 1977 album ‘Trans-Europe Express’ became a motif throughout the collection.

‘The euphoria of discovery… the exhilaration of travel,’ Ghesquière described of the show, which culminated in the models watching over the space from the atrium’s balconies. ‘The enthusiasm of departure or the comfort of return.’ JM

Sacai

This season, Sacai’s Chitose Abe was thinking about the rituals of dressing with a collection titled ‘One Tender Moment’. Namely, the idea of ‘wrapping’ – how we wrap fabrics around our body for warmth, protection or comfort. As ever, this was achieved through adept pattern cutting (she worked as a pattern maker for both Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe before starting her own label), with garments which twisted and looped around the body, like the blazer transforming into forms reminiscent of capes or enormous scarves. The silk foulard was a symbolic motif of the collection’s thrown-on mood, transforming into twisted handkerchief dresses or inset into jackets. Meanwhile, flourishes of adornment – from faux-feather appliqué to oversized paillettes – gave the collection an insouciant, sensual glamour, which Abe said was also reflected in the evocation of Man Ray’s teardrop works in ‘photo stitch’ embroidery. ‘[They] highlight the lips and the eyes – the purest essence of sensual beauty,’ she said. JM

Rokh

Rok Hwang designs his clothes for shy girls – women who might not be the loudest in the room, but who want their wardrobe to relay a certain strength about who they are. This season, the Korean-American designer and Celine alum (Hwang was at the brand during the Phoebe Philo years) explored the idea of ‘Fractured Motion’, applying his signature style of deconstruction and poetic drape to a muted, chalky wardrobe that played with ideas of fragility. Guests were invited to a crumbling French maison to see the show unfold, its rough grandeur setting the stage for a collection that balanced structure and spontaneity. Rather than lean into pure romance, Hwang subverted the tropes of classic tailoring, turning rigid forms into fluid sculptures. Wool coats bloomed into floral shapes, sculptural dresses clung and collapsed in unexpected ways, and layered fabrics gave the feeling of perpetual motion. A series of body pieces were Hwang’s most theatrical – strict, corset-like structures with unravelling edges, and illusion pieces that made models’ torsos resemble the marble busts of Rodin. A love letter to the sensitive souls who have supported his brand since he launched in 2016, this was Hwang at his most experimental and refined. It was about ‘tradition and boldness silently told,’ he said of the collection following the show. OB

Valentino

Alessandro Michele brought his flair for the theatrical to his sophomore ready-to-wear outing for Valentino, which unfolded in a specially constructed showspace at Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe. Evocative of an enormous public bathroom – cubicles ran around the edge of the room, as did sinks and mirrors – the red-hued space provided a surreal but cinematic backdrop for a show exploring ‘ideas of private and public, surfaces and depths’ (Michele called the set ‘Lynchian’). Titled ‘Le Méta-Théâtre des Intimités’, the designer explained in his typically esoteric show notes (references included the philosophers Romano Màdera and Ludwig Wittgenstein), that this was a show about intimacy as performance: before the models emerged from the swinging cubicles, we saw glimpses of feet from beneath the door, as if the person inside was stood in the nude.

It set the stage for a sensually charged collection from the designer: undone lace body suits were inset with narrow satin bras, 1970s-style dresses in clashing shades of red and pink, while thrown-on ‘fur’ coats had a hedonistic glamour. If not stripped back – Michele remains a maximalist at heart – there felt like new clarity to this collection, pulling back some of the more extraneous flourishes of last season towards a harder vision of glamour. Indeed, the collection felt like it was unfolding in the bathroom of a nightclub, with models prowling the space, checking their outfits in the sink mirrors, before disappearing away back into the cubicles. What they were doing inside – and with whom – was left to the imagination. ‘The deepest intimacy is theatre,’ Michele concluded, having put on his own thrilling – and seductive – show. JM

Akris

The vaulted main hall of Le Collège des Bernardins, a former Cistercian refectory, was flooded with blue light for Albert Kriemler’s latest Akris outing, which celebrated the evocative power of the hue. Titled ‘The Blue Hour’, the designer called it ‘a story of clarity, of euphoria, of blue – blue in nature, blue in spaces, blue in artworks, just blue,’ which began by thinking about the moment ‘when day and night cross.’ As such, garments melded codes of day and eveningwear: a macintosh-style jacket, sliced away at the waistline, was reimagined in rich midnight-blue velvet, a ribbed-knit sweater worn with a floating organza skirt, while a zip-up hoodie was adorned with hundreds of iridescent blue paillettes. Feathers were a motif that ran throughout, whether sprouting from a high-heeled pump or in blue and black waves across the collection’s closing look. Kriemler said he wanted them to ‘evolve with movement, continuously changing as they follow the body [and] right to the next party.’ JM

Balenciaga

Demna staged his latest collection on a darkened, labyrinthine runway with ‘multiple entrances and exits’ which the Georgian designer likened to the way you can lose yourself in the creative process. Though having established such a design signature of the house, namely a subversive take on wardrobe archetypes, this was a collection which saw Demna continue, clear-minded and defiant, down his own path. He called the collection, which attendees viewed from up close (everyone had a front-row seat), a study of ‘standard dress codes, and what it takes to twist standard fits and garments into a fashion context… a sociological observation of the wardrobe.’ As such, the catalogue of looks – which moved between sharp, corporate attire, twisted sportswear (a collaboration with Puma featured) and dishevelled eveningwear, with lace and polka dot dresses hiked up to reveal the leg – felt like a revisiting of Demna’s greatest hits, albeit here with new rigour (he talked about a ‘pursuit of the golden ratio… a rethinking of standards’). Highlights included a series of furry-hooded puffer jackets whereby the quilting had been cleverly reworked to recall the shape of a corset or bodice, or tailoring with deep, in-set creases – reminders of the designer’s potent ability to reimagine the familiar anew. JM

Duran Lantink

Duran Lantink invited guests down to an office space – soon to be fashion-favourite design studio Bureau Betak’s new HQ – lined with cubicles to see his A/W 2025 runway unfold. One might have expected a collection of grey office-core formality to have appeared, but that would have been too on the nose for Lantink. Instead came a series of brash, sculptural creations that played with animal prints and ideas of ‘bad taste’. Moving away from the padded bubble forms that have defined previous seasons, more tapered silhouettes used the body as a framework for dramatic character-building; jackets in zebra-print pony hair rose up to the earlobes, velvet leopard print hugged heads in balaclavas and legs in flared trousers, and snakeskin fabric became alien-like neck-swallowing bodysuits. Taking his signature three-dimensional sculpting to wry new territories, the LVMH Prize-shortlisted designer self-titled the collection ‘Duramnimal.’

Mixed in with these jungle prints, a storyline of absurdist Americana ran through battered varsity jackets, camo prints, padded trapper caps and oversized denim that was constructed to have the illusion of floating in front of models' hips. Having his fun with small town Southern aesthetics, one pair of jeans even took the style of assless chaps. But it was the opening and closing looks that were the most talked about – Mica Argañaraz in an Action Man-style latex six-pack torso, and a male model with waxy, swinging boobs. ‘I love the idea of women as action figures,’ the designer said in explanation. ‘I think everyone should feel empowered to create their own identity and not feel restricted by anything.’ OB

McQueen

During his tenure at McQueen thus far, Irish designer Seán McGirr has largely found inspiration on the streets of London – his adopted home city where he arrived to study at Central Saint Martins in the early 2010s. This season, in a more intimate presentation, his third collection for the British house, he said post-show that he was thinking about ‘Victorian London… particularly Charles Dickens’ Night Walks, conjuring a nocturnal dandy ‘who walks on the streets until dawn’. Historical inflections came in raised ruffled collars, capes and carved waistlines, while extreme elongated footwear – recalling the shape of a winklepicker – lent a strangeness to the silhouette. In a continuation of the crystallised finale looks of last season, the collection was heavy on embellishment, from bejewelled facemarks to scores of surface adornment on leather jackets and dresses, or the gilded embroidery on the frock coat which closed the show.

Another reference was Oscar Wilde, a writer McGirr said he grew up with as a teenager and who is synonymous with the figure of the dandy. ‘To me, dandyism is the ultimate act of adornment; deeply personal, playful and transgressive. It raises questions of character and identity, idealism and gender,’ said McGirr. ‘I wanted to explore the enduring relevance of the dandy’s radical spirit in our modern world.’ In this translation of past to present, McGirr also spent more time in the McQueen archive this season, paying particular attention to Lee McQueen’s hourglass-shaped tailoring. ‘McQueen is all about the waist… I wanted to rework [that] in a way that made sense for today.’ JM

Comme des Garçons

Rei Kawakubo’s latest runway show was a declaration of independence. ‘Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all,’ she issued in a brief statement on her A/W 2025 show, presented in Paris on Saturday afternoon. ‘There is also strong value in small. Small can be mighty.’ She is proof: now over half a century since she founded the convention-defying label in Tokyo, Japan in 1973, Comme des Garçons provides alternative to the luxury fashion conglomerate, shepherding a small umbrella of designers (among them Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya) and incubating several more (the designers behind Vaquera, one of those labels, were in attendance at the show). As such, the collection’s opening felt like a send up of the corporate uniform: tailoring fabrics, from Prince of Wales check to pinstripes, were reimagined into Kawakubo’s strange, undulating forms. That off her chest, the rest of the collection looked towards tropes of femininity, from ruffles, pleats and floral motifs (the latter as a 3D adornment on the inside of a tartan dress, which the model held open as she walked) to textures of velvet and satin. As ever, it was a free association of ideas from a designer who, at 82 years old, remains one of fashion’s most liberated – and independent – voices. JM

Hermès

Upon entering the low-lit Hermès space, the feeling underfoot was like stepping onto a particularly plush material – though, as your eyes adjusted, the spiralling runway was actually covered in a soft layer of soil. It set the stage for a ‘determined’ collection from Nadège Vanhée, who in lieu of thematics described the collection’s mood as ‘sculptural, resilient, seductive… [the woman] moves forward, never looks back. She has everything she needs.’ So out stomped her largely leather-clad cast in riding boots and high-heeled brogues, the latter’s perforations also appearing as leather piping on sculpted dresses and mini shorts. Leather was a focus throughout – an expression of the house’s extraordinary command of the material – from enveloping reversible overcoats to a stripped-back riff on the biker jacket and pin-sharp tailoring, or the sensual line of a ribbed wool and leather dress. In its movement between the everyday – albeit reimagined in hyper-luxurious style – and a pulsing undercurrent of sensuality, it was the latest chapter in Vanhée’s ongoing interrogation of womanhood at the house. Now in her tenth year, it is a vision that looks more desirable than ever. JM

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

Andreas Kronthaler was feeling sentimental this season. ‘This collection is about honouring the place I have lived for more than 30 years: London,’ he said ahead of his A/W 2025 show, which – if not a touch ironically – was held in Paris yesterday afternoon. His ode to the city began with the anchors of every Westwood collection – knitwear and tailoring – which the designer subverted through a series of witty, swashbuckling silhouettes that channelled the distinctive creative language he shared with his late partner, Vivienne Westwood, for three decades.

Heritage fabrics were pushed to new realms of invention, so that Harris tweeds came in a carnival of shades and stripes, deep blue Yorkshire wools were transformed into fuzzy bodysuits, and bolshy Scottish tartans appeared in Clueless-esque wonky suiting. Ties, meanwhile, were so exaggeratedly long they skimmed the knees. Elsewhere, a love letter to Westwood’s style of drape, cut and corsetry ran through the designer’s more feminine looks, where cowl necks and boning exposed bare chests, and silhouettes roved between Victorian to Grecian and bohemian.

Drawing inspiration from a lengthy list of figures the brand admires – among them Quentin Crisp, Gertrude Stein and Rihanna – the result was a collection that unified a hodge-podge of characters and sensibilities. Not unlike the subcultural melting pot of London itself, Kronthaler’s school of A/W 2025 was a place where an office-punk, windswept chiffon goddess, padded 1980s ski instructor, and a bodiced gothic bride (who closed out the show) could happily coexist. ‘Vivienne taught me the love of tailoring and knitting,’ said Kronthaler. ‘The formality it gives you is a framework to express yourself. There’s nothing sexier than a suit.’ OB

Noir Kei Ninomiya

Until 2019, Noir Kei Ninomiya showed his raven black collections in stark white rooms – just natural light, no music – with the idea that others could see the clothes ‘deeply and simply’. Things have changed quite substantially since then. Yesterday morning, guests of the Comme des Garçons designer’s A/W 2025 show were welcomed into a darkened space that was lit solely by the glow of UV, illuminating the outfits of the oft-too serious front row like dancers in a neon rave.

The collection that followed was, as ever with Kei Ninomiya, an expression of unrestrained invention. Soundtracked to glitchy electronica, the opening looks had the colour and cheer of a kindergarten crafts room; bulbous plastic shapes resembled squishable toys in gashapon vending machines, an assemblage dress of massive bows had the texture of multi-coloured pipe cleaners, and dozens of yarn pom poms were adjoined into a modish ultra-mini dress topped with a mushroom stool matching hat. Designing from impulse rather than reference, the designer summed up the collection in a typically mysterious fashion – ‘a kind of feeling that is uncertain and hard to understand.’

While the Japanese designer has, in recent years, introduced a more vivid palette, his most enduring fascination remains in the language of black – as reflected in the closing looks of his A/W 2025 collection. Showcasing his gift for adorning the body in unconventional materials ‘to achieve expressions impossible with just fabric‘, this time resin was the star of these monochromatic creations. Taking on alien proportions, balls of shimmering fronds exploded from the body, while inky tailoring saw spines of spiky white plastic that glowed under the UV sprout and spiral from jackets. It made for a spectacle of sensory overload that only Kei Ninomiya could have produced. ‘Black is just the word, but it really has a meaning, very strong and very beautiful, and very deep,’ he once said of the beloved shade. ‘It has such a feeling.’ OB

Junya Watanabe

After a rugged Junya Watanabe MAN show earlier this year – which largely riffed on tropes of classic American sportswear – the Japanese designer was back to a more experimental mood for his latest womenswear outing, shown in a stripped out former shop on Paris’ Rue Auber. ‘I'm fascinated by creating clothing that appears to be unrealistic. This time, I created everyday clothing from a cubist perspective,’ he elucidated, explaining the collection’s protruding spikes or sharp, geometric surfaces, which transformed pieces like the leather biker jacket or trench coats into surreal – but undeniably Watanabe-esque – forms. Others had enormous pitched shoulders, or became strange hybrids, like a pair of lace-up leather boots which became the sleeve of a jacket. Another inspiration was the musician Jimi Hendrix, which lent the collection a rock and roll inflection, from amped-up fuzzy jackets and shades to python-print pants and garments crafted from hair and wigs. JM

Victoria Beckham

This season, Victoria Beckham found inspiration close to home – within the four walls of her own dressing room, to be precise. Unveiled in a stark runway space in Paris yesterday evening to a sultry soundtrack that moved between jazz and trip hop, her A/W 2025 show was about the ‘tricks’ and ‘happy accidents’ that shape the way we put on clothes every day. Doubling down on the flattering cuts that are the backbone of her brand, the resulting collection roved freely between dress codes, as if pulled instinctively from every rail of the wardrobe. Raincoats and parkas were exaggerated or cropped, exposing body-hugging garments that took cues from the knicker drawer. Elsewhere, Beckham played with the ways women might borrow their boyfriend’s clothes and adapt them, so that masculine shirting was rolled up at the sleeve and oversized trousers were cinched at the midriff. Winking at the make-up tutorials she films at home, silk dressing gowns were reconstructed into lustrous evening dresses, while the designer’s initial-emblazoned bathrobe was slashed into pussy-bowed smoking jackets in terry-cloth towelling. It was a love letter to spur-of-the-moment dressing that was firmly rooted in Beckham’s own personal language of chic – clothes that she and the brand’s customer have worn, and will wear, time and again. OB

Issey Miyake

Since the late 1980s, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has invited members of the public to hold specific objects – from plastic buckets and chairs to stacks of oranges – for a minute or so (Wurm discourages specificity on timings). A practice the artist has returned to over the decades, Wurm’s ‘One Minute Sculptures’ see the ‘participating viewer become part of the sculpture for an ephemeral time,’ as a blurb on the artist’s website describes. On Friday afternoon in Paris, Wurm staged his latest edition of ‘One Minute Sculptures’ as the backdrop to Issey Miyake’s A/W 2025 runway show. Held at the Carrousel du Louvre, a group of performers were invited to interact with Issey Miyake garments, stretching them into strange, body-like forms for the duration of the show – an apt reflection of the playful spirit of the Japanese label, which has long been fascinated by fabric and form.

The collection itself was titled ‘[N]either [N]or’, seeing head designer Satoshi Kondo look towards the ‘ambiguity and many in-betweens’ of Wurm’s project for a collection that was rooted in the ‘freedom of wearing [clothing] in one’s own way and the exciting possibilities that are yet to be discovered within the garments’. As a result, there was a spirit of play in Kondo’s clothes – trompe l’oeil prints of Issey Miyake knitwear ran along undulating plissé gowns, blown-up paper bags became colourful strappy tops, and clever new heat-pressed knits made structured, paper doll-like silhouettes. A liberated use of colour, evocative of Wurm’s photographs, ran throughout.

It was a collection that continued Kondo’s recent winning streak. His garments have the illusion of spontaneity, though they are actually the result of several months – even years – of fabric experimentation and craft. ‘Issey Miyake was tenacious and stubborn. It’s something that echoes with me, too – that tenacity, that perseverance,’ Kondo told Wallpaper* in the recent March 2025 Style Issue. ‘He continued until he found something really original. It’s a mindset. When you want a really beautiful flower, you don’t go to the florist, you go out into the forest.’  JM

Givenchy

Sarah Burton’s first collection for Givenchy began with the discovery of a cache of pattern pieces, stuffed in brown envelopes and hidden behind a wall at the former Givenchy maison at 8 Avenue de Vigny, found during a recent renovation. Created by Hubert de Givenchy, they date back to 1952, the year he founded the eponymous house. For the former Alexander McQueen designer – who is known for a meticulous hand when it comes to cut and make – they sparked the exploration of contemporary womanhood which unfolded at the Givenchy salon on Avenue Georges V on Friday morning. ‘It’s my natural instinct to go back to pattern-cutting, to craftsmanship,’ she explained, noting that each garment was fitted at least three times on the body before walking the runway. ‘To cut, shape and proportion. It’s what I feel, how I work, and want to do.’

It led to a collection that eschewed theatrics for clarity and purpose, though not without flourishes of glamour and romance. ‘I want to address everything about modern women,’ she said. ‘Strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it.’ So there was precise tailoring, carved narrow at the waist and wide at the shoulder (edges were left raw as if to suggest an act of construction), trapeze-shaped overcoats, and roomy leather shirts and jackets, while eveningwear moved from intricately embroidered opera coats tied with enormous obi-style bows towards bouncing layers of lemon yellow tulle, flared ballet skirts and tuxedo-inspired tailoring, sliced at the waist or turned back to front. Meanwhile, in splashes of the surreal, tops and dresses were constructed from make-up powder cases and tangles of jewellery.

It was a strong start which, despite its sheen of modernity, was nonetheless rooted in Hubert de Givenchy’s archival designs. In the sunlit salon – which is also the historic site of the house’s couture atelier – the intimate guest list perched on symbolic piles of pattern pieces, like those discovered hidden on Avenue de Vigny. ‘To go forward, you have to go back to the beginning,’ Burton said. ‘To me, that’s about the atelier. It’s the heart and soul of Givenchy.’ JM

Chloé

Chemena Kamali continued to hone her breezy, bohemian vision for Chloé – one that recalls Karl Lagerfeld’s free-spirited early collections for the French house – though this season, the German designer talked about seeking ‘evolution… to redefine and to evolve the Chloé woman’s state of mind’. There was certainly a more opulent feel to the collection, which borrowed from bourgeois dress codes – namely a proliferation of ‘fur’ (like most designers this season, it was actually shearling with the illusion of fur), whether as nipped, patchworked jackets, trims or stoles, while heritage overcoats, ladylike chain handbags and Mary Jane footwear struck a similar mood.

They were welcome additions to the Chloé uniform, which this season felt more grounded in everyday wear – Kamali talked about a finding mood of ‘realness and instinctive ease’ in flared jeans and leather trousers, as well as the eclectic, thrown-on styling. That said, there was still fun to be had in the romantic gowns in the millefeuille ruffles of taffeta and lace which have become the designer’s signature. ‘I thought about how we romanticise the past through an intuitive lens, blending traces of tradition and historical fragments, pieces passed down through generations, what we once loved with what we love today,’ she described. JM

Rabanne

It is astounding how fur – albeit in faux or shearling iterations – has dominated this season’s runways, emerging time and again across the four major cities. No doubt it speaks to our desire for protection against the elements, both real and existential – an idea that will surely be unpacked by commentators in the coming weeks. It was at Rabanne Julien Dossena conjured some of the most arresting ‘furs’ of the month so far, spanning knit gowns with tassel-like ‘tails’ around the hem, sliced shearling skirts and tabard tops, and bombastic fur coats lined with shimmering, tinsel-like fabric – at once glamorous and primitive. Dossena called the juxtaposition one of preciousness and protection: opposing impulses which also met in clear plastic raincoats worn over gleaming chainmail dresses, or the hardy, outdoorsy wools and leathers clashed with delicate beadwork or sequins. These tonal shifts were intriguing and beautiful, confirming Dossena’s status as one of Paris’s most consistently impressive designers. With another stellar collection under his belt – and having served over a decade at Rabanne – the question lingers: will Dossena be one of fashion’s next big moves? JM

Rick Owens

Held in one of the vast interior wings of Paris’s Palais de Tokyo – a longtime show location for the designer – Rick Owens called his latest womenswear collection ‘Concordians’, the same title as his menswear show held earlier this year. It references the industrial Italian town of Concordia, just outside Venice, where Owens produces the bulk of his collections each season.

Having travelled there for over two decades (in various dwellings, from a couch in his office to a ‘serial killer hotel’ and now his own apartment), the town’s relative banality has become a part of his and his team’s creative rhythm: ‘a studious isolation… almost bleakness. This cloistered life seems to be what it takes to be able to focus on reaching for something weird and wonderful.’

The spoils of that isolation were on show here in a collection which channelled a subversive, Owensian glamour: whether the ‘chain-linked’ laser-cut leather dresses which appeared on the body like scales or feathers (a collaboration with Parisian designer Victor Clavelly), towering, broad-shouldered overcoats in wool or leather, or, in another continuation of the menswear show earlier this year, ‘megacrust’ denim, whereby the fabric is intricately layered with bronze foil and wax. ‘I want to depend on fewer things but make them as supernatural as possible,’ he said after the menswear show, and here he seemed to retain that focus – this was a collection which was undeniably Rick Owens, though here evolved through extraordinary craft and make.

Iggy Pop’s ‘Mass Production’, which soundtracked his very first show 23 years ago, made a nostalgic return – another suggestion that Owens was digging deeper into his label’s rebellious roots. ‘We won’t legally be able to use it on YouTube,’ the designer said, ‘but it’s a song that yearns for the weird and wonderful, as much to me now as it did back then.’ JM

Schiaparelli

What would the world be like if we woke up tomorrow and there were no men? How would women dress? These musings are usually the stuff of playful debate over the dinner table, though yesterday in Paris, Daniel Roseberry brought them to life with a high-glamour A/W 2025 collection for Schiaparelli. Observing ‘that the women I know rarely, if ever, dress for men… when they do dress up, it’s for other women, and it’s women’s praise that matters to them,’ the American designer imagined how women would remember masculine archetypes in an alternate reality where they ‘inherited the earth’.

The resulting collection, which Roseberry titled Lone Star, pulled from his fantastical couture offering in January, as well as old Hollywood tailoring and gunslinging Western tropes that paid tribute to his upbringing in Texas. Balancing ideas of dominance and tenderness, his women appeared in decadent velvets, voluminous furs and sheeny satins in silhouettes that played with juxtapositions: feline second-skin dresses, demure oversized 1940s suiting and spangled cinched-waist drama fit for the red carpet. Southern charm came in waves of bow-legged denim, leather fringing, cowboy boots and low-slung belts that were accentuated through the house’s gilded codes. It was, he says, a tribute to the strong women in his life.

