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

An imagined meeting between photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and couturier Yves Saint Laurent – two men responsible for honing the aesthetic of the 1980s – provided the inspiration for Anthony Vaccarello’s A/W 2025 menswear collection for Saint Laurent, presented in the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of Paris’ Bourse de Commerce earlier this year. Hanging chandeliers – lowered to just a few feet from the floor – lent the space a moody half-light, inspired by those which hung in the ballroom of Paris’ Intercontinental Hotel, where Yves Saint Laurent held his couture shows from 1976 onwards.

Out of the darkness emerged his protagonist for the season: part-Yves Saint Laurent in ‘bookish’ houndstooth and flannel tailoring, a recreation of his distinctive Parisian uniform, part-Mapplethorpe in the thigh-high leather boots worn atop, inflected with the suggestion of kink that ran through his photographic oeuvre (Mapplethorpe remains best-known for his homoerotic male nudes, which often featured elements of fetish and BDSM-wear, from leather boots, chaps and harnesses to gimp masks and latex). Vaccarello described the collection as capturing ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’, further figured in hefty leather overcoats and flourishes of ‘fur’ (in fact, these pieces were constructed from thousands of meticulously placed feathers).

Dangerous elegance: A/W 2025’s new menswear mood

This feeling of ‘menacing elegance’ ran through the season, with 1980s-inflected designs capturing a mood of dangerous sensuality through moments of leather, denim and western-wear, often clashed with classical tailoring or corporate attire. At MM6 Maison Margiela, tasselled leather gilets and pants looked to have stepped out of a Karlheinz Weinberger photograph; at Versace, slick leather tailoring was worn with silk shirts adorned with animal prints and baroque motifs; while at Prada, an influence of western-wear came in cowboy boots tweaked upwards at the toe, and tailoring made from a patchwork of leather. Playing out amid a scaffold show set designed to evoke the intimacy of a nightclub, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons called it a collection of ‘instinct and passion’.

Here, taken from the cover shoot of the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, a series of these looks is captured by French photographic duo Melanie + Ramon and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes. Together, they encapsulate the A/W 2025’s dangerous, sensual mood – an invitation to embrace a sense of risk when dressing for the season ahead. Our short film of the shoot, above, plays out to the voice of a young Marlon Brando, as recorded in an early screentest for Rebel Without a Cause (the part later went to James Dean).

Model: Colin O at Tomorrow Is Another Day. Casting: Noah Shelley at Streeters. Hair/grooming: Michael Harding at Blend Management using Davines. Digi tech: Grzegorz Stefanski. Photography assistants: Joe Conway, Jason Colledge. Fashion assistant: Anna Sweasey. Production assistant: Danielle Quigley. Retouching: Courtoisie.

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

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

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

When the rain hits Paris’ Avenue Montaigne, shoppers are given a clear plastic overlay to protect their purchases from being dampened by the weather.

At Rabanne, which has an outpost on the rarefied shopping street, a new handbag comes with such functionality built-in, seeing a version of the French house’s seminal ‘1969’ chainmail bag sheathed in a futuristic transparent plastic case which can be popped on or off depending on the day’s forecast (this new iteration, in disks of leather, is called the ‘Paco’ bag).

Rain or shin: Rabanne’s weatherproof handbag

It arrives as part of a S/S 2025 collection in which creative director Julian Dossena reimagines the ‘1969’ bag – originally inspired by the humble chainmail apron worn by butchers in France – in a multitude of precious new materials, from disks of hand-blown Murano glass by Venice-based artisans Venini to gleaming gold coins by French medal-makers Maison Arthus Bertrand (the latter in a process which takestook over 300 hours of handcraft).

Dubbed by the designer as the ‘world’s most expensive bag’, the gilded accessory is an ode to Paco Rabanne’s gold-and-diamond-adorned ‘world’s most expensive dress’, created for house muse Françoise Hardy in 1968.

A version of this article appears in the April 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 6 March 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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

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

The best Resort 2025 fashion

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

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

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

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

Rabanne launched its first make-up line a year ago (August 2023), with the intension of disrupting the beauty industry in the same way Paco Rabanne disrupted fashion.

The 1966 debut of the Spanish designer’s ‘Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials’ collection sent shockwaves through the couture salons of Paris. As the legendary fashion editor Polly Mellen once said: ‘The first time I went to one of his shows, I remember saying: “What is going on here? I don't believe it! It’s so beautiful and so different! Gladiator dresses, a suit of armour, a warrior, the new male!''’

Rabanne’s fragrances are unusual in the best way possible

However, revolutionising make-up is no easy task in today’s highly saturated beauty market. Conceived by make-up artist Diane Kendal, products like ‘Shimmer Bomb’ (a glitter spray that creates a veil of radiance all over the skin or body), ‘Liquid Shots’ (amplifiers in metallic and glitter finishes, which provide a disco ball glimmer to eyes, cheeks and lips), and ‘Dramalips’ (wet-look lipsticks with a radiclally glossy finish), prove that Rabanne lived up to the task.

Now, Rabanne has debuted ‘La Collection Rabanne’, its first line of luxury fragrances, which have been made with the same innovative yet time-honoroued vision. Designed by six of the industry’s most celebrated noses, including the likes of Fanny Bal and Fabrice Pellegrin – who have also worked with perfume houses Frédéric Malle and Diptyque respectively – the collection is comprised of eight perfumes. Each one is inspired by a different aspect of the brand, from significant dates and places to fabrics and materials.

Much like Rabanne’s clothing (the fashion brand is currently led by creative director Julien Dossena) these fragrances are best suited to those hoping to make a statement with what they wear. When I visited Rabanne’s Paris headquarters to discover the collection, I was particularly struck by how distinct they are from one another. As a whole, they are unusual in the best possible sense.

The experience recalled my initial encounter with the first fragrance collection from Dries Van Noten, another Puig-owned beauty diffusion line from a fashion house. (This was also made by an ensemble cast of perfumers, invited to interpret the brand’s aesthetic through their unique olfactory visions.)

Where the Dries Van Noten fragrances reflected the brand’s idiosyncratic yet refined glamour, Rabanne’s are punchy and flamboyant, with a slight metallic silage throughout. Standouts from the range include ‘Silver Skin’, a scent inspired by the cool feeling of a Rabanne chainmail dress against the body. Woody with mineral touches via a blend of iris concrete, vanilla and ambrox, it’s peculiar in the best possible way.

‘Midnight Sex’ is an unabashedly carnal scent inspired by Paco Rabanne’s revealing designs. It’s an almost sugary combination of tuberose and sweet coconut pulp, tempered with leathery touches of sandalwood oil. ‘Armure Mara’, another of my favourites, is a truly remarkable gourmand, made from a never-before-seen 100 per cent natural extract of strawberries. (This is a highly technical feat in the world of perfumery, I’m told). These fresh, and summery mouth-watering notes are combined with the high-contrast of earthy patchouli, for a perfume that is simultaneously sweet and heady.

Each eau de parfum comes in a square walled bottle made from glass that also, naturally, have flourishes of metal. This includes the silver-toned and gold-toned cap, embossed with the Rabanne monogram, and final adornment in the form of a chain link from the brand’s signature ‘Eight’ jewellery.

‘La Collection Rabanne’ is available now, exclusively at a Selfridges, with other retailers soon to come.

rabanne.com

Three hundred and sixty-seven gleaming ‘pastilles’ of metal, each one attached together by hand, make up Rabanne’s ‘1969’ chainmail handbag, an emblem of the eponymous designer’s utopian vision for fashion which – alongside André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin – would define the Space Age spirit of the 1960s. ‘I defy anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn’t been done before,’ Paco Rabanne said in 1966. ‘The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.’ Metal would become his favoured medium, creating pieces in chainmail and metal paillettes that looked descended from another planet.

‘When you wear Rabanne chainmail, it’s really a feeling. There is a sensation between the garment and the skin,’ current creative director Julien Dossena told Wallpaper* in the September 2023 Style Issue. ‘He was fighting against the old rules, the old world. Even aesthetically, he didn’t understand couture, and he didn’t want to understand.’

‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Julien Dossena on the ‘1969’ bag

That said, the ‘1969’ handbag had more humble beginnings, its starting point a steel apron traditionally worn by butchers in France to protect them from the sharp implements of their trade. Using just a pair of pliers – of a type still used to attach the bag's hooks and pastilles today – the apron’s protective disks were recrafted into the simple, foldover bag. Its original handles were made from the handles of toilet flush chains, recalling Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades.

’It was on its own a symbol of design in the 20th century, and has become timeless – super desirable, culturally charged and radical at the same time,’ says Dossena as the ‘1969’ bag becomes central to his evolution of Rabanne, which last year saw the house drop the ‘Paco’ (there was also the launch of a Diane Kendal-led Rabanne make-up line in similarly Space Age packaging, and a clothing and homeware collaboration with H&M, which included sequin-disk door curtains and lamps). ’It was not even a question to revive it because it was living its life already.’

Of its particular appeal – which has seen numerous iterations, including the ‘nano’ and ‘mini’, the latter the size of an iPhone – Dossena credits the way it evokes ‘a lifestyle, hedonistic and avant-garde, sensual and modernist’. Indeed, its sinous form is designed to trace the line of the body – like the house’s chainmail gowns, immortalised by Jane Fonda in Barbarella – and was worn by figures of French cinema like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda. So distinctive was its design in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it needed no label or logo (something that endures over half a century on). Wearers also talk of a signature ‘swish’ sound upon movement.

‘It’s all handmade,’ says Dossena of the bag’s unique brand of savoir-faire. ‘The rings which link the metal pieces are all opened and closed with a plier. It’s really demanding craft [but it] creates that magic articulated liquid-like metal.’

As for how he hopes a woman might feel wearing the ‘1969’ – which he brought back at the start of his tenure – he hopes it reflects the liberated spirit of the era in which it was created. ‘I hope they feel like they are wearing an extraordinary piece of craft,’ he says. ’I want them to feel free to mix it with their own clothes.’ Summer 2024 sees the addition of 1969 bags adorned with colourful raffia fringing, gobstopper ‘pampille’ pendants and golden medals (an apt accessory for an Olympic summer).

It is all part of the evolution of Rabanne that has taken place under Dossena’s ten-year tenure, a relative lifetime in the ever-turning merry-go-round of designer appointments and exits. ‘Now, there’s a perception of the brand that is completely different [to when I started],’ he said last year. ‘First, it was the industry insiders that were sceptical about what Rabanne could be. Then we got them on side. Now, Rabanne is going mainstream. I can feel the evolution.’

The ‘1969’ bag is available from Rabanne’s website, as well as at Selfridges.

fashion.rabanne.com

When Rabanne Beauty launched last year (2023) it proved that there was still plenty of room for innovation in the make-up space.

With the iconic makeup artist Diane Kendal overseeing creative direction, the brand debuted with a range of products that included Shimmer Bomb, a glitter spray that creates a veil of iridescence all over the skin or body; Colour Shot, richly pigmented liquid eyeshadows that can be mixed into lipsticks or used as highlighter for high-voltage looks; and Liquid Shot amplifiers in glitter and metal, which provide a disco ball glimmer to eyes, cheeks and lips.

Rabanne Beauty’s new Dramalips lipstick

Now, Rabanne is continuing its penchant for bold, radical beauty, with a line of lipsticks that make the word ‘glossy’ seem like an understatement. The new line, called Dramalips – which will be available from Selfridges later this month (April 2024) – comes in 14 wet-look colours and three pearlescent shades that can be worn on their own or layered on top of colour for an extra intense effect. For Kendal, the versatility of Rabanne Beauty’s products has always been what makes them so exciting to work with. And the Dramalips lipsticks are one more playful tool she can add to her makeup kit.

‘I think when something’s modern, it means that it has to be very versatile,’ Kendal tells me over a call from the Rabanne offices in New York. ‘The great thing about Rabanne products is that they can all be played into each other, with lipsticks that can be used on the cheeks, as with Dramalips, or Metal Shots which can be mixed with the eyeshadows and the lipsticks to give different diving dimensions. Shimmer Bomb, is such a fun product to have within the line that you can use to enhance makeup look by putting on your face with a brush or spraying on your body.’

The union of Rabanne Beauty and Kendal is a natural fit, since Kendal has made a name for herself as an expert in avant-garde beauty. After studying special effects and prosthetic make-up at the London College of Fashion in the 1980s, she went on to become a foundational member of the nascent 1990s London fashion scene, working regularly with photographers like David Sims and Nathaniel Goldberg. By the mid-90s she relocated to New York, where she and then up-and-coming hairstylist Guido Palau became known for their signature grunge-meets-fashion aesthetic.

Looking back on her illustrious career, Kendal says the best thing about her work has always been collaborating with fellow creatives and brands. ‘One of the biggest aspects of doing what I do is, of course, working with people and collaborating. It gives me the benefit of being able to work with different designers and being inspired by what they’re inspired by. It’s exciting and inspiring and makes me be more creative because you’re always trying to find new ways of creating looks for all these different people.’

Rabanne Beauty, in particular, has helped Kendal explore new limits of her creativity. ‘I think the great thing about coming to a brand like Rabanne is that it pushes me to always find new ways of creating looks and using products,’ she says. ‘It’s such a beautiful brand to be able to do that with, and just play.’

Rabanne Beauty Dramalips lipsticks are available from 28 April 2024 at Selfridges.

pacorabanne.com

As we begin to look back on 2023, we pause to remember some of the most inspirational creatives we have sadly lost during the year and, through the tributes below, to celebrate their work and enduring influence.

In memoriam

Balkrishna V Doshi, architect (1927 – 2023)

A glance at the dates and it's clear that Balkrishna V Doshi and modern Indian architecture grew side by side. A student at the JJ School of Art in Mumbai when India celebrated its independence in 1947, the architect's career runs alongside the creation of some of the country's most iconic contemporary architecture. From his involvement in the Chandigarh project and India's famous Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn heritage, through to its finest architecture education institution – he designed and founded the School of Architecture and Planning in Ahmedabad in 1962 – Dr Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi has been an omnipresent figure for a remarkable period of India's built environment. 

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Paco Rabanne, fashion designer (1934 – 2023)

Spanish designer Paco Rabanne – whose visionary designs under his eponymous label came to define 1960s ‘Space Age’ fashion – died aged 88 in Portsall, France, his passing announced by Puig, the group that controls the label’s fashion and fragrance lines. ‘Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic,’ said José Manuel Albesa, president of Puig’s fashion and beauty division. ‘Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women to clamour for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre – the word means “automobile grill”, you know – and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?’ 

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Phyllida Barlow, sculptor (1944 – 2023)

Phyllida Barlow, one of the most extraordinary forces in British sculpture and arts education, died aged 78. During her 60-year career, Barlow reshaped British sculpture as it was known. Monumental yet anti-monumental, her ability to draw directly from her surroundings and transform humble into entirely new environments was unparalleled. 

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Rafael Viñoly, architect (1944 – 2023)

Rafael Viñoly, who died in New York aged 78, left behind a rich legacy of projects that dot the planet. In his long career, the celebrated architect and mastermind of landmark schemes, such as New York's 432 Park Avenue, one of the world's most distinguished, elegant supertalls, worked tirelessly in his home country of Uruguay, his adopted home in the USA, and beyond. His portfolio consists of a slew of high-profile designs that made his namesake studio one of the most instantly recognisable in the field. 

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Italo Lupi, architect and graphic designer (1934 – 2023)

Italian designer Italo Lupi died in Milan on 28 June 2023; the news was shared by his son, writer and editor Michele Lupi. ‘Architect, art director and right man, he has worked all his life away from the clamour, fighting against the desire to shock at all costs,’ wrote Michele. His work was influenced by history and architecture, and among his inspirations he cited Massimo Vignelli, Achille Castiglioni and Saul Bass. Throughout his work, Lupi was able to distil these inspirations (purity, humour, cinematic drama) to create the distinctive style that made him unique.

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Michael Hopkins, architect (1935 – 2023)

Architect Sir Michael Hopkins died 'peacefully on 17 June 2023 at the age of 88, surrounded by his family', it was announced. The pioneering figure of 20th-century architecture worked in the UK and abroad on era-defining projects that won him many accolades, including the prestigious RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1994 (the same honour was this year awarded to Yasmeen Lari); a CBE in 1989, followed by a knighthood in1995 for services to architecture; and he was elected a Royal Academician in 1992.

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Paolo Portoghesi, architect (1931 - 2023)

To mark the passing of the postmodernist Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, writer David Plaisant celebrates his life and legacy, recalling his visit to Calcata for a feature in the Wallpaper* April 2021 issue. 

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Thomas Eyck, design entrepreneur (1964 – 2023)

Dutch design entrepreneur Thomas Eyck died on 4 July 2023; the news was shared by his brand's managing partner, Wendy Gooren. ‘Surrounded by loved ones and leaving us with beautiful memories, an end has come to Thomas’ life. We will miss him so much,’ read Gooren’s message. Eyck started his eponymous label in 2007 with a collection by Studio Job, and instantly became a Wallpaper* favourite. Through his well-considered design editions, he helped boost the careers of some of the Netherlands’ design stars, from Aldo Bakker to Irma Boom, Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings – the brand currently boasts over 200 pieces by 20 designers, and his team will carry on his legacy under Gooren’s direction. 

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Rodolfo Dordoni, architect and designer (1954 - 2023)

Italian designer Rodolfo Dordoni died on 1 August 2023. A Milan Politecnico alumnus, Dordoni left his mark on Italian design through his work as artistic director of Minotti and Roda, and through collaborations with the likes of Molteni&C, Cassina, Foscarini, Effe, Kettal and more. Based in Milan, he led his eponymous design studio as well as an architecture practice, Dordoni Architetti, working on architectural planning, interior design in collaboration with Luca Zaniboni and Alessandro Acerbi. 

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Jamie Reid, artist and graphic designer (1947 – 2023)

Jamie Reid, British artist and graphic designer, has died aged 76. Reid’s subversive body of work most famously included album artwork for the Sex Pistols, with his distinctive, bold aesthetic and playful defacing of Cecil Beaton’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II shaping a generation of punk.

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Andrea Branzi, designer (1938 – 2023)

Italian designer Andrea Branzi died on 9 October 2023. Born in Florence in 1938, Branzi was among the founders of legendary design studio Archizoom Associati alongside Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello and Massimo Morozzi. He also co-founded Domus Academy, and was a professor and chairman of the Politecnico di Milano’s School of Interior Design.