‘In this post-social media era – when many of us have become weary of and disgusted by living our lives through the screen – many of us are asking what makes life meaningful,’ Roseberry said in a letter to attendees. ‘I’ve spent the past few months speaking less and listening more. I wanted to make things that can inspire. The women in my life are lone stars – there’s no one else like them, and there could never be. I hope they, and all women, feel the same about these clothes.’ OB

Tom Ford

Haider Ackermann made a confident start to his tenure at Tom Ford, which he described as an attempt to capture the mood of seduction which he sees as foundational to the label. ‘I hope I seduced you all,’ the designer said backstage after the show, which instilled the uninhibited glamour synonymous with the label – founded in 2005, just after the eponymous designer’s departure from Gucci – with something more louche and darkly romantic, a hallmark of Ackermann’s own work at both his now-shuttered label and Berluti, where he was briefly creative director. Comprising both men’s and womenswear, the collection deftly shifted between daywear – largely in leather and largely black – towards showstopping eveningwear in the bold, painterly hues with which Ackermann has become synonymous. A sinuous yellow gown was hiked up above the hip on one side, another came in striking green satin sliced seductively along its back (a particularly Haider-esque gesture), while a lilac dress was adorned with shimmering tassels. For men, tailoring was pin-sharp, with smatterings of sparkle a nod to the more overt glamour elsewhere. It ended with a standing ovation – the intimate show was packed with Ackermann’s friends and well-wishers – while Tom Ford himself gave a seal of approval with a warm embrace at the show’s close. JM

Acne Studios

Acne Studios latest collection played out amid a surreal skyline conceived by the set designer Polly Philp, whereby totemic metal ‘skyscrapers’ were interspersed with tapestry-covered ‘rocks’ by design duo Front, inspired by the natural landscapes of Sweden. This clash, between nature and the city, provided the impetus of Jonny Johansson’s latest collection, which saw the designer imagine his protagonist wandering from the windswept Nordic north and into an urban cityscape for ‘a dynamic juxtaposition of two worlds; an exercise in contrasts.’ As such, garments which suggested an overt glamour – like a power-shouldered body suit – were imagined in soft, teddy-bear like fabrics. Indeed the bear, inspired by a rewatch of Björk’s Human Behaviour video (the musician had ‘curated’ a newly mixed version for the soundtrack), became a trope, with the construction of a teddy bear’s limbs inspiring the blown-up proportions of tailoring and outerwear, as well as an enormous paw-like boot.

Alongside were pieces which conjured the surreal femininity Johansson has been honing in recent seasons – a dress covered in trailing ribbons and bows, crinkled leather pussybow shirts, hazy trompe l’oeil prints – while a sense of the homespun recalled the designer’s own roots in northern Sweden. ‘A Nordic upbringing develops a deep connection to nature. Nature and urban cities have always had a relation that fascinates me,’ he said. ‘It is the tension and contrast between the two of them that I have tried to portray within this collection.’ JM

READ: Acne Studios has created a surreal skyline for its A/W 2025 runway show

Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney was in a playful mood this season, holding her runway show in the surreal ‘Stellacorp’ headquarters, a simulacrum of a corporate office complete with spinning chairs and computer desks. Even more surreal were the handful of male and female pole dancers who emerged at the show’s finale, a nod to the collection’s title, which was ‘Laptop to Lapdance’. ‘A bold day-to-night wardrobe for the working woman,’ described McCartney of the collection’s roots, which saw her imagine the season’s protagonist heading from a day in the office to a night out on the town in typically irreverent fashion. Part Working Girl – power shoulders were a definite feature – the collection swayed between double-breasted tailoring, pencil skirts and office blouses (worn with a hefty dose of irony), and party wear, from tasseled jeans to T-shirts which read ‘Slippery When Wet’. And, while it made for a moment of much-needed escapism, McCartney remained fastidious about sustainability, with 96 per cent of the collection crafted from conscious materials (and, as ever, 100 per cent cruelty free). This included some impressive versions of python and ostrich skin, here crafted from the innovative Yatay M, an alternative leather made from mycelium. JM

Dries Van Noten

In the first of two debuts of the day – Haider Ackermann would present his first Tom Ford collection later that evening – Belgian designer Julian Klausner heralded the start of a new era at Dries Van Noten, taking over from the eponymous founder who made his exit last June. Having worked at he house since 2018, and arriving with the full blessing of Van Noten himself, the show at the Opéra Garnier was less about a full-scale revolution than it was about a steady transition from one designer to the next.

The show’s setting was a clue to the inspiration: Klausner imagined his protagonist for the season dashing through the gilded opera house grabbing pieces of fabric and wrapping them around her body intuitively, tied with shoelaces. As such, there was a sense of improvisation to the silhouette: a halterneck top appeared crafted from a handful of silk scarves, while dresses wrapped cleverly around the body, as if thrown on in haste. Opulent fabrications – sometimes clashing – nodded towards Van Noten’s own mastery of texture and print, though here there was bolder eclectism, like a series of garments adorned with hundreds of different curtain ties, or the amalgam of paillettes, animal prints, checks or brocade.

‘Looking back, I realised I made this collection in a very instinctive way,’ he said after the show. ‘I went towards things I always loved. I thought about the fact that the first time I fell in love with fashion was as a child playing in the costume box, just grabbing things that you love, combining them, mixing them. Dries wanted me to feel the freedom of doing it alone.’ JM

Courrèges

Nicolas Di Felice said he wanted to mine a feeling of optimism this season at Courrèges, despite what he admits are increasingly ‘uncertain times’. Set to a remix of Chantal’s 1990 house classic ‘The Realm’ and centred around a flurry of pink confetti cleverly conceived by French set designer Rémy Briere, Di Felice called the runway ‘a place to unite, to gather – a safe space for joy and togetherness’ akin to his beloved raves (the Belgian designer grew up in the 1990s rave scene, a constant touch point of his work).

It lent the collection a looser, more intuitive feel: a series of dresses, which wrapped cleverly around the body, were based on the idea of throwing on a scarf (the silhouette ran throughout, and was also inspired by the elongated rectangle shape of a streamer), while enormous ostrich feathers became tops (the musician Arca was already wearing one front row). Meanwhile archetypal garments – like the tank top, or the biker jacket – were twisted at their seams into intriguing new proportions, often with the illusion that they were slipping off the body.

‘This collection started from the first time I was pessimistic in my life, which was not like me at all, last season,’ Di Felice explained backstage, noting that photographs of confetti by the artist Dan Colen had brought him back to life. ‘So this [collection] is the total opposite. I found myself so happy, full of joy, an optimist again.’ JM

Alaïa

Marking a return to Paris after showing at New York’s Guggenheim Museum last season, Pieter Mulier staged his latest collection in the Alaïa atelier on Rue Servan. Populating the space were a series of monolithic heads in roughly hewn unfired clay by the contemporary Dutch artist Mark Manders. Mulier said he was drawn to the works for the way they appear to stand outside of time or place: ‘Manders’ work fascinates me – each of his sculptures seem itself a work either in progress, or marked by the passage of an imaginary time, reminiscent at once of many different cultures,’ he said. ‘And that idea of a non-linearity – of space, and of time – was inspiring.’

The idea of non-linearity – of garments which traversed time and space, a ‘beauty outside of any era or geography, free of boundaries’ – ran through the standout collection. Referencing at once ancient deities (on his Instagram prior to the show, he posted a carved Bronze Age figure of a woman, captioned ‘Modern Venus’) and the archival designs of house founder Azzedine Alaïa (notably, a focus on hooded silhouette and pleats), the resulting garments were what Mulier called ‘kinetic sculptures’. Romantic flourishes came in heart-shaped cut-outs and flower-like pom poms at the neckline, while looping gowns – held in place with twists of metal – continued the ‘gravity-defying’ silhouettes of last season.

‘The message is about singularity, individuality, the eternal strength and resilience of women, empowering them through their clothes,’ Mulier continued. ‘That always inspired Azzedine, and it always inspires me – the strength of beauty.’ JM

Dior

The idea of metamorphosis was at the centre of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest collection for Dior, an idea reflected in a theatrical mise-en-scène by the experimental American theatre director Robert Wilson which recreated the dawn of time in his symbolic style (from jagged glaciers that rose from the floor to a pterodactyl which zoomed across the space). Grazia Chiuri’s collection had also begun with something elemental, at least in fashion terms: the white shirt, which she linked with Gianfranco Ferré, who led the house in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and who was an influence here.

The foundational garment became a jumping off point for an exploration of historic dress codes, layered under corsetry or dramatically ruffled and elongated at the cuff, chiming with the Elizabethan-inflected frock coats, ruff-inspired pearl necklaces and flared-waist crinoline gowns elsewhere (Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and its time-travelling, gender-shifting protagonist, were another inspiration). Meanwhile, tough black leather met playful faux-ermine stoles, while slouchy parka-style outerwear prevented the collection from feeling like costume. Grazia Chiuri also reintroduced the John Galliano-era J’Adore Dior T-shirt, including a version given new life with patches of delicate lace. ‘A femininity that imagines possible futures by mixing evocations of a past,’ the designer described. JM

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

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

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

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

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

Lanvin

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

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

Sacai

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

Hermès

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

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

Dior

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

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

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

Junya Watanabe MAN

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

Rick Owens

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

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

IM Men

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

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

Paul Smith

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

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

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

Lemaire

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

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

Auralee

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

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

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

While Paris Fashion Week might mark the final stop on fashion’s world tour – with shows in New York, London and Milan already wrapped up for the season – its comprehensive nine-day schedule, featuring some of fashion’s most well-known names, meant that there was still plenty to digest before it closed yesterday evening with an exuberant show from Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton. Exploring the idea of ‘soft power', it unfolded at the Louvre in front of an audience which included French First Lady Brigitte Macron.

Elsewhere, notable moments have included Alessandro Michele’s debut runway show for Rome-based house Valentino, which took place on Sunday afternoon on the outskirts of Paris. It marked a return to fashion for the Italian designer after exiting Gucci in November of 2022 following a critically acclaimed and commercially successful tenure in which he became one of fashion’s most well-known figures. A musing on the power of beauty, it was an evolution of the romantic, eclectic design codes he honed at Gucci, here rewritten with nods to the Valentino archive and the Roman street. ‘When I say beauty, I am clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,’ said Michele. ‘I rather allude to that unique capability to deeply feel and connect with something.’

On Wednesday, eyes were on Dries Van Noten – the brand hosted its first show since the departure of the eponymous designer – while yesterday morning, they turned to Chanel, where a creative director is still yet to be announced (the show did, however, mark a return to the Grand Palais, the spiritual home of the Chanel runway show). Numerous other big names have shown alongside, including Balenciaga, Hermès, Saint Laurent, Dior and Loewe, where Jonathan Anderson staged a ‘radical act of reduction’ on Friday morning.

Here, reported from Paris, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss picks the best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025.

The best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025

Louis Vuitton

It was the perfect end to Paris Fashion Week: an uninhibited, exuberant Louis Vuitton collection from Nicolas Ghesquière, who as he enters his second decade at the Parisian house seems to be entering something of a creative renaissance. The runway, which raised upwards as the show began, appeared constructed from hundreds of hammered-together Louis Vuitton trunks, while a neon-light ‘Louis Vuitton Paris’ sign at the end of the runway recalled a golden age of full-throttle 1980s runway shows. The designer called the collection a musing on ‘soft power’, and the intriguing juxtaposition the saying captures, here figured in the opposition between structure and fluidity, soft lines and razor-sharp cuts. Or, in Ghesquière’s words (via the collection notes) ‘the suppleness of structure… ethereal opulence… resolute femininity… the mechanics of fluidity.’ There was a distinctly 1980s flair: bold, wide-shouldered jackets which flared at the waist were worn with knee-length-leggings, pirate-style pants beneath a flare of tulle (recalling the New Romantic movement), while the era’s opulence was captured in billowing gowns, a rich melange of print, and layer upon layer of jewellery. Though it was anything but nostalgic: each look came with the sheen of futurism which is so distinct to Ghesquière’s work. Meanwhile a striking white opera coat, fluid in cut and tied at the neck with a bow, was a counterpoint of elegance and restraint. Together with a euphoric soundtrack featuring songs from Jamie xx’s new album ‘In Waves’, it was an end-of-fashion-week moment that had you walking on air.

Miu Miu

The Miu Miu show set had been created by Poland-born, London-based artist Goshka Macuga, in which hundreds of newspapers – ‘The Truthless Times’ – whirred across the ceiling as if at the printing press (the installation at Palais d’Iéna will be a part of Art Basel Paris 2024, supported by the brand). An accompanying short film – featuring sparring lovers Pathos and Lagos – took place in the newspaper’s fictional printing plant and explored themes of truth and misinformation, ‘the struggle for truth and meaning in contemporary society’. On this prescient issue, Miuccia Prada weighed in with a collection which looked towards youth for inspiration, a ‘period of absolute truth,’ said the designer via the collection notes. ‘Before dissimulation is learned, each individual is honest to themselves, to their ideals. And as 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.’

As such, it began with the simplest of white dresses, worn by 16-year-old Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, the daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. Other garments had a similar clarity – white cotton skirts and blouses, colour-blocked anoraks, camisole tops, pleated kilts and school blazers – though assembled with the underlying strangeness, and frisson of subversion, which runs through Mrs Prada’s oeuvre (nylon knickers, undone dresses and clashing 1970s prints, reminiscent of her S/S 2005 collection, all featured). The starry model line-up also featured Alexa Chung, Hilary Swank and Willem Dafoe – who walked for Prada’s infamous A/W 2012 ‘Villains’ show – the latter, at age 69, proving that in Mrs Prada’s world, youth is just a mindset.

Chanel

It was a return to the Grand Palais this season – the longtime home of the Chanel show – after the turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts building underwent a renovation for the Olympics (in the time between, shows were held at the Grand Palais Éphémère across the river). The light-filled space, thanks to its vast domed glass ceiling, lent a feeling of freshness, while an enormous Chanel-branded bird cage in the centre recalled the theatrics of Karl Lagerfeld’s tenure. For spring/summer, it was again the turn of the Chanel design team to create the collection after the departure of Virginie Viard has left the house without a creative director (rumours of her replacement still swirl). Using the metaphor of a bird ‘spreading its wings beneath the glass roof of the nave’, this was a collection of ease and lightness: frilled tulle emerged from the collars of the house’s signature tulle jackets, floating organza capes were tied around the neck with black bows, and diaphanous layered knits were featherweight in construction. Meanwhile motifs relating to birds, whether delicate feather trims, or feather illustrations on silk, appeared throughout. It ended with actress-singer Riley Keough mounting a swing inside central birdcage and singing a version of ‘When Doves Cry’ – a nod to the the 1991 Coco L'Esprit de Chanel advert starring house muse Vanessa Paradis.

Balenciaga

Balenciaga’s Demna distributed a handwritten note to guests this season, which outlined the designer’s desire to return to something more intuitive, an almost childlike desire to dress up and play. ‘My early memories of fashion start with me drawing looks on cardboard, cutting them away and making “fashion shows” on my grandmother’s kitchen table,’ he wrote. ‘35 years later, this show reconnects me to the beginning of my vision. It’s a tribute to fashion which has a point of view.’ In the specially constructed show space outside the Cour du Dôme des Invalides, this childhood scene was writ large: an enormous polished wood table ran the length of the space and would serve as the runway, around which guests sat as if waiting to be served a lavish dinner. Nearly submerged in darkness, the scene – in typical Demna style – was laced with a feeling of strangeness, as if a childhood memory was rising up to the surface (an amped-up version of Britney Spears’ Gimme More added to the surreal mood).

The collection’s opening looks captured the idea of placing cut-out garments onto the body: what appeared as lacy lingerie was actually trompe l’oeil motifs on a body suit. Other pieces played with proportion: dresses tied up along the back with enormous corsetry laces, left undone and trailing along after the models as they walked (they also revealed the skin of their bodies beneath). Jeans were cut perilously low on the waist – a riff on the bumster – and worn with blown-up jackets, while ‘fashion victim’ silhouettes were a playful pile up of garments, teamed with perforated caps that cleverly tilted to cover the face (in a busy Paris Fashion Week’s final days, they looked particularly appealing). Another sweater was playfully daubed with an ironic ‘Fashion Designer’ slogan, though Demna felt at his best in the collection’s crescendo of closing looks: a trio of extreme wide-shouldered jackets and dresses, which in their abundant cut and sculpted line captured something of the spirit of Cristóbal Balenciaga, albeit in Demna’s singular, uncompromising style. With its phalanx of stars and an enormous screaming crowd outside, the Balenciaga buzz felt well and truly back.

Rokh

Rok Hwang felt in a more romantic mood this season, titling his collection ‘Thread Blossom’ and building it around a series of flower blossom motifs crafted from leftover fabric, lace and thread he had gathered in his studio. He described the process as ‘giving [leftovers] entirely new forms and life’, a loving act of transformation which informed a collection rich in craft and construction, from sliced tailoring – out of which delicate panels of a white shirt emerged from beneath – to intricate ruffles, folds and smocking, some adorned with trails of thread. The result was a collection both abstract and homespun, where flowers sprouted to create unexpected forms, or ruffles rippled across the body haphazardly. It was satisfying to see a greater softness this season: cardigans which buttoned open across the midriff were particularly appealing, as was a bold red sweater worn with billowing trousers, ribbed socks and ballet pumps. Hwang summarised it as a ‘celebration… of the relentless pursuit of beauty, an intricate dance of form and innovation, where the past, present, and future are interwoven.’

Sacai

Sacai’s Chitose Abe was in a celebratory mood this season: not only was she marking an impressive quarter century in business, but she has recently opened the Japanese brand’s first Paris office on Rue Cassette on the Left Bank (after the show, she would host a ‘housewarming’ for friends of the brand). It cemented Sacai’s link to Paris, and the importance of the city as a hub for business, so some of this season’s looks – in particular a Breton-stripe motif which ran throughout – seemed like a sartorial ode to the city where Sacai shows four times a year, and to French dress codes more widely. A similar mood was conjured in the trench coats and handkerchief-collared blouses, albeit here rewritten in Abe’s distinct design vernacular, which includes unexpected pattern-cutting and hybrid garments, at once familiar and twisted. Elsewhere, Abe played with the idea of fur and skin: the latter was evoked in thousands of threads which sat on collars or sprouted from shoes, while cheetah prints were transposed onto techy nylon. Meanwhile a feeling of romance emerged in bright white ruffled gowns, constructed from layers of plissé fabric (a pitch to the potential Sacai bride, perhaps) or trails of sheer organza which sprouted in handkerchief-like layers from the back of tops. It made for perhaps a more glamorous outing from Abe this season: exciting new territory for the designer, who continues to break new ground, 25 years on.

Stella McCartney

Stella McCartney returned this season to Avenue Saxe-Breteuil in Paris’ 7th arrondissement, a tree-lined boulevard which hosts an outdoor market every Thursday and Sunday (it is made all the more romantic with its direct line of sight to the Eiffel Tower). With glowering clouds overhead, by some miracle rain held until McCartney took her final runway bow, following a show that the designer once again used to spread a message about the state of the planet. Beginning with a recorded monologue by Helen Mirren inspired by author and avid birdwatcher Jonathan Franzen’s essay collection The End of the End of the Earth, it was a plea to protect birds: a ‘celebration of and call to action for birds… a collection crafted without harming a single creature’ (backstage she called to attention the number of birds killed or injured for their feathers for fashion purposes, which she said was over a billion). Soundtracked (aptly) by Prince’s When Doves Cry, the collection featured bird motifs as prints or cast as metal bra tops and necklaces, while puffy jackets – which almost recalled foam – were an alternative to the feather or fur jacket (McCartney called them ‘cloud knits’ and elaborated that they were made from recycled plastic bottles). Meanwhile the liberated collection – which featured broad-shouldered tailoring, dramatic 1980s-style trench coats, glimmering tassels, and twisting faux leather capes and dresses – was described by the designer as an attempt to capture the freedom of flight, one she said was not held down by masculine or feminine norms.

Valentino

It was Paris Fashion Week’s most anticipated moment: on Sunday afternoon, Alessandro Michele – the former creative director of Gucci – staged his first runway show for Valentino, marking a triumphant return after a two-year hiatus. Held in a judo arena in Paris’ 14th arrondissement, the space was transformed in Michele’s theatrical style, seeing a jumble of chairs, furniture and lampshades covered with dust sheets, while a shattered mirrored runway looped through the space. He titled this show ‘Pavillon des Folies’, noting in his typically philosophical collection notes (Martin Heidegger, Théophile Gautier and Michel de Montaigne were all name-checked) that this was about a pursuit of beauty, albeit in unexpected, esoteric style. ‘When I say beauty, I am clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,’ said Michele in a letter distributed to guests, including Harry Styles and Elton John, who he worked closely with at Gucci. ‘I rather allude to that unique capability to deeply feel and connect with something.’

So here was Michele’s eclectic, magpie-like spirit refracted through the louche, romantic silhouettes of the Valentino archive, along with a shot of the bourgeois dress codes of Rome, where Valentino Garavani founded the house in the 1960s. There were marabou trimmed and ruffled gowns (each exquisitely constructed, leading to some excitement about his first couture collection for the house in January), polka dot tailoring and richly adorned kaftan style tops, as well as billowing floral dresses, lace tights, and moments which recalled underwear, like diaphanous negligees or bow-adorned bra tops (bows, a motif beloved by Garavani, appeared throughout). Accessories, something Michele proved to have the Midas touch with at Gucci, were particularly strong, whether vertiginous heels which tied with bow fastenings, or an array of handbags (some worn two at a time) which riffed on vintage, ladylike styles. Together, it captured the dizzying, seductive spirit of his best collections for Gucci, a flight of imagination which remained grounded in the real. Because among the more outré show pieces, this was a collection of extraordinary breadth – a wide-reaching vision for Valentino which perfectly encapsulates the eclectic, individual mood that has defined the season so far.

Read out full review of Alessandro Michele’s Valentino debut here.

Akris

Albert Kriemler selected the serene former refectory of Paris’ Collège des Bernardin – an ancient school for Cistercian monks – to host his latest show for Akris, a space which reflected the designer’s contemplative mood for the season. Here, Kriemler was in pursuit of lightness, drawing inspiration from a recent collaborative project with John Neumeier earlier this year on the costume design for the choreographer’s final ballet as artistic director of the Hamburg Ballet, Epilogue. It drew the designer back to the works of early Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca – in particular his ‘subdued, sublime colours’, which had inspired the costumes – a period that Kriemler mined deeper for this collection. On a research trip to Mantua, Italy, he was struck by Andrea Mantegna’s 15th-century ‘Cameradegli Sposi’ fresco. ‘[It was] full of light and life: Mantegna’s use of light and shade mesmerised me, creating a visual impression of volume and granting his figures a presence that appeared individual and three-dimensional, even real,’ he said. It made for a collection which comprised delicate, oftentimes sheer layers – whether gauzy, gently draped dresses, skirts adorned with anemone-like frills, or diaphanous knits – which Kriemler described as ‘a notion of carving shape from cloth’. The mood of simplicity and reduction in the clothing was complemented by the Alice Bag, a rectangular, top-handle bag named after house founder Alice Kriemler-Schoch which captures Kriemler’s purity of line.

McQueen

Seán McGirr’s sophomore show for McQueen took place at the École des Beaux-Arts, the set appearing like the traditional tiled floor had been hacked away to reveal a steel-plated runway running down its middle (as the show began, it lit up and filled with smoke, part of an installation commissioned for the occasion by Tom Scutt). It was an ode to the kind of runway theatrics which have long been part of the British house, here backdropping a collection which McGirr said began with tales of the shrieking banshee he had learned from his mother growing up in Ireland. It had also been an inspiration point for Lee McQueen himself, whose A/W 1994 collection was titled ‘Banshee’, a darkly romantic show staged at London’s Café de Paris. ‘The banshee is rooted in the history of McQueen,’ said the designer. ‘For me, she has come to represent something real and potent now: the idea of someone who is feeling and forthright; someone who can be seen as a guiding force.’