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Ida Applebroog, artist (1929 – 2023)

American artist Ida Applebroog died aged 93 in New York. Applebroog, who is survived by her four children and their families, was an integral figure in American feminist art, frequently translating classic motifs of male aggression into darkly humourous work. Born to an orthodox Jewish family in the Bronx in 1929, Applebroog embraced an eclectic selection of mediums over six decades, creating sculptures, films, installations, paintings and drawings. She especially enjoyed working on skinlike Rhoplex-coated vellum, creating figures that were cartoonish in their simplicity. 

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Maria Pergay, designer (1930 – 2023)

Designer Maria Pergay died on 31 October 2023, aged 93. She spent most of her life in France, where she began her design career in the 1950s: at a time when design strived to be functional, Pergay defied the customs of her time by creating objects and furniture whose silhouettes were experimental, and sophisticated. 

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Russell Norman, restaurateur (1965 – 2023)

British restaurateur and author Russell Norman passed away at the age of 57. He was known for his notable contributions to the restaurant industry, introducing the concept of Italian small plates and breathing new life into the Negroni cocktail. Having earned the title of the ‘new king of Soho dining’ in 2012, Norman had a diverse career in London's most iconic restaurants before co-founding the independent restaurant company Polpo with his close friend Richard Beatty in 2009. They then continued to establish restaurants in central London, including Spuntino and Mishkin's.

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Joe Tilson, artist (1928 – 2023)

British artist, Joe Tilson, a stalwart of the British Pop movement, died aged 95. Tilson brought a joyful riot of colour to the contemporary art scene in the 1960s, after early experiments with slyly witty work inspired by American culture. After studying at St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art, Tilson drew on his training as a carpenter and a joiner as he began creating his early works rooted in realist traditions.

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

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

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

Julien Dossena paid ode to Paco Rabanne’s legacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah Burton said goodbye to Alexander McQueen after three decades

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

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

Miu Miu went trouser-less

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

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

Willy Chavarria helped put American fashion centre stage

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

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

Nicolas Ghesquière marked ten years at Louis Vuitton

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

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

Conner Ives lead fashion’s new vanguard

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

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

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

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

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

Quiet luxury entered everyday parlance 

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

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

While Jonathan Anderson won the year’s fashion plaudits

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

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

Boxing Day is a distinctly British tradition. No matter where you are in the country, or how you celebrate the holiday season, the general consensus is that it’s considered a national day for doing not very much at all, if possible. Whether you’re currently spending today on the sofa, eating, drinking, and relaxing, or even if you’re on your way elsewhere, take a moment to scroll through the Wallpaper* shortlist of seductive beauty packaging from the past year.

There’s Lucia Pica’s First Emotions collection for Byredo (which won Wallpaper’s 2023 design award for best use of colour), Hermès’ debut eyeshadow launch (captured by photographer Ivona Chrzastek on the pages of our November 2023 art issue, alongside an interview with the creative director of Hermès Beauty, Gregoris Pyrpylis), and more.

Boxing Day: seductive beauty packaging from 2023

Byredo’s First Emotions collection by Lucia Pica

Okay, so if you want to be pedantic, Byredo’s First Emotions collection, designed by the brand’s creative image and make-up partner Lucia Pica, was technically launched in 2022. However, for the Wallpaper* 2023 design awards issue, we gave the range of products the top spot for ‘best use of colour’. It goes without saying that the packaging also deserves a mention, which includes designs for a Kajal eye pencil and mascara in burgundy, a five-colour eyeshadow palette with gold, auburns and metallic pinks, and two lipsticks.

Celine’s bath and body collection

Inspired by the ritualistic Parisian art of bathing, Hedi Slimane realised a new Celine bath and body collection in 2023. Infused with the scent of fragrance Cologne Céleste (which launched earlier in the year containing notes of orange blossom, angelica, sweet lemon essence, petitgrain, neroli, ambrette, and orris butter) the bottles are also pieces of art unto themselves, with weighty glass bottles and metal lids that turn any bathroom into a little slice of luxury.

Hermès’ eyeshadow debut

Designed by Pierre Hardy in keeping with the entire Hermès Beauty range, the packaging for the first collection of eye products was highlighted on the pages of Wallpaper* November 2023, celebrating form as well as function. Called ‘Le Regard’, the selection of products is comprised of eyeshadow palettes and brushes, and a selection of mascaras in six different shades. As Greek make-up artist and creative director of the storied house’s beauty line Gregoris Pyrpylis told Mary Cleary: ‘I don’t want to impose a certain look on someone … I want them to amuse themselves and have a nice moment. Make-up shouldn’t feel like an obligation.’

Rabanne’s new make-up line

‘The nice thing about the products is that they’re very interchangeable. You can mix them, and there’s a lot to play with. There’s definitely that playfulness, that avant-garde spirit and a little bit of sophistication, while still being playful and young,’ said make-up artist Diane Kendal, in a Wallpaper* interview marking the launch of Rabanne’s gender-neutral make-up line, and her subsequent appointment as its creative director, in August 2023. ‘People want to have fun and have products they can play with.’ Of course, a Rabanne product wouldn’t be a Rabanne product without design references to the iconic chainmail that the Spanish brand is renowned for, evidenced in the metallic packaging for foundations, lipsticks, eyeshadows, amongst others.

Ann Demeulemeester’s first ever fragrance

September 2023 marked a first for Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester (her namesake brand was founded in Antwerp in 1985), when the label put out its first-ever fragrance. Simply titled ‘A’, and described as ‘darkly romantic’ with notes of clove, cumin, Ceylon cinnamon, Sicilian lemon and Calabrian bergamot, and ‘narcotic’ jasmine, the bottle played into the gothic minimalism inherent to the fashion line, with a sleek black design crafted from glass. ‘The box itself – evocative of a blank canvas – is designed to recall the designer’s Antwerp boutique, while a portrait of the designer by husband Patrick Robyn in 1992 is fixed to the interior,’ wrote Wallpaper’s fashion features editor Jack Moss upon the perfume’s arrival.

From a rare glimpse inside the V&A’s extraordinary Chanel archive with Oriole Cullen, to conversations with some of the world’s finest designers and creative directors – among them Margaret Howell, Martine Rose, Véronique Nichanian, Julien Dossena and Lucie and Luke Meier, as well as on-the-rise names, like Willy Chavarria and Aaron Esh, who are reimagining the fashion landscape – I’ve chosen these interviews for the way they reveal the stories behind the figures who have defined the year in style. 

Top 10 fashion interviews of 2023

01. Julien Dossena on the evolution of Rabanne

‘I can feel the evolution,’ Rabanne creative director Julien Dossena told me of his ten-year tenure at the French house in a wide-ranging conversation taken from the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*. Following founder Paco Rabanne’s death earlier in 2023, he spoke of keeping the pioneering couturier’s spirit alive (‘he left behind so much, all those radical moments of modernity’) while forging his own path forward. ’When you wear Rabanne chainmail, it’s really a feeling,’ he says. ‘There is a sensation between the garment and the skin,’

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02. Oriole Cullen takes Wallpaper* inside the V&A’s extraordinary Chanel archive

Taken from the November 2023 Issue of Wallpaper*, V&A senior curator of fashion and textiles Oriole Cullen granted us a rare look inside the institution’s extraordinary Chanel archive just prior to the opening of ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’, its latest blockbuster fashion exhibition. ’It’s about chic, simple clothing, looking at movement and the body,’ Cullen says of the French couturier, whose designs set the template for the modern woman’s wardrobe, while also setting a blueprint for the contemporary designer with astute branding and self-promotion. ’She was happy to be front and centre.’ 

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03. Véronique Nichanian talks seeking pleasure and perfection as artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe

‘We are always thinking: what is the classic of tomorrow?’ said Hermès’ Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of Hermès’ men’s universe, of how she approaches her celebrated menswear collections for the house in our March 2023 Style Issue. Inviting me into her Paris studio, the designer – who has been at the French house for three decades – talked about seeking pleasure and perfection in her clothing, and never looking back. ‘I want to bring happiness to people – in the sensuality of the fabric, or the colour, or something that makes you say “wow”.’

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04. At home with Margaret Howell

As part of our ongoing ‘At Home With’ series, cult British designer gave Wallpaper* a glimpse inside her domestic life – which is split between south-east London and a holiday home on the Suffolk coast – in our March 2023 Style Issue. Accompanied by her own iPhone photographs, Howell talked to me about her treasured objects, finding inspiration and her favourite place to spend a rare spare moment: ‘relaxing in my little bathtub with a view of the setting sun on a summer’s evening, listening to In Tune Mixtape on BBC Radio 3.’

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05. Norbert Stumpfl of Brioni is making clothes to feel good in

In Wallpaper’s November issue, Brioni creative director Norbert Stumpfl opened up about his creative process and design philosophy, which centres on creating truly luxurious menswear that’s a pleasure to wear – and has gained him a legion of high-profile fans during his five-year tenure, from Brad Pitt to Jude Law. ‘[I’m drawn towards] reduction, the desire to make something more simple, but still leave a powerful image,’ he told me. ’In collection fittings, we put on a lot of details to try things out. Then we take things off until we arrive at the place where [the garment] speaks for itself.’

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06. American designer Willy Chavarria on his lifelong love of Dickies

Selected as part of the ‘Wallpaper* USA 300: A Guide to Creative America’, the award-winning designer Willy Chavarria – whose distinct approach sees him infuse his collections with references to his Mexican-American heritage and the melting pot of cultures he witnesses in his home city of New York – spoke in August about his collaboration with Dickies. Talking utilitarian design, authenticity, and buying his first pair of Dickies at Kmart, it’s a collection which gets to the heart of his lifelong fascinations. ‘It’s very special to get to design a collection for a brand that I have grown up wearing and admiring,’ he says. ‘To me, the most elegant look will always be a clean, pressed pair of Dickies pants worn with a crisp white T-shirt.’