It began with tailoring, scrunched and gathered at the front as if its wearer had grasped it shut to protect them against the elements, while other jackets were sliced open to reveal rough gathers of tulle. This rough-cut tulle appeared throughout, including more ethereal dresses which looked hacked along their edges, while a more ceremonial flourish – enormous collars, military-style jackets – provided a regal counterpoint. Meanwhile a series of gowns, including the dramatic closing look, made entirely from metal chains and crystals, demonstrated a greater use of the McQueen atelier this season, something he credited after the show to having a full season to prepare (his debut came after just ten weeks of work). The longer preparation showed: this was a more polished, commercially savvy collection from the designer, with plenty to intrigue and desire. Though what it missed slightly was the more guttural power of Lee McQueen’s work, an embrace of the extreme which makes his archive so continually potent.

Hermès

The show set for Hermès’ latest womenswear outing was a series of panelled walls, evoking raw canvasses before paint has been applied by the artist. Nadège Vanhée said that this season was about the idea of process, an attempt to capture the distinct magic of the atelier, the place where imagined or sketched garments come to life. ‘Where canvas meets brushstroke, where paper meets pencil, where raw material meets the tool wrought and refined over generations,’ she elucidated via the accompanying notes. It made for a collection of lightness, a methodical adding together of sensual layers: semi-sheer knits revealed almost sporty underwear under beneath, cropped jackets and pleated trousers came in the lightest of leather, while zips which ran the entire length of the side seam on skirts and jumpsuits. Later pieces captured the feeling of an artist at work: there were rich flushes of pink, silk shirts adorned with twisting graphic prints (she described the design as ‘between stamping and etching’), and a series of intricate dresses which appeared as if knitwear had been stitched with hundreds of pieces of leather and beads. ‘The paradox of lightness through craftsmanship,’ described the notes, summarising Vanhée’s greatest skill: despite the oftentimes hundreds of hours of craft that go into each piece, the end result is always effortless.

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

A pursuit of ‘beauty and joy’ – and a sole focus on womenswear for this season’s show – led Andreas Kronthaler to an exploration of femininity, albeit twisted in the designer’s idiosyncratic style. ‘Ultra feminine and elegant in the most classic way,’ he described. ‘The priority is the neckline. Brainy sexiness!’ Playing out in a former store on Paris’ Place de la République (the collection notes referenced its history of revolution, a founding principle of Vivienne Westwood’s own approach to fashion), models walked seductively through the corridors of seating, posing coyly on white pillars, a play on department store shows of the 1980s. There was a lightness to this season’s offering: featherweight tulle dresses, in Westwood’s signature bombshell silhouette, were dotted delicately with crystals, while diaphanous knits, cut on the bias, hung lightly on the body. Crinoline skirts came in pale, buttery yellow which Kronthaler called ‘washed out’, while white poplin dresses were surprising in their simplicity. After last season’s yodelling spectacular (complete with a staff-wielding Sam Smith) it made for a surprisingly restrained outing from the designer, though bold headwear – enormous shocks of tulle, crystal-covered straw hats – will please the die-hard fans, who gathered both in the venue and the street outside.

Junya Watanabe

It was an energetic start to the day at Junya Watanabe, where the shimmering disco tones of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love provided an early morning wake-up call. It soundtracked a short but sweet show of futuristic, cyborg glamour, where silhouettes evocative of mid-century couture – Cristóbal Balenciaga’s envelope dress seemed to be referenced, alongside flared-waist gowns and cocooning opera coats – were reformulated in nylon backpacks, motorcycle wear or fabrics evocative of parachutes. Meanwhile gleaming reflective stripes, clip fastenings and technical straps – even the padding used to soundproof a recording studio – provided unexpected adornment (Watanabe called them ‘modern recycled materials’). Other garments, from mini dresses to wide-shouldered jackets, were constructed from stitched strips of fabric, which looped around the body to futuristic effect. It ended with the model Irina Shayk pounding the runway in an off-the-shoulder gown made from protective motorcycle clothing – techno-couture, Junya Watanabe style.

Victoria Beckham

It was into the woods for Victoria Beckham, who chose to host her latest show in Château de Bagatelle, a royal folly in Bois de Boulogne, a vast forested park on Paris’ eastern reaches. It made for a dramatic setting: in the darkness of evening, guests wandered up to the showspace via a series of candlelit paths, while an enormous curved-roof tent had been erected in the grounds of the château (even the air was scented with 21:50 Rêverie, her latest fragrance, a heady reminiscence of an evening spent on the Indonesian island of Java). The evocative collection, which saw models descend from the château’s doorway and onto the runway, was an exploration of the ritual of dressing and undressing, said Beckham. ‘[Seeing] the wardrobe not only as a space in which we dress but where we undress, too… observing the physical relationship between skin and garment,’ the collection notes described. The opening looks saw fabric cast onto the skin as if doused with water, while later in the collection tailoring was sliced away and deconstructed to reveal the body beneath. A series of semi-sheer gowns, with architectural looping wires under their surface, was another intriguing proposition (and will no doubt have a few red carpet moments, judging by the evening’s starry guestlist). It is satisfying to see Beckham continue to experiment with the label – a gamble which so far seems to be paying off, with sales rising 52 per cent last year, and a Netflix documentary in the works. No doubt this runway show will play a starring role.

Loewe

An act of ‘radical reduction’ is how Jonathan Anderson described his latest Loewe collection, which was staged in a specially constructed white box on the grounds of the historic Château de Vincennes. Around its edges it was decorated with violin sonata sheet music, while inside, a tiny miniature bird stood in the centre of the circular space like a totem. The notes elucidated that it was a 2017 work by the British artist Tracey Emin: ‘caught in a moment of pause, she encourages us to imagine the bird’s imminent flight, and ultimately its freedom’. Of the hints to music – birdsong, sheet music, and later in the collection, rockstar-style merch adorned with the faces of Bach, Mozart and Chopin – Anderson said he was wondering: ‘is it possible to fill an empty white room, commanding attention, without shouting for space?’

Commanding a space is something that Anderson has little trouble doing. Here was another collection brimming with ideas: featherweight dresses were constructed over undulating cages that bounced and bobbed down the runway in perpetual movement (the inspiration was ‘some very strange pre-war American sets’ which he found in a vintage store, here made far lighter in construction), while glimmering structured jackets were decorated with shards of shell, evocative of the exteriors of lacquered boxes. Feathers, he said, were a nod to haute couture techniques (a fixation in recent collections), while tailoring came with twisting draping on the trousers for a louche, oversized silhouette. The latter was something the designer said he had been developing for several seasons: ‘historically, tailoring was something Loewe wasn’t good at for a long time, but I think we’ve been able to do it right, and come up with a kind of signature’.

Other pieces featured the paintings of Van Gogh, including Sunflowers and Irises, the artist’s most ubiquitous works. So ubiquitous, says Anderson, that when he is driving to work he sees them over and over, imprinted on tea towels and canvases on the stalls which line the River Seine. ‘We get so used to them that they become a kind of high-low culture… we burn out the image,’ he said. Situated here, they became a new proposition, painstakingly re-painted over feathers. ‘But still we are always magnetically drawn to them,’ he continued. ‘There's something that we want to be part of, something, even if we don't understand it.’ Anderson’s work at Loewe has a similar magnetism: sometimes strange, but always seductive. After the show, he said wanted to capture the feeling of stepping into a dark room before your eyes adjust: ‘it's the idea of the eye going into focus.’ Here was a vision sharper for Loewe that was sharper than ever – a fact not unnoticed by the audience, who rose to a rare standing ovation at the end of the show.

Issey Miyake

Satoshi Kondo’s latest outing for Issey Miyake saw the Kyoto-born designer look towards the ancient craft of creating washi paper, a traditional Japanese paper made from wood bark or hemp which is used for origami, decoration and bookmaking, even clothing, thanks to its relative durability. In a glass-box-like space situated in a lush green garden in eastern Paris, Kondo and his team created an all-white scene, the floor gently creased to evoke the appearance of washi paper, and dotted with stools made from rolls of paper leftover from the heat-pressing of the brand’s signature knife pleats (usually these are sent straight to recycling, but for the showspace they were sliced to size for guests to sit on). For the collection, Kondo and his team – in what took several months of experimentation – worked alongside artisans at the Awagami Factory in Tokushima Prefecture, south-west Japan to create garments in hemp washi paper, like a gently crinkled coat which, thanks to clever pattern-cutting, folds into an entirely flat rectangle. Elsewhere, washi yarn was cleverly woven with other fabrics, while the act of folding and manipulating paper led to intricate origami-like finishes on jackets and dresses. Meanwhile a sense of play was captured in the collection’s knitwear (one pair of trousers had ‘double legholes’, as if two people could wear them at once) or the paper-bag-style handbags which for the show had been stuffed with baguettes and flowers. Kondo also noted the inspiration of water – an abundance of water is needed to make washi paper – which emerged in fluid, draped silhouettes, some of which looped over the head like a veil.

Rick Owens

Guests were warned that the Rick Owens show, held on the outdoor forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, would take place whatever the weather. The warning came after two days of constant rain, which – by small miracle – halted just as the show was scheduled to begin (the sun even momentarily emerged from the clouds). It was prophetic fallacy: titled Hollywood (like the menswear show held earlier this summer) this was a grasp for hope and community amid what Owens called the ‘peak intolerance we are experiencing in the world right now’. Like that menswear show, he drafted a cast of local art students to model the collection – a response, he said, to the intimacy of his previous womenswear outing, held in his Paris home – alongside underground icons like Alannah Starr and Kristina Nagel, evoking the ‘weirdos and freaks’ he found in Hollywood after escaping from small town Porterville, California to Los Angeles as a young person. ‘After showing in the house last season, I felt bad about making attendance so restricted so this time around I wanted to welcome everyone,’ he said. Here, his eclectic cast was clad in typically Owensian creations, from monastic draped gowns (some which scrunched sculpturally around the body) and operatic cloaks to tough zip-covered jackets and dramatic frilled capes he playfully called ‘megafrilled donut shrugs’. It ended with figures draped in black cloth dropping white confetti from high up on the Palais de Tokyo rooftop – a symbolic celebration of what Owens called ‘unity and reliance on one and other’.

Chloé

Chemena Kamali’s sophomore collection for Chloé was a continuation of the breezy, bohemian aesthetic which the German designer described at her debut earlier this year as one of ‘natural beauty, [a] sense of freedom and undone-ness… the glow, the radiance and the energy.’ It is a mood which lends itself well to the summer season, seeing Kamali conjuring an easy vision of warm-weather dressing in sheer puff-sleeve tops and body suits, billowing ruffled gowns and negligee dresses tied at the shoulder with bows. Romantic cuffs were gathered to created a floating volume, while a more sinuous line was struck in bodysuits evocative of Henley underwear, or contouring swimwear trimmed with the requisite Chloé ruffle. Colours felt bolder than last season: alongside hues of white, beige and apricot and were more vivid flushes of blue and raspberry. ‘What matters to me is the feeling and intuition that guides this very personal, intimate and sensual way of dressing,’ explained Kamali. ‘I wanted to capture that longing for summer and the way summer makes you feel – taking the essence of Chloé’s roots as a starting point, building new foundations and capturing that fantasy moment of the summer months when you reconnect with yourself.’

Acne Studios

Acne Studios’ latest show took place amid an assemblage of objects by the Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase, largely comprising soft sculptures of things you might find in a home – lamps, radios, even cats – alongside recycled sofas, cabinets and armchairs sourced from LeBonCoin and daubed with the artist’s dynamic, naive motifs (the artist told Wallpaper* that the ‘messy, complicated’ domestic scene was an attempt to explore ‘emotions and the body, and how they affect the space around you’). ‘The idea for this collection started from a twisted domestic scenery. I asked myself whether classic domestic codes could actually be translated into fashion,’ explained Jonny Johansson, Acne Studios’ creative director. Promising a surreal ‘glimpse between closed doors and curtains’ at once ‘domestic and alien’, the collection itself riffed on the materials of the home – tablecloths, curtains, upholstery – reimagined in the brand’s distinctly contemporary style, whether as the enormous bows on draped dresses, or the chintzy floral motifs which adorned peep-toe boots. Intriguing too were the collection’s proportions: tailoring appeared as if it had been inflated, while other garments were shrunken in size, or nibbled with holes, as if worn and washed for years. Meanwhile dresses, crafted from pile-ups of different fabrics like discarded clothing, conjured a strange glamour.

Rabanne

Speaking to Wallpaper* last year, Julien Dossena said that his collections begin with material, tasking his team to experiment with texture, fabric and embellishment before a single item of clothing is sketched or made. This, said Dossena, is the spirit of the house: in 1966, founder Paco Rabanne said he ‘defied anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn’t been done before... the only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.’ Dossena’s latest collection, shown on a drizzly Paris afternoon, continued this approach, taking the mainstays of an everyday wardrobe – striped cotton shirts, cableknit sweaters, bomber jackets and lace-trimmed slip dresses – and reimagining them in new materials or treatments (for example the gleaming cable-knit was ‘frosted’ across its surface, while guipere lace was ‘foiled’ to otherworldly effect). Titled ‘Material Girls’, it captured what Dossena described as ‘an interplay of casual and decadent’.

Towards the end of the show were three versions of the chainmail 1969 handbag, which Paco Rabanne had originally based on the traditional steel aprons worn by butchers in France. Just as the couturier had elevated the humble into an object of desire – inspired, in part, by Marcel Duchamp’s readymades – Dossena undertook his own act of transformation. These were bags just about as precious as you could get: one was created from hand-blown Murano glass by Venice-based artisans Venini, the next from Astier de Villatte ceramics, and the final one by medal-makers Maison Arthus Bertrand. Crafted from gold and taking over 300 hours of labour, it was dubbed the ‘world’s most expensive bag’ – a tribute, said Dossena, to Paco Rabanne’s gold-and-diamond-covered ‘world’s most expensive dress’, created for house muse Françoise Hardy in 1968.

Dries Van Noten

The first collection since Dries Van Noten exited his eponymous brand in June of this year was a respectful outing from his Antwerp-based design team, which recalled hallmarks of the designer – an act of ‘assessing, admiring and reinterpreting,’ as the collection’s accompanying notes described. So there were lush, sequinned overcoats, diaphanous silk skirts and dresses, louche, mannish tailoring, and moments of romantic embellishment, while an opulent palette (spanning earthy browns to vivid shots of orange, lime green and turquoise, inspired by an archive S/S 1997 collection) met clashing prints, from rich florals to those evocative of animal skins. Described by the brand as ‘the freedom of wandering for a brief time’, this nonetheless satisfying collection couldn’t help but pique the interest of what’s next for the Belgian label – and whether a new designer is already waiting in the wings.

Courrèges

Nicolas Di Felice’s latest Courrèges show took place around an enormous tilting disk, over which thousands of tiny balls moved back and forth (in the early morning slot, its effect was akin to meditation). The designer said that he was interested this season in the idea of the ‘infinite loop’, an inspiration point hinted to by the show’s invitation, a Möbius band, cast in metal. ‘Repetition, revolution, renewal,’ the Belgian designer described, a maxim which was encapsulated in the show’s opening look, a hooded neoprene cocoon coat in which the model’s hands were encased inside. Its inspiration was a 1962 haute couture cape by Andre Courrèges, which here Di Felice channeled through the collection in garments which could be slipped on as a single garment, though appeared like two (a bandeau bra top and halterneck dress, for example). Elsewhere, the designer honed his sleek, sexy vision for Courrèges in bonded tailoring, sliced denim, and rectangular bra tops which seemed to hover magically across the models’ chest, an act of sartorial ‘architecture’ (as Di Felice described) which continued over the collection’s closing looks.

Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello selected Saint Laurent’s Rue de Bellechasse headquarters on Paris’ Left Bank to stage his latest collection, a location he held his first-ever show for the house eight years prior – a full circle moment, and a relative lifetime in the merry-go-round of designers at fashion’s major houses. The runway was circular too: a monumental golden circle, open to the elements (drops of Paris rain drizzled through as the show took place) and hovering over a vivid blue runway. Vaccarello said he chose the colour to evoke the blue of the Yves Saint Laurent gardens in Marrakech, the house founder’s adopted home city.

It set the stage for a collection that saw Vaccarello pay ode to Yves Saint Laurent in his most direct manner yet, evoking the designer’s own personal uniform – a wide-cut, fluid tailored suit, usually double-breasted and worn with a tie – with a trail of gender-swapped Saint Laurent doppelgangers (Bella Hadid, who made a much-anticipated runway return after a two-year hiatus, even wore his signature glasses). Meanwhile, the other half of the collection sought to evoke the opulent Saint Laurent woman in her various guises: a boho ruffled dress slung with wooden beads, opulent jacquard blazers and flourishes of lace, all in rich, seductive tones as if plucked from a jewellery box. Eight years on, it made for one of Vaccarello’s most desirable collections yet: an exercise in tailleur and flou which saw the house’s past rewritten in the Belgian designer’s singular and sensual design vernacular.

‘No other house is as linked to a quintessential female archetype as Saint Laurent, whose ideal woman is more complex than the seductive perfection of classic muses,’ said Vaccarello via the collection notes. ‘As Yves Saint Laurent could have said: I am the Saint Laurent woman.’⁠

Dior

The roots of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest ready-to-wear collection for Dior could be found in her A/W 2024 couture show, held earlier this summer in the grounds of Paris’ Musée Rodin (the location also served as the site of this afternoon’s show, a shift from its usual venue in the Tuileries). Back then, Paris was on the precipice of an Olympic summer, with Chiuri looking back to the classical roots of the games in Ancient Greece, riffing on the ‘peplos’, a garment from the era which is made from a singular piece of cloth and folded at the waist. For her S/S 2025 ready-to-wear collection – teased with a video of the designer being given a tour of the Louvre’s Roman Antiquities gallery – she looked once again to the ancient era, summoning the mythological Amazons, a tribe of female warriors who appeared in epic poems from the Argonautica to the Iliad (men were not allowed in the Amazons, while any sons born to them were handed back to their fathers). The link to the historic house was Christian Dior’s Amazone dress from his autumn-winter 1951-1952 collection, a cut that was inspired by a group of French female horseriders (‘Amazone’ derives from the Gallic word for ‘side saddle’). Chiuri said the dress is symbolic of ‘a strength of spirit, a reference point for the notion of an autonomous, courageous femininity’.

It was a thematic choice that fits well with Chiuri’s vision for the Parisian house, which is focused on creating clothing for – and inspired by – empowered women, nonetheless infused with moments of mythological grandeur and romance. The show began with an appearance from Sofia Ginevra Giannì, aka Sagg Napoli, a multidisciplinary Italian artist and archer, who, bow slung over her shoulder and wearing a riff on the gladiator’s uniform, walked the runway before setting up in a Perspex corridor and firing shots on an eye-shaped target (the artist had also created the show’s set). The looks that followed continued a sleek, sporty mood: there were criss-crossing asymmetric bodysuits and dresses, evocative of swimwear, elongated mesh dresses, lace-up boxing boots and sneakers, go-faster stripes and racing grid motifs, while later in the show utility nylon shirts and protective bodices recalled professional shooters and archers. Meanwhile nipped-waist tailoring – largely styled off the shoulder to reflect the collection’s asymmetric line – layers of sheer organza and tulle, plissé dresses and glimmering tassels added the requisite feeling of romance that remains at the heart of the house of Dior. The result, said Chiuri, was an exploration of the relationship between body, movement and dress, and in doing so provided a link to her first-ever collection for the house nearly a decade prior, in 2016, which was inspired by female fencers and their uniforms.

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025.

Katrin Wouters and Karen Hendrix were jewellery designers to the Antwerp Six, emerging with the art-school collective when, in the spirit of a radical Flemish fashion bomb, they left Belgium in a rented truck and rolled up at London Fashion Week in 1986. The pair had honed their craft alongside Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester and the others at Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Having started selling their Surrealist-tinged, handmade jewels in Antwerp two years before, they were simultaneously creating pieces with the designers around their collections.

This week, during Paris Fashion Week, Wouters & Hendrix (which still adheres to the RTW-schedule of two collections a year), launches its most high-brow project to date, in partnership with the recently revived Royal Museum of Fine Arts, or KMSKA, Antwerp. Part of the jewellery house’s 40th anniversary celebrations, the ‘Je est une autre’ collection is directly inspired by four paintings Karin Wouters and her team chose from the museum’s 19th-century saloon. The result is a collection that culminates in four 19th-century style parures (complete sets) of jewellery, also offered as separate RTW pieces. As is typical with Wouters & Hendrix designs, many of the rings, earrings and necklaces, created from sterling silver and gold-plated silver, are ingeniously modular and are carefully crafted to be dismantled and worn in numerous ways.

‘When the museum posed the idea of a collaboration their initial thought was that perhaps we might make a jewellery line for them,’ Karin tells me at the house atelier, a former liquor distillery in central Antwerp, ‘But for me it's impossible just to make only beautiful things. I need to have a story, something with depth, so we asked to choose four paintings that would make us think. Then we asked ourselves: “If these women lived today, who would they be? What jewels would we create for them?”’

For Carmen Willems, general director at KMSKA, any Wouters & Hendrix collaboration was a win-win. ‘Firstly, the fact of them being such strong craftsmen was a genuinely good fit. Then, the way in which they always bring a twist to what they do correlates with our new vision for the museum,’ she told me at the museum's party to celebrate the brand's 40th anniversary.

After a few sessions with the museum curators, the jewellery designers settled on a formidable quartet. ‘We approached our visits in an impulsive way, while listening to the museum curators' stories and insights,' Katrin reveals of the collaborative process. 'The four paintings we settled on intrigued me very much: the Parisian Sphinx is dreamy, mysterious, even, while a defiant Cleopatra is experimenting with poison in preparation for her death. The Countess Rattazzi appears daring, rebellious, just in the way she stands, and the painting of the woman with the babies? She drew us in just as we were walking by.’

As a result, the parures were created to fit the characters of each woman in the paintings, as Katrin and her team evisaged them. "The Parisian Sphinx" by Alfred Stevens inspired the aquamarine-themed ‘Parure de l’Entourage’. The salonnière "Countess Rattazzi" by Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran informed the ‘Parure de l’Incroyable’ in boldly elegant chain designs that ‘shimmer without the need for stones’. Alexandre Cabanel’s "Cleopatra", meanwhile, is the force behind ‘Parure de la Salamandre’, its salamanders reflecting the Egyptian queen’s ‘talent for shrewd reinvention’. The ‘Parure de La Peregrina’, a homage to the image of the ‘formidable, nameless mother in Virginie Breton’s "A l’eau!" is a particular favourite, a pearl-based collection that ‘celebrates the ocean as our birthplace and the extraordinariness of “ordinary life”.

Though, perhaps lesser known in the UK, the independent nature of Wouters & Hendrix's topsy-turvy collections of handmade costume- and fine-jewellery is wildly appealing to a new generation. Collaborations are, of course, in the brand’s DNA, and projects with Belgian photographer Mous Lamrabat and accessories and jewellery designer Stephanie D’heygere are just two notable Wouters & Hendrix creative get-togethers. The Antwerp house currently helms a string of standalone boutiques across Belgium and Amsterdam, with international outposts in Japan, China and North America.

Karen Hendrix left the business a couple of years ago but her maverick spirit is palpable in the atelier and through the collections. ‘Forty years ago, I could not have imagined our world could be like this,’ Katrin Wouters admits. 'We started, just the two of us, believing in our small company and what we were doing. And now we’ve arrived here. When I look back, I see that each jewellery story we create, though different and surprising, is a reaction to the collection before, in that, we take the knowledge and experience we get and always try something new with it’.

Wouters & Hendrix designs are available to buy at Wouters-hendrix.com and farfetch.com

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

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

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

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

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

Hermès

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

Loewe

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

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

Dior Men

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

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

Hed Mayner

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

Junya Watanabe

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

Rick Owens

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

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

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

Wales Bonner

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

Lemaire

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

Auralee

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

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

And so, after stops in Copenhagen, New York, London and Milan, Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024 marked the culmination of fashion month – a glittering nine-day finale that featured outings from the industry’s biggest names. These included Louis Vuitton, which closed the week on Tuesday evening (5 March), where creative director Nicolas Ghesquière celebrated ten years at the storied Parisian house in spectacular fashion.

Earlier in the week, Dior began proceedings with a collection that looked back to the house’s first-ever ready-to-wear collection, Miss Dior, which was launched in 1967. Backdropped by the sculptures of Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri said she wanted the collection to capture the era’s liberated femininity. Meanwhile, at Saint Laurent, a sensually charged show saw Anthony Vaccarello present an almost entirely sheer collection, inspired in part by Marilyn Monroe’s ‘naked dress’, which she wore for her final public appearance in 1962. Elsewhere, there was a ‘sensual and symmetrical’ collection from Nicolas di Felice at Courrèges, a full-throttle outing at Acne Studios, which clashed ‘elevated femininity and a biker attitude’, and riff on aristocratic dress codes by Jonathan Anderson at Loewe. Chemena Kamali also made her debut at Chloé, while Irish designer Seán McGirr presented his debut collection for Alexander McQueen, having taken over from Sarah Burton last September.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss selects the shows to remember from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024 (also see Wallpaper’s stand-out A/W 2024 beauty moments).

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024

Louis Vuitton

Leave it to Nicolas Ghesquière to close out fashion week in spectacular fashion, celebrating ten years at Louis Vuitton with a thrilling collection that imagined his previous collections anew. In front of over 4,000 guests – including hundreds of Louis Vuitton staff invited for the occasion – it was a tour de force of design that cemented his legacy as perhaps his generation’s most influential designer. 

The show took place in the Cour Carrée at the Louvre, the place where he showed his first collection in 2014. Then, enormous metal blinds opened to let in the sunlight to herald a new day; yesterday evening, the space was filled with a blockbuster set by artist Phillippe Parreno and film production designer James Chinlund, a series of light installations that centred around an enormous orb that flashed and sparked as the show began. 

Each look in the collection, said Ghesquière, was based on a previous garment from the past decade, though here they had been reimagined in a way that the designer described as capturing ‘a tinge of earlier affinities, felicitous imprints of beloved garments, and affection for a gesture, a cut or an embroidery’. He also said that it was about ‘following one’s North Star’, a testament to Ghesquière’s unerring, recognisable vision, which is largely defined by a futuristic, postmodern approach which sees him traverse eras and cultural references in a sometimes dizzying manner. 

What struck here, though, were the extraordinary moments of craft: fronds of feather-like tassels emerging from the cuff of sleek-lined parkas, shimmering swathes of clattering sequins, intricately embroidered brocade overcoats, or the billowing ruffled skirts edged with what looked like shards of silver confetti. Contrast came in sleek, moulded silhouettes, like a series of hourglass tailored jackets which felt quintessentially Ghesquière.

‘This is a particular evening, a meaningful evening,’ he wrote in a personal letter left on each attendee’s seat. ‘I remember the feeling of beginning, the immense joy to be among you. This joy is still here.’ As the audience rose to their feet for his final bow, it was palpable. 

Chanel

Following the cinematic interludes of recent seasons, Virginie Viard’s latest collection began with an Inez & Vinoodh-shot short film starring Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt as a pair of lovers on a beachside jaunt (a cameo came from the model and house muse Rianne Van Rompaey, who played the couple’s waitress). It was inspired, said Viard, by Claude Lelouch’s 1966 French film A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme), which is set partly in the Normandy beachside town of Deauville. Its links to the French house are multiple: A Man and a Woman’s titular ‘femme’ is actress Anouk Aimée, a close friend of house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, while Deauville is where the couturier would start her eponymous house with a millinery shop that opened in 1912. ’It’s where it all began for Gabrielle Chanel,’ said Viard of Deauville, temporarily transforming the Grand Palais Éphémère into the town’s wooden boardwalk for the show. ’This story is very close to my heart.’

In the collection itself, Viard conjured the romance of a beachside town in winter, creating a collection of ‘warmth… of layers of materials, colours and volumes’. Long, sinuous overcoats in the house’s signature tweed were inspired by languid 1920s silhouettes, while chunky knitted skirts, cable-knit sweaters, and some brilliant shearling jackets (a nod, said Viard, to the 1970s) were befitting the autumn-winter season. Coated faded denim had an easy elegance, a mood continued in a series of diaphanous ruffled gowns that were printed with colourful illustrations of 35mm film and cinema tickets. But it was the enormous sun hats, pulled off the face with decorative hat pins, which provided the collection’s most memorable impression – a nod to the house’s millinery origins, and a symbolic link between Chanel and Viard, two designers working a century apart. 

Miu Miu

‘Every single morning, I decide if I’m going to be 15 years old, or a lady near death.’ So said Miuccia Prada on Tuesday afternoon after her latest Miu Miu show, which drew inspiration from ‘from the span and scope of people’s lives’ (a multi-generational cast, which included the 63-year-old actress Kristin Scott Thomas and 70-year-old doctor Qin Huilan, hammered home the message). It made for an eclectic collection – ‘a dichotomous mixing of different codifications of dress’ – which combined the liberated rebellion of childhood and youth with the ‘signifiers of propriety and chic’ that define adulthood. The former emerged in shrunken silhouettes, girlish round-toed Mary Janes, coloured tights, skinny jeans and stomach-bearing cropped denim jackets, the latter in ladylike twin sets, strings of pearls, brooches and bourgeois (faux) fur jackets. Other garments suggested a woman at work: baggy blue shirts and trousers recalled a doctor or nurse’s scrubs. Miuccia Prada explained, via the collection notes, that the shifting moods of the collection were built from a desire to alter the perception of Miu Miu, which has traditionally been seen as the girlish younger sister to a grown-up Prada. Here, the designer said she wanted to shift what such ‘girlishness’ means, blurring the divide between youth and age. ’[It’s] a word we can revalue, from a pejorative gendered noun, anchored to age, to a universal idiom expressive of the strength of rebellion, a spirit of freedom and individuality, one attribute of a richer whole.’ 

Rokh

Presented in the opulent surroundings of Hôtel Mona Bismarck on the River Seine, Rok Hwang’s latest collection saw the designer traverse eras in what was perhaps his most ambitious collection yet. Hwang – who was born in South Korea and grew up in Austin, Texas – said that this season he was thinking about two artistic eras, the high Renaissance and Romanticism. The former, he said, epitomised ‘classical ideals of human form, focusing on perfection and harmony’, while the latter ‘emphasised individualism, and emotion, exploring raw human experiences and irrational aspects of existence’. Here, these ideas clashed in Hwang’s typically mashed-up garments: a deconstructed trench coat became a dress, out of which a ruffled petticoat emerged, while a denim skirt was edged with dramatic twists of velvet, recalling classical drapery. Elsewhere, an exploration of tapestry came in painterly Renaissance prints across sheer tops and dresses, while another look saw a model entirely concealed in jacquard fabric – as if they had torn a tapestry off the wall and placed it over their head. Meanwhile, flourishes of fax fur – here in long, trailing scarf-like adornments – added to the collection’s mood of collage. 

Sacai

Chitose Abe said that this season she was thinking about the ‘emotional protection’ that clothing can afford its wearer, inspired by a quote by the late street style and fashion photographer Bill Cunningham: ‘fashion is armour to survive the reality of everyday life’. As ever, hybridisation was at the heart of the collection (Abe said the signature technique was here ‘spliced to its ultimate expression’), with a series of garments that were inspired by the concept of ‘one-piece’ dressing – the idea that a jacket or a coat could become a dress, a mood evidenced in the collection’s opening looks. There, outerwear was cut to an abbreviated A-line silhouette which recalled a mini dress and was worn with boots; later in the collection, the shape was used across shirting, tailoring and knitwear. Elsewhere, there was a strong use of texture and adornment, from fuzzy webbed and pom-pom knits to dots of pearls and brightly coloured flourishes of shearling.

Valentino

Pierpaolo Piccioli’s tenure at Valentino has been defined by a virtuosic use of colour, making this season, which was titled ‘Le Noir’ and rendered entirely in black, a departure. ‘Black is the uniform of democracy,’ read the Charles Baudelaire quote on the collection notes, while Piccioli also noted inspiration from artists including Mark Rothko (a talking point of the season, as Rothko’s works are currently on show at Fondation Louis Vuitton) and Constantin Brâncusi. Some looks leaned classic – a perfectly cut sleeveless top and tailored trousers, worn by Mona Tougaard with a gently creased leather opera glove, for example – while others recalled the house’s haute couture line in their intricacy, like the millefeuilles of sheer lace ruffles (against the skin, black became a different hue) or the delicate hooded gowns which recalled a figure in mourning. ‘Black can challenge and explode stereotypes,’ said Piccioli via the collection notes. ’As Baudelaire intimates, black holds within itself its own democracy. Day and evening blur together, precious silhouettes and embellishments are given new reality, relatability… an entire spectrum of shades, infinitely nuanced, within one.’

Akris

A strong outing from Albert Kriemler at Akris saw the designer think about the idea of ‘duality’ – ‘shadow and light, simple and layered, protection versus projection’. The photograms of Switzerland-based artist Katalin Deér became symbolic of the collection’s interplay between light and dark, and appeared as prints on the diaphanous, colour-soaked dresses which closed the show. ‘I discovered the photograms of Katalin Deér at Art Basel,’ said Kriemler. ‘Hidden beauties breaking into the light. A photogram is an analogue work of art, and to use it for digital photo prints on fabrics, a technique that we pioneered in the early 2000s, resonated with me.’ Elsewhere, a typically considered wardrobe for the ‘contradictions and routines’ of contemporary life, seeing Kriemler contrast tough outerwear and sharply defined tailoring with softer layers of organza, silk and sequins. 

Balenciaga

The invitation for Balenciaga’s A/W 2024 show was an eBay parcel, in which a second-hand object – from porcelain bears to candle sticks and band T-shirts – had been hand-selected for each of the 800 or so guests. It is not the first time eBay has been brought up by a designer this season (in London, Molly Goddard said her show was inspired by her eBay watch list); here, Demna noted the particular thrill he gets when an eBay parcel arrives on his doorstep. Indeed, the collection had a mood of eclecticism one might associate with an endless scroll on the auction site: a series of DIY dresses, made from a collage of other garments, were what he called ‘one-minute designs’ (backstage, he referenced the challenges on TV show Project Runway). Elsewhere, the Georgian designer doubled down on his distinct aesthetic: dishevelled (faux) fur coats, face-shielding sunglasses, blown-up corporate tailoring and references to subculture, like one look adorned with chains and studs, repeated throughout. ‘This show had to represent me and my style,’ he said. ‘This is the aesthetic I’ve been hammering for ten years, and I’m going to continue doing that as long as I do fashion.’

Alexander McQueen

A much-anticipated debut collection from Irish designer Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen saw attendees travel to a disused tram shed in Paris’ 13th arrondissement on Saturday evening. The location recalled those favoured by the late Lee McQueen; in particular, The Birds, his S/S 1995 show held in a warehouse in a then un-gentrified King’s Cross. That collection, which was inspired by ornithology, as well as the creeping unease of the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name, was also the starting point of McGirr’s own journey at the house, the designer noting that it was the first show he looked back at when he began his tenure. 

Indeed, McGirr – who was previously head of menswear of JW Anderson and a graduate of McQueen’s alma mater Central Saint Martins – attempted to channel the fierce energy of the designer’s seminal 1990s and early-2000s collections into this opening gambit (he also noted A/W 2001’s Voss and McQueen’s final collection, Plato’s Atlantis, as further touch points). There were T-shirts which appeared like broken glass (a reference, said McGirr, to his broken iPhone screen), moulded dresses crafted from the same material as car chassis that models were bolted into, and gowns which trapped the arms into their construction, while sharp pitched-shoulder tailoring was cinched at the waist with twisting leather ties. Other pieces, said the designer, had a DIY energy, and came from a desire to return to the feeling of being a student, slicing away at garments and fabrics in an attempt to create new forms. Enormous knit sweaters, meanwhile, were a nod to the Aran sweaters of his home country. If it felt occasionally chaotic, that might have been the point. 

‘I feel like Lee McQueen's message that he put out into the world is more relevant than ever… this idea of anti-politeness,’ he said backstage. ‘When I see the girls in the shows in the 90s, he was doing the opposite of what was happening in mainstream fashion in a way. The models looked like people on the fringes, the outsiders. That's something I'm really interested in.’

Afterwards, though, the question still lingered: who is McGirr’s Alexander McQueen man or woman? Amid the collection’s shifting silhouettes and moods, it wasn’t always clear. But with less than six months at the house (his tenure was announced in October), he has time to hone his vision, and is certainly not lacking in energy or resolve. One wonders whether the blast of Enya’s Orinoco Flow at the end of the show might have been a clue as to where he looks next. Just as McQueen mined the costumes and lore of British history for inspiration, McGirr’s native Ireland might prove just as fertile creative ground. We’re intrigued to see his next move. 

Hermès

It was raining both outside and inside of Hermès – the former a symptom of Paris in early March, the latter an impressive theatrical trick which saw gallons of water pour from the ceiling and onto the runway of the specially built space (for those worried about the clothing, models walked on either side of the downpour). Creative director Nadège Vanhee titled this season’s collection ‘The Rider’, encapsulating what felt like a tougher outlook from the designer, one which she said was inspired by imagining a woman on the move. As such, studs adorned edged poncho-like overcoats and sculpted knit dresses, while the raised collar of a leather overcoat seemed to recall the construction of a motorcycle jacket (albeit here stripped back in the designer’s cooly minimalist style). Other garments nodded to trips in the country, whether zip-up leather riding boots, quilted jackets or enveloping roll-neck sweaters. ‘Astride a horse or a motorcycle… boldly she rides on,’ said Hermès. 

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

A surreal performance from Simon Mayer’s Sons of Sissy – which riff on Austrian folk traditions in humorous, offbeat style – provided both the centrepiece and soundtrack for Andreas Kronthaler’s latest collection (think: yodelling, axe-wielding, and bottom-slapping dances). They were part of a typically eclectic outing from the Austrian designer, who said backstage that this collection began with a Giovanni Batista Moroni exhibition in Milan, the designer fascinated by the ‘elegance and austerity’ of his portraits (in particular,  the doublet-clad figure in late 16th-century painting ‘The Tailor’). ‘We always talk about history and historical figures and I went back to that this season, even as I wanted to move ahead,’ he noted after the show, setting the scene for a collection of codpieces, ruffles and bows, albeit translated in Kronthaler’s imaginative style. Elsewhere, hallmarks of Westwood’s work continued to run throughout – from the towering platform boots and ballooning silhouettes to swathes of tartan, here sliced away into a mini kilt and worn on the runway by a staff-wielding Sam Smith. 

Noir Kei Ninomiya 

There was a feeling of levity and play to Kei Ninomiya’s A/W 2024 collection, which the Japanese designer titled ‘Iridescent’. Set to a cranking soundtrack with a fairground-style announcer calling out the various looks by number, out bounced his models in typically intriguing creations which this season were defined by a liberated use of colour. Across the designer’s sculptural silhouettes – largely A-line in construction – were rainbows of crystalline feathers, pinwheel flowers, and clear geometric motifs which recalled 1970s crochet (though here were solid, like stained-glass windows). As ever, it was a guessing game as to what garments were actually made from and how, though in typical alchemist’s style, the designer refused to reveal his secrets. Instead, like the other designers in the Comme des Garçons group, he simply offered a succinct statement on the season in way of explanation. ‘I chose to focus on creating something new using different colours and textures, and play with the reflection of light,’ he said. 

Junya Watanabe

‘I want to express the beauty of the contrast between clothes and sculptures,’ said Junya Watanabe of his latest collection, presented on a drizzly Saturday morning at Elysée Montmartre. As such, geometric triangular cutouts and protrusions interrupted the line of quotidian garments (like the overcoats which opened the show), while other looks saw sculptural adornments sit atop more classic high-neck sweaters, wool trousers and skirts. Meanwhile, experiments in leather ran throughout – some thick and protective, looping around the body in cut-out folds, others seeing the material sliced into tasseled strands or adorned with mock-croc motifs. Shape came too in twisting puffer jackets, while a series of floral dresses, overlaid with sculptural deconstructed coats (an echo of the geometric forms at the start of the show) captured the juxtaposition at the heart of the collection. It was completed with black chain-adorned mules made in collaboration with sneaker brand Hoka – a no doubt holy grail for Junya fans when they arrive in stores later this year.

Issey Miyake

There was something instinctual about Issey Miyake’s latest collection, which was titled ‘What Has Always Been’. ‘The act of clothing the human body,’ explained designer Satoshi Kondo of the season’s inspirations in a letter left on attendee’s seats. ‘It is as spontaneous as it is deliberate, on that the hand responds before the mind does.’ Indeed, the collection’s wrapped, draped and intricately layered silhouettes recalled ancient dress codes – the feeling of using fabric to protect and envelop the body against the elements – while complex pleated garments, which concealed the wearer almost entirely, had a ceremonial flourish. Meanwhile, moments of lightness and play (hallmarks of Issey Miyake’s design philosophy) emerged in the as-ever expert use of colour and painterly prints which ran throughout. ‘We explore, feel, and grasp what has always been, nothing more and nothing less,’ concluded Kondo.

Loewe

Jonathan Anderson used his womenswear collection for Loewe as an opportunity to stage an exhibition of the works of Albert York, a reclusive American painter who gathered a small but devoted following in his lifetime (former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was an avid collector). In total, 18 of the works – which comprise pastoral landscapes and studies of flowers and animals – were on show here, making it the largest exhibit of York’s work outside of the United States. Dotting the green-hued corridors which partitioned the Chateau de Vincennes showspace, Anderson called the paintings ‘small but intense’.

The choice, Anderson elaborated backstage, was about the idea of context. He was thinking about luxury: the near ‘grotesqueness’ of York’s bucolic paintings (which the artist said were an attempt to capture the ‘paradise’ of the world and its natural landscapes) ending up sitting on the walls of an Upper East Side apartment. He likened it to the ceramics decorated with flowers and botanicals from the 18th century, which would then be used on the heaving tables of the land-owning elite. In the collection, hazy floral prints were drawn from china made by the famed Chelsea porcelain factory in the era, while a series of extraordinary ‘caviar’ beaded garments and accessories, evoking eagles, dogs and asparagus, were another attempt to shift the familiar out of context. ‘I like the idea of craft becoming something else,’ he said. ‘How you can look at historical craft, things that aren’t to do with clothing, and apply it to something else.’

This idea of subversion – ‘the tropes of class and wealth turned on their head’ – ran through the collection itself, which riffed on upper-class dress codes in Anderson’s idiosyncratic style. Etonian dress coats were elongated on their tails so they dragged on the floor (the designer had studied a pile of vintage garments to understand their construction), while cable-knit sweaters and ties were worn with high-waist trousers adorned with enormous, near-futuristic studs. This was aristocratic dressing, albeit in Anderson’s typically twisted style. 'The aristocrat is almost a foreign thing now,’ he elaborated. ‘A caricature.’

Givenchy

Givenchy took to the house’s historic couture salon on Avenue George V to present its first womenswear collection since the departure of American designer Matthew M Williams in December 2023 (a men’s collection was shown in the same history-steeped space in January). As his successor is yet to be announced – though naturally rumours continue to circulate – it was down to the house’s design team to create the interim collection. To do so, they attempted to conjure a woman of ‘sensuality and suspense’ with an A/W 2024 collection rooted in the archival designs of house founder Hubert de Givenchy. He is best known for his association with a slew of celebrated women (most famously Audrey Hepburn); here, the team channelled this same spirit in evoking a dressed-up wardrobe for potential cinematic muses of today, from draped and sculpted gowns to riffs on the tuxedo. Befitting the setting, the collection was illuminated by moments of embellishment: the extraordinary beading on the opening look more than stood up to the salon’s synonymy with Parisian craft. It closed with a very modern bride: the American model Amelia Gray, who donned a delicately feathered gown with in-built veil, pulled down for her strutting finale walk. 

Schiaparelli

At Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry continues to define his ready-to-wear offering for the haute couture house, now in its third season. It’s raison d'être: to create ‘fully formed, hyper-exclusive collections’, described the American designer in a letter to attendees. ‘A complete wardrobe of everyday staples – but with the volume turned up to Schiaparelli settings.’ It‘s hard to argue that Roseberry isn’t doing just that, taking archetypal ready-to-wear garments – blazers and slacks, double-breasted overcoats, denim shirts, jeans – and instilling them with moments of surreal adornment inspired by house founder Elsa Schiaparelli, whether buttons or buckles shaped like eyes or shells, or neckties which appeared like plaits of hair. ‘It’s made for every day, not just the rare, precious moments of life when only couture will do,’ Roseberry elaborated of the ready-to-wear outing, which had a distinctly 1980s mood. ‘It’s for every occasion and everywhere – just make sure you can get used to being asked “Excuse me... where did you get that piece?”’

Rabanne

A brilliant collection from Julien Dossena at Rabanne revelled in the clashing and the unmatched. ‘Grunge, art school, borrowed clothes, vintage one-offs, menswear, 1970s graphic design,’ were noted by the French designer as some of the season’s expansive reference points, lending the collection a freewheeling energy. Looks were layered with abandon: fuzzy cheetah print sweaters, houndstooth overcoats, plaid blazers, polka-dotted skirts, checkered knits and chainmail cami tops all added to the collection’s glorious pile-up of elements, born from ‘an indescribable longing for everyday originality’. Dossena called it a ‘matrix of possibilities’ imbued with the distinct pleasure of finding a cherished piece in a vintage store or on an eBay trawl – here epitomised by the pairs of tights adorned with delicate metal petals, studs and chainmail disks, like hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. 

Chloé

The Chloé girl is back. So was the consensus after Chemena Kamali’s debut collection for the Parisian house, presented on Thursday morning (29 February) in a former telephone exchange on Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. ‘I want to bring back the feeling I had when I first stepped through the doors here 20 years ago and fell in love with the Chloé woman’s spirit,’ said the German designer, who began her design career at the house under Phoebe Philo (since, she has worked as a designer for numerous other brands; most recently, she was design director at Saint Laurent). ‘I want to feel her presence again; her beat, her natural beauty, her sense of freedom and undone-ness. The glow, the radiance and the energy of that girl. She is real. She is herself.’

It made for a collection that largely drew on fellow German designer Karl Lagerfeld’s two-decade-long tenure at Chloé, beginning in the early 1960s (he would later return in the 1990s). He would define the breezy, bohemian aesthetic most readily associated with the house, continuing founder Gaby Aghion’s desire to dress her friends who favoured ease over lengthy haute couture fittings in the 1950s. Here, Kamali did so through a sense of fluidity: a series of brilliant riffs on the sheer ruffled dress (some abbreviated at the hem or elongated at the sleeve, others asymmetric) recalled Chloé’s defining silhouette, while recurring caped motifs also nodded to the house’s heyday. A melange of accessories, meanwhile – from handbags with banana hardware to golden snake jewellery and looping Chloé signature belts – continued the collection’s eclectic mood. You could certainly imagine women shopping from its composite parts.

‘This collection is about intuition, freedom and an instinctive female energy,’ said Kamali. ‘It’s about a Chloé with a sense of nostalgia that also mirrors the times we are living in and anticipates how women want to feel today. It’s about what feels right.’ 