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07. Lucie and Luke Meier’s eclectic new vision for Jil Sander

Speaking in the run-up to their A/W 2023 show for Jil Sander, wife-and-husband duo Lucie and Luke Meier talked to Scarlett Conlon about their latest collection, which began with the pair looking back to the 1990s music scene. ‘It's quite unexpected,’ they said at the time of the heady, freewheeling collection, presented in Milan in February. ‘We’re always evolving as people and our ideas are always progressing are always changing,’ said Luke. ‘Fashion is exhilarating because it’s a dialogue with what's going on in the world.’

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08. Sofia Prantera introduces a new chapter (and address) for her cult streetwear brand Aries

Just prior to its opening, Aries founder Sofia Prantera invited me into the brand’s first-ever store in Soho as the label completed its evolution from niche streetwear brand to cultural ubiquity – all the while retaining its DIY roots. ‘I think what I picked up from skateboarding is this DIY attitude to things – you don’t need everything to make something work, you just need an energy,’ she said. ‘When people say ”the death of streetwear”, it’s just the death of a kind of streetwear – the type replicated by mass production. But it’s not the death of the spirit of streetwear.’

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09. Aaron Esh takes us behind-the-scenes of his debut London Fashion Week show

British designer Aaron Esh – a recent Central Saint Martins graduate – invited Wallpaper* beauty and grooming editor Hannah Tindle into his London studio in the run-up to his much-anticipated debut show at London Fashion Week. Taking place on one of the upper floors of Tate Modern’s Blavatnik Building, with expansive views of the city beyond, the assured debut cemented him as a young designer to watch. ‘It’s the clothes that I see when I’m at a house party; or the clothes someone would wear to do an off-license run,’ he said. ’There’s an authenticity and realness to the clothes, mixed with beautiful tailoring and amazing craftsmanship. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.’

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10. ‘I wanted sexiness, and cheekiness, and fun’: Martine Rose on her Italo-disco-inspired show at Pitti Uomo

Early in 2023, Martine Rose decamped from London to Florence to show her A/W 2023 collection as part of the city’s historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo. Choosing Florence’s outdoor Mercato Nuovo and transforming into a shag pile-carpeted, mirror-walled nightspot for an ode to Italo-disco that merged ‘Italy and London together’. ‘I wanted sexiness, and cheekiness, and fun,’ she told me after the show, which captured the feeling of letting yourself loose on the dancefloor – all in the designer’s unique, idiosyncratic style. 

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The Rabanne H&M collection launches on 9 November 2023, featuring a sparkly fashion offering as well as a series of home accessories and furniture that encapsulate the late French designer Paco Rabanne’s spirit with a distinctive 1970s disco vibe. 

Renowned for his futuristic use of plastic and metal in fashion, the designer set up his label in the 1960s, championing a 'space age' look that empowered women with a contemporary, boundless approach to creation. 

Rabanne H&M collection launches on 9 November

The collection was designed in collaboration with Rabanne’s creative director, Julien Dossena, and marks the biggest home offering so far among H&M's designer collections, as well as Dossena's first foray into interior design. 'While this was my first experience designing homeware and objects, our founder Paco Rabanne designed some emblematic metallic furniture in the 1970s, so this interiors collection felt like an authentic extension for the house,' he says. 

The collection is defined by Rabanne's signature metallic finish, and features objects and furniture that include vases, candleholders and goblets, monogrammed trays, a set of dice and a deck of playing cards. 

A small stainless steel stool is among the collection's statement pieces, a simple interpretation of a functional design that is both contemporary and representative of Rabanne's visual history. Equally impressive is a metallic sequined curtain and a lamp featuring the same motif, two objects that replicate an iconic design from the house’s homeware archives.

'I wanted to embellish the lifestyle element of the ready-to-wear collection to incorporate home décor items that complemented the luxurious mood of enjoyment,' continues Dossena. 'The silver lamp, for instance, shimmers like the paillette party dresses, offering an innovative take on a Rabanne icon.'

'At H&M Homes, we are always looking [...] to showcase a world where fashion and interiors can meet,' concludes Evelina Kravaev-Söderberg, head of design & creative at H&M Home. 'Rabanne was the perfect collaborator, with Julien Dossena bringing his visionary approach to radical modernism to interiors for the first time. We’re excited to present a wide-ranging collection that builds on the heritage of the house but infuses it with contemporary relevance, as well as playful twists.'

Rabanne H&M HOME launches in selected stores and online on hm.com/home on 9 November 2023

The forward-thinking spirit of the fashion house Rabanne (more of which in our recent Julien Dossena interview) takes a fresh shape with the launch of Rabanne Beauty: a dynamic, gender-neutral make-up collection that exudes the same boundary-breaking spirit of its sartorial sibling.Designed to challenge convention and support radical self-expression, Rabanne Beauty offers a comprehensive range of colours and textures that can be wielded to drape the eyes, lips, face and body. Ranging from mascaras, lipsticks and lip balms to handbag-inspired eyeshadow palettes in two sizes, 30 shades of foundation and innovative art-inspired products that invite users to experiment, customise and adapt existing products to create a finish that’s entirely one’s own, Rabanne Beauty leaves nothing on the table.

Overseen by make-up maestro Diane Kendal, who serves as the brand’s creative director, Rabanne Beauty draws from the distinctive identity of its namesake. ‘The nice thing about the products is that they’re very interchangeable. You can mix them, and there’s a lot to play with. There’s definitely that playfulness, that avant-garde spirit and a little bit of sophistication, while still being playful and young,’ she says. ‘People want to have fun and have products they can play with. 

Each of the pieces in the Rabanne Beauty collection nods to the signature metal details and kinetic silhouettes of the fashion house – for example, the ‘XL Link’ jewellery and ‘1969’ bag – in its packaging and product design. Conceived like accessories in their own right, the pieces have a collectible feel, while remaining easy to transport and use. 

Intended to prompt limitless creativity and experimentation, Rabanne Beauty is characterised by a malleability that speaks to the modern age. This is particularly reflected in its Art Factory product suite, which offers metallic and glitter finishes that can be added to other colour products for a transformative effect. Metal Shot, a liquid multi-use highlighter that is dispensed with a dropper, can be used alone or to amplify the look of an eyeshadow or lipstick. Shimmer Bomb, a glitter spray, produces a thin, refined veil of iridescence all over the skin or body, while Pure Metal, a vial of biodegradable, metallic silver powder, can again be used on its own or combined with Rabanne Beauty’s other products. 

The formulations are all vegan, dermatologically tested and committed to sustainability. Ninety-eight per cent of the ingredients are of natural origin, while still ensuring high-performance wear and maximum pay-off. 

‘You can put a tiny bit of the Color Shot in silver on the inner corner of the eye and that’s your look, if you wanted,’ says Kendal, of the tubes of highly pigmented cream-to-paint liquid eyeshadow, that come in 12 metallic shades. ‘Or you can do a gorgeous lip and throw glitter all over your face. It’s just easy and accessible. There’s no beauty, only beauties.’

pacorabanne.com

In 1966, the Spanish couturier Paco Rabanne presented his breakout collection, ‘Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials’. An evolution of an earlier project, as well as his work creating plastic accessories for Parisian houses like Schiaparelli, Balenciaga and Givenchy in the early 1960s, the collection of abbreviated mini dresses were fashioned from futuristic panels of aluminium and iridescent plastic, joined together with metal rings to evoke chainmail. 

The audacious designs would send a jolt through Paris’ traditional haute couture salons – ‘he’s not a couturier, he’s a metal worker,’ Coco Chanel is said to have sniped – and posited the designer, who first trained as an architect, as fashion’s enfant terrible. Alongside fellow couturiers André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin, and furniture designers such as Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen and Eero Aarnio, he was deemed responsible for ushering in the ‘space age’ spirit of the late 1960s, which used post-war industrial materials to create a gleaming, utopian vision of the future. ‘I defy anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn’t been done before,’ Rabanne said in 1966. ‘The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.’

‘I can feel the evolution’: Julien Dossena on ten years at Rabanne

In February 2023, Rabanne passed away, aged 88, at his home in Brittany. The following month, in Paris, French designer Julien Dossena – creative director of the house since 2013 – presented a collection that he described as a ‘coda to the couturier’s legacy’, ending with five archival dresses and featuring spoken extracts from Rabanne as part of the show’s soundtrack. ‘Spanning five decades, these dresses will signal the innovative craftsmanship that defines the timeless and totemic women of Paco Rabanne,’ read the collection notes.

‘He left behind so much, all those radical moments of modernity,’ says Dossena, speaking from the Rabanne design studio on Paris’ Rue Françoise (‘Paco’ has now been dropped from the house’s name as part of a wider rebranding). ‘He was really fighting against the old rules, the old world. Even aesthetically, he didn’t understand couture, and he didn’t want to understand.’

The collection itself had been completed prior to Rabanne’s death, though a sensorial focus on material and texture – several of the intricate paillette-covered gowns and skirts could be heard jangling as they walked the runway – felt a fitting homage to the designer’s legacy. ‘When you wear Rabanne chainmail, it’s really a feeling. There is a sensation between the garment and the skin,’ he smiles. As such, collections often begin with Dossena tasking his team to experiment with fabrics and embellishment. 