Rick Owens

Following the designer’s menswear show in January, Rick Owens once again invited showgoers inside his beloved ‘concrete palace’, the converted former French Socialist Party headquarters on Paris’ Place du Palais Bourbon that the designer calls home with his wife Michèle Lamy. On Thursday morning, guests took their places amid the sparse, concrete space, which is populated by the designer’s monolithic furnishings and artworks (in a previous Wallpaper* interview, At Home with Rick Owens, he described it as ‘insulated, isolated, removed, and remote’). The choice of setting, he said, emerged from a desire for human closeness, ‘an intimate move in observance of the barbaric times through which we are living’. This mood of intimacy was reflected in the collection itself, which seemed to suggest protection against the elements: knitted alpaca ‘spacesuits’ enveloped the body in softness, while twisting, padded forms looped around the torso in typically sculptural style. Infusions of strange glamour – which Owens said came from a childhood enchantment to opera – came in the extraordinary closing looks, a series of cage-like gowns crafted from tangles of sequins. They suggested, albeit tentatively, hope.

Acne Studios

A set of enormous rubber armchairs and stools, crafted by Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo from recycled car tyres, provided the backdrop for Acne Studios’ latest womenswear collection. Their strange, moulded shapes reflected the collection’s full-throttle mood, which the Swedish brand described as an exploration of ‘toughness and human form, leather and denim’. The latter two fabrics have long been at the heart of Acne Studios; here, they were reimagined in sculpted, near-industrial silhouettes, described by the brand as ‘mechanical’ (case in point, a series of moulded leather overcoats and dresses which recalled armoured chest plates). Denim, meanwhile, was typically twisted: skewiff shirts and jackets were coated to give an oily effect, while a pair of jeans appeared smeared with rust. ‘I’ve always been drawn to leather and denim. It’s the spirit of Acne Studios,’ said creative director Jonny Johansson. ‘One of our first collections in the late 1990s was quite literally called “leather and denim”; [they are] two things that belong together.’ 

But there was a surprising softness to the collection, too: elongated jersey dresses and Henley-style T-shirts had the comfort of bedwear, while chunky-knit hooded dresses look set for hunkering down in a Swedish winter (such juxtapositions are a signature of Johansson’s work, which often swerves between the tough and sweet). Meanwhile, moments of elegance – which Acne Studios described as riffs on ‘archetypes of womenswear’ – came in (faux) fur coats and stoles, ladylike handbags and ‘lampshade’ gowns, which Johansson said were a riff on traditional haute couture, jutting out at the hips like panniers. ‘This collection is about the juxtaposition of an elevated femininity and a biker attitude,’  Johansson told Wallpaper*. ‘I wanted to look deeper into the archetypal codes of women’s fashion and confront them with the codes of Acne Studios.’

Courrèges

A gently swelling installation, accompanied by the sound of a person’s breath, provided a typically intriguing runway set for Nicolas di Felice’s latest Courrèges collection (last season, the plastered ground cracked beneath the models’ feet). Of the collection itself, Di Felice described it as a musing on ‘symmetry and sensuality’, here looking towards the simplicity of ‘primary shapes’ to continue the designer’s coolly reduced vision for the French house. He likened it to the ‘geometry’ of a square-shaped scarf, which despite the simplicity of its shape can be contorted into a near-limitless amount of forms (‘its plasticity releasing heritage cuts from their expected formality’). So there were clean-lined square-shaped tops and dresses which seemed to hang impossibly on the body without straps or back (in fact, a sheer fabric was holding them in place), while later the silhouettes became sinuous and twisted, cleverly wrapping around the body in ties and twists of fabric. Di Felice said the final looks – some of which fell away to reveal underwear-style details beneath – were designed to recall a woman disrobing, a ‘behind closed doors’ mood reflected in delicate feather appliqué, which marked a rare flourish of adornment from the designer. 

Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello’s latest collection for Saint Laurent took place in two vast circular rooms, curtained around their exteriors in emerald green damask, recalling the draped windows of the house’s historic haute couture salons at 5 Avenue Marceau. The mood, the designer noted, was one of intimacy and that of a ‘boudoir’, providing an apt setting for a seductive, sensually charged show which riffed on the idea of transparency. ‘Anthony Vaccarello reminds us of what once was at the centre of fashion by rendering it invisible: clothes,’ said the house in collection notes, ‘minimising the distance between garment and skin so the two effectively meld and fabric evaporates like mist.’

As such, the nexus of the A/W 2024 collection was a series of sinuous, gauzy gowns recalling undergarments and hosiery, wrapped around the body in various ways (it followed Vaccarello’s clever tendency to riff on a singular silhouette, or idea). One inspiration, said the designer, was Marilyn Monroe’s notorious ‘naked’ dress, worn by the actress for her last appearance in public in 1962 (memorably, Kim Kardashian donned the dress for the 2022 Met Gala). Indeed, there was a nostalgic glamour to the flourishes of faux fur – like a series of jackets which were not worn but grasped in the hand – or the palette, which Vaccarello said recalled the powdery hues of make-up. And, if full-scale exposure is not your track, a series of perfectly crafted caban-style overcoats or fluid, wide-shouldered tailoring offered an elegant way to cover up – and perhaps a hint of where Vaccarello might be heading next. 

Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri looked back to the 1960s for her latest collection, an era which the designer said saw ‘fashion leave the atelier to conquer the world’. By this, she meant the advent of ready-to-wear, which allowed shoppers to purchase clothing from Parisian couture houses from the racks of a store, rather than the rarefied haute couture salon (where all clothing was made to measure, and thus the reserve of the uber-rich). Dior’s contribution to this change – led largely by former Dior creative director Yves Saint Laurent’s introduction of its Rive Gauche line in 1966 – was Miss Dior, a womenswear line launched by Marc Bohan in 1967, but entrusted to his assistant Philippe Guibourgé.

In the A/W 2024 collection, Chiuri used this as a jumping-off point to explore the era‘s liberated dress codes – here formulated in easy but elegant everyday silhouettes, like the various riffs on the classic trench coat that ran throughout. Other looks featured abbreviated skirts, nipped tailoring or clean-lined tabard-style tops, while expressions of the Dior atelier emerged in the collection’s closing looks (think: shimmering surface embellishment, metallic tassels, and crystal webbing). The mood, said Chiuri, was designed to evoke the liberation that the Miss Dior line came to represent: a way to fulfil house founder Christian Dior’s desire to dress all women, whatever the occasion. ‘I wanted a woman to be able to leave the boutique dressed in it from head to foot, even carrying a present,’ he is quoted as saying in the collection’s accompanying notes.  

In the show itself, models circulated a series of sculptures conceived by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni (it continues Chiuri’s ongoing collaboration with women artists on her evocative show sets). Evoking Kulkarni’s signature works, armature-like figures of women created from cane, they encapsulated a kind of juxtaposition – at once ‘clothing, protecting and transforming’ the body, while ’imprisoning it in a kind of cage’. It was symbiotic with Chiuri‘s interrogation of femininity, which has run throughout her tenure. Here, she noted how the Miss Dior collection became an emblem of a search for ‘a pluralistic, autonomous, and versatile femininity... a moment of creative freedom’ – a mood of liberation that permeated the collection itself. 

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024

Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024 – the closing leg of men’s fashion month, concluded in the French capital this week. Having started with Pharrell Williams’ anticipated sophomore ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton – an ode to the American West and its distinctive dress codes – the week continued with Givenchy’s first show since the departure of Matthew M Williams (the collection will be designed by the in-house team), another Paris outing for British designer Grace Wales Bonner, and an intimate show from Rick Owens held at his Paris home. 

Here, the very best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024, as it happened. 

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024

Wooyoungmi

The mythic allure of Seoul – as viewed through an outsider’s eye – was the starting point of Wooyoungmi’s latest collection. Youngmi Woo (better known by her moniker, Madame Woo) began the collection with a book by Scottish missionary Alexander Williams from 1870, somewhat surreally titled ‘Knowing About Korea Without Ever Going There’. The designer noted that even now – as Seoul becomes one of the foremost producers of pop culture, particularly music – the city remains ‘an idea: a faraway metropole like no other; a place many know about without ever going there’.

Here, she set about to create her own ’portrait’ of the city’s style, one informed by both reality and perception. Indeed, it was a collection infused with the easy, eclectic mood of the street – she said she wanted it to feel like observing a stream of particularly well-dressed passers-by – from wide-legged washed jeans worn with roomy baseball jackets to colourful rugby and football shirts, and playful riffs on corporate suiting (denim jackets and jeans were worn with shirts and ties for her dressed-up version of the Canadian tuxedo). Strongest, though, was a beautiful array of outerwear – a category that Madame Woo has long been astute at creating – from abbreviated pea coats to elongated styles in heritage fabrics, or blown-up versions of the classic women’s tweed jacket. 

Valentino

Pierpaolo Piccioli has long used colour to conjure a particular mood (memorably, he presented an entire women’s collection in a single shade of pink, dubbed ‘Pink PP’ and granted its own Pantone colour). Here, it was breezy sky blue, which adorned both benches and doors in the ornate salons of Paris’ Monnaie de Paris for the designer’s latest menswear-only show (last season, Valentino returned to the menswear calendar having previously been shown co-ed during womenswear fashion month). The choice hinged on an exploration of contemporary manhood, the colour with which blue is now associated, particularly after the birth of a child. But Piccioli said he was thinking about how colour can be resignified – traditionally, he said, blue was associated with femininity, the shift only happening in this century – hoping to present it here as something fluid, a mood which extended to the clothing itself, seeing archetypal menswear garments, like the traditional Italian suit, cut with a softer line or embellished with moments of decoration recalling the house’s haute couture collections.

Hermès 

Véronique Nichanian’s approach to Hermès menswear is to capture a feeling of pleasure through clothing: an endless search to create garments which please both visually and physically, a balance she has struck in her over-three-decade-long tenure so far. Yesterday’s menswear show provided a gamut of options for the Hermès man come next winter, particularly in the way of outerwear, from a beautiful shearling-lined leather parka to shorter leather peacoats adorned with a collage of utility pockets (in Hermès’ playful parlance, these were pockets that ‘slip and slide’). Elsewhere, a melange of knitwear – some adorned with painterly prints and presented in layers – met riffs on heritage checks, like Prince of Wales plaid, which ran throughout. Typically seductive adornments came in the way of accessories: versions of the house’s roomy Haut à Courroies carry all came in textures of smooth barénia and sombrero calfskin, while a smaller, book-size bag came with utility pockets and was grasped in the hand. A final flourish came in an array of eveningwear, including a tailored jacket and coat in calf hair leather, cut with a narrow, elegant line. 

Loewe 

Los Angeles-based artist Richard Hawkins provided the starting point for Jonathan Anderson’s audacious fall outing for Loewe, set amid a strange cathedral to masculinity where ‘stained-glass window’ screens buzzed with images of the designer’s phalanx of celebrity devotees – from Jamie Dornan and Josh O’Connor to Omar Apollo and Manu Rios. They had filmed themselves on their iPhones, preening their reflection, while around them Hawkins’ dizzying collages flickered, capturing the artist’s fixations, which span Roman statuary, French decadence and contemporary celebrity culture, as well as depictions of masculinity and the male body, which is the through line of his work. At the end of the runway were a series of Hawkins paintings; after the show, Anderson called it the ‘altar’. 

The idea of collage – of ‘collaged realness,’ as Anderson described – ran throughout the collection, which had a mood of irreverence and youth. Enormous leather cargo pants were worn with baseball sneakers and skewiff checkered shirts; sweatpants, elongated sweaters and handbags were adorned with Hawkins’ saturated works; while stacked up layered garments appeared in colourful glimpses from beneath a long overcoat, as if the model was concealing a pile of laundry. An elegant riff on the trench – with a dropped tie waistline – came in leather, while riffs on the pussybow emerged in a melange of textures, alongside fairisle knits. A visual trick, meanwhile, came in a pair of trousers attached to a pair of socks, which were in turn attached to a pair of shoes. ’You're kind of telling someone: this is what you're wearing. You can’t get away from it, it’s like the media,' Anderson described. 

It emerged from the designer’s observation about the way modern life has ‘become a collage’; a never-ending stream of algorithmic images combining like Hawkins’ works, which in some ways predicted the way we consume visual culture today (he has been working on these pieces for over 30 years). ‘I’m looking at this idea of iconography,’ said Anderson. ‘It’s all about different types of validation… how we perceive ourselves to the outside world. It’s a new psychology. What that means in the future, I don’t know – but I think it can be exciting.’

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

There was a striking simplicity to Rei Kawakubo’s latest menswear outing, which largely eschewed the more unconventional silhouettes of the Japanese brand’s womenswear collections towards what was at its essence a studying in tailoring (albeit in the designer’s idiosyncratic, imporvisational style). Largely in shades of white, cream and ecru – ‘white is symbolic of prayer,’ was all Kawakubo offered in her typically enigmatic press notes – tailored jackets were nipped tightly across the chest (some with double lapels, or sliced away in sections), while trousers had a generous volume, ballooning just above the ankles (other jackets were worn with wide, elongated shorts or pleated kilts). Embellishment came in the form of rows of stitched-on white buttons or glimpses of sequins revealed beneath blazers and knits, while the final flourish came from playful headpieces by Gary Card, made from wrapped up garments from Comme Des Garçons ubiquitous ‘Play’ line. 

Dior Men

The invitation for Kim Jones’ latest Dior show featured a photograph of Soviet-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who in a much-mythologised grasp for freedom defected to the West on a 1961 trip to Paris. It was taken by Jones’ uncle, a photographer and former ballet dancer who had struck a friendship with Nureyev and documented his life in the West in a series of images which for the show had been collated by his nephew in a book left on attendees’ seats. ‘Nureyev is entwined with my personal history because of my uncle,’ explained Jones. ‘I had been thinking about the relationship between the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn and Monsieur Dior. The masculine interpretation of this involved thinking about her most famous dance partner, Nureyev.’

The heady liberation which Nureyev has come to epitomise (the famous Daily Express headline the day after his defection ran ‘Dance to Freedom’) inspired one of Jones’s strongest outings for the house yet. Divided into ready-to-wear and couture – the latter twenty looks were a demonstration of the extraordinary abilities of the Dior atelier – the collection moved from rehearsal room to stage (fittingly, the show was presented in the round to the booming sounds of ‘Dance of the Knights’ from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet score, as reinterpreted by Max Richter). ‘The collection – or rather collections, are about contrast: the contrasts in the house of Dior in terms of ready-to-wear and haute couture,’ explained Jones. ‘It’s the difference between onstage and backstage; the life of Nureyev theatrically and in reality. Here it is a meeting of the dancer’s style with that of the Dior archive.’

So there were twisting turbans by Stephen Jones evoking those worn by Nureyev in the dance studio (other models had their hair scraped back with thick black bands), wide tailored shorts worn with white socks and a masculine riff on the ballet pump, or a series of lightweight zip-up ribbed knits which plunged low on the neckline like ballet cardigans. Tailoring, meanwhile, had a feeling of lightness and fluidity, gently flared and based on archival pieces from Yves Saint Laurent’s tenure at the house. The final flourish of couture looks – which at the end were heralded by being raised high on a rotating platform as if models were dancers in a music box– were perhaps Jones’ most theatrical expressions yet, from an extraordinary beaded white tabard with a thick collar of pearls (worn here with white tights and ballet pumps decorated with the house’s cannage motif) to a kimono-style cape, based on a style Nureyev wore throughout his life, which took three people a staggering ten months to complete.

Paul Smith

Paul Smith noted that this latest collection was a demonstration of the motto that you have to know the rules in order to break them. His career has been defined by the dictum, whereby a deep-rooted knowledge and respect for British tailoring has been enlivened and reinterpreted through the designer’s witty, eclectic use of colour and print. This dichotomy was on full display in this latest collection, which combined hallmarks of British style – WW2 rider jackets, classic overcoats, padded gilets – with modernist-inspired colours, prints and motifs, including a ‘Photogram’ print inspired by Man Ray’s hazy ‘Rayograph’ images, ‘a trailblazing technique which stood as its own rebellion against the restrictive norms of the day,’ as Smith described. Colours, meanwhile, spanned deep purples, navies and browns, with flashes of lime green and ochre, while Smith’s vividly hued ‘Signature Stripe’ motif appeared across layered cardigans and knit sweaters.

Junya Watanabe MAN

A multi-generational cast appeared in Junya Watanabe’s latest collection, which was titled ‘Reconstructed Suiting’. ‘I wish for men of different generations to wear these suits,’ was all that Watanabe offered in way of description, though there was certainly a mood of the quotidien to the outing, which largely played on hallmarks of men’s style – from tailoring to denim jeans, striped shirts and hoodies. A sense of hybridity ran throughout the individual garments: a tailored jacket, for example, was extended into a coat with the addition of a panel evocative of a classic trench, while others were overlaid with panels of chinos or jeans. Coats, which were held onto the body with a panel across the chest, and worn with classic pinstripe pants, heralded a shift towards simplicity, though Watanabe’s more distinct hallmarks – namely patchwork – continued to appear throughout. And, despite the mood of reduction, Watanabe’s desire for collaboration does not seem to abate; here, versions of (among others) Brooks Brothers, Palace and Carharrt’s own signature styles were reassessed with the Japanese designer’s distinct, disruptive eye. 

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was born from a collaboration with the polymathic French artist and designer Ronan Bouroullec. Here, the design team looked towards his drawings – colourful abstract forms which he draws each morning using a Japanese felt tip brush – which in the collection were used as adornment across the brand’s pleated separates, or informing its freewheeling mood, which this season had an improvisational air (a series of colourful scarves, for example, were draped around the model's bodies to recall Bouroullec’s work). 

As such, the collection was titled ‘Immersed in the Wilds of Creativity’ and was an attempt to explore the translation of creative materials (here, Bouroullec’s oeuvre) into clothing. It made for a liberated mood, seeing beautifully layered silhouettes – many of which had the feeling of having been wrapped or loosely twisted around the body – meet moments of artistic flourish, such as a trio of models who carried cushions decorated with motifs reminiscent of Bouroullec’s work in their hands. 

Amiri

A suitably dramatic set – enormous velvet curtains, an expanse of monogrammed carpet – provided the backdrop for Mike Amiri’s latest collection, which the American designer described as an ode to the Hollywood epic. Inspired by the nostalgic glamour of his home town of Los Angeles, louche tailoring was a focus – whether elongated satin blazers, jacquard evening jackets, or suiting with a loose, pyjama cut – which was inspired at once by Old Hollywood dress codes and the undone glamour of the 1990s. Befitting the inspiration, the shimmer of crystals ran throughout the expansive collection, whether as stacked-up brooches adorning the lapels of jackets or twinkling across undone shirts and beanie hats.

Rick Owens

Rick Owens opened the door to his Parisian home on Paris’ Place du Palais Bourbon to host his latest menswear show, titled ’Porterville’ (a reference to the Californian city where the designer was born and grew up). Held amid the vast concrete rooms, sparsely decorated with Owens’ monolithic furniture, he chose the intimate location – a stark opposition to his usual shows held on the forecourt of the Palais de Tokyo – as a sign of ‘respectful restraint’ in response to world turbulence (recent seasons have seen him grappling with creation during times of war and crisis). 

Here, the balm was community; Owens invited Steven from Fecal Matter and Gena Marvin – both known for their strange, otherworldly looks – to walk the runway, while collaborating with London-based designer Straytukay on inflatable footwear, and rubber-wear specialist Matisse Di Maggio on pieces crafted from recycled tyres. A mood of envelopment and solace ran throughout; enormous shaggy forms wrapped around the body in a suggestion of protection, while knitted all-in-ones were crafted in soft alpaca, cashmere and merino.

Wales Bonner

British designer Grace Wales Bonner has long riffed on the hallmarks of American collegiate style in her oeuvre. She returned to them this season, with a typically poetic show held in Paris’ Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Howard University, a storied Black institution in Washington DC (alumni include Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison), was at the collection’s centre: ‘a celebration of [its] shining lineage’, ‘where depictions of homecoming resound: hip-hop performances, readings from the poets, international gatherings on the green’. In this spirit, a live performance came from musician Yasiin Bey.

The collection itself clashed the college uniform – from Howard Crew-adorned sweaters to monogrammed varsity and baseball jackets – with moments of elegance and craft, from crocheted mirrors across tailoring (created by hand in India) to beads, pearls and amethysts adorning jewellery and brooches, which suggested a ceremonial flourish. Ceremonial too was a beautiful black tuxedo – perhaps recalling the moment of graduation – which the designer created alongside Savile Row tailors Anderson and Sheppard. The mood of refinement continued to her latest Adidas Originals collaboration, which comprised miniature handbags and versions of the Superstar sneaker in crocodile-embossed leather.

Givenchy

The house’s historic haute couture salon in Hôtel de Caraman on Paris’ Avenue Georges provided the setting for Givenchy’s first runway show since the departure of American designer Matthew M Williams late last year. Befitting the location – in which Hubert de Givenchy worked for 36 years – the show transpired like a traditional salon presentation, with guests sitting around tables in the space’s various white-walled rooms (madeleines, truffle sandwiches and champagne completed the mood of refinement). Designed this season by an in-house team (the new creative director is yet to be announced), the press notes said the collection began with a consideration of ‘gentlemanliness’ inspired by Mr Givenchy and his dress codes: ‘the duality of his public and personal wardrobes: a sartorial formality energised by an inimitable off-duty sense for nonchalance, flamboyance and seduction’.

It made for an eclectic offering. There were cat-adorned vest tops and fronds of synthetic hair, which crept out from under tailored jackets or adorned dramatic overcoats, ladylike silk headscarves (based on a style from the archive), louche, unbuttoned silk scarves, layers of knitwear, and sculptural hats. Tailoring, of course, ran throughout, in various iterations – some sliced away along the sleeves, others playing on classic eveningwear – though it was largely double-breasted and narrow in silhouette. At the end of the show, no one came out to take the final bow. Who will do so come next season remains to be seen.

Lemaire

Lemaire’s latest show was staged in the brand’s airy, white-walled headquarters in Paris’ Place des Vosges. Warm herbal cocktails were served in the covered courtyard before the show – a balm to the day’s cold, drizzly weather – adding to the intimate feel of the presentation, which suggested an invitation into the brand’s serene inner sanctum. As such, the clothing itself, which largely evolves season on season rather than any more dramatic shifts, continued to hone the brand’s signature look, one of discreet, uncomplicated elegance (one already underscored by the staff at the show, chicly dressed in varying tones of Lemaire ecru and off-white). 

Christophe Lemaire, who runs the eponymous label with Sarah-Linh Tran, noted that he felt like now was the right time to invite people into this space, which comprises the brand’s entire operation, including the atelier and workshop. As such, they talked about the collection as capturing the solace of home: enveloping, layered looks which took their cue from dance attire in the way pieces caressed the body like ‘a second skin’. Others subverted the domestic for wear out of doors, like elegant ‘in-and-out pyjamas’ or outerwear which recalled the proportions of a bathrobe. 

Louis Vuitton

It was out to Paris’ Bois de Boulogne for Pharrell Williams’ sophomore ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton. This follows his debut last summer in Paris, and a subsequent pre-fall collection, where the designer had erected an enormous box in the shadow of Frank Gehry’s sweeping Fondation Louis Vuitton. Inside the A/W 2024 show venue, vast projections lined the walls depicting the rocky plains of the United States, providing a hint of what was to come (the invitation, an LV-branded cowboy hat and an engraved harmonica, provided another). Here was Williams’ ode to that most American of archetypes: the cowboy, albeit filtered through the Parisian sensibilities of Louis Vuitton (‘Paris to VA’, in reference to his home state, is a continuing motif in his tenure so far). So, there were denim chaps and cowboy hats, Western-style shirts with frilled yolks and pearl-and-sequin adornment, and riffs on workwear, from a tailored take on the traditional double-kneed carpenter’s pant to a footwear collaboration with Timberland. Requisite cowboy hats completed the look, while enormous gilded Louis Vuitton trunks were wheeled along the runway on wooden frontier carriages.