This season, sharp, elongated metal paillettes were honed to evoke both the ‘lightness and movement of feathers’ and ‘little weapons’. Elsewhere, a layer of sheer mousseline was combined with metal mesh to conjure up the effect of ‘smoke around the metal’, while leather panels seemed to melt away into diaphanous chainmail.

‘The two materials together have this tension, this new interaction,’ says Dossena, who grew up in the Brittany resort of Le Pouldu, not far from where Rabanne would spend most of his later years. He never met the couturier, preferring to respect the distance that Rabanne placed between himself and fashion by the time he left his label in 1999. ‘I did hear from a few people who were still in contact with him that he was really liking what we were doing with the brand,’ says Dossena. He was even told that Rabanne had said he was welcome to reach out for a coffee the next time he was in Brittany.

‘I never dared to,’ says Dossena. ‘He was doing so many other things, and expressing himself across so many other fields. And I wanted to respect that – when you work on somebody’s name, on their designs, you don’t know how they feel. I wanted to keep that respectful distance. So I never met him, but I don’t regret it. Let’s call it politeness.’

Besides, the designer brought his own influences to the house. He remembers first encountering fashion through a video of a Jean-Paul Gaultier runway show on TV as a child in the late 1980s, the beginning of a lifelong fascination with clothing (in a full-circle moment, he was selected as Gaultier’s guest designer this season, showing a collection at the last couture week in July). ‘He was surrounded by all those crazy, beautiful people,’ he says. ‘I’d never seen people like that in Brittany, and I was like, “Wow, that looks so fun. And that’s a job?”’

Dossena would go on to study art at the Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris, before moving to Brussels’ visual arts institution La Cambre to become part of the prestigious fashion school (notable alumni include Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy and Courrèges’ Nicolas Di Felice). There, he became fascinated by the work of Belgian designers like Dries Van Noten and Martin Margiela; on graduation, in 2008, he took an internship at Balenciaga, which was in the process of being reinvented by creative director Nicolas Ghesquière. The French-Belgian designer’s anachronistic approach melded archival silhouettes with moments of futurism, something which proved hugely influential to the young Dossena.

In 2012, he left Balenciaga and launched his short-lived label Atto. Later that year, stylist Marie-Amélie Sauvé – a longtime Ghesquière collaborator, who now styles Dossena’s own collections – introduced him to Marc Puig, CEO of the Barcelona-based Puig conglomerate, which owns Rabanne. The house had gone through two designers in two years and was in need of some stability. After working at Rabanne for eight months, Dossena was promoted to creative director in 2013.

For the first four years, he did not enter the house’s archive. ‘I didn’t want to fall into the trap of recreating [garments], or being retro,’ he says. ‘Then, at some point, I thought we were solid enough to recontextualise some of the archive.’ When he did, he didn’t leave for three days, ‘taking pictures of every little thing’. What struck him were not the singular garments, but the overwhelming sense he got of the designer from old photographs, newspaper editorials and discarded chainmail tests.

‘Rabanne was just in love with metal,’ says Dossena. ‘To him, it symbolised the next civilisation. He wanted everyone dressed in it. It felt like I was seeing this really deep, personal, cultural expression of him.’

Now Dossena visits the archive when ‘he wants to be surprised’, likening it to the feeling of visiting an exhibition or gallery for inspiration. On one of these visits, he discovered photographs of Salvador Dalí alongside models in Rabanne’s dresses at the artist’s house in Catalonia in 1966. Another video, taken at some point during the 1960s, showed the pair throwing sewing machines on the floor as a riposte to the ‘old world’. ‘When you see that video, you can feel the radicalness, the craziness. Together, they became this great avant-garde energy.’

For the A/W23 collection, four of Dalí’s paintings – which Dossena describes as ‘mental landscapes’, surreal, dreamlike tableaux – appeared as prints across a series of sliced-away gowns. They had been used with permission of the Dalí Foundation (aware of Rabanne and Dalí’s relationship, they were keen to collaborate), and contributed to what Dossena calls the ‘exploration of sensation’ that runs through the collection. ‘It’s about sensuality, but a new kind of sensuality,’ says Dossena. ‘The imagination of what it feels like to touch – the dream and the subconscious, they arrive in that moment.’ 

Archival interviews with Rabanne show the designer repeating a piece of advice for his mother, who worked as chief seamstress for Balenciaga in San Sebastián, in northern Spain, during the couturier’s heyday. ‘In fashion, you have all the freedom and liberty that you want,’ he recounts. ‘Except one thing. You are not allowed to attack the beauty of women.’ Rabanne saw women as figures of sensual power, describing his clothes as ‘weapons’. ‘The woman of tomorrow will be efficacious, seductive and, without contest, superior to man,’ he said.

Dossena says he has been largely surrounded by women for most of his life, and collections often emerge from observing his female friends going about their day-today lives, ‘on the street, in their couples, with their family, when they dance, or when they work. It’s a little bit like sociology. I want to give them what I think they might need.’ 

So far, so successful. In his ten years at the house, Dossena has transformed Rabanne from a near-forgotten fashion house to an agenda-setting, financially successful label built in his vision. Puig does not release the fashion results for its individual brands, though in the group’s 2022 financial report, it noted its fashion arm was ‘growing at the same pace as the company’, whose overall revenue rose by 40 per cent.

As for why, in the topsy-turvy world of fashion – where creative directors rarely last more than a few years at a house – Dossena has achieved such staying power, the designer credits the ‘absolute freedom’ he has been given at Rabanne. ‘It’s so close to me, because I really built it from the beginning,’ he says. ‘Nobody expected anything from Rabanne when I started; it was tough work because you have to prove the value of the brand, but I could create it the exact way I thought it should be.’

‘Now, there’s a perception of the brand that is completely different,’ he continues. ‘First, it was the industry insiders that were sceptical about what Rabanne could be. Then we got them on side. Now, Rabanne is going mainstream. I can feel the evolution.’ 

Model: Shuting at Elite Paris. Hair: Beth Shanefelter using Less is More. Make-up: Kamila Vay using Edulis and Make Up For Ever. Photography assistant: Hugo Varaldi. Fashion assistant: Sara Perilli. Producers: Anya Hassett, Tracy Gilbert.

A version of this article features in the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, on sale now available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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.

Spanish designer Paco Rabanne – whose visionary designs under his eponymous label came to define 1960s ‘Space Age’ fashion – has died aged 88 in Portsall, France, according to an announcement from Puig, the group which controls the label’s fashion and fragrance lines. 

‘Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic,’ said José Manuel Albesa, president of Puig’s fashion and beauty division. ‘Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women to clamour for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre – the word means “automobile grill”, you know – and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?’

Albesa continued: ‘That radical, rebellious spirit set him apart: There is only one Rabanne. With his passing, we are reminded once again of his enormous influence on contemporary fashion, a spirit that lives on in the house that bears his name.’ 

Paco Rabanne dies aged 88

Born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo in 1934, close to San Sebastián, Spain, Rabanne left the country not long later, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, with his mother (she had worked as head seamstress for Cristóbal Balenciaga, and the Spanish couturier remained a profound influence throughout Rabanne’s career). Heading to France, he initially studied architecture at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, before shifting to fashion, creating bold jewellery and accessories for a slew of Parisian fashion houses, including Nina Ricci, Givenchy, Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges. 

It was 1966 that proved formative in Rabanne’s career, when he released his first haute couture collection under his own name, titled ‘Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials’. Establishing Rabanne as something of an ‘enfant terrible’ of Parisian fashion, the dresses came to epitomise his distinct vision as a designer, which married historical elements – primarily chain mail, which was to become his signature – with contemporary materials, like plastic, rhodoid and aluminium, and the abbreviated silhouettes of the 1960s. 

The look established him, alongside Cardin and Courrèges, as one of a cadre of so-called ‘Space Age’ designers of the 1960s, a movement which coincided with a boom in space exploration, culminating with the moon landing in 1969. Pieces were defined by a futuristic sensibility, featuring sharp, modernist silhouettes, metallic elements and an influence of contemporary engineering and architecture. A definitive moment in the ‘Space Age’ movement was Rabanne’s costumes for Barbarella in 1968, a sexually charged space-exploration movie set in the 41st century and starring Jane Fonda as the movie’s titular character.

‘The woman of the future will be efficacious, seductive, and without contest, superior to men,’ Rabanne once said. ‘It is for this woman that I conceive my designs.’

Rabanne is also synonymous with fragrance, his name appearing on some of the bestselling perfumes of the last half-decade. His foray into fragrance began in 1969 with debut fragrance Calandre – created alongside nose Michel Hy – which was encased in a metal bottle evocative of a Rolls-Royce radiator grille. Rabanne said he wanted the metallic scent, with top notes of bergamot and aldehydes, to evoke a couple making love on the bonnet of a car in a forest. ‘I like my fragrances to be fresh first, then structured, full of vibrations and contrasts,’ Rabanne said.

After three decades at the helm of his eponymous label, Rabanne retired in 1999. While remaining largely out of the public eye in the years since, he was made an Officer of the Legion d’Honneur – one of France’s highest awards – by the country’s culture minister in 2010. ‘I have always had the impression of being a time accelerator,’ he said later, in 2016. ‘Of going as far as is reasonable for one's time and not indulging in the morbid pleasure of the known things, which I view as decay.’

Rabanne was also a believer in the occult, making him prone to outbursts, particularly on the subject of impending Armageddon and apocalyptic visions. He claimed to be able to see and communicate with ghosts (‘I’m a bit of a medium, a clairvoyant’), to have lived several past lives, and to have been visited by extra-terrestrials. ‘My personal conviction is total,’ he said on the subject in 1999. 

The label went on a five-year hiatus from 2006, reopening in 2011 with Indian designer Manish Arora at the helm. Currently, French-born Julien Dossena is creative director of the house, his commercially successful and critically acclaimed collections often drawing from Rabanne’s original archival pieces (chain mail and metal paillettes feature heavily, and Rabanne’s 1969 ‘Le69’ handbag was reissued under Dossena’s tenure).

‘Whenever you see Paco Rabanne’s work, you know it was done by someone with an eccentric mind who didn’t care about trends,’ Dossena said in 2019. ‘He used clothes to liberate, and I love that idea.’

pacorabanne.com

A common style trick over the last 12 months has been to throw a tailored blazer over a tracksuit for a impromptu Zoom meeting, or to pop a smart layer over loungewear when nipping outside for essentials. Now that there's more opportunity to embrace elegant dressing codes, an elevating women's jacket should be the top item on your shopping list. Here we present the brands for bolstering your smarter spring mood, whether you're easing back into office life or simply sitting en plein air.

Lanvin: Hit the right buttons

Lockdown has made us more aware of life's smaller details. Lanvin's elegant double-breasted jacket accentuates the body with eye-catching mother-and-daughter motif buttons.

Paul Smith: Hot under the collar

Months at home put you in a more relaxed state of mind? Layer up in a sleek textured shirt, as demonstrated by Paul Smith's luxurious leather design, which also features a handy front pocket.

Max Mara: Coffee-break colours

The chicest way to celebrate your first coffee outdoors? Complement your cappuccino with your clothing, courtesy of Max Mara's smart, organically hued blazer. This silhouettes scores office-worthy style points, even if you're only sitting in the park.

Petar Petrov: In good sport

If you're unsure you'll ever separate yourself from sports-inspired comfort, Petar Petrov has the ease-fuelled answer. The Viennese brand's sleeveless leather anorak speaks of luxurious yet laid-back style.

Paco Rabanne: All dressed up

Glam has been perilously low on our style radar. Keen to inject some going-out inspired chic into your wardrobe? We suggest sporting Paco Rabanne's double-breasted coat as a mini dress.

Louis Vuitton: Buckle up

Bring some belted bite to your blazer with Louis Vuitton's waist-cinching buckled jacket. This silhouette has a futuristic, deconstructed silhouette, a fitting way to embrace today's new world.

Chanel: Stay in touch

Jacket, £1,950; shirt, £1,450; trousers, £950, all by Fendi. Photography: Alexandre Guirkinger. Fashion: Benoit Martinego. Originally featured in the May 2021 issue of Wallpaper* (W*265)

With social distancing limiting our sense of touch, tactile fabrications take on a new importance. Chanel's bouclé jacket revels in the maison's signature fabric, accentuated with beaded embellishments.

Boss: The palette cleanser

Spring calls for palette-cleansing colours. Draw attention in optic white silhouettes, like Boss' minimalist duster coat. The simplest way to avoid grass stains? Carry a picnic blanket when embarking on a sit-down sortie.

Gucci: An exotic escape

If an exotic escape feels like something of a pipe dream, let tropical prints and motifs take your fancy instead. For spring, Gucci's casual button-up jacket shows an affnity for the eye-catching pattern of snake skin.

Hermès: Make it minimal

Look to Hermès for an incredibly elevated take on 1990s minimalism. Sometimes pared-back silhouettes have the most power, as demonstrated by this zip-up leather coat, which is conceived in the finest of fabrications.

Peter Do: Utilitarian attention

For the more adventurous of dressers, consider the apron your new take on outerwear. Peter Do's version is sumptuous in its tactile finish, and should be worn to reveal a flash of flesh.

Bottega Veneta: Craft flair

A hand-crafted finish will draw attention, whether you're sitting outside on a terrace or sauntering through a city street. Bottega Veneta's denim jacket features a delicately crocheted hooded detail, fusing sportswear with sophistication. 

INFORMATION

A version of this article first appeared in the April 2021 issue of Wallpaper* (W*264) – available to download here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just days before the opening of Paris Fashion Week, new Covid-19 restrictions were implemented in France. Bars and restaurants in Marseilles were shuttered. In Paris, drinking spots were ordered to close at 10pm and gatherings of more than 10 people were banned in public places. The final city to host the S/S 2021 shows with the most sizeable schedule has been beset with travel restrictions – from the 14 day quarantine required of returning UK citizens, put in place in mid-August – to the announcement that those arriving in Italy from France are subject to a Covid-19 test. But for the City of Lights, and the epicentre of the French fashion industry, estimated at creating one million jobs and €150 billion in direct sales each year, the shows had to go on, if at least in largely ‘phygital' form.

French fashion behemoths including Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton staged live physical shows, in venues including the top floors of former department store La Samaritaine, which has been shuttered since 2005, and the rooftop of the office skyscraper Tour Montparnasse, while brands including Balenciaga, Thom Browne and new-to-the schedule Wales Bonner devised innovative collection films, featuring in Browne's case, a trio of Olympic athletes. When a week before in Milan, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada debuted their co-creative collection via a live stream, so Matthew Williams also presented his first collection for Givenchy online, teasing out his debut designs days before on Instagram.

Maria Grazia Chiuri may have presented a softer Dior silhouette for spring – inspired by enforced ease with which we are living our lives – but she didn’t go soft on the set design of the maison’s show, which was live streamed for the first time on TikTok. Inside a socially-distanced tent at the Jardin des Tuileries, Chiuri enlisted Italian visual artist and writer Lucia Marcucci, to create 7-meter high stain glass collages, that sprung up in 18 illuminated columns, inspired by the 2011 artwork ‘ Vetrata di poesia visiva’. Collage has a visual resonance with Chiuri, and she uses the art form as a tool to convey her feminist methodology. For the brand’s A/W 2018 show, she pasted the walls of the brand’s show space with provocative magazine covers and slogans, in a collection which nodded to the student protests in Paris in 1968.

If Dior is defined by the cinched in silhouette, Chiuri relaxed this rigour for spring. Models sported loose gauzy gowns, dressing gown shape jackets, easy tuxedo trousers and utilitarian cagoules. While her silhouettes were made for our at-home habits, details had an escapist élan, incorporating nomadic tie-dye, tassels, crochet and faraway florals. Designs for social-distancing, but still with a dream.

If anyone was going to respond to the practicalities of Covid-19 with technical tenacity it was Coperni. The label has its finger on the pulse of contemporary life, incorporating the digital experience into its design DNA. For S/S 2021, founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant developed ‘C+' a protective technical jersey developed using Swiss technology, which is lightweight, moisturising and anti-bacterial. This fabric – which is immersed in silver ions – was incorporated into streamlined designs, which worked to enhance the body, not restrict it, like elasticated trousers and loose buttonless shirts. The collection, shown on the roof of Paris’ tallest skyscraper, also featured wet suit leggings and technical blazers, with easy zip fastenings.  

Face masks and visors have entered the global accessory lexicon, and for his sophomore outing for Kenzo, creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista tapped into this phenomenon. Inspired by an early 20th century photograph of a man wearing a structural 3D mosquito net and cap (complete with a hole for his pipe), he created silhouettes which spoke of soft protection. Models walking outdoors at the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, wore mackintoshes and gauzy archival floral print cagoules, paired with beekeepers hats, some of which had transparent coverings protecting not only the face, but cocooning the entire body.

In 2020, the world accelerated in line with Marine Serre’s apocalyptic design vision, with proposes sustainable silhouettes for battling climate change, and environmental and social chaos. These mediate somewhere between sportswear and couture. In ‘Amor Fati', a film directed by Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiago, she presented a cinematically impressive sci-fi fantasy, with a circular narrative hooked around a laboratory, a natural landscape and an underground water-world. Serre’s cast sported balaclavas, Black Panther-centric berets and body suits, arming themselves against upheaval with recycled moire harnesses and holsters.

There’s also an apocalyptic armour behind Rick Owens’ designs. In recent seasons, the label’s creations have drawn on the garb of glam rock stars and mythological Aztec gods. For spring, Owens streamed a show from a piazza in front of Venice Lido’s casino – the spot where he spends his summers, and also the city where the term quarantine originated, when during the Black Death, infected ships arriving in the port where isolated for 40 days. An apt allusion to our times, the collection was titled ‘Phlegethon’, referring to one of the rivers in the Inferno described in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Owens equipped his hell dwellers in jackets with bulbous shoulders, fluid gowns, leather hot pants, platform thigh high boots and face masks. Uncharacteristically optimistic hues of creamy pink, banana yellow and candy apple red nodded to Neapolitan gelato. In his show notes Owens said, ‘I might just be getting into a taste for the lurid that an undercurrent of threat and dread can inspire.’ 

Pepto Bismol pink was also a colour favoured by Kiko Kostadinov’s Laura and Deanna Fanning, who for S/S 2021, evolved the label’s womenswear lexicon, experimenting with both Victorian and 1970s shapes, in bold hues and textures. Standout were hand craft-focused shirred and smocked dresses, which pucker and crinkle around the body, retro wide-collared tailoring, and an update of the brand’s curved Louis heel, embellished with colourful crystal beads and accentuated with Gladiator ankle straps.