Before the show, Williams noted that part of the reason for this collection was to provide a more expansive vision of the cowboy trope (Black and Native American cowboys were among some of the first cowboys in the United States, though they have been largely excluded from contemporary depictions of the era). As such, the collection contained a ’creative exchange’ with artists from the Dakota and Lakota nations, who assisted with Williams’ vision for the collection, including a version of the house’s ’Speedy’ bag, which was embroidered with a Dakota Flower motif, or ’Keepalls’ which featured designs reminiscent to those found on ‘parfleche’, stretched buffalo hides which were historically decorated by Native American communities. To close the show, powwow group Native Voices of Resistance – clad in designs conceived by Dee Jay Two Bears of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe – performed as a gentle flurry of snow fell from the ceiling, the projected desert on the walls now dusted white. It made for a show that spoke of Williams’ vast, energetic vision for Louis Vuitton – all that was left to wonder is where the designer will take his odyssey next.

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2024

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.

Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024 is the final stop on the month-long European menswear tour, with previous layovers in London, Florence, and Milan. As ever, the packed six-day schedule features the city’s most storied brands – chief among them this season Louis Vuitton, where Pharrell Williams began the week’s proceedings with a blockbuster menswear debut for the house that took place on the city’s oldest standing bridge, Pont Neuf. Meanwhile, at Dior, which is scheduled for Friday, Kim Jones will celebrate five years as menswear creative director of the house. New collections from Loewe, Givenchy, Hermès and Dries Van Noten, among others, will also feature alongside an array of rising talent.

Here, in our ongoing round-up, is the best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024, as it happens. 

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024

Hermès

A feeling of lightness – in both construction and spirit – has defined Véronique Nichanian’s over-three-decade tenure as artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe. It was a philosophy on full display in the light-filled main hall of Paris’ 1939-built Palais d'Iéna, where Nichanian presented a collection the house described as ‘as soft and sweet as a summer breeze, stirred by a tender strength’. It was nearly impossible not to be seduced by the vision (more so since Paris is currently in the midst of a sweltering heatwave), which began with an airy semi-sheer shirt with subtle grid design and just-cropped trousers, before moving through a gamut of lightweight layers, from abbreviated shorts and gauzy tailoring to twill shirts constructed from Hermès scarves. Equally seductive accessories included tote bags constructed from grids of cord, double bridle-leather belts and shimmers of palladium-finish jewellery. ‘The summer is serene and joyful, the air is cool, the allure unequivocally sensual,’ said the house. 

Loewe

A series of fountains by American sculptor Lynda Benglis had been installed in the Loewe showspace at Paris’ Garde Républicaine. It was the first time the collection of works had been shown together in a single location, said Anderson, noting that particularly with the central trio – which reached upwards to the roof and sprayed water out onto the catwalk – he was fascinated by the way they dwarfed the viewer who is forced to look upwards to their height. It was this feeling of perspective – of looking from the ground up – which inspired his latest menswear outing, designed to feel like you were looking up at the model through a fish-eye lens. As such, elongated wide-leg trousers and jeans sat high on the waist, the upper half comprising tucked-in shirts and cropped knitwear, or shimmering sculptural pieces which recalled twists of fabric but appeared solid to the touch.

‘I wanted the idea of looking up at someone, as the audience was looking up at the statues, [it’s] the idea that the torso becomes smaller and the leg longer. The look became dwarfed, but I liked that,’ he said after the show. It provided a continuing exploration of what he described as ‘turning the straightforward into something not so straightforward’; as such, there were enormous tops which evoked swatches of fabric (complete with an equally large dressmaker’s pin as adornment), crystals which ‘swarmed’ across shirts, trousers and sunglasses, or beautiful leather jumpsuits which sliced open down the sides. Though beyond such theatrical gestures on the runway, it is perhaps Anderson’s biggest trick that among it all there was a true proposition here for real-world dressing: the perfect wide-leg jean or chino, a colourful argyle-knit jumper, a slouchy tuxedo jacket and banker shirt. ‘Everything derived from the idea of the wardrobe,’ said Anderson of the extraordinary collection, which continued to cement his near-unparalleled position as a designer setting the agenda for the season ahead.

Officine Générale

As ever, Officine Générale creative director and founder Pierre Mahéo began his latest runway show with a letter to attendees, earnestly laying out how the S/S 2024 men’s and womenswear collection came to be. This season, he noted that while he loved the monochrome silhouettes presented as part of the previous show in January – ‘I’ve always had a penchant for using similar shades from head to toe,’ he wrote – for this latest collection he instead wanted to inject warmth and colour after ‘these cold and rainy last few months in Paris’. He also described a want for reduction: ‘rather than add, I looked to remove, lighten, and strip away. Little by little, I began to wonder whether simplifying may become a language in itself, the season’s defining mood.’ It led to a collection which demonstrated Mahéo’s knack for uncomplicated elegance: whether elastic-waist cotton trousers, languid dresses or matching pyjama-style shirts and trousers. ‘Colour, lightness, optimism, simplicity,’ concluded Mahéo, facets of the collection which looked particularly appealing in the heat of the sun-soaked courtyard of Monnaie de Paris.

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

A typically tight-lipped Rei Kawakubo said in a brief statement on her latest Comme des Garçons Homme Plus collection that ‘in order to find a new world we have to go beyond reality’. Symbolic of this was a motif evocative of the curtains of theatres, which appeared not only as a trompe l’oeil print across garments, but also in the construction of draped tailoring which opened up the front and back and was held in place with tie fastenings (not unlike traditional curtain ties). But despite the theatrical mood – bold spiked hair pieces and headbands made in collaboration between Arai Taeko and Gary Card featured discarded glasses, model fish and paint brushes – there were plenty of real-world wardrobe propositions from the Japanese designer, whether the striking simplicity of the opening pinstripe tailored jacket with overlaid white poplin collar, elongated shirting or the latest collaborative sneakers from the brand and Nike ACG. Hybrid pieces also featured, like a pair of double-toed derby shoes or a tartan jacket with sleeves protruding from the chest. 

Acne Studios

‘For spring, I was thinking about how young men in the 17th century would go on a “Grand Tour” to see important destinations across Europe, and come home more cultivated,’ explained Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johansson of his latest menswear collection, which imagined a contemporary sightseer incorporating the spoils of their travels into an eclectic wardrobe. As such, there was an amalgam of colour and texture: antique-silver coated denim, bleached knitwear, patchwork trompe l’oeil, postcard-inspired prints and a colour palette inspired by the bold hues of Venetian Murano glass. ‘It reminded me that when you’re travelling, you choose to pack your really personal garments, and these get mixed up with new-found pieces, maybe historical garments, or merchandise you bought from a tourist shop,’ he continued. ‘You experiment with what you have in your suitcase – you feel kind of free to change your identity, and to be more eccentric with your style… It’s about an accumulation of things you’ve picked up along the way.’

Kenzo

In an echo of longtime collaborator Pharrell Williams, who showed his debut menswear collection for Louis Vuitton on Pont Neuf earlier this week, Kenzo creative director Nigo also chose a bridge over the Seine as the backdrop for his latest show. The narrow Passerelle Debilly footbridge provided an altogether more low-key – but no less charming – setting than Williams’ blockbuster, a reflection of the playful ease which has defined the Japanese designer’s tenure at the house so far. ‘A ready-to-wear wardrobe suspended between east and west,’ described the press notes of a collection which was inspired by City Pop, a radio station Nigo listened to during his formative years in 1980s Japan. He said that in the collection the station’s unique ‘mélange of pop, funk and boogie’ was reflected in poppy, preppy silhouettes and a bold use of colour and print (like the array of floral motifs which ran throughout, or a collaboration with Japanese graphic artist Verdy). Other pieces ‘code switched’ between eastern and western wardrobes, like the judo uwagi kimono, reimagined here as a chore jacket. 

Dior

British designer Kim Jones celebrated five years at the helm of Dior menswear with a trick: all at once, models rose from the floor of the vast grey box constructed by the house in Paris’ Ecole Militaire. The sci-fi-like gesture prompted an outburst of applause from the audience, the models circling the runway before disappearing back into the floor again in threes (they rose once more for the grand finale). The collection, Jones said, was a celebration of Christian Dior’s creative directors – ‘from the silhouettes of Yves Saint Laurent to the embroideries of Gianfranco Ferré; the cabochons of Monsieur Dior to the textures of Marc Bohan.’

It was Saint Laurent, though, that he said was most formative to the collection’s construction: here figured in looks which merged masculine and feminine (shrunken cardigans embellished with crystals, tweed jackets hung delicately on the shoulder, abbreviated shorts) with a broad use of colour. Saint Laurent’s 1959 collections for the house were a particular reference, Jones noting inspiration from the ‘volumes, vents, pleats and necklines’ in his tailoring and outerwear this season, notably in a series of elegant A-line trench coats. Criss-crossing cannage motifs also appeared throughout. 

‘Dior is an haute couture house: it is all about the clothes. At the heart of Dior is silhouette, shape, technique and fabrication of the very highest order. I like to think that in my five years of being here I have never forgotten this,’ Jones said. ’It’s a culture we have inherited from womenswear past and applied to menswear present. And for the first time in our collections, it is a collage of influences from different Dior predecessors and eras we wanted to pay tribute to at once – together with some of our own. All are connected through texture and technique alongside some of the Dior pop icons, particularly the cannage.’

Paul Smith

Paul Smith’s latest outing saw the British designer return to familiar ground for a collection which he called ‘The Suit (But Different)’. Continuing recent seasons’ exploration of the relevance of tailoring for a new generation, Smith began with a catalogue of reference points which spanned 1970s to present day. A sense of playfulness was key, said Smith – his desire is to overturn tailoring’s stuffy connotations – with riffs on the ‘Canadian tuxedo’ (a denim jacket and barrel-fit jeans), and what he called the ‘morning suit’, a blazer worn with tailored boxer shorts. Workwear and utility wear were also prescient references, while a typically bold colour palette – pops of red, blue and pink inspired by a single frame from Lawrence of Arabia – was utilised throughout.  

‘Tailoring is so often thought of as such a serious business, but I’ve always been keen to show people how much fun you can have with it – especially now,’ said Smith. ‘So, while this show is an homage to suits and tailoring as an art and form of craft – one that requires a huge amount of skill and expertise – it’s also about putting humour and joy back into smart dressing. I’ve always been interested in the question of “what exactly is a suit?”, and I hope this show serves as something of an answer.’

Junya Watanabe Man

For several seasons, Junya Watanabe has placed collaboration at the forefront of his menswear collections, uniting with a vast array of brands often in a single show – Carhartt, Oakley, New Balance, Palace and The North Face among them. For S/S 2024, though such collaborations continued, he proposed a new approach. ‘My collection is comprised of many collaborators, however this time I focused on Junya Watanabe (womenswear) as the main collaboration,’ the Japanese designer explained. ‘The idea and the way of my approach in creation of Junya Watanabe is completely different to Man, so they are different brands to me. I wanted to incorporate clothes like Junya Watanabe into Man.’ It marked a shift away from the work- and utility-wear silhouettes for which he is synonymous towards the more dramatic, poetic gestures of his womenswear collections: elongated sleeveless trench coats came in patchwork fabrications, collarless tailoring with Chanel-like bouclé tweed panels, and a series of leather jackets appeared constructed from hundreds of belts. For the devoted Junya Watanabe Man customer, a sense of groundedness remained in utility cargo pants (worn with fitted ribbed vests) or jackets which drew inspiration from fireman’s uniforms, hi-vis vests and workmen’s overalls. 

Dries Van Noten

‘Disrupted elegance,’ described Dries Van Noten of his latest menswear collection, an exercise in reduction that nonetheless retained the Belgian designer’s poetic gestures of colour and silhouette. Set amid the abandoned glamour of a condemned building in Paris’ 17th arrondissement – the vaulted show space saw paint peeling away from the walls – it began with the simplicity of a trench coat, subtly elongated to reveal just a slither of trouser and leather flip-flop beneath. ‘It is a reflection on refinement, celebrating subtle details and nuance over bold gestures’ read the collection notes. ‘The power and clarity of reduction. Stripping away extraneous over matter.’ Indeed, there was little in the way pattern – save for a series of subtle 1970s-style prints later in the show which the notes called ‘non-obvious’ – Van Noten instead focussing on refining the way a garment looks and feels on the body. The plays on texture were most seductive: the lightness of a sheer mousseline top or featherweight technical parka, the raw edge of a wool overcoat, or the shimmer of pailettes across sequinned shirts and shorts.

Berluti

Berluti continued to eschew a pursuit of seasonal trends in favour of honing what the Parisian house calls the ‘epitomic wardrobe’. This season, the collection was driven by a feeling of contrast – ‘individuality versus adaptability, substance versus lightness, and exceptionality versus ease’ – figured in a number of hybrid garments which fused leather and fabric. One workwear-style jacket, in petrol-blue, combined panels of suede and technical wool, while a military-style jacket had a similar patchwork effect in sand-coloured suede and cotton. Elsewhere, the house’s handwritten ‘Scritto’ motif recurred throughout, across outerwear, knitwear and embossed onto leather accessories, while a patina effect gave garments the feeling they had been lived-in and treasured.

Givenchy

A strong menswear collection from Matthew M Williams saw the American designer look towards what he called the ‘archetypes of smartness’ for a reconsideration of contemporary elegance. He began with the school uniform – ’a dual symbol of democracy and constraint‘ – here reimagined in precise high-waist tailored trousers worn with shirts, ties, and shrunken jumpers. He called the school uniform our ‘formative discovery of elegance’, using it as a jumping-off point for a beautifully constructed collection of tuxedo-style tailoring – gently nipped at the waist of the jacket, fluid in the trouser – which culminated in a pair of black and white sleeveless jumpsuits without side seams. Amongst it all, convincing sportier elements reminiscent of his work at own-label 1017-ALYX-9SM – T-shirts covered with enormous eyelets to expose the skin beneath, slick-to-the-body tank tops worn with slouching denim jeans, and a series of utility-style bags which wrapped around the waist and hung on the back. 

Rick Owens

‘With our world conditions under increasing threat, jubilance seems like the wrong note but maybe it’s the only correct moral response? Beyond being nice to each other, isn’t personal joy what we are put on earth to do?’ said Rick Owens of his latest collection, presented in the deco forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo. Under enormous scaffold towers which erupted with plumes of colourful smoke, he settled on a collection of ‘grim, determined elegance’ entirely crafted from the colour his clothing is perhaps most synonymous with, black (‘a formal, restrained, albeit admittedly drama queen, black’). Voluminous trousers in wool, silk and cotton faille pinched the waist and flared at the hem to drag along the damp floor (rain drizzled as the show went on), while T-shirts in silk and leather wrapped seductively around the body. Most dramatic was a series of elongated hooded looks, which saw models trudge, monk-like, into the mist. 

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

‘A refinement of what is quintessential to the brand,’ said Homme Plissé Issey Miyake of its latest collection, held in Musée des Arts Décoratifs and titled ‘Everyday, One of a Kind, Now and Hereafter’. As such, the collection reflected on the Issey Miyake offshoot’s essential element – the plissé pleat – beginning with an enormous roll of pleated paper which was unfurled along the runway. As the show went on, the Homme Plissé design team cut the paper into sections, revealing garments from the collection inside which they then placed on the models by hand. Typically colourful – this season, colours were inspired by hues that could be extracted from natural materials – the various pieces went onto the models’ bodies with ease, an encapsulation of the brand’s effortless philosophy. Fresh for the season were a series of horizontal-pleated garments, which lent a sculptural silhouette, and the voluminous ‘Wing’ coat, inspired by the wings of birds. 

Wales Bonner

‘That’s the long-distance runner, the quietness is loud too,’ read a quote from American artist David Hammons on the accompanying notes to Grace Wales Bonner’s latest collection, titled ‘Marathon’. A meditation on the determined grace of long-distance runners – ‘the unwavering spirit striding, soaring’ – saw the British designer look towards the legendary marathon runners of Ethiopia and Kenya, Eliud Kipchoge and Haile Gebrselassie among them. In an ode to ‘long journeys and life missions’, Wales Bonner elucidated that several of the garments were imbued with a sense of time: Tibeb fabric was hand-woven in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, raffia hand-embroidered onto skirts and vests, while macramé garments were adorned with glass beads from Ghana (recent collections have seen the designer double-down on handcraft). Such crafts take time and practice, which Wales Bonner linked to both the art of the marathon and her own ongoing practice as a designer – ’the point where mantras repeat without effort, where routine transcends into a tranquil flow’. A new collaboration with Adidas Originals also featured, including a replica of the Neftenga sneaker worn by Gebrselassie to win the Berlin Marathon in 2008 in a world record-breaking time. 

Botter

On the seat of each attendee at Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh’s latest show was a keyring, created alongside artist Daniel Von Weinberger and featuring the discarded heads of Barbie-doll-style toys. The collection notes explained that they were a contemporary riff on voodoo dolls, a reflection of the collection itself, which looked past popular understandings of the practice – namely, that such dolls are used to inflict harm on others – towards the origins of ‘vodou’, which began in Haiti. Here, vodou has a more expansive outlook: ‘everything within the universe affects everything else... We are all a unity, the notion of the unity of all forces of nature is central to vodou,’ read the notes. It provided a reflection of the designers’ own border-crossing approach, which they call ‘Caribbean Couture’ (Rushemy was born in Curaçao, and Herrebrugh has family roots in the Dominican Republic). A vest, jacket and trousers in intricately woven plastic spoke became symbolic of interconnectedness (‘a continuous flow of energy’), while other garments featured works by Haitian artist Day Brièrre, printed on organic silks and woven into jacquard using their signature algae yarns. 

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams‘ blockbuster Louis Vuitton debut saw the polymathic musician shut down Paris’ Pont Neuf to present a star-studded first menswear collection for the brand (guests included Beyoncé, Rihanna and Jay-Z, the last closing out the evening with a musical perfromance). Tracing a metaphorical line between Virginia, USA, where Williams was born and grew up, and Paris, the collection featured varsity wear inspired by the Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach, alongside riffs on the house’s signature ‘Damier’ check. The historic show ended with a performance from Virginia-based gospel choir Voices of Fire. ‘When you come from a culture that has been purposefully blocked and set in disadvantaged situations, you can’t imagine what’s even possible. But there’s this narrative that’s changing,’ said Williams. ‘When I say the sun is shining on me – and it’s shining on all of us – listen, this is a French house but they went right back to America and found another Black man, and gave me the keys.’

Read our full review of the show here.

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.

French designer Martine Sitbon, the former Chloé creative director whose insouciant, poetic collections helped define the 1990s, has announced a return to Paris Fashion Week in March 2023. 

Titled Rev, the new project – backed by Iro founders Arik and Laurent Bitton – will see Sitbon reimagine her extensive archive for today. ‘Revisiting the past, into the future,’ stated a release this morning (2 February 2023). 

‘A style, all in moving lines, between masculine and feminine, calligraphic appearances, loose and fluid. Androgynous chiffon,’ the announcement continued, noting that Rev will place focus on collaboration with Italian artisans. ‘A raw sense of individuality, preciousness and authenticity.’

Martine Sitbon to make Paris Fashion Week return with Rev

As such, the showroom will been based in central Milan on Via Monte Di Pietà in a space designed by seminal British architect John Pawson. ‘Minimalism in an intimate and virtuous time,’ the brand says of the studio’s design.

The first collection will be unveiled during Paris Fashion Week in March 2023. ‘A singular universe, an attitude; a contemporary nonchalance written with silhouettes,’ the announcement teased.

Sitbon rose to prominence in the late 1980s, launching her eponymous label in 1986 in Paris. In 1987, she was made creative director of French fashion house Chloé, gaining a cult following through the 1990s for what Sitbon calls her ‘tenderly androgynous’ collections ‘tinged with youth’, an ‘alternative vision of femininity... sophisticated, ethereal, edgy, glamorous.’

Sitbon’s work with longtime collaborators art director Marc Ascoli and photographers Nick Knight and Craig McDean provides some of the era’s most definitive and enduring imagery. She is also associated with the phalanx of 1990s supermodels who wore her clothing and walked in her shows – among them Kirsten Owen, Kate Moss, Kristen McMenamy and Stella Tennant.

Her eponymous label shuttered in 2004. In 2012, she was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite by the French government and in 2016, she released a Rizzoli-published monograph of her work, titled Alternative Vision.

‘Further from standards, closer to sensitivity,’ says Sitbon of this latest chapter.

See our guide for more on what to expect from Women’s Fashion Week A/W 2023.

Menswear fashion month concluded with Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023, a packed six-day schedule that encompassed the city’s storied names – among them Hermès, Dior and Givenchy – in a glimpse of the menswear’s season ahead. Highlights include Anthony Vaccarello’s return to the Paris menswear schedule at Saint Laurent having shown in Morocco and Los Angeles in recent seasons, KidSuper ‘co-creating’ Louis Vuitton’s latest menswear collection alongside the house’s design team (a full-time successor to Virgil Abloh is yet to be announced), and an appearance from Grace Wales Bonner, marking the British designer’s Paris Fashion Week debut. Emerging names – from Bianca Saunders to Botter – showed alongside. 

Here’s the best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023, as selected by Wallpaper*.

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023

Kiko Kostadinov

Bulgarian designer Kiko Kostadinov said that he wanted to look outside the ‘restrictive frame of menswear’ this season; to do so, he referenced little-known, but nonetheless influential, avant-garde women designers Anne-Marie Beretta, Irene Lentz and Sorelle Fontana – ‘the quiet superstars of the Italian canon’. He also noted the influence of his ‘closest collaborators’ Laura and Deanna Fanning, the designers who helm the womenswear arm of his label, and their Central Saint Martins graduate collection. As such, he noted a ‘geometric rigour’ and expansive use of colour across the vivid collection, featuring the off-kilter approach to cut and silhouettes – blouson-style jackets with V-shaped hems, caped sleeveless overcoats, wide-leg trousers puckered at the waistband – which has defined Kostadinov’s work so far. Figurative illustrations by London-based Estonian artist Mariann Metsis also featured, while other ‘decorative anomalies’, like découpage, paid hommage to Kostadinov’s maternal grandmother.

Ludovic de Saint Sernin

Sunday morning opened with another high-octane outing from Belgian designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who next month will show his debut collection for Ann Demeulemeester having been announced as the house’s new creative director late last year. Titled ‘Private Show’, the eponymous collection drew from De Saint Sernin’s childhood obsession with Fashion TV (clips from the show played over the soundtrack). As such, the collection mined the tropes of Y2K style – which has become something of a hallmark of the designer’s approach – with mini handkerchief dresses in gleaming chain mail (for men and women), lace-up leather mini dresses (with matching chokers), and slinky unravelling knitwear. De Saint Sernin has always drawn inspiration from the figure of the supermodel, and a real one walked today here – Irina Shayk, who strode the runway in an LDSS denim two-set, trailed by a male model in nothing but a pair of denim underpants.

Sacai

Chitose Abe said that the inspiration for her A/W 2023 collection was Christopher Nolan’s 2014 science-fiction film Interstellar, which charts a group of explorers as they seek to travel through a time-compressing wormhole in space. As such, she noted a play on the ‘relationship between past, present and future’ in the designer’s typically hybrid forms, like a prim tweed twin-set with flared puffer jacket back. Other pieces were able to shape-shift, with zip fastenings which changed the silhouette of a dress, or a coat which merged into a backpack. The collection also featured collaborations with outerwear brand Moncler (with whom Sacai had first worked over a decade earlier) alongside Abe’s take on Carhartt’s signature workwear and a new sneaker created alongside Nike in a continuing partnership. ‘The importance of learning from the past and a future informed with what’s gone before’, the accompanying notes elucidated of the cinematic inspiration, quoting one of Interstellar’s memorable lines to capture the collection’s sense of curiosity and experimentation: ‘We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars.’

Namacheko

‘Middle Age Grunge’ was the title of Namacheko’s latest collection, the Sweden-based label of former civil engineering and art history student Dilan Lurr which draws on the designer’s Kurdish heritage (Namacheko first began as a 2017 photography project documenting quotidian life in Kirkuk, Kurdistan, where he was born). The brief collection notes comprised simply a list of words – among them ‘knights’, ‘punk’, ‘jousting’, ‘grunge’ – suggesting inspiration from both contemporary counterculture and medieval dress. As such, a profusion of studs seemed to evoke chainmail, while lace-up elements and top-heavy silhouettes recalled historic menswear attire. Zips, acid-wash denim, and elements of leather, meanwhile, lent the energetic collection its rebellious undercurrent. 

Bode

Introducing womenswear to her offering for the first time this season, Emily Adams Bode Aujla looked towards her family history for a transporting show which took place on the stage of the 19th-century Théâtre du Châtelet. Drawing inspiration from the Rice sisters – the designer’s mother and aunts – the show’s setting was the Crane Estate, a Massachusetts residence where her aunt Janet worked while in college (its exterior was recreated as the collection’s backdrop). There, in the 1970s, she was introduced to 90-year-old Ms Long, its eccentric resident who would descend each evening for dinner wearing intricately constructed gowns from a century prior. This feeling of dishevelled glamour, and the idea of dressing across American eras, informed Bode Aujla’s approach this season – from elongated flapper gowns, edged with tassels, and heavily embroidered velvet dresses, to Western-style shirting and a take on the tuxedo. Menswear continued Bode Aujla’s homespun approach, with tasselled suede overcoats, collarless jackets and a selection of eveningwear featuring the brand’s signature embroidered motifs and quilting. Together, the expansive collection marked a step forward for the designer, who is cleverly fleshing out the Bode world with her distinct vision of American style. 

Hermès

An elegance permeated Véronique Nichanian’s latest menswear collection for Hermès, shown in the curved ground-floor hallway of the modernist Maison de l’Unesco building. ‘An attention to the sensuality of the clothes,’ said the house of the A/W 2023 offering, which was rooted in the sense of intimacy which defines Nichanian’s work – a pocket hidden at first glance, an unexpected flash of leather on a pea coat, or the feeling of being enveloped in shearling (of the last, a series of wide-shouldered shearling overcoats were some of the collection’s standout pieces). Sensuality came too in the array of other fabrics Nichanian used this season – an obsession with the materiality of clothing is at the heart of her approach – from the ‘caress of cashmere and flannels’ to the mix of leather grains, or the silk foulards which were in-set into roll-neck sweaters and cardigans. Flashes of satin and the shimmer of jewellery lent the latter section of the collection a dressed-up mood, a sensual proposition for Hermès eveningwear with all of Nichanian’s lightness of touch. 

Loewe

Jonathan Anderson called his latest menswear collection for Loewe ‘a reductionist act’ in a continued line of thinking from his recent JW Anderson show during Milan Fashion Week S/S 2023, whereby the designer noted a desire for clarity (‘I think we’re going to head into a season of reduction and stripping things back,’ he said at the time). Set in a vast white cube – the space interrupted only by two towering artworks by Washington-born Julien Nguyen of his muse Nikos – the A/W 2023 collection drew back the surrealism of recent collections towards a stress on singular garments and sharply defined silhouettes. The designer said he had been interested in the work of the Old Masters, here figured in the materials used throughout the collection: oversized jackets hammered from pewter and copper, spiked metal angel wings, shirts that appeared to have been moulded from paper and parchment. ‘Capturing a moment and a movement in real time, using traditional means in non-traditional ways – shapes are moulded, bended, frozen, tailored,’ said Anderson via the collection notes. Of the last, a series of elongated overcoats – some of which pulled over the head – or a rigorous single-breasted suit, grounded the collection in the reality of the everyday. As ever, Anderson said it was his visceral response to what he sees in the world around him. ‘Fashion has never felt more exciting,’ he said post-show. ‘As a designer, you have to look at the culture and respond to it. Hopefully, we are entering a period in design where it is about feeling uncomfortable. It’s good to be able to reinvent yourself.’

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

Rei Kawakubo said that the theme of her latest Comme des Garçons Homme Plus collection was ‘tailoring of the avant-garde’. Riffing on hallmarks of the designer’s most memorable works – padded elements across the back of a jacket, for example, recalled her seminal S/S 1997 ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body’ collection – the concise outing provided a distinct take on the traditions of tailoring, whether elongated blazers which opened along the front with undulating zips, elements of fur, or jackets with sleeve-like appendages emerging from the body. A series of cage headpieces by Gary Card and Valériane Venance featured alongside, while the collection also featured a number of prints by Canadian artist Edward Goss, who is self-taught and works with found objects like newspaper, tape and photographs. Here, scrawled motifs by the artist vividly appeared across tailoring and T-shirts.

Dior

A monolithic grey box on the Place de la Concorde – surrounded by hordes of screaming fans for the phalanx of celebrity attendees, including K-pop star Jimin – provided the setting for Kim Jones’ latest menswear collection for Dior. Inside, vast screens ran across its outer walls, flickering to life to show a dramatic reading of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land by British actors Robert Pattinson and Gwendoline Christie (both were also in attendance), which provided the show’s backdrop. It lent the collection a contemplative air, which Jones said was drawn from the ‘great rivers of London and Paris’, the ‘eddies and flows of the water… in which flux, movement, ease and fluidity are central’. Jones also noted the inspiration of Yves Saint Laurent, who took over from Christian Dior at the house aged just 21, and the ‘dynamism’ of his work, which saw historical couture silhouettes reinterpreted in a time of change (Saint Laurent was head of the house only briefly, from 1958-1960). Such has been Jones’ own aim at the house so far, to transpose the intricacies of Dior couture onto a contemporary menswear offering, here figured in a collection of extraordinary detail – delicate three-dimensional blossom-like motifs across tailoring and sweaters, a ‘CD’ monogram in lace on a neat pearl-buttoned cardigan, or juxtaposed technical elements, like the toggle fastenings on the sleeves of tailored jackets and shirts. Silhouettes were voluminous and poetic – billowing, wide-cut trousers, pleated kilts, sweaters pulled up on one side to reveal a shirt sleeve beneath – while others drew directly from the Dior archive, like an elongated smock which found inspiration in a marine ensemble created during Saint Laurent’s tenure at the house, here ‘transposed and transformed’.

Paul Smith

The vast American Church in Paris’ 7th arrondissement provided the backdrop for Paul Smith’s latest menswear collection, which the British designer said was inspired by the modernist movement (particularly those working in the field of architecture and design). As such, the collection featured sharply drawn silhouettes – like the top-stitch single-breasted suit which opened the collection – which morphed into softer, more amorphous styles, like cocooning puffer jackets (opening at the sides with popper fastenings) or colourful poncho-like knits. The brand called it a ‘more erudite’ outing for the designer this season, giving particular focus to his expertise in print; across the collection, bold graphic designs featured, inspired by modernist interiors (one was called the ‘rug print’, comprising a melange of floral and textural motifs). A re-examination of the three-piece suit, which began last season, continued with a crewneck vest serving as Smith’s reimagining of the waistcoat, worn beneath a matching jacket or over colourful shirting. 

Junya Watanabe

The brief notes for Junya Watanabe’s A/W 2023 collection noted that the Japanese designer had ‘no particular theme this season’; rather, he had become fascinated with Innerraum, the Berlin-based accessory label of Livio Graziottin and Sergio Eusebi. Their futuristic forms – created using polymer plating and the protective elements of motorsports gear – appeared across the collection, morphing with the looks like armour (‘Every single object is experienced as an extension of the body and is a metaphor of the body itself,’ Graziottin and Eusebi say of their designs). ‘They create new things by assembling materials such as protective gear parts used in different fields,’ the notes continued. ‘Some of Watanabe’s past clothes were designed with a similar logic. This is a reproduction of those archives.’ The collection itself – nearly all black, and moving from narrow tailoring towards signature street- and workwear-inspired silhouettes – also featured a slew of other collaborations, including Palace, Levi’s, Karrimor, Carhartt and North Face, reinterpreted in Watanabe’s recognisable style. 

Acne Studios

‘When I work, it’s sort of like therapy. I’ve been thinking a lot about the masculine baggage that we drag along as guys, boys, men and I wanted to explore it for fall,’ said Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson of the brand’s A/W 2023 collection, which imagined a ‘modern caveman’. ‘I felt inspired by the new man, the new way of looking at things, and by men who can show vulnerability aesthetically. I was intrigued by the thought of a caveman being the most masculine thing and I used that as a contrast.’ As such, Johansson combined fabrics and cuts which ‘traditionally skew feminine’ – whether ‘second-skin’ miniature cropped T-shirts, lace trims emerging from the waistband of trousers, or crochet knitwear – with tough leather, shearling and elements of retro sportswear. ‘The contrast I built the collection on is simple: ultra-masculine versus ultra-feminine.’ 

Louis Vuitton

A colourful imagining of a house provided the set for Louis Vuitton’s latest menswear collection, which this season was co-created by the house’s design team – many of whom worked under Virgil Abloh – and American designer and artist KidSuper, aka Colm Dillane. Known for an approach that attempts to recapture the wonderment and curiosity of being a child, Dillane brought a similar sense of levity to this collection, which began with one of his short films and was accompanied by a rousing live performance from Rosalía. In the collection notes, the house said this latest outing was about a feeling of collectivity; as such, the set had been created by cult filmmakers Michel and Olivier Gondry, while longtime Abloh collaborator Ibrahim Kamara styled the collection. It lent the spectacle an eclectic, in-it-together quality, which continued to find influence from Abloh – the various looks seemed to capture the late designer’s desire for imaginative flights in his collections, seeing garments emblazoned with faces, or playful, idiosyncratic elements, like a suit and hat stitched with pages of paper – while new ideas emerged, like the hand-drawn motifs by Dillane which decorated the latter looks. Much of the collection hinged on tailoring: broad across the shoulder with wide pointed lapels, often featuring elements of embellishment – whether a ruffled trim, or zip fastenings that sliced diagonally across the body of a tailored jacket evoking the shape of a doublet. The show ended with a collective bow from Dillane and the entire menswear design team. What comes next is yet to be announced, though the search for a permanent menswear artistic director – a position unfilled since Abloh’s death in 2021 – continues.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake

The latest Homme Plissé Issey Miyake was directed by Adrien M & Claire B, a French visual and performing arts company that, for the occasion, created an immersive video installation that stretched across the walls of the Palais de Tokyo space. A series of projections also featured on the runway itself, seeing flitting lights – ‘like an imaginary river of myriad particles’ – undulating across the runway, and across pieces of sheer fabric, brandished by a group of dancers. As ever, the presence of such choreography was symbolic of the brand’s desire to create clothing primed for movement, the spectacle this season evoking ‘a world that blurs our perception of space and gravity’, as the notes described. The collection itself was titled ‘Upon a Simplex’, an exploration of triangles and other simple geometric shapes, which when put together can develop into increasingly complex forms. As such, the ‘Edge’ coat was one of this season’s new introductions, a cocooning style in high-density polyester pleats, which draws inspiration from the composition of triangles, while grid-like and triangle prints referenced the work of American architect and philosopher R Buckminster Fuller. Other pieces – like a skirt and pullover parka – were cleverly constructed from overlaid triangles of fabric. Such experimentations are the heart of Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s  approach, an ever-evolving vision for the brand which continues to transform the way clothing is made and worn.

Givenchy

There was a feeling of reset to the stark optic-white show space erected in the École Militaire for Matthew M Williams’ latest menswear collection for Givenchy, a mood reflected in the pin-sharp black tailoring of the opening looks – a nod to what Williams called ’a new formality’ that could be traced in origin to house founder Hubert de Givenchy. As the show went on, these codes loosened up – a nod, Williams said, to the multiplicities of contemporary masculinity – from cleverly hyper-layered garments in a melange of colour and print (camo, cheetah and tartan among them) to unhemmed tailoring, a literal undoing of the formality of the opening looks. Part of the inspiration was a photograph of Hubert de Givenchy in the 1960s, wearing a jumper around his waist like a skirt: ‘[It is about] how you wear things... self-expression through the imbuement of personal gestures into clothes.’ It led to  Williams’ most expansive menswear offering yet – at least in terms of the breadth of the collection – and a clear declaration of his vision for Givenchy as he enters his third year at the house. 

Hed Mayner

Tel Aviv-based designer Hed Mayner’s previous collection was an exploration of proportion, magnifying garments in size in an attempt to ‘destigmatise [them] from class, gender and formality’. This season, he continued this exploration, though with a shift in focus, beginning the collection by imagining how a child’s tuxedo jacket might look on an adult body. Mayner – who spent much of this season commuting from his Tel Aviv home to the Tuscan factory which makes his clothing – said the closeness to the production process had offered a ‘more objective’ approach to shape, moving from the expansive towards something ‘more direct, more urgent, a little bit bent’. As such, pieces were distorted in shape, pulling and twisting around the body, while purposefully awkward fitting trousers were designed to give the impression that garments had been borrowed or passed between generations ‘of fathers, grandfathers and younger brothers’. A new collaboration with Reebok followed a similar rationale, with a version of the sportswear brand’s ’Classic Leather‘ sneaker washed and bent into shape, as if well loved.  

Bianca Saunders

Andam Award-winning British designer Bianca Saunders continued her exploration of archetypal menswear garments with an A/W 2023 collection titled ‘Playwork’. Saunders said she had drawn inspiration from Jamaican comedian Oliver Samuels, whose show ‘Oliver at Large’ saw sketches played out in quotidian settings – ’stripped-back set-up bars, bedrooms, corner shops’ – transformed into the extraordinary by what Saunders called the ‘amplitude’ of his performance. ’[He] tricks the eye into seeing a world far greater than what modest first impressions may imply,’ she said via the collection notes. Set against the backdrop of a back-room bar – Saunders’ own imagining of Samuels’ humble sets – this same line of thinking informed the clothing itself, whereby classic tailoring, overcoats and denim were manipulated with Saunders’ subversive approach to cut and silhouette, seeing garments hold structure as if scrunched or folded. The collection also featured pieces from Saunders’ second capsule collection for At.Kollective – a collaborative project led by Ecco Leather – which saw the designer hone her burgeoning accessories offering with square-toed shoes and a series of slouchy handbags inspired by the shape of a tent. 

Saint Laurent

In the vast central rotunda of the 18th-century Bourse de Commerce – formerly a place of trade for wheat and other commodities, now home to the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection art gallery – Anthony Vaccarello made a return to Paris Fashion Week Men’s, having shown his menswear collections for Saint Laurent outside of the house’s native city in past seasons (most recently, in Morocco’s Agafay Desert). Inside the space, black-leather seating lined the concrete walls of Japanese architect Tadao Ando’s circular ‘structure-within-a-structure’, its shape providing a visual link to the glowing disk by Es Devlin that rose from the desert floor at the end of Vaccarello’s Moroccan show. ‘Almost inadvertently, the O shape, a symbol of perfection and purity of execution, becomes a recurring, pertinent thread at Saint Laurent,’ said the house. 

The collection itself was described as a ‘sequel’ to the designer’s recent menswear collections, which have been defined by an aesthetic rigour and sharply drawn silhouettes – notably in severe, wide-shouldered tailoring – tempered by moments of fluidity and romance. Here, Vaccarello noted a desire for ‘ample volume’, figured in vast overcoats and wide-legged trousers inspired by the cut of sweat pants. A riff on the pussy bow ran throughout, while Vaccarello also talked of a ‘reciprocity’ between the masculine and feminine, including through a series of hooded pieces, reminiscent of Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘capuche’ dresses of the mid-1980s. 

While Vaccarello’s womenswear collections typically end with the Eiffel Tower’s shimmering light show as a backdrop, this finished with an altogether more restrained, but no less impactful, gesture: a single light hovering on Charlotte Gainsbourg, who provided the show’s live piano soundtrack, the models fading into shadows as the composition reached its crescendo. 

Wales Bonner

Following a triumphant show at Florence’s Pitti Uomo in June 2022, Grace Wales Bonner continued her European tour with a stop in Paris, which marked her debut collection in the city. For the occasion, she selected a historic salon on the Place Vendôme, a place synonymous with Parisian luxury – having housed couture and jewellery houses, international banks and hotels, including The Ritz – to show a collection that looked towards those who have chosen Paris as creative refuge over the decades, from James Baldwin to Josephine Baker (‘the rebel sojourners, arriving like a stream of stars, coming together in their uniqueness as if a constellation’). ‘What I found most interesting about these international artists and writers being in Paris was what it opened up for them in terms of freedom of expression,’ she said after the show. This sense of creative liberation came through in a rich amalgam typical of Wales Bonner’s work: diaphanous silk shirting and scarves which featured works by British artist Lubaina Himid (an ode to ‘the Black flâneur’), silk eveningwear created in collaboration with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard (conjuring Parisian nightlife of the early 20th century), and swathes of handcraft and embellishment (baroque pearls, Ghanaian beads and Swarovski crystals were inspired by the ‘ceremonial wardrobe’). The collection also featured a preview of Wales Bonner’s kit for the Jamaican national football team – in collaboration with Adidas – while the show’s soundtrack featured ‘original commissions’ by Duval Timothy, Sampha and Kendrick Lamar.

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 looks set to round out fashion month in climatic manner – from spectacular shows courtesy of France’s historic houses (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, Saint Laurent and Hermès among them) to a new wave of emerging designers showing across the city (Ester Manas, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Ottolinger and more), Europe’s spiritual home of fashion feels as energised as ever. New additions to the nine-day schedule include Victoria Beckham, in her Paris debut, Ib Kamara, who reveals his vision as art and image director of Off-White, and a contingent of Japanese designers making their womenswear return after two years of Covid-19 restrictions, including Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamato (Issey Miyake will also show its first collection since the eponymous founder’s death earlier this year). 

Here is the best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023.

The best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023

Tuesday 2 October

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton’s show set – a ‘pulsating monster flower’ by artist Philippe Parreno – acted something like a funhouse hall of mirrors, with rows of flashing light bulbs and slowly turning mirrors altering perceptions of perspective and scale. Something similar happened in the collection itself, which Nicolas Ghesquière said had a focus on femininity – ‘glorifying its complexity, magnifying it, putting it in the spotlight’. As such, zip pulls were blown up to the size of a hand; vast eyelet belts were printed onto perforated leather tailoring; huge pochette handbags, decorated with the Louis Vuitton monogram, appeared like one of the house’s purses had been multiplied to several times its size. ‘It's a stylistic exercise that re-evaluates the proportions of clothing and its adjuncts, one in which the codes of femininity unsettle scale,’ explained the collection notes. ‘The infinitely large and the infinitely small come together on silhouettes, inviting a second look.’ The result was something both tough and playful at once; a near-fetishistic celebration of the elements which make Louis Vuitton unique – the symbolic monogram, the hardware of its handbags – zoomed in, highlighted, ‘given their due’. ‘These are the custodians of a story that endures.’

Miu Miu

Recent seasons have seen Miuccia Prada – at both Miu Miu and her eponymous label – search for what she called ‘the idea of directness’ last month after her and Raf Simons’ S/S 2023 Prada show in Milan. It has meant an exploration of archetypal, near-banal garments; this season at Miu Miu, the opening look comprised two layered T-shirts and a featherweight knit on top, recalling undergarments in their simplicity. ‘This collection is about fashion born from reality, and born for reality, to be placed back into that context,’ she elucidated in the show notes. ‘[It] is not a time for meaningless fashion.’

This idea of utility ran throughout the collection. Lightweight nylon parkas became zip-up dresses. Wide bum bags with two large front pockets – in denim or nylon – sat low on the waist. Adjustable toggle fastenings ran throughout; nylon bustiers fastened with slide-release buckles. ‘This is not an easy moment to create fashion,’ she said. ‘For this collection, I wanted to explore the purpose of fashion, its reason. Its usefulness in society and in culture today.’

That said, moments of aesthetic rebellion emerged throughout – after all, Miu Miu describes itself as ‘rebellious and seductive’, ‘an unrestrained portrayal of Miuccia Prada’s creativity’. Hybrid flip-flop boots came in neon shades; smatterings of sequinned flowers decorated an otherwise simple T-shirt and skirt; unruly linings emerged from beneath the hem of a jacket. ‘Fashion can have a meaning and a reason beyond utility – to decorate, to attract, is a meaning. But it is important that fashion functions – I am not anti-luxury, but I am anti-ostentation.’

Chanel

In 1961, Gabrielle Chanel designed the dresses worn by French actress Delphine Seyrig in Alain Renais’ Last Year at Marienbad, a classic of French cinema’s new wave. For her S/S 2023 collection, artistic director Virginie Viard looked back towards this moment for a collection which mused more widely on film’s power to seduce. ‘The films we have seen, those that possess us and those we invent for ourselves,’ said Viard of the collection’s starting point. ‘Marienbad, the nouvelle vague, the allure according to Gabrielle Chanel, Karl [Lagerfeld], the night, feathers, sequins, heels.’

Such elements made for a deeply desirable collection from Viard, who is slowly making a signature at the house, defined by a feeling of simplicity, of stripping back, but nonetheless illuminated with subtle frissons of glamour and craft. Here, light touches of feather and delicate sparkling paillettes adorned beautifully cut tweed tailoring, the easy silhouette reminiscent of the costumes in Last Year at Marienbad and their simplicity of line. Elsewhere, patchwork motifs, photographic prints and subtly juxtaposed elements lent a feeling of collage. ‘I like it when things get mixed up,’ said Viard.

Another cinematic influence came from Kristen Stewart, the American actress and house muse. A film by Inez and Vinoodh starring Stewart played on the large screens which backdropped the runway; Stewart herself watched on from the front row. ‘Whether it's her, or the other women I dress, I need to feel that they like the clothes anyway,’ said Viard. ‘But, of the people around me, she is the closest to Gabrielle Chanel, at least to my idea of her. She understands Chanel, its clothes. And with her, it becomes even more modern. This collection, it’s also her.’

Monday 1 October

Rokh

At Rokh, Rok Hwang uses the archetypes of a woman’s wardrobe – the trench coat, the tailored suit, the classic blouse – as the starting point for his collections, mashing them up into complex hybrid garments which this season he characterised as ‘The Irrational View’, the collection’s title. ‘[It] joins together classic symbols of the wardrobe by applying multiple Rokh codes into one rationalised wardrobe with a modern perspective,’ explained the collection notes, with those codes spanning multiple buttons, diagonal cuttings, and ‘multi-size, unbalanced pleats’. It was the trench coat – a garment Hwang has explored in previous seasons – which became the collection’s nexus, reimagined in various shape-shifting forms, from a full-length skirt (as if the upper half of the trench had been taken clean away) to mini tailored jackets, made from sliced-up trench coats in subtly varying shades. An asymmetric silhouette ran throughout: plissé skirts had undulating hemlines, while dresses were cut diagonally so one side fell gently onto the floor. ‘Editing authenticity, adjusting identities,’ described Huang of the process. ‘Rationalising the irrational view across identities and wardrobes; new comprehensions found in repetitions of fitting, cutting during work in progress.’

Lanvin

A wistful S/S 2023 offering from Bruno Sialelli saw the French designer evoke ‘the emotions of couture and memories of Lanvin’ in a collection that looked towards the purity and refresh of springtime as inspiration. Refresh might be an apt word – after the high-glamour offerings of recent seasons, this was a more stripped-back approach, part of a move from the house to create a more expansive offering for its customer. Against the backdrop of a film by Joshua Woods, Sialelli proposed an array of elegant tailoring for the season – some left raw on the edges, ‘an exchange between the raw and the refined, the perfectly unfinished’ – often with just a singular button, which became symbolic of the collection’s reductionist outlook. Elsewhere, the influence of couture came in a feeling of craft: macramé vests and dresses were intricately crafted from embroidered silk soutache, while flowers became a delicate motif that reoccurred throughout. Pieces from Jeanne Lanvin’s own archive also provided inspiration for the collection – graphic prints from gentleman’s ties were printed onto radzimir and decorated dresses and skirts; Lanvin’s 1920s robe de style was reimagined in plissé silk chiffon. ‘An interplay of the rigour of couture with the impulse of emotion, an attitude of today with gestures that honour the past,’ said the house. ‘Simple pleasures, pure joys.’

Thom Browne

‘As you know, Thom likes to tell a story,’ said British actress Gwendoline Christie, the compère and protagonist for Thom Browne’s extravagant S/S 2023 presentation. A Cinderella story of sorts – a giant translucent slipper sat at one end of the runway, which wove around the gilded corridors of the Palais Garnier – the half-an-hour or so happening saw a collection that spanned vast taffeta opera coats (which were then removed, revealing spotted tailoring beneath, for the models’ second walk of the runway), punk-inspired get-ups (complete with liberty spiked hair), riffs on preppy American tailoring, before an all-out finale where Pose’s MJ Rodriguez zoomed around the venue in a shimmering floating car (the hood ornament a tiny recreation of Browne’s signature dachshund, Hector). The finale saw Christie transformed, wearing a white pleated opera coat – ‘the truest version of herself’ – zooming off into the sunset with Rodriguez. ‘In Thom Browne’s world,’ Christie said at the show’s close, ‘all girls and all boys fit inside the shoe.’

Sacai

Sacai’s Chitose Abe said she was thinking about freedom this season, noting a desire to create a collection encompassing feelings of ‘positivity, gentle strength, dignity and joy’. Amid an airy, light-filled showspace, lined with hundreds of cube-shaped stools in an array of primary colours, the collection encapsulated a carefree mood: oversized white shirting, jackets sliced along the sleeves for movement, dresses and skirts with deep utility-inspired pockets. As ever, Abe proposed a number of clever hybrid garments – the double-breasted blazer, for example, was reimagined as a sleeveless pleated top; trousers with apron-style pouches on the front – while moments of textural play, from shiny silver fabrications to shimmering sequins, set an optimistic mood. As one slogan T-shirt read: ‘I got a feeling it’s gon’ be alright.’ 

Sunday 2 October

Givenchy

A heavy downpour of rain might have threatened to disrupt Matthew M Williams’ first solo womenswear outing – previously, his women’s collections have appeared in co-ed shows – though a brief break in the clouds at showtime proved serendipitous (as if on cue, the rain began again as Williams took his runway bow). This season, Williams said he imagined a ‘transatlantic clash’, between his own native America and the city of Paris, where he now resides. ‘Through the timeless gaze of Hubert de Givenchy, whose contributions to American cinema inspired the nation’s perception of everyday elegance, the silhouettes of classic Parisian chic and casual Los Angeles cool consolidate,’ the house said in a statement. 

In the collection, this culture clash arose in an opposition between elegant black tailoring – one standout was a perfectly sculpted tuxedo jacket, panelled like a corset – and more casual 2000s-inflected elements, from knee-length cargo shorts and stone-washed denim to motorcycle-inspired handbags. A series of heavily embellished gowns in sequin and crystal were perhaps Williams’ most dressed-up proposition for the house yet – a nod to house founder Hubert de Givenchy’s innate command of eveningwear. ‘Everything begins with Hubert, the designer said. ‘I looked into his archives with my adopted Parisian eye, but also with my instinctive American eye. The cultural exchange reflected in this collection has been a long time in the making.’

Ottolinger

‘To look backwards is to die,’ began a short piece of text by Berlin-based writer and artist Calla Henkel, which accompanied Ottolinger’s S/S 2023 collection. Indeed, there was a distinct feeling of forward motion to Switzerland-born, Berlin-based Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient’s latest offering, models trouncing down the runway at speed (some complete with wheeled suitcases, as if ready to walk straight on out of the door). Showing amid a sea of bare white mattresses – which doubled as the audience’s seats – Bösch and Gadient said they imagined those moments when you get out of bed and have a good feeling about the day ahead. Twisted leather jackets and folded skirts were created in the duo’s deconstructed style, while skin-bearing silhouettes – skimpy knit bra tops, sheer printed vests, sporty riffs on swimwear – will no doubt satiate those already invested in their sexy, 1990s-inspired clothing (Bösch and Gadient have an ever-growing legion of fans, evidenced in the amount of Ottolinger clothing worn by the show’s attendees). ‘You are ready. You will not slow down,’ concluded Henkel. ‘You will never look back. It is an Ottolinger summer.’

Valentino

Last season, Pierpaolo Piccioli presented a study in pink, using one vivid shade across the collection’s various garments (such was the colour’s prominence, it came with its own Pantone shade, ‘Valentino Pink PP’). Here, the colour reappeared on the numerous VIP attendants at the show dressed by the house, making Piccioli’s about-turn on the runway itself more distinct. This season, he chose a more muted palette of beige and brown, designed to be evocative of skin tones, part of a collection that had renewed focus on the body. Adaptable body suits, pieces in stretch lycra and contouring knitwear were created to ‘liberate the form’, while the Valentino Toile Iconographe – a monogram for the house – enveloped the models’ bodies (from shoes to tights to gown, to make-up over the face). Flashes of colour demonstrated Piccioli’s unique eye – here, bold yellow, a rich Valentino red – while his usual impressive flourishes of craft, from sprays of delicate feathers to incredible work with sequins and crystal, added the requisite glamour synonymous with the house. 

Balenciaga

‘The mud show’ was the title of Demna’s latest presentation for Balenciaga, held on the outskirts of Paris. On arrival, the reason was clear – the showspace itself was a vast mud-filled pit, its trodden-down runway pitted with pools of water (the set was created by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra; the scent enhanced by longtime collaborator Sissel Tolaas). In a letter, the Georgian designer – known for his transporting runway shows – noted that it was a metaphor ‘for digging for the truth and being down to earth’. ‘I hate boxes and I hate labels and I hate being labelled,’ he wrote. ‘Fashion loves boxes and labels… individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudotrends dictated in a post in some stories of some celebrity of the moment… I’ve decided to no longer explain my collections and verbalise my designs, but to express a state of mind… you either like it or not.’ 

The statement set the stage for a defiant collection, which continued to mine a dystopian mood (last season, he talked about the experience of fleeing the Abkhaz-Georgian war as a 12-year-old; models dragged their belongings through an Arctic tundra, doubling as a comment on impending climate crisis). Demna elucidated that this collection was about individualism: ‘The more you try to be yourself, the more you get punched in your face,’ he said (indeed, models appeared bashed and bruised, lips split open). Clothes and bags were purposely soiled – backstage, he said that these items took longer to create than if he had tried to make them perfect – riffs on the various items which have become his hallmarks at Balenciaga (the uniforms of security officers, torn denim jeans, hoodies, oversized leather jackets). Models walked with lifelike baby dolls strapped to their chests, or carried crumpled crisp packets and bedraggled cuddle toys. The final looks had a dark glamour: twisting dresses that knotted onto the body, a sequin gown, hem dragging in the mud. 

Beneath the darkness, optimism lurked: ‘Every day becomes a battlefield to defend [your] unique identity… but how great it is it be different from one and other,’ he said. ‘Let us let everyone be anyone and make love not war.’

Saturday 1 October

Akris

A 2011 work by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone provided the backdrop for Akris’ S/S 2023 show, which also marked 100 years of the label. Reading ‘We Are Poems’ in a rainbow-coloured font – for the finale, a series of dresses would echo the colours of the sculpture – it hovered over the Palais de Tokyo’s central fountain, guests looking out towards the Eiffel Tower beyond. It was a fittingly impactful setting for the Swiss house’s centenary celebration, seeing current creative director Albert Kriemler select nine pieces from the house’s archive from the years 1978-1992 to walk among the new collection. He had discovered them while preparing to shoot them for an upcoming book on Akris’ history; struck by the unexpected modernity of the pieces he ‘knew right away we had to work with them’. As such, the opening look was a double-face cashmere coat with tie fastening first created in 1978; a 1989 Vicuna blouse and 1983 nappa leather trouser followed. ‘Some designs defy time,’ said the collection notes of the styles. Kriemler’s own work has an equally timeless quality, this season providing a comprehensive wardrobe in his precise, minimally embellished style – from simple overcoats and easy tailoring to lightweight shirt dresses, some edged with lace (a motif drawn from archive pieces from the 1980s). ‘Let’s call it a rebeginning, an incentive to pause, a point in which everything can reappear or renew itself,’ he said in a letter left on each seat. ‘A collection where past, present, and future co-exist. A look back to move forward into a new century.’

Hermès

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski imagined her woman for S/S 2023 at a ‘rave in the desert’ – ‘the sounds sound radiating from behind the hill follows the drift of the dawn: she’s never felt anything so beautiful’, read the collection notes. Indeed, the vast carpeted show space was evocative of a desert landscape; in its centre, a recreation of a sand dune, which as the show began was projected with an ebb and flow of swirling colours (‘the colours from the landscape came alive and began to move, to shimmer as though liquefied’). It led to a collection loosely inspired by outdoor adventures – Vanhee-Cybulski said she imagined ‘[a] return to a life in the heart of nature’ – with pieces nodding to tents, mosquito nets and hammocks, these functional items reimagined in the designer’s typically seductive style. A raincoat, for example, rolled up at the back to reveal a breathable mesh underlay – recalling the construction of a tent doorway – while utilitarian details, from toggle fastenings to zip-away openings, added a sense of ease to the otherwise luxurious pieces. A rich, desert-inspired palette – yellow, ochre, sand beige, brown, red and ‘dawn pink’ – completed this evocative, transporting collection. 

Ester Manas

Ester Manas’ S/S 2023 collection was titled ’Sunset Body’, attempting to capture the languid feeling of a summertime evening – the moment where the ‘undressed day turns into an otherwise dressed evening’. Founders Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre are known for their ‘one size fits all’ approach, where sizes span 34-50 (or S to 3XL), often in a singular garment through clever design tricks (a system of adjustable straps, for example). Beyond that, their collections are infused with a feeling of sensuality – ‘it’s for someone fierce, strong, sexy, a woman who really wants to be seen,’ Manas told Wallpaper* earlier this year – here emerging in a sun-kissed exploration of the ‘pleasure’ of salt, sea, sand and sun (‘the collection is only about pleasure’, read the notes). Arriving in a vivid palette of pink, orange, blue, lavender and iridescent black (‘like a promising night’) the various pieces saw body-tracing, swimwear-inspired silhouettes meet feminine flourishes – frills and ruffles, the shine of knitted lurex – and flashes of skin. ‘All its variations embrace the idea of a comfort that does not permit itself to be sexy,’ the pair say, the final looks giving a brief glimpse of an upcoming collaboration with Danish fashion label Ganni. ‘Everyone is welcome.’

Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood 

‘This collection is my dream,’ said Andreas Kronthaler prior to his S/S 2023 collection, which looked towards the English metaphysical poet John Donne for inspiration. He had recently read Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Russell; in the collection notes, he quoted a passage from the book on clothing (a particular fascination for the poet, who was part of the court of James I). ‘John Donne understood that when we get dressed we ask something of the world. All clothes speak: they say desire me, or oh ignore me, or endow my words with greater seriousness than you would were I not wearing this hat.’ It lent the collection a theatrical, Rennaissance flair – the show saw models climb onto a wooden stage in the round – from doublet jackets, bodices and puffed bishop sleeves to swathes of silk jacquard decorated with silk stars (specially commissioned from Stephen Walters, ‘perhaps the only silk weaver left in England’). Towering platforms shoes, corseted gowns, and men’s underwear Kronthaler has owned since the 1980s completed the eclectic look which – besides the aforementioned jacquards – was crafted entirely from deadstock fabrics. ‘I always like to combine new with old,’ said the designer. ‘To get dressed is to make both a statement and a demand.’ 

Friday 30 September

Coperni

If you have an Instagram account, it is likely that you will have already witnessed Coperni’s thrilling closing act: a nearly nude Bella Hadid being sprayed with Fabrican, a liquid that when hardened creates a wearable textile (such is the speed of this transformation, Hadid was able to walk in the runway in the minimal slip dress just moments after its completion). ‘An experience that sublimates the female body in the purest and most innovative way, tempting to immortalise it,’ described the collection notes, which also saw the designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant pay ode to ‘women of this world’ in all their multiplicities (‘to you, women in every city, every desert, every club who magnify space and oxygen, yet fill emptiness and shadows’). Indeed, the collection which preceded the viral finale had a fierce femininity; presented against a grinding techno soundtrack, silhouettes were sliced, tailoring pin sharp, heels Perspex. A run of hologram dresses and shirts were sculpted to the body; more delicate touches of lace emerged from skin-tight slips. The final flourish was a €100,000 version of their signature Swipe bag in solid gold – the second viral moment of the night. 

Victoria Beckham

The cloisters of Val-de-Grâce church provided the setting for Victoria Beckham's debut at Paris Fashion Week. Having previously shown in New York and London, Beckham called this latest move a ‘recontextualisation’ of the established ‘hallmarks and codes’ of the label – though in many ways it felt like a departure, with Beckham embracing a more vivid expression of sensuality (or, as the collection notes put it, ‘an embracing of feminity’). There were sheer, lingerie-inspired dresses with flourishes of lace; sinuous, contouring knits; latex leggings and body suits that peeked out below skirts or above the line of a waistband. A series of sharp, tailored pieces drew the link to Beckham’s past collections – here, the outline of a lapel appeared embossed. A duo of dresses with heart motifs – crafted from twists of silk jersey – nodded towards the city's romantic mood, a feeling continued in the celebration post-show, where hundreds of candles lit the historic courtyard outside.

Issey Miyake

‘We see design as a process driven by curiosity, built upon a comprehensive exploration – bringing joy, wonder, and hope to life, and of course with a touch of playfulness,’ read a short message from Issey Miyake creative director Satoshi Kondo prior to his emotive S/S 2023 show, an ode to the brand’s namesake, who died earlier this year (preceding the show, the Japanese designer’s portrait was projected onto the show space’s walls). ‘A form that breathes’ was the collection’s title, its sculptural forms – ‘kneading, carving, and shaping,’ Kondo described of the process – reminiscent of Miyake’s own extraordinary command of body and silhouette, and how they intertwine. The collection began with what Kondo called ‘Torso’, comprising sculpted drapes in relatively sombre shades of black and white, before moving towards a more expansive colour palette, itself a hallmark of the label. As ever, innovative processes created pieces with an almost otherworldly quality – bouncy ripples of pleats, made from recycled polyester; innovative knits, which emerged from the body like spikes – appearing best in movement (a group of contemporary dancers, who closed the show, demonstrated the various garments flexibility). ‘A form imbued with life, robust and lively,’ said the accompanying notes. ‘Not defined, not confined, enveloping the body, liberating the mind. 

Loewe

The invitation for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Loewe show was a single anthurium flower, its glossy red flower encased in a slim white box – ‘a product of nature that looks like an object of design, and treated as such,’ the designer said of its appeal. At the show venue, an enormous fibreglass recreation of a flower towered over the runway; on the opening looks, flowers were replicated once again – bright white, lime green, classic red – in various sizes, becoming hard corsages on dresses or sprouting from shoes (another pair was placed on the chest of a white gown, stamens pointing outwards suggestively). At his men’s show earlier this year in June – a comment on the intersection of nature and technology – real grass sprouted from coats and sneakers; here, the organic became inorganic, cast from fibreglass. 

It was a continuation of Anderson’s recent fascination with the way we consume imagery; at both Loewe and his eponymous label, surreal elements are an attempt to consider the way that technology shifts our perception of the world – ‘are we falling into our screens, becoming our phones?’ he said in London last month after his S/S 2023 JW Anderson collection. Here, he talked about ‘sharpening, stripping down, thinking forward… a focus on line, colour, shape: the reality of clothing, in tension, with precision.’ It meant an exploration of silhouette: polo knit skater dresses were shrunken, shirts blown up. One hoodie had a geometric edge; from the front, it appeared pixelated, as if being viewed on a screen. Hard breastplates – decorated with dainty flowers – sat just away from the body, skewing the shape. Panniers jutted from models’ hips.

‘I kind of liked this idea of something meditative,’ said Anderson, noting that the repetition of looks was part of the collection’s ‘trickery’. You don't know if it's the look that you saw, or the same person or not; It’s more focused. I feel like I'm starting to enjoy just the making of a silhouette.’ 

Thursday 29 September

Rick Owens

Rick Owens once again used the vast forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo – this time, its central fountain shooting a monumental spire of water high into the air – to backdrop a collection inspired by the figures of ancient Egypt, and biblical epics he would watch as a child (the inspiration points were similar to his men’s show this past June, when he said of Egypt, ‘I found great comfort in the remoteness and scale of its history’). A feeling of ritual and ceremony permeated the collection: silhouettes were draped around the body (the opening look felt like a play on the mantled statues of classical antiquity), shoulders were peaked, the shape of a jacket evoked the shell of a scarab beetle (a creature ancient Egypt saw as symbolic of eternal life). A black hooded clock was monastic in proportion, while a final flourish of tulle – Rick Owens’ take on the ballgown – provided a dramatic closer.  Most striking, though, was one of the collection’s fabrications – an otherworldly ‘gelatinous’ leather that had been treated with glycerin to appear sheer. 

Chloé

Gabriela Hearst looked towards an unexpected inspiration for her S/S 2023 collection for Chloé – nuclear fusion energy, which the designer called ‘a large-scale, peaceful, clean energy source’ (environmental concerns are at the heart of Hearst’s approach to design, both here and at her eponymous label; here, she had undertaken research into the technology with ITER, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion). Taking place in the darkened Pavillon Vendôme, Hearst looked in particular towards the vast metal tokamak – a powerful magnetic device being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power – evoking its circular structure in the collection’s curved, industrial lines and metal embellishments, while a flashing laser light installation by artist Paolo Montiel-Coppa ‘resembled the magnet placement in a tokamak’ (it also lent the space the feeling of nightclub, or rave). ‘I was surprised how many people didn’t know about fusion – the clear opportunity we have with this collection to tell the positive story and cross-pollinate audiences,’ said Hearst. ‘It is extremely rewarding to use creativity to visually express what we learnt.’

Wednesday 28 September

Acne Studios

Acne Studios’ S/S 2023 collection marked ten years since the Stockholm-based label began showing its collections in Paris. To celebrate, Jonny Johansson imagined a ‘twisted wedding party’, a mood reflected in the all-pink set, which came complete with rumpled satin sheets and shell-adorned candelabras by nail artist Sylvie Macmillan. ‘I wanted to put a spin on the classic, kitschy wedding, referencing everything from the tablecloth to the chandelier, the wedding-night bed sheets, the bride’s shoe, the bows, and the cute flowers,’ said Johansson of the collection itself, which riffed on the archetypes of wedding nuptials in the label’s eclectic, undone style. Delicate layers of lace, transparent tulle adorned with flowers, and girlish bows and hearts set a romantic mood, while spikey accessories, battered leather, and the brand’s signature denim provided a tougher counterpoint. ‘I find weddings fascinating because they are always a melting pot, and they kickstart a lot of aesthetic choices,’ Johansson continued. ‘There’s something cute, kitschy, sweet about weddings – but also something serious, tense, and vulnerable.’

The Row

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen continue to bring their distinct brand of ascetic luxury to Paris Fashion Week, presenting a typically restrained – but entirely desirable – collection for S/S 2023. There was, of course, plenty of brilliant outerwear – broad-shouldered coats with hems almost touching the floor; a trench, grasped over the chest with the hand – while a feeling of sensuality came from the silhouette, subtly nipped at the waist and flaring slightly towards the hips, or diaphanous layers which wrapped around the body. A passage of looks saw the designers forge new ground in an exploration of the intimacy and imperfections of handcraft, from a homespun crochet dress and top – the various knitted patterns lending them a feeling of collage – to swathes of delicate netting, intricately stitched with hundreds of shimmering crystals.

Paul Smith

‘A suit used to equal a job interview or a formal occasion, but now the suit is cool again,’ Paul Smith said at his S/S 2023 menswear show earlier this year, a thematic thread which continues into the designer’s latest womenswear collection. Contemporary riffs on tailoring provide the collection’s nexus – a sleeveless blazer, with an angular closure is worn with tailored shorts, while a play on the three-piece suit comes in matching satin shirt, overlaid bustier and trouser (Smith calls it a more ‘youthful’ take on the formalwear staple). Elsewhere, an after-hours mood permeates the collection – Smith says he drew particular inspiration from his musical icons of the 1970s and 80s – in louche silhouettes and tuxedo-inspired elements, which ‘blur the lines between day-to-night’. Despite this, the collection retains a resolutely relaxed mood, with gently ruched dresses, oversized trench coats, and soft-to-the-skin boucle, jersey and satin epitomising Smith’s uncomplicated, easygoing approach. 

Courrèges

‘Elapsed time, looking forwards, glancing backwards,’ were the evocative starting points of Nicolas Di Felice’s latest collection for Courrèges, symbolised by a stream of sand which poured from the ceiling onto the circular runway below – as if attendees were suspended in a giant hourglass (the spectacle was created by French artist Theo Mercier; the sand was made from nut shells ‘obtained from 100% renewable raw material’). He did so by looking towards the ocean (‘time leads back to nature’), the annular sand-covered runway also evocative of a beach – ruffled-haired models held their shoes in hand, as if wandering home the morning after (rave culture has been a prescient inspiration for Di Felice during his tenure at the house so far). It lent the collection a certain fluidity, which referenced both Di Felice’s sleek minimalism and the futurist innovations of the house founder. A series of flou dresses, for example, took their body-skimming line from a 1974 zippered dress, while a wetsuit created in 1981 ‘evolved’ into a leather jacket. Metallic halter swimsuits, spiky silicone dresses – their unique texture evocative of coral – and scuba fabrics completed the beach-side look, which was both recognisable and unexpected at once. ‘To look at the past as we look to the idea of the future,’ he said. ‘As a way to create for the now.’

Tuesday 27 September

Saint Laurent

‘Radical fluidity’ described Anthony Vaccarello of his glamourous S/S 2023 outing at Saint Laurent, reimagining the enveloping sheath dresses worn by American choreographer Martha Graham – which traced the line of the body and often stretched from head to toe – as diaphanous hooded eveningwear, which also recalled Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘capuche’ dresses of the 1980s. Indeed, the era proved to be something of a theme of the collection, not least in a brilliant array of power-shouldered outerwear – from elongated leather trenches to elegant floor-length wool coats – drawn from the archive and yet contemporary in their boldness of shape (such cinematic silhouettes have been a focus of Vacarello in recent seasons). Set against the usual backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, it was a blockbuster show which closed Paris Fashion Week’s first full day in electric manner.

Dior

Florentine noblewoman Catherine de Medici has become one of European history’s most evocative figures, bringing the riches of her realm – the Republic of Florence, prior to Italy’s unification – to 16th-century France and its royal court through her marriage to King Henry II. Among them, delicate Burano lace, the corset, and platform heels, her imports reshaping Parisian fashion and arguably defining feminine dress for centuries to come. The seductive appeal of De Medici provided the starting point of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s S/S 2023 collection for Dior, which explored women’s ability to exercise power through fashion. ‘The power of fashion becomes the art of woman,’ read the collection’s notes. ‘An art of invention, able to redefine the city of Paris over and over again, each and every time.’

Presented amid a rich Baroque-inspired cardboard ‘cave’ created by French artist Eva Jospin, Chiuri conjured De Medici’s spirit through a 21st-century lens – from swathes of intricate lace to panniers, corsets, and rich, ceremonial silhouettes (billowing sleeves, elbow-length gloves, symbolic embroidery). Contemporary elements were woven through the primarily black collection (De Medici wore only black after the death of her husband; Chiuri noted it was a colour with particular visual power) from toggle fastenings to denim, alongside cargo pants, bomber jackets, and trench coats. ‘Fashion dialogues with reality through artifice; the garments of the Court are transformed.’

There was, of course, an autobiographical thread that wove through the collection – Grazia Chiuri herself is an Italian in Paris; she too is attempting to make her mark on the way people dress in both the city and the world beyond. Time will tell Chiuri’s own influence, though the success of her tenure so far – Dior’s revenues are estimated to have tripled in her time on the job, bringing in close to $7 billion dollar profit – shows she is striking a chord with women with collections that, like De Medici’s wardrobe half a millennium before, encompass both power and desire. 

Stay tuned for more Wallpaper* coverage from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023