Wales Bonner showed for the first time on the S/S 2021 schedule, but her collection – presented in ‘Thinkin Home', a sunset-drenched film by Jamaican artist Jeano Edwards – was the second in a three-collection spanning exploration of the diasporic connections between Britain and the Caribbean. While A/W 2020’s ‘Lovers Rock’ considered the British Jamaican community in the 1970s in London – inspired by Bonner’s father’s family, and photographs of teenagers hanging at Lewisham Youth Club, ‘Essence' explores the early 1980s origination of dancehall music in her grandfather's home country. Bonner looked to the style of Augustus Pablo, the Jamaican roots reggae and dub record producer and musician, and her collection sung of dancehall vibrancy and sleek British smartness, featuring stripe caftans mixed with tailoring, and fluid knitwear and bold patchwork corduroy. The collection also continued her collaboration with Adidas Originals, on slimline shell suits and colour blocked tees.

‘Psychedelic optimism’ is how Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson summed up the brand’s S/S 2021 collection, designed to celebrate the possibilities of life experienced on pause. Looking to astrological elements as optimistic symbols, the Swedish brand collaborated with the LA-based artist Ben Quinn on a series of star prints layered over organza tunics. Johansson also honed in on luminescent fabrics, finding illumination in pearlised cotton, metallic threads and iridescent paper, and celebrating fluid and diaphonous silhouettes, with handcrafted details. Akris’ Albert Kriemler also found inspiration in phosphorescence, namely the light-emitting sculptures of Imi Knoebel. He collaborated with the German Minimalist on a series of fluorescent and vibrant creations that nodded to the artist’s graphic and colour-focused oeuvre, including caftans and relaxed dresses and chic tracksuits. ‘A Knoebel line, colour or form is instantly recognisable as its own. It represents what felt very right for this moment,' Kreimler explained. ‘Something designed today should not be obsolete tomorrow.'

There have been diverse opinions regarding the return to the physical show format, and one designer content with finding alternative methods is Jonathan Anderson. For the men’s shows back in July, he devised a ‘show-in-a-box' concept for his eponymous label, and for Spanish house Loewe where he is creative director, containing interactive runway show-inspired ephemera. At Loewe, the label's S/S 2021 men’s design was imagined as a grey canvas index card box – conceived in collaboration with M/M (Paris) – packed with fabric swatches, a record, and a pop-up show set, inspired by Duchamp's ‘Boîte-en-valise', a box the artist carried in a suitcase with miniature monographs of his own work.

For S/S 2021 womenswear, Anderson broke out of the boundaries of the box, creating a ‘Show-on-the-wall', an artist's portfolio featuring S/S 2021 looks, accompanied by an interactive selection of ephemera, encouraging its receiver to immerse themselves in the collection's elements, as the viewer would at a physical runway show. Eagerly Instagrammed add-ons included a roll of wallpaper designed by Anthea Hamilton, plus a border roll depicting spring's voluminous and architectural shapes – enhanced with plumes of taffeta, ruffles of broderie anglaise, glittering knots and XL pleats – sent with Loewe monogrammed scissors, a canvas tool bag, paintbrush and glue. 

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski also placed focus on the printed form, sending out a collectors' item scrapbook to accompany Hermès’ physical show, with atmospheric images lensed by creatives including Wallpaper* collaborator Katrien De Blauwer. The maison’s accompanying collection was a masterclass in seductive minimalism. Body suits with cut-out backs were paired with knee length skirts in the supplest leather, crisp trousers styled with bandeaus, while shawl coats featured rolled up collars that unpoppered into scarves. The colour palette was rich and restrained in tones including caramel, sorbet yellow and scarlet. The most luxurious house shoe for spring? The Hermès clog, complete with an ‘H’ detail leather upper.

Paul Smith – whose beloved British brand celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – immersed himself in his personal history for spring. The designer – who swapped a physical or digital show for a lookbook and walk-through press appointments in London – was inspired by over 30 holiday photo albums, featuring snapshots of himself and wife Pauline. ‘We designed it over the phone!’ Smith laughed of the creative process behind the soothingly optimistic collection which features easy zip-up jackets in stripe tailoring fabrics, silk skirts and beach shorts emblazoned with enlarged archive rose prints, plus unconstructed tailoring. A double-breasted jacket with tactile prick stitch detailing, was inspired by the retro shapes Smith spotted on trips to Havana. ‘If people have been wearing sweats and tees all year, we ned to ease them back in,’ he said of the soft shapes.

There was also a nostalic nod behind Miu Miu's spring offering, which featured super sweet girlish silhouettes, like tracksuit tops paired with retro briefs, stripe halternecks and tennis skirts, knitted polo shirts and micro minis shimmering with plastic pailettes. It spoke of the innocent joy on dressing up and was sublime in its celebratory tone.

Designers used the downtime experienced during global lockdown to reconsider the core values of their brand. In fashion cities across the world, labels have presented pared-back or streamlined collections, with fewer looks and more focus. This concept resonated with designer Satoshi Kondo, who, troubled by the sheer number of shipment boxes used to transport Issey Miyake's last A/W 2020 offering from Tokyo to Paris, conceived a collection so compact it fitted into one. S/S 2021 features a number of shrink-inspired silhouettes that nod to the brand’s prowess in fabric development and innovation, from a technical parka and poncho which can be folded into a garment bag, to zig-zag knit patterned tops and dresses that can be rolled into a shape of a sponge. 

Y/Project’s Glenn Martens also presented a vision which evoked the ‘essential meaning’ of the experimental brand. Celebrating the versatility of its hybrid silhouettes, an accompanying ‘How to wear’ film showed how pieces could shaped, with the incorporation of zips and poppers. At Schiaparelli too, Daniel Rosenberry’s third collection for the house was focused on ‘essential silhouettes in the best fabrics’ that assimilated the hand-focused flourishes of haute couture, like trouser suits in the brand’s signature hot pink with Rorschach test-centric prints, Delphic gowns and chain-embellished shirting. These silhouettes were anything but shy, and were paired with hammered gold jewellery with nose and keylock details – surrealist symbols of the house.

While few were physically able to attend Paris for the spring shows, brands chose to celebrate the city itself. At Ami, the brand held its first show on the womenswear schedule, on the bank of the River Seine. In a more seductive spin than previous seasons, models sported dresses with cut-outs at the décolletage and check pencil skirts paired with string vests, inspired by Nineties evening wear. The urban landscape also inspired the soundtrack to Paco Rabanne’s pared-back physical show at Espace Commines, which bought a relaxed, daytime ease to the brand's disco-centric shapes. Nostalgic noises, that were silent for so much of this year, accompanied the collection, like dogs barking, police sirens honking, cars indicating and bike bells jingling.

The fashionable flaneur was also a focus. In a digital film presented as a music video, Balenciaga's S/S 2021 models stomped towards the Place Vendôme and along the Seine in the dark, miming to a synthy take on Corey Hart’s electro pop hit ‘Sunglasses at Night,’ sporting chainmail dresses and hybrid sportswear, fluffy heeled hotel slippers and wraparound shades, naturally. Rokh’s Rok Hwang was also fascinated with the concept of walking outside at night - a pastime we’ve all appreciated in recent months - recalling teenage wanders with friends when living in Austin Texas. The brand’s cinematic show film, set in an otherworldly location, featured modern flaneurs in fighting forms, including ruffled and tartan Victoriana dresses layered with leather harnesses.

For his debut at Givenchy, 1017 ALYX 9SM founder Matthew Williams teased out snippets of his S/S 2021 showcase a week before on Instagram, posting low-fi close-up images of chains and padlocks, lensed by Nick Knight. Hardware was essential to the designer’s vision, which was revealed in a surprisingly low key lookbook, with metal elements designed as a luxurious interpretation of the much-coveted logo. Williams looked at the codes of the historic couture house through a Gen Z-centric streetwear lens, featuring sleek, architectural shapes like square shouldered leather capes paired with gauzy bejewelled gowns, severe tailoring and tube dresses with seductive exposed backs. Williams nodded to previous creative directors, celebrating the tenure of Alexander McQueen with animalistic accessories, like sandals with curving horn heels and caps with knobbly antlers, and to Riccardo Tisci, in a hardware-focused revision of the graphic Antigona bag, beloved of supermodels in the Noughties. Referring to the collection as a ‘sampler’ of things to come, William’s Gen-Z fans will be fixated on what is next.

Chanel is one of many red carpet labels that has lost out to countless cancelled occasions this year, although Julia Garner and Shira Haas did opt to wear the brand to the Emmy’s first ever ‘phygital' awards show. With a typically insouciant mindset, creative director Virgine Viard was attracted to the off-duty attitude of an actress before a photocall for S/S 2021. In the show's press release she spoke of women with ‘their attitude a little out of sync with the outfits they’re wearing’ – a feeling many people have experienced this year, dressing up for visual dinner parties and on-screen events. Models walked against a huge Hollywood-inspired Chanel sign – the letters of the house erected with huge scaffolding – at a physical show inside the Grand Palais, sporting fluid asymmetric dresses, power shouldered skirt suits, sequin bermuda shorts and slogan t-shirts inspired by neon lights. The show celebrated cinematic escapism, one of which was rooted in reality.

Also intrigued by the codes of dressing today, John Galliano dissected the haute couture shapes and techniques used in Maison Margiela’s Artisanal collection, creating ethereal, finely crafted and avant-garde creations which were presented in ‘S.W.A.L.K 2', a Nick-Knight directed sequel to the brand’s video in July. The 40 minute film flits between fitting scenes in the label’s studio, and a sprawling estate in Tuscany, where Galliano’s models dance the tango, offering extensive insight into the creative process behind creating a collection.

Louis Vuitton's Nicolas Ghesquière was also fascinated by the concept of ‘in between garments' that reflect the on-pause lifestyle of today, somewhere between suiting and sportswear, at home clothes and ones for dreaming of going out. Usually showing in various areas of The Louvre, from its IM Pei-designed Cour Marly to its underground Pavillon de l’Horloge, the label decamped to the top floor of La Samaritane, the LVMH-owned department store which has been shuttered for refurbishment since 2005. In a physical and digital presentation blend, the Art Deco architecture and Art Nouveau frescoes were offset with green screen elements, which showed snippets of Wim Wenders ‘Wings of Desire' to audiences at home. Ghesquière's ‘stylistically vague' shapes featured 1980s power suiting, chainmail mini dresses and slouchy knitwear. Silhouettes appeared elegantly thrown on, like boardshorts paired with a long duster coat and a ‘Peace’ slogan tee. The show summed up a season that navigated the online and physical realms, creating clothing which caters to today's much changed lifestyle, one which shows no sign of settling come spring.

From classic sportswear brands to high-end fashion houses, our selection of sportswear gets stretched to its limits in high octane photographs by Jori Komulainen. To match, we asked London-based stetching expert Blok studios to share some at-home movements for warming up muscles while you keep looking cool.

‘Morning uplift stretch’: low squat with chest opener 

1. Come into the lowest squat possible by bringing your feet wider than your hips and turning your toes out slightly.
2. Bring your hands to prayer and press your elbows against your inner thigh to open out across the chest.
3. Try to stay here for a full minute and focus on your breath.

‘Morning activation stretch’: cossack squat

1. From standing, spread your legs wide apart and go into a deep lunge.
2. Stretch out your right leg and try to send your hips back, as if sitting on a chair behind you. Find your lowest position and hold there for 10 seconds. 
3. While keeping your hips as low to the ground as possible starting shifting your weight to the same position on your left side. Hold here for 10 seconds.
4. Repeat this 5 times.

‘Mid-workday back stretch’: pulling back release

1. Find something belly-button height that you can pull against, like a bannister, door handle, or counter top.
2. Grab hold of it, step back until your torso is parallel to the floor and your legs are a straight 90 degrees to your torso.
3. Make sure you try to make your back as long as possible to help you elongate the muscles between your ribs and help you breathe deeper.

‘Late afternoon reenergize stretch': sphinx or seal stretch 

1. Lying face down on the floor, place your hands flat underneath your shoulders and press down. Lift your chest off the floor until your arms are straight. If this feels too intense, lower down onto your forearms.
2. Stay here for 30 seconds and repeat twice more with little rests in between. While doing this think about pushing your shoulders far away from your ears and squeezing your shoulder blades together.

‘Night time wind down stretch': supine twist 

1. Lying on your back with your left leg extended, hug your right knee into your chest.
2. Place your left hand on the outside of your right thigh and then draw the knee across to the left, aiming to bring the right knee to the floor. Make sure to keep both shoulder blades pressed down on the floor.
3. Spend 30 seconds on each side.

INFORMATION

bloklondon.com

Mood board: Fashion’s role in female empowerment is a constant topic of discussion during fashion month, as brands work to present strength and power without resorting to gimmicks or marketing tricks. Paco Rabanne has a long history of liberation. In the late sixties, the label’s metal disc-emblazoned dresses were a symbol of space age discovery. ‘Super refined even fragile, but a fragility that gives you strength,’ was how creative director Julien Dossena described the feminine power he wished to convey for A/W 2020. He presented a sorority of chainmail-clad women, resembling Joan of Arc knights, belly dancing temptresses or masked mystical priestesses. The other armour in their arsenal? Dossena zipped between the past and present, conveying a ‘collision of times’, with puritanical suiting, twinkling bodysuits resembling medieval armour, lacquered leather military coats, ceremonial smocks and tasseled knitwear in swathing monastic shapes. Silhouettes associated with male power were usurped, and imagined more sensually for women. ‘Femininity is an attitude that’s also violent,’ he added backstage, ‘and women need to express that.’

Scene setting: Dossena switched Rabanne’s usual Grand Palais setting, in favour of the impressive arch-lined medieval palace Conciergerie. It was here that Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before she was sent to the guillotine. Models walked through its enormous history-lined hall in a monastic procession to operatic church music.

Finishing touches: The sixties and seventies is a constant source of inspiration for Dossena, who last season looked to flower power and psychedelia. For autumn, he paired his strong, ceremonial silhouettes with sky high platforms.

Mood board: A kaleidoscopic strip of lighting illuminated creative director Julien Dossena’s long S/S 2020 runway at Palais De Tokyo (a change in venue from the recently favoured Grand Palais) – one which it was announced the morning of the show, would incorporate menswear as part of its offering. The brand is working to unite its fashion and fragrance businesses, and it’s a sensible time for it to expand its categories. Earlier this year, the label also reissued its famed ‘1969’ chainmail bag, and Business of Fashion reports it is expected to triple its revenue in 2019 after doubling it in 2018. For S/S 2020, Dossena took guests on a trippy Magic Roundabout of references, which nodded to the naiveté of the 60s and 70s, and ‘was alternately romantic, cosmic, utopic, but most of all, non-nostalgic.’ The ebullient and energetic offering was swathed in rainbow chainmail, hippie florals, swirling silk foulards and bright leather intarsia depicting sunset scenes, all sent down the runway to the psychedelic sounds of Prince’s For You.

Best in show: Dossena’s menswear had bold Woodstock-worthy appeal. Think silver suiting, leather trousers, slim stripe knits and bright pointed boots.

Team work: Dossena teamed up once again with Peter Saville on a series of graphic t-shirts, depicting psychedelic sunset scenes, and in a nod to Rabanne’s menswear debut, emblazoned with the slogan ‘Male Tales.’

Mood board: Regimental frock coats, 1940s evening dresses in slippery silks, Glam Rock sequin trousers… if last season Julien Dossena took his insouciant Paco Rabanne girl to the coin-shimmering world of the souk, for A/W 2019 she was well and truly travelling through time. Dossena was preoccupied with decades spanning ‘pageantry, ceremony and performance’, featuring the chainmail dresses idiosyncratic of the brand (seen for autumn with a 1930s v-neck cut and shimmering with crystals), alongside pieces from a host of other eras. The look was glamorous and gilded, poised between the pretty – cherry print twinsets, Mary Jane shoes and art deco gowns, and the daring – second skin sequins, chain mail pencil skirts and cheeky polka dot tights.

Scene setting: If last season’s light-bulb lined show set resembled a twinkling ball room, A/W 2019’s looked a little more hotel lobby. Kitsch leaf-print carpet lined the runway and huge graphic chandeliers hung above the catwalk. Considering the decades on display, this was a reception lobby with a host of time-defying guests.

Best in show: A skinny Vichy check suit had androgynous New Wave flair. Those demure art deco frocks will make for fantastic partywear for the nonchalant Paco Rabanne girl.

Scene setting: Paco Rabanne’s signature chainmail dresses have a sense of disco drama. When the brand’s founder was designing in the mid-1960s, his shimmering and Space Age-silhouettes would have danced with the light reflected by a disco ball at nightclubs like Le Sept and Le Bus Palladium. For S/S creative director Julien Dossena drew on this discothèque dazzle, erecting a long catwalk at the Grand Palais, with a ceiling constellation of heat radiating lightbulbs. Catwalk show meets disco inferno!

Mood board: Since Dossena took the creative reigns of the house in 2013, he’s been successfully carving a contemporary identity for the house, that isn’t simply just rooted in the chainmail dress. Take last season, when he added bourgeois classics into his collection, like white shirts and pea coats. His S/S 2019 offering had more belly dancing-dazzle, with chainmail sarongs and vests twinkling with Moroccan motifs and waists jangling with belts strung together from gold coins. This was the artful Paco Rabanne girl discovering the desert or the inner depths of a bazaar, sporting silk nightgowns, clingy tube skirts overlaid with chainmail or skirts crafted from floral paillettes, metallic jacquard suits and tie-dye tees. In 1968, the brand’s founder dressed Jane Fonda in a green suit for science fiction film Barbarella. Dossena’s S/S 2019 collection was a wonderful denouement of how Paco Rabanne will resonate into the future.

Finishing touches: Those gold coins appeared on gold chains, which wrapped around the neck, paired with soft chainmail shoulder bags, wood block sandals and small party girl handbags cut from leather sequins resembling graphic flowers. §

Mood board: Julien Dossena also caught the Nineties nostalgia bug this season, opening his show with bustier baby doll dresses (some even tie-dyed), which were distressed by the house’s signature metal grommet – albeit in a grungier way than we’ve seen used before. Dossena’s spacey futurism vibe was still present in his track and field and terry-towelling swim sequences, but this season the whole package felt freer, certainly more deconstructed, and even experimental as he pushed further away from the house’s chain metal codes.

Best in show: A black strapless dress towards the end of the show that was torn between exposing the unhinged secrets of its construction and Dossena’s otherwise clean oeuvre.

Finishing touches: Were they Paco Rabanne branded elastic underpants that we saw peaking above the pant line? The Nineties really are back, load and clear.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans