This evening (16 June 2026), guests will gather in the cloisters of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Church for a dinner hosted by the Umbrian designer Brunello Cucinelli – a twice-yearly tradition that marks the opening of Pitti Uomo, the historic Florentine menswear fair. And with it, the beginning of Men’s Fashion Month: after Florence, there are stops in Milan and Paris across a 12-day schedule which will see S/S 2027 menswear offerings from fashion’s biggest houses – among them Prada, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent – as well as a raft of newer names. By the time Paris wraps up on 28 June 2026, we will have the blueprint of how menswear might look a year from now, and no doubt plenty to mull over: this looks to be a season of consolidation and world-building as relatively new creative directors settle into their tenures and others steady the ship amid the backdrop of a global luxury slowdown.

And, while the schedule is certainly lighter than its womenswear counterpart (the S/S 2027 women’s shows will take place in September, and traditionally have a busier line-up), plenty of intriguing moments remain – from Simone Rocha’s first dedicated menswear show (she will be a guest designer at Pitti Uomo, showing in the historic Teatro Della Pergola), to calendar shift-ups, designer returns and (a small handful) of debuts. We've picked the eight moments to look out for this Men’s Fashion Month S/S 2027 below.

Simone Rocha will be Pitti Uomo’s guest star

Historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo, taking place in Florence twice-yearly, marks the start of Men’s Fashion Month each season, centring around the 14th-century Fortezza da Basso. But alongside the main fair – where you will find stands from Brunello Cucinelli, Herno and the like – organisers invite a number of guest designers to show each season in locations around the city (previous guests have included Raf Simons, Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner, alongside numerous fashion houses). This time, it is the turn of Irish designer Simone Rocha, who will host her first dedicated menswear show on Thursday 18 June at the 17th-century Teatro Della Pergola, an opera house and theatre that is one of the oldest in Italy (previously she has presented menswear as part of her womenswear show, or via lookbook). ‘I would like to thank Pitti Uomo for their generous invitation to present my first independent menswear show on the men's calendar,’ she said when the news was announced, elucidating that she will use the moment to show ‘the length and breadth of [her] menswear proposition... [and] a new chapter in my work and world.’

Two menswear greats will return to Milan

Milan is well known for its sartorial prowess – particularly when it comes to men’s tailoring – something that has drawn two legendary international designers back to Milan Fashion Week Men’s this season. They are Paul Smith, who has shown in the city for a handful of seasons now, and Ralph Lauren, who returned to the Milan schedule in January of this year, marking the American designer’s first Italian menswear show in two decades. Both will show in their headquarters in the city: the former on Viale Umbria, the latter at Palazzo Ralph Lauren, which resides in an imposing 1941 Mino Fiocchi-designed building formerly known as Casa Campanini-Bonomi. Both will likely be celebratory affairs: particularly for Smith, who will turn 80 in July and use the latter half of the year to celebrate the landmark, including the release of an autobiography, Threads: My Life in Style, in September.

While Thom Browne will make his Milan Fashion Week Men’s debut

American designer Thom Browne has adopted something of a travelling schedule for his runway shows in recent seasons, showing between Paris and his native New York, as well as a one-off show in San Francisco earlier this year to coincide with the Super Bowl (Browne’s tailoring is a favourite among American athletes, and NFL players DeAndre Hopkins, Justin Jefferson and Steeler Marcus Allen walked the show). This season, though, he is breaking new ground: a runway show in Milan on Monday 22 June will mark his debut in the Italian city. Apart from the venue, the neoclassical Palazzo Serbelloni, little has been revealed about the show – though, if his previous outings are any indication, expect his usual eye for fantasy and play (his last menswear show, in Paris, for example, featured enormous glittering alien heads, worn by the models as masks).

Saint Laurent is back to opening Paris Fashion Week Men’s

Last June, Saint Laurent opened Men’s Fashion Week with a S/S 2026 collection that transported guests from ‘Paris to Fire Island’ amid a serene installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection (it comprised a circular pool on which a series of bowls floated across its glimmering blue surface). This season, the house will return to its first-day slot (for A/W 2026, in January, it ended proceedings) with a menswear show that is expected to take place in the contemporary art gallery. It will be followed that evening by another blockbuster show: the latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection by Pharrell Williams, which will take place at 9pm in an as-yet-undisclosed location.

All eyes will be on Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Men

Three seasons in, Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has succeeded in making Dior one of fashion’s most talked-about houses: case in point, a Hollywood-inspired Cruise 2027 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in May, which alongside a starry front row (Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus and Al Pacino were all in attendance), featured collaborations with artist Ed Ruscha and milliner Philip Treacy (fittingly, one of the headpieces spelt out ‘Buzz’ in feathers). On Wednesday 24 June, he will return to Dior’s home city for his S/S 2027 menswear show – arguably the most anticipated on the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule, following an acclaimed A/W 2026 show that drew inspiration from the outré stylings of couturier Paul Poiret and his infamous Belle Époque dinner parties.

Sarah Burton will reveal her vision for Givenchy menswear

Sarah Burton has shown three womenswear collections on the runway since the beginning of her tenure at Givenchy (she came to the house from Alexander McQueen, where she succeeded the eponymous designer as creative director); this season, in Paris, she will begin to expand her Givenchy universe with her first dedicated menswear presentation. Because, despite overseeing commercial collections – as well as dressing figures like Timothée Chalamet for the red carpet – she is yet to formerly introduce her menswear vision for the Parisian house. What to expect? Some great tailoring, no doubt – Burton is adept when it comes to a pin-sharp suit – alongside the bold flourishes of colour and print which defined her critically lauded A/W 2026 womenswear show last season.

At Celine, Michael Rider will host a dedicated menswear show

An intimate presentation of Michael Rider’s first dedicated menswear collection for Celine – presented earlier this year in the brand’s headquarters – was one of the highlights of the A/W 2026 season, despite a lack of models and runway (the clothing was instead staged in a series of playful tableaus, while guests snacked on Celine-branded popcorn). For S/S 2027, the American designer – formerly of Polo Ralph Lauren, as well as Celine during Phoebe Philo’s tenure – will host a dedicated menswear show on the final Sunday of Paris Fashion Week. Expect the infusion of Parisian insouciance and Ivy League stylings that have become his signature – and won him a devoted legion of fans, as well as thousands more aping the look in Instagram GRWMs, from colourful sweaters slung around the waist to rugby shirts and sliced-away ties.

London label Studio Nicholson will make its runway debut

This menswear season is suprisingly light on debuts, either from fledgling labels or major houses welcoming a new creative director. Studio Nicholson is an exception, though it also doesn’t fit into either camp: founded in 2010 by Nick Wakeman, the London-based label has already established itself as a cult destination for those who favour a simplicity of design and high-quality fabrications. But, while the brand has undertaken high-profile collaborations with the likes of Zara, it has never hosted a traditional runway show, something that will change this season: Wakeman has opted to present a collection during Paris Fashion Week Men‘s. Taking place on Friday 26 June at Hotel d’Evreux in Place Vendôme. Comprising her men’s and women’s collections for S/S 2027, it is a new addition to the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule – others include Meryll Rogge’s first menswear presentation, 2025 LVMH Prize winner Soshiotsuki and Australian brand Song for the Mute.

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

The best colourful outerwear to brighten spring days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The standout show sets of fashion month A/W 2026

Burberry

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

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

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

Diesel

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

Marni

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

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

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

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

Gucci

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

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

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

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

Prada

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

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

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

Dior

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

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

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

Loewe

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

Chanel

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

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

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

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

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

The best beauty looks of A/W 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

Acne Studios

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

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

Alaïa

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

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

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

Rabanne

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

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

Rick Owens

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

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

Loewe

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

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

Issey Miyake

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

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

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

Lanvin

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

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

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

Givenchy

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

Junya Watanabe

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

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

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

Celine

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

Hermès

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

Comme des Garçons

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

Balenciaga

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

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

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

Jean Paul Gaultier

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

Chanel

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

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

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

Louis Vuitton

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

Miu Miu

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

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

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

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

Bold Texture

Above left.

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

Lucky charms

Above right.

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

The 1990s slip

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

A brand new bag

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

Pyjama dressing

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

Block colour

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

True blue

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

A new summer shoe

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

Extreme layering

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

Shirt tales

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

Standout specs

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

Vivid outerwear

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

Shop the story

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

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

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

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

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

Acne Studios, Tokyo

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

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

Miu Miu, London 

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

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

Longchamp, New York

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

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

Extreme Cashmere, Amsterdam

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

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

Dries Van Noten, London

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

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

JW Anderson, London

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

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

Saint Laurent, Paris

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

Stone Island, New York

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

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

Loewe, Paris

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

Dior, Shanghai

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

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

This has been a watershed year in fashion. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, 2025 saw the industry hit refresh: in September alone, 15 designers made their debuts as creative directors of fashion’s major houses, ushering in a bold new era in style (and, as with any such change, prompting passionate – and oftentimes divided – online commentary).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are the 25 fashion moments that defined the zeitgeist in 2025 – from a viral Marty Supreme track jacket and Saint Laurent’s thigh-high wader boots, to big-name buyouts, runway returns and, of course, all those debuts.

Willy Chavarria made his mark in Paris with a powerful duo of shows

In January, CFDA Award-winning designer Willy Chavarria chose to shift his runway show from New York, where he lives and works, to Paris. A striking first show, held at the American Church on Quai d’Orsay, came just a few days after Trump’s inauguration, with Chavarria – whose runway shows have long been a clarion call for the rights of immigrants and the queer community – soundtracking the show with Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon imploring the incoming president to ‘have mercy’ towards marginalised communities. ‘It was so beautiful, and it fell exactly in line with what we were doing,’ he told Wallpaper* of the speech. ‘I wanted to show that everyone is welcome, and to do that in a church seemed like the most pronounced way of showing queer people, trans people, in this environment where they were the saints’. His sophomore Paris show, this summer, was similarly impactful: it opened with 35 kneeling men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a reference to those being unlawfully detained by ICE in the United States.

READ: Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion’s old guard’

Faux fur and shearling took over the runway

Not a moment, per se, though the proliferation of faux fur and shearling on the runway – spanning both the men’s and women’s collections – was one of the year’s undeniable style takeaways (so much so, we even spotted it on the spring/summer runways). ‘When worn, it becomes a heady meeting place of signifiers – luxury, wealth, power, but also protection, armour against the elements, an ancient and primal urge to be swaddled in the spoils of the hunt,’ we wrote earlier this year of the renaissance of fur – albeit in imitation fabrics – which seemed to a response to the tumult of contemporary living. Indeed, at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘Raw Glamour’, ‘fur’ coats – constructed from cleverly manipulated shearling – had strange protusions at the collar or were trapped under plastic. ‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

READ: Faux fur and shearling dominated the A/W 2025 runways – these pieces capture the material’s ‘raw glamour’

Alessandro Michele entertained with a showstopping haute couture debut for Valentino

Haute couture was always going to be a medium which suited Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director who now heads up Valentino. For his first couture collection for the house – presented this past February – the Italian designer, known for theatrical runway shows and richly imaginative collections, hit new heights, employing the ‘petits mains’ of the Valentino atelier to create a series of showstopping gowns. In a style typical to the deep-thinking designer, they were explained in the book-length collection notes through the language of philosophy and semiotics – Homer, James Joyce and Italo Calvino were all mentioned – with each gown representing a ‘list’ of words and influences (‘[lists] confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe,’ Michele wrote, quoting Umberto Eco). These surreal lists scrolled across the show’s set on a series of ticker-tape screens as the dramatic looks wandered across the stage, a millefeuille of satin, lace and tulle – eclectic, intricate and, as fashion sleuths showed after the show, rooted in the Valentino archive. ‘To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own,’ we wrote at the time. ‘It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.’

READ: Inside Alessandro Michele’s showstopping debut haute couture show for Valentino

Martine Rose held her first gallery show – an ode to Bronski Beat’s radical energy

During London Fashion Week in February, Martine Rose hosted her first gallery show at Sadie Coles HQ, revisiting her 2016 film Everything Must Change – a Sharna Osbourne-shot short starring Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville. ‘Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond,’ Rose told Wallpaper*. ‘Mainstream pop by out and proud gay men making serious, respected pop music – not tokenistic – which can never be replicated. It was a radical time for music, all about individuality, no stylists, all genuine expression.’ It’s a statement that captures the radical, subculture-infused energy of Rose’s own work: later that year, in June, she staged a one-off show in an abandoned west London job centre, adorned for the occasion in boudoir-style ruffled curtains. ‘I was exploring this new shrunken silhouette,’ she said after the show. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.’ It is this idiosyncratic approach – at once strange, sexy and real – which has made Martine Rose one of London’s defining voices, doing things her own way for close to two decades.

READ: Martine Rose’s first gallery show celebrates the radical queer energy of Bronski Beat

Calvin Klein returned to the runway with a new ‘sexitude’

In February, Calvin Klein hosted its first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018 (under him, the runway collections went under the moniker Calvin Klein 205W39NYC; now, they are back to being called Calvin Klein Collection). In one of the year’s first notable debuts, it was former The Row designer Veronica Leoni who took the helm, seeking a mood of sensual minimalism she dubbed ‘sexitude’ – a nod to the pulsing undercurrent of eroticism which ran through the brand’s advertising campaigns and collections in the 1990s. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ the Italian designer said backstage. ‘You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’ The collection came with the blessing of Mr Klein himself, who watched on from the front row. ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Fendi celebrated its centenary with a blockbuster show in Milan

2025 was a definitive year for Fendi: not only did it mark a century since the fashion house was founded in Rome, but, after the departure of artistic director of womenswear and couture Kim Jones in October 2024, the beginning of its new chapter. As such, in February, Fendi opened the doors to its newly renovated Milanese headquarters for a celebratory runway show, seeing house scion Silvia Venturini Fendi take the reins for the blockbuster spectacle which included a cast of Fendi muses, past and present. The granddaughter of house founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, Venturini Fendi started at the house in the 1990s under Karl Lagerfeld, and would go on to head up menswear and accessories, though this was just the second time she had also designed the womenswear line (the first was after Lagerfeld’s death in 2019). Talking to Wallpaper*, she said that it was an honour to head up such a definitive show for both her family and the house – but was adamant this was not about living in the past: ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’. After presenting a second co-ed collecti on in September, she stepped down from the creative role to become ‘honorary president’. Her successor will be former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in a much-rumoured move.

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

Prada agreed to purchase Versace for $1.375 billion

The subject of much speculation and rumour after Donatella Versace stepped down from her role as creative director the month prior, in April, it was confirmed that the Prada Group reached an agreement to purchase Versace after the Italian house was put on sale by former owner Capri Holdings earlier in the year. Agreeing to a deal of $1.375 billion for 100 per cent of the company – well below the initial $2 billion asking price – it marked a definitive move from the Prada Group to establish an Italian luxury conglomerate (The Prada Group comprises Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe; in 1999, it purchased controlling stakes in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, though they were later sold). ‘We are delighted to welcome Versace to the Prada Group and to build a new chapter for a brand with which we share a strong commitment to creativity, craftmanship and heritage,’ said Patrizio Bertelli, Prada Group chairman and executive director, at the time (the deal was completed in December). ‘We aim to continue Versace’s legacy, celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic; at the same time, we will provide it with a strong platform.’

READ: Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director

The Met’s Costume Institute explored the figure of the Black Dandy

In a year which was notable for its slew of fashion exhibitions – from the confection-like gowns of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at London’s V&A to a Rick Owens retrospective featuring a lifelike sculpture of the designer ‘urinating’ water into a trough below – the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition in May still demands the most attention. This is largely because of the accompanying Met Gala – the starry event heralds the exhibition’s opening – though it is also down to the Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton’s eye for finding intriguing subject matter in the Met’s extensive archive. This year, he drafted Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, to help curate the exhibition, which traced the sartorial history of the Black Dandy from the 18th century to the present day. Titled ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, alongside historical garments, it featured the work – or personal wardrobes – of Virgil Abloh, Andre Leon Talley and Grace Wales Bonner, among others, with set design for the arresting exhibition courtesy of artist Torkwase Dyson. ‘I clocked into how people have fashioned themselves as a manipulation of autonomy and ownership in which clothing is a resistance,’ she told Wallpaper* of the design, which riffed on her signature trapezoid sculptures.

READ: Torkwase Dyson’s set design for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at The Met meditates on ownership, charisma and histories

Saint Laurent’s viral knee-high boots heralded menswear’s dark, sensual mood

At Cannes film festival, while promoting queer ‘dom-com’ Pillion – a film which explores a dom/sub relationship between a shy parking attendant and a biker – Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård donned a thigh-high leather wader boot by Anthony Vaccarrello for Saint Laurent. Shown at the house’s runway show earlier that year, it became one of the viral accessories of the year, worn by everyone from Pedro Pascal to Marc Jacobs, and ubiquitous in magazine spreads. Inspired by an imagined meeting between two men who designed the aesthetic of the 1980s – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe – the collection captured a mood of dangerous sensuality which ran throughout the season, from Prada’s patchworked leathers to Maximilian Davis’s S/S 2026 Ferragamo collection, inspired by the languid sensuality of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Vaccarello dubbed it a ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ – classic menswear with an inflection of kink.

READ: Inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint Laurent’s surprise menswear show captured ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake channelled la dolce vita in Florence

It would prove one of the most memorable show locations of the year: unfolding against a painterly Florentine sky at sunset, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged its S/S 2026 show at Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello in the rolling Tuscan countryside. A guest of Pitti Uomo menswear fair, the Issey Miyake offshoot used the occasion to introduce a new roving format of runway show: eschewing its usual place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (its position has been taken by IM Men, another brand in the Issey Miyake family), it will show in a series of locations around the world in the coming seasons. As such, collections will draw inspiration from local landscapes: here, it was done via an evocative use of colour, utilising hues sourced through trips the design team had taken around Italy (from ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ to ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’). The result was a collection which fused Italian charm with Homme Plissé’s pioneering fabrications: played out in the villa’s winding, maze-like gardens, it was impossible not to be seduced.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Rick Owens spread the love with a Paris retrospective

‘I’m surprised I got so far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Palais Galliera. A celebration of the American designer’s singular approach – one laced with both subversion and wit – the exhibition took attendees on a trip from his early years on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s (a recreation of his Los Angeles bedroom of the time appears in the exhibition) towards his blockbuster spectacles at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (indeed, in June, an opening party took place just after his S/S 2026 menswear show, with guests simply having to cross the road from one institution to another). ‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, ‘You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!’ She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it,’ he said. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

READ: ‘I’m surprised that I got this far’: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Jonathan Anderson rebooted his brand – and debuted at Dior

It was a busy June for Jonathan Anderson. Alongside his much-anticipated debut show at Dior – a menswear offering for S/S 2026 presented at Paris’ Hôtel National des Invalides, which astutely reworked formal dress codes – the Northern Irish designer also revealed a rebooted vision for his eponymous, London-based label JW Anderson, which propelled him to renown after it was established in 2008. Doing away with the label’s usual seasonal runway shows, the new vision centres on the idea of the shop: in Paris, during haute couture week, he constructed a simulacrum of a new store concept by architects Sanchez Benton which included not only a fashion collection (a greatest hits of sorts, seeing signature pieces imbued with a greater commitment to craft) but a curation of intriguing objects and curiosities, from ceramics and vintage gardening tools to furniture, art, even honey. 'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with.’

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

Craig Green returned to the runway – and to Paris

After just over a decade in business, Craig Green remains one of British fashion’s definitive voices – a singular creative force whose imaginative collections transform humble menswear archetypes (workwear, uniforms, biker jackets) through imaginative construction and unusual fabrications, oftentimes evoking sculpture. This year, he made his return to Paris Fashion Week, having shown a year prior in his London studio, and elsewhere via lookbook (Green is one of a handful of designers who seem to be flourishing outside of the typical fashion calendar). The show was one of our highlights of the year: a poetic, free-thinking collection inspired by The Beatles, psychedelics and 1960s bed sheets – albeit in his typically inventive style. ‘Creativity how everything moves forward,’ Green told us in the October 2025 ‘Long View’ issue of Wallpaper*, in which we documented the process behind the collection. ‘You need creative thought for things to progress, and for new things to happen. You have to have the freedom to make mistakes, to create work and not live in fear.’

READ: ‘You have to be fearless’: inside the free-thinking world of Craig Green

Glenn Martens unveiled his vision for Maison Margiela

The task was unenviable: as the new creative director of Maison Margiela, Belgian designer Glenn Martens would not only have to follow the house’s namesake – arguably the most influential designer of recent times – but also John Galliano, his predecessor, whose final collection, which conjured a troupe of contorted dolls on the drizzly moonlit banks of the Seine, was a true fashion epic. But Martens, who comes with a pedigree of his own after zeitgeist-defining stints at Y/Project and Diesel, was more than up for a challenge. His own creatures were sheathed in masks (a nod to a Margiela hallmark, that of anonymity) and appeared pulled through the the walls of history – quite literally, with a melange of jacquards, Renaissance motifs and embossed leather (inspired by 16th-century Flemish wallpaper), evoking the faded grandeur of abandoned stately homes (indeed, the show set was a series of ‘palatial interiors’ printed on crumpled and crased paper). We called it a ‘thrilling’ debut, a task of ‘reinvention and reconstruction – a precarious balance of what to take and what to leave behind’.

READ: Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future

Fashion East celebrated a ‘rowdy and raw’ 25 years of nurturing emerging talent

In September, Fashion East’s S/S 2026 runway show doubled as a celebration: 2025 marked 25 years of the Brick Lane-based talent incubator, which was founded by Lulu Kennedy to help forge the careers of London’s rising stars. The roll call of names which have passed through its doors is proof of its success: Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Kim Jones, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner are all alumni of the unique scheme, which has long encapsulated London’s unique brand of young talent – defiantly creative, ‘rowdy and raw’ (as Kennedy herself described in a letter distributed to guests at the show). Taking place at the ICA, this season’s show – comprising collections by Nuba, Jacek Gleba and Mayhew – doubled as a Nike-sponsored exhibition tracing Fashion East’s impressive quarter century through its memorable clothing and ephemera, from Green’s ‘broken-fence’ chestplates to a leopard-print cake by Mowalola. Later in the year, in December, Kennedy and her creative partner Raphaelle Moore collected a Special Recognition Award at the 2025 Fashion Awards. ‘We’re proud to have created a unique space where designers have both the freedom to create fearlessly, and a family unit to uplift them,’ they said.

September’s fashion week saw almost too many debuts to count

2025 was fashion’s big reshuffle, seeing an unprecedented number of designers making their debuts at fashion’s biggest houses – from Dior to Chanel, Gucci to Celine. It was September fashion month, though, that was a true changing of the guard moment, with over 15 designers presenting their first collections as newly installed creative leads. These spanned an energetic and playful debut from Nicholas Aburn at Area in New York (the former Balenciaga designer riffed on the figure of the party girl in irreverent style), Simone Bellotti’s masterful first outing at Jil Sander, which saw him astutely explore ideas of modernity and lightness (staged in the brand’s white-walled Milan headquarters, it was a true clean slate momet), or Pierpaolo Piccioli’s typically heartfelt first collection for Balenciaga (an appearance from the Duchess of Sussex ensured column inches).

Elsewhere, notable debuts included Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier. And, while these debuts were largely lauded – particularly by critics – fiercer debates broke out online in the depths of Instagram comment sections. ‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ wrote Perfect magazine’s Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta, in a much-shared post. ‘It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything… but why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Though in Paris, it was Chanel and Dior which commanded the most attention

There were two debuts, though, which commanded the most attention: Jonathan Anderson’s womenswear debut for Dior (he had previously shown his first menswear collection in June) and Matthieu Blazy’s opening act for Chanel. Shrugging off the weight of expectation, both collections provided an astute and contemporary viewpoint on the future of two of fashion’s most storied houses – Anderson through a fearless ‘recoding’ of the house’s archive in his idosyncratic style (we said it was a collection of ‘bravery, vision and instinct’), Blazy through a collection of unbridled freedom and optimism (a twirling Awar Odhiang in a gown of kaleidoscopic feathers, the model who memorably closed the show, encapsulated the ‘triumphant’ mood). After Chanel, which marked the end of fashion month, we said that after all of the debuts, it finally felt like a ‘weight had been lifted’. ‘There will be no more anticipation or speculation, no more guessing games or gossip. The designers are in place, and a new chapter of fashion has begun – from there, the hard work begins.’

While Demna marked his Gucci debut with a Demi Moore-starring film

In what proved an astute move, the Georgian designer Demna – previously of Balenciaga – got ahead of the season’s other debuts by presenting his first collection as creative director of Gucci on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, allowing him a moment in which he dominated the narrative (and, of course, social media). Revealed first through a lookbook of Gucci ‘archetypes’, rewritten in his typically irreverent and subversive style (he called it a ‘bold, sexy new chapter’ for the house), it was followed up by a Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-directed short, premiered at Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte. Titled The Tiger, it starred Demi Moore as the fictional ’head of Gucci international and chairman of California’ whose world begins to unravel at a family gathering. Even cleverer? Demna will get another ‘debut’ in 2026 when he holds his first runway for the house during Milan Fashion Week, in February.

READ: Gucci reveals its ‘bold, unapologetically sexy’ new era under Demna

The fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani

In early September, the fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani, an arbiter of Italian style who founded his eponymous house half a century ago, in 1975. One of fashion’s great success stories, Mr Armani began the label using funds made from selling his old Volkswagen Beetle; on his death, he left behind a multi-billion dollar empire spanning not only fashion but homeware, hotels, restaurants, fragrances and cosmetics. To mark his death, after a private funeral held earlier in the month, well-wishers gathered at Milan Fashion Week in September for his final Giorgio Armani show. Originally intended to celebrate 50 years in business, it took place at Brera’s Pinacoteca di Brera, where an accompanying exhibition unfolded in the galleries above. As ever, the S/S 2026 collection – modelled on a cast of Armani models past and present and watched on by muses Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton and Cate Blanchett – encapsulated Mr Armani’s brand of soft elegance, culminating with model Agnes Zogla in a glimmering gown adorned with his face. Afterwards, guests milled the galleries, where the designer’s work took its fitting place amid the great Italian masters – from Bellini to Raphael.

READ: In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

A Virgil Abloh exhibition celebrated his landmark legacy

Just over four years since his death, American designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a towering legacy – one which was celebrated this September in Paris with the opening of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. Open for just a few days (cue a sold out booking system and snaking queues around the block), the exhibition opened the doors to his prolific archive of objects, clothing, ephemera, furniture and art, displayed across sprawling tables and shelves as if stepping into his headquarters. Indeed, one senses the polymathic designer – who made history as the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton – would enjoy the exhibition’s approach, which eshewed the behind-glass formality of the traditional museum (only self-restraint stopped you from picking up the objects on display). Titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, the idea is for it to go on display around the world. ‘This is a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos,’ said the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

READ: Inside the Paris exhibition cataloguing Virgil Abloh’s extraordinary archive

Grace Wales Bonner is appointed at Hermès

In late October, Hermès announced the appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as the house’s head of menswear, replacing Véronique Nichanian who made the choice to step down from the role after a record-breaking 37-year tenure (the longest of any working creative director at a fashion house). It felt long overdue for the British designer. An LVMH Prize-winning designer whose deeply felt collections for her eponymous label Wales Bonner – exploring themes of Black masculinity, migration and luxury – have consistently won plaudits for rich storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship, leading many to question why she hadn’t been chosen for a creative director role sooner (she had been rumoured for roles at both Louis Vuitton and Givenchy which went to Pharrell Williams and Sarah Burton respectively). On social media, there was a rare positive consensus on the decision: in her own post, the designer, who was born in South London to a British mother and Jamaican father, expressed her ‘deep honour’ at being chosen for the role. ‘It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,’ she wrote.

READ: Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at Hermès

1980s ‘architect of glamour’ Antony Price returned to the runway

The fashion critic Alexander Fury – who is an avid collector of his work – has called Antony Price, a British fashion designer who came to prominence in the 1980s, as ‘criminally underrated’. Best known for creating the visual universe of Roxy Music, and staging similarly dramatic runway shows in the decade, the ‘architect of glamour’ made a welcome runway return in November, courtesy of a one-off salon show with London-based label 16Arlington. Staged in the latter’s east London studio, the high-profile cast – from Lily Allen to Adwoa Aboah – prowled the runway in the high-voltage creations, puffing on cigarettes before posing for photographer Felix Cooper. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ Capaldo told Wallpaper*. ‘To have been able to witness such a legend at work has probably been one of the most incredible and pivotal moments in my career. It's been really magical.’ Sadly, it was announced that Price passed away at the age of 80 on 17 December 2025.

READ: ‘Architect of glamour’ Antony Price makes a high-voltage return to the runway with 16Arlington

Dario Vitale said goodbye to Versace

It was to be one of fashion’s shortest tenures – just a few short months after his debut, in December, it was announced that Italian designer Dario Vitale would be exiting Versace. The former design director of Miu Miu, and the successor to Donatella Versace, the news came as some surprise: Vitale’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week, though divisive, had won over critics and was already being worn by celebrities (Olivia Dean wore custom Versace for a recent SNL appearance, while Addison Rae was also an early adopter). We said that Vitale had ‘stripped back conceptions and ushered in an energetic new vision: sexually charged and ‘reckless’, one that harkened back to the dress codes of Gianni Versace without nostalgia.’ On social media, the announcement came with some disappointment at the way in which designers are given so little time to make their mark: ‘There’s a disturbing pattern across the fashion industry: giant companies, plucking creative directors, placing them on a pedestal, parading them as the future, and then discarding them just as quickly,’ wrote casting director Anita Bitton in a much-shared Instagram post.

In Vienna, there was a chance to see Helmut Lang’s fashion archive for the first time

Though he exited the industry 20 years ago, Helmut Lang’s influence on fashion remains palpable. A definitive figure of the 1990s, he proposed a vision of sensually-charged minimalism and utility which continues to define the way that we dress today. He also changed the way we consume fashion, too: his memorable New York runway shows stripped back the artifice of the 1980s and its elevated runway, drafting friends to walk alongside supermodels, while stripped-back campaigns were captured by a young Juergen Teller. This revolutionary spirit is celebrated in ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, an exhibition which opened in December at MAK in Vienna, which marks the first time Helmut Lang’s fashion archive is on show to the public – from memorable garments to archival film, ephemera, even recreations of elements from his equally definitive stores (Lang donated his archive to the institution in 2011). ‘Looking at Helmut Lang’s store architecture, it became obvious: his stores were all about directing the gaze. This is also what exhibitions need to do, but here it was essential. A photo wouldn’t suffice; you have to experience it,’ curator Marlies Wirth told Wallpaper* of the exhibition, which is designed to immerse you in the Lang universe – all the way down to the floor, which features a seating plan from a runway show.

READ: Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress today

Marty Supreme birthed the year’s viral garment – thanks to Timothée Chalamet

The Marty Supreme press tour has already come with some memorable sartorial moments – the film’s star Timothée Chalamet and girlfiend Kylie Jenner in matching orange Chrome Hearts for one – though it was more humble track jacket which went viral in December (the Josh Safdie-directed film is out on Christmas Day in the United States). The nylon windbreaker, created by the film’s production company A24 alongside California-based label Nahmias, was part of a merch drop for the film – adorned with ‘Marty Supreme’ and three gold stars, Chalamet has barely taken it off since. Pop-ups in New York and London have seen queues around the block to lay their hands on the $250 jacket – with resale sites selling the garment for up to for up to £4,366 (that’s over 20 times its original price). It speaks not only to A24’s marketing prowess, but also to the rise of movie merch – at the end of 2024, Mary Cleary explored its rise for Wallpaper*. ‘How it will continue to play out is yet to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: movie merch will continue to take over fashion,’ she wrote – and was right.

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

Themes of glamour, danger and seduction ran through the A/W 2025 collections – from Saint Laurent’s thigh-high leather boots to ‘fur’ coats, animal prints and sculpted tailoring. As seen in the September 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), we capture the season’s sensual new mood in 12 objects and looks for men and women.

Power trip (top left)

Tropes of glamour – from bullet bras and brooches to red lips and fur coats – were riffed on by designers in unexpected and imaginative ways. At Alaïa, towering shearling ‘fur’ coats looped around models’ necklines and tassels jutted from skirt waistlines, while vast corsages sat flush to the neck. ‘The message is about singularity, individuality, the eternal strength and resilience of women, empowering them through their clothes,’ said creative director Pieter Mulier. ‘That inspired Azzedine, and it always inspires me – the strength of beauty.’

Thigh high (top right)

An imagined meeting between Robert Mapplethorpe and Yves Saint Laurent sparked Anthony Vaccarello’s menswear collection for Saint Laurent. Clashing the carnal desires of Mapplethorpe’s photography with the ‘bookish’ classicism of Yves Saint Laurent’s Parisian uniform, it was defined by thigh-grazing leather boots worn with 1980s-inspired tailoring. Referencing a ‘Robin Hood’ boot created by Yves Saint Laurent in 1963, they were perhaps the season’s most talked-about accessory, finding fans in Alexander Skarsgård and Pedro Pascal.

Buffer zone

The proliferation of faux fur – or fur reproductions in cleverly manipulated feathers or dyed shearling – suggested a desire for protection, whether against the elements or something more existential. Enveloping ‘yeti’ coats were most appealing in their hefty weight and size, from those at Dolce & Gabbana – evoking the thrown-on style of off-duty models – to Sportmax’s shaggy monochromatic overcoats. ‘Hyper-reinvention – where the ordinary becomes extraordinary,’ said the Italian label of the collection.

Swan song

After a five-year tenure, Kim Jones held his closing act as artistic director of Dior menswear amid a dramatic monochromatic mişe-en-scene that saw models descend an enormous optic white staircase and onto the runway – a play on the staircase at the house’s Avenue Montaigne address. Silhouettes took inspiration from the streamlined proportions of Christian Dior’s 1954 H-Line couture collection, while ribbon-like eye masks were tied at the back with a bow, evoking those found on the bottles of the Miss Dior fragrance.

Magic eye

Awaiting the arrival of incoming creative director Matthieu Blazy, Chanel has used recent collections to reinforce its most distinctive codes. For A/W 2025, it did so through a collection designed to ‘alter perceptions’, reimagining Chanel emblems using tricks of the eye – whether trompe l’oeil bows or a series of surreal accessories blown up in size or shrunk into miniature. These included a huge version of its signature pochette, a tiny quilted handbag, and this Borrowers-style string of pearls, one of which flips open to make a bag.

Dark arts

‘A menacing elegance’ is how Anthony Vaccarello defined the mood of his menswear collection for Saint Laurent, with its sense of danger, inflected with hints of kink. There was also Prada’s patchworked leather tailoring and raw slices of shearling ‘fur’; Lemaire’s leather foulards, worn as headscarves; and elongated trench coats and leather gloves at Ferragamo. The latter was presented by Maximilian Davis on a darkened runway strewn with red roses, a nod to the sensual staging of Pina Bausch’s Nelken, performed by the Tanztheater Wuppertal.

Wild ones

Designers embraced a wilder side this season, with Duran Lantink’s collection sporting a heady collage of zebra, leopard and tiger prints, some painted directly on to the models’ bodies, while Peter Copping’s Lanvin debut – an ode to the louche 1920s eveningwear of founder Jeanne Lanvin – featured oversized leopard-print coats with a soft, shaggy finish. At Sacai, Chitose Abe looked towards more fantastical realms, conjuring up the monsters of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are with brightly coloured flourishes of dyed shearling.

Hat trick

The hat is having something of a renaissance, appearing in various guises on recent runways. Signalling a move beyond the casual spirit of a cap or beanie, designers instead delighted in the nostalgic elegance of more classic millinery. At Sportmax, it was something between a pillbox and a panama, at Duran Lantink, there were amped-up versions of the trapper and woolly hats in his signature sculpted form, while Loro Piana featured a play on the cloche hat, a style synonymous with the liberatory dress codes of the 1920s.

Pump action

The pointed, heeled pump has been an archetype of femininity since its rise to prominence in the 1930s, a moment that coincided with the growing influence of Hollywood. Interpretations of the pump appeared throughout the collections, though it was those at Prada that proved most intriguing, featuring raw-cut edges as a riposte to perfection. Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons noted it was part of an interrogation of femininity. ‘We asked ourselves, what is feminine beauty?’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is a constant questioning.’

Carry all

This was the season of the XXL bag, perfect for transporting the necessities of contemporary life. Hermès offered up a new take on its ‘Haut à Courroies’ bag, which, in its roominess, can double as a weekend bag or plane carry-on. Stripped of the usual hardware, the various straps and clasps were replaced with ghostly embossing, as if a trace of what was there had been left behind. It came as part of a collection that artistic director Véronique Nichanian described as ‘a play between front and back, inside and out, visible and invisible’.

Body work

Stella McCartney staged her show at the ‘Stellacorp’ HQ – a surreal simulacrum of an office, complete with spinning chairs and desks, which was eventually invaded by underwear-clad pole dancers. Titled ‘Laptop to Lapdance’, playful juxtapositions ran through the collection, which saw the corporate uniform, from pencil skirts to blouses, shot through with a frisson of perversity. Collections from Acne Studios, Balenciaga and All-In presented similar riffs on office attire, the latter inspired by Mike Nichols’ 1988 movie Working Girl.

Take shape

Men’s tailoring this season was sculpted in silhouette, with a focus on the waist. Kim Jones’ final collection for Dior Men included a tuxedo-style riff on Christian Dior’s Bar jacket, while at Wooyoungmi, a reconsideration of eveningwear saw a carved waistline on a jacket adorned with 3D-appliqué flowers. Madame Woo, who staged the show in the opulent surrounds of Karl Lagerfeld’s former residence on Rue de l’Université, said she was thinking about ‘ideas of proper dressing’, reimagining formalwear in louche and sensual style.

Models: Hollie-May Saker at Models 1, Tristan Watkins at Menace Models. Casting: Dean Goodman. Hair: Anna Chapman at Julian Watson using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Kirstin Piggott at Julian Watson using Charlotte Tilbury. Manicure: Hayley Evans-Smith at Saint Luke using Byredo. Interiors: Olly Mason. Digi tech: Laura Heckford. Photography assistants: Tom Porter, Ed Philips. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Interiors coordinator: Archie Thomson. Production: Victoria Watkins at Birdhouse. Production assistant: Melina Grace Bryant. Retouching: Aly Studio.

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

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

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

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

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

Craig Green

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

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

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

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

Wooyoungmi

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

Hermès

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

Kiko Kostadinov

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

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

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

Dior Men

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

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

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

Willy Chavarria

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

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

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

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

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

Junya Watanabe MAN

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

Rick Owens

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

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

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

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

Dries Van Noten

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

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

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

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

Amiri

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

IM Men

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

Wales Bonner

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

Hed Mayner

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

Lemaire

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

Louis Vuitton

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

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

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

Auralee

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

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

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

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

Since the beginning of June, the circular rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection gallery in Paris has been taken over by an installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. Comprising a vast circular pool – its shape echoing Tadao Ando’s 29-metre-wide, nine-metre-tall concrete cylinder which sits inside the original 19th-century domed rotunda – the artwork features hundreds of porcelain bowls which serenely float across its surface. As they do so, they gently clatter against each other, the effect akin to a meditative sound bath.

On Tuesday afternoon in Paris – marking the start of this season’s men‘s fashion week in the city – the installation served as a striking runway set for Anthony Vaccarello’s latest menswear collection for Saint Laurent. At 5pm, the rotunda was flooded with light – a rare occurrence for a Saint Laurent show, which usually take place in the shroud of darkness – a gesture that the designer said was purposeful. Via the collection notes, he said he was seekeing ‘the clarity of the afternoon light... a deliberate rupture... no artificial glow... just dry light’ (as such, there was a parallel to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest Prada show set, where the pair spoke of a desire to to let the light in).

It set the stage for a collection of ‘ease’ and ‘escapism’ – ‘a suspended moment, somewhere between Paris and Fire Island, where escape becomes elegance, and desire becomes a language.’ In this context, the installation became an abstract daydream of Fire Island – a longtime queer haven off the coast of Long Island, New York – and its shimmering blue beaches and swimming pools. Along its edges looped the cast of models in the wistful S/S 2026 collection, which saw abbreviated shorts and pyjama sets meet diaphanous layers of silk and nylon, wide-shoulder shirts, blazers and ties.

In the latter, there was a reference to the corporate uniform Vaccarello has riffed on in recent seasons in his menswear collections, though here the look was loosened-up and languid, evoking what the designer called a ‘subtle sensuality’ through gently crumpled surfaces and folded-over waistbands. ‘Everything feels light; shapes float rather than cling,’ Vaccarello elaborated via the collection notes, calling a colour palette of sand, ochre, moss green and piscine blue ‘hushed’.

On each seat was a photograph of a young Yves Saint Laurent on holiday in Oran in a pair of short shorts, and the idea of escapism took on a more potent meaning when Vacarello evoked other queer artists of the era – among them Larry Stanton, Patrick Angus and Darrel Ellis – who sought refuge and kinship in Fire Island’s liberated dunes, and would later be lost to Aids.

’This collection pays tribute to a lost generation, to the artists – Stanton, Angus, Ellis – who gave a face to silent desires,’ he said. In the collection, subtle gestures of exposture – the line of a boxer short above the waist of a tailored trouser, sheer fabrications which revealed the body beneath – spoke of a time of queer semiotics, of communicating through clothing and codes.

‘[It is] inspired by a time when desire was style, when beauty served as a shield against emptiness,’ said Vaccarello, a reference, perhaps, to Yves Saint Laurent’s personal struggles with depression and addiction beneath his glamorous facade. ‘The collection explores this subtle sensuality, that fragile moment when one dresses as much to reveal oneself as to conceal.’

ysl.com

Where Yves Saint Laurent – the late designer whose radical ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo changed the course of fashion – set out to define an era through clothes, his namesake cosmetics brand is leading the contemporary hunger for beauty with purpose. At the Ourika Community Gardens, launched by the brand in 2014 within the red sandstone expanses at the base of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, over 200 species are being tended by local women in a bid by the brand to give back to the country which so inspired its founder.

Inside YSL Beauty's Ourika Community Gardens

The gardens, dreamed up by YSL Beauty’s international sustainability and science director Caroline Negre, and brought to life by architects Arnaud Maurières and Eric Ossart, specialists in designing for arid landscapes, are a labyrinth of growing patches, test areas and olive groves. Iris, orange blossom, pomegranate and verbena whose scents and properties will find their way into products as diverse as mascaras, lip glazes, shadow palettes and perfumes, lend lush, aromatic verdancy to the otherwise dry, scrubby topography of the valley.

‘Yves searched for beauty everywhere – not an academic beauty, but something on the wild side,’ Saint Laurent’s official biographer Laurence Benaïm tells Wallpaper*. ‘In the Ourika Community Gardens we can feel his presence, but it hasn’t been designed as an homage to him. It’s not a decorative rose garden with Majorelle blue walls, it’s been designed with a pure North African sensibility. It’s not fake, it’s real.’

Saint Laurent first visited Morocco, neighbouring country to his birthplace of Algeria, in 1966, and maintained a residence there for the rest of his life. Of his love for the place, he said: ‘When I discovered Morocco, I understood that my own colour palette was that of zellijs, zouacs, djellabas and kaftans. The audacities that have since been mine, I owe them to this country.’

Not only was it essential for the brand to pay its respects to the region in a way that was tangible and practical, but a programme which empowers specifically women was a natural extension of Saint Laurent’s own lifelong passion. ‘Yves was surrounded by women from an early age, his sisters Brigitte and Michelle, and his mother, Lucienne. It was a privileged contact that he had with women. I think he admired the way women could be lots of different things … dramatic, playful, extravagant … their capacity for reinvention,’ says Benaïm.

‘His first muse was Flaubert’s character Emma Bovary, because they shared the same dream of a big life. And then there was Betty Catroux, who was like his double in many ways, and Loulou de la Falaise, who was this Salome, or Carmen-esque character. Like a living drawing.' But, Benaïm says, ‘Yves was not a passive recipient of inspiration from his muses, there was a complicity to the relationship.’

This legacy is being carried forward by YSL Beauty’s global makeup artist Sam Visser. ‘There are certain pigments and tones that you can find here in the gardens which are very specific to the region – the makeup techniques and palettes used by Arab women are really beautiful, and so unique. It’s very different from Western makeup, and that’s really special, and very inspiring to me.’

The beauty industry has an intrinsically complicated relationship to the female body, and, historically, YSL Beauty has not been exempt from this complexity. To quote Laura Mulvey: ‘Iconographically, the female form can connote enigma and the enigma of the feminine under patriarchy.’ As such, the female body has long been utilised as a selling device for perfume, metaphorically representing the concept of desire in lieu of a more developed vocabulary to articulate scent which is lacking in many Western languages.

Yves Saint Laurent’s 2000 campaign for their perfume Opium, shot by Steven Meisel and starring Sophie Dahl, is remembered as one of the most controversial adverts of all time, sparking approximately nine-hundred-and-fifty complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency in the year of its release, eventually being banned in the UK. But 25 years later, the brand is determined to recalibrate its values with its output.

The establishment of the cooperative, the first of its kind in the Ourika valley, hinged on an exploratory dialogue with the Berber women to discover exactly what would most benefit them. The outcome of this conversation was to design a framework that promotes knowledge building and offers financial independence. The cooperative members receive critical training in regenerative agriculture, and learn the skills to be able to transform the 210 botanical species into something sellable. Thus, not only do these ingredients make their way into YSL Beauty’s collections of cosmetics and fragrances, but, when yields are high, excess harvests can be utilised by the women themselves to create their own products and generate supplementary income.

‘For me, it has never been a problem to be a woman. I’ve never had to battle. I have education, I have opportunity. But not every woman has these same chances, so it is essential that we work together to project their voices, and to help in whatever way we can,’ says Anne Flipo, master perfumer of Libre, the signature fragrance first launched in 2019. The name Libre is symbolic of this updated sense of purpose, and a pursuit of freedom exists at every touchpoint of the brand, whether in the self-expression and experimentation encouraged by its product range, or in the material conditions being improved for the women of the cooperative. ‘To have the freedom to live the life you want to live means everything,’ Flipo summarises.

Environmentalism and feminism are indivisible, with the systemic oppression of women and the rapid destruction of the global commons being linked inextricably. In Ourika, YSL Beauty is making a credible effort to treat ecological preservation and female empowerment with equal urgency. It is a forward thinking approach which can be traced to the visionary perspective of M. Saint Laurent himself, updated for the twenty-first century.

yslbeauty.co.uk

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

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

Explore the story below.

Splash out! This summer’s best accessories

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

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

Looking back at some of the most iconic ads of the 2000s, as Taschen’s latest compendium in its All-American Ads series does, reveals early clues about the direction consumer culture was headed.

It was an era when prestige TV and reality shows ruled, celebrities were hocking everything from Moët to milk, and rapid advances in personal tech, photography and the World Wide Web were on the verge of reshaping life as we know it today.

Sex, scent and celebrity: Taschen’s All-American Ads of the 2000s

Within its pages – divided into chapters on alcohol, tobacco, cars, travel, entertainment and more – are sections devoted to fashion and fragrance. Here, the 2000s truly emerge as a decade when the phrase ‘sex sells’ reached provocative new heights in a growing attention economy.

Few understood this better than American designer Tom Ford. In particular, All-American Ads highlights his 2007 For Men fragrance campaign, in which perfume bottles were cheekily placed, tongue-in-cheek, over glistening, naked bodies to preserve a semblance of ‘modesty’. Earlier, during his tenure at Yves Saint Laurent, Ford was responsible for the infamous Opium advert. Shot by Steven Meisel and released in the year 2000, the image showed a nude Sophie Dahl in ecstatic repose. It drew hundreds of complaints and was ultimately banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority, but the controversy meant that it remains one of the most iconic perfume adverts in history.

The book also charts the rise of the celebrity perfume brand, which, alongside celebrity beauty lines, is a hotter commodity today than ever before. While Elizabeth Taylor arguably pioneered the trend with her 1987 Passion fragrance, it was the massive commercial success of her White Diamonds line, which launched in 1991, that popularised the trend of celebrity-branded perfumes. ‘Everybody jumped on board,’ Jim Heimann, editor of All-American Ads of the 2000s, tells Wallpaper*. ‘David Beckham, Michael Jordan... And Paris Hilton, who just seemed to be everywhere, selling her products. Celebrity endorsement with perfumes is so indicative of advertising trends in the 2000s.’

All-American Ads of the 2000s features Taylor’s 2003 scent Gardenia, alongside Jennifer Lopez’ 2002 advert for Glow. And, it even highlights Donald Trump’s 2004 cologne, Donald Trump The Fragrance, where the current POTUS is depicted beside a beaming Melania. In other full-circle moments, designers like Ford and Marc Jacobs star in their fragrance ads. Jacobs’ 2010 campaign for Bang, shot by Juergen Teller, sees him nude, save for a giant bottle of the scent strategically covering his crotch in an unmistakable nod to Ford’s visual language.

‘One of my bellwethers for this kind of sexuality in 2000s advertising is men’s underwear,’ says Heimann. ‘You see virtually nothing between the 1950s and the 1970s. Then, in the 1980s, Calvin Klein changes everything: you’ve got a guy, seven storeys high in the middle of New York, wearing only his underwear.’

Alongside the aspirational messaging that one must smell, dress and eat like a celebrity, a striking theme within All-American Ads of the 2000s is the recurring lure of ‘individualism’. How can the average consumer become more than ‘average’ and ‘stand out from the crowd’ through the products they use?

The 2000s helped lay the groundwork for today’s digital age, where the iPhone is ubiquitous as both a status symbol and a tool for proliferating the same ‘individualism’. Social media influencers and the impact of viral, user-generated TikTok trends, particularly in the beauty sphere, now rival – or even eclipse – ‘traditional’ forms of advertising. (It’s worth noting that in All American Ads of the 2000s’ chapter on tech, there are some striking examples of early Apple adverts, bearing its tagline of the time: ‘Think Different’).

From this temporal vantage point, there’s a palpable sense of a new era dawning – and, one coming to an end. ‘It’s all online now, and so print is just slowly getting choked off,’ says Heimann of why this will likely be the final Taschen book showcasing American ads by decade. ‘I don't think it’ll go away completely, because you look at newsstands, the ones that are left, and there are hundreds of magazines there. So there’s still space for traditional ads on those pages. But online, everything’s so peripheral. It’s there for a moment – and then, boom, it’s gone.’

All-American Ads of the 2000s , £30, published by Taschen is out now.

taschen.com

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

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

Skincare

A healing elixir by Omorovicza

A multi-tasking face oil by Dr Barbara Sturm

A lipid-rich moisturiser by Dr David Jack

Make-up

An ‘explicit’ lipstick by Nars

A powder duo by Westman Atelier

A zingy edit of nail polish by Hermès

Fragrance

An inspired eau de parfum by Yves Saint Laurent

A honeyed scented candle by Loewe

A brave new fragrance by To My Ships

Tech

A ‘revolutionary’ hair dryer by Dyson

A world first microcurrent device by ZIIP

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

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

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

Georg Jensen’s ‘Gelateria Danese’

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

The Row’s first homeware offering

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

Prada Frames boards a restored Gio Ponti train

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

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

Stone Island’s ‘sonic experience’

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

Louis Vuitton’s latest Objets Nomades series

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

Miu Miu’s ‘Literary Club’

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

Valextra’s ‘travelling sculpture’ with Zaven

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

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

Brioni bottles a rare fragrance with Lalique

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

Luca Faloni collaborates with Winetage

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

Missoni Home opens new Milan store

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

Tod’s celebrates Made in Italy craft

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

Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters

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

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

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

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

Saint Laurent’s homage to Charlotte Perriand

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

Versace’s celebration of the ‘Art of Living’

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

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

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

Fendi Casa’s collaboration with Lewis Kemmenoe

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

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

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

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

Hermès’ brilliant white box

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

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

Armani Casa’s ‘Oriental Inks’

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

Loewe’s artist-designed teapots

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

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

Dior expands ‘Ode to Nature’ collection with Sam Baron

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

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

The pleasure of vinegared rice layered with nori and fresh seafood is well known to Saint Laurent’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who for years has been a regular visitor of Los Angeles’ restaurant Sushi Park. The unassuming omakase experience, founded by chef Peter Park in 2006 is located on the second floor of a strip mall on Sunset Boulevard and has been frequented by some of the world's most famous faces.

Saint Laurent Sushi Park Paris opens its doors

Vaccarello publicly declared his love for Sushi Park back in 2022, when he organised an event there for Saint Laurent’s Rive Droite line. Three years on, as Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 kicks off, the fashion designer has brought the Californian destination to the French capital’s Rue Saint-Honoré – Sushi Park’s first outpost beyond LA.

The move, part of Saint Laurent's broader global expansion ambitions, follows the opening of Babylone, a Vaccarello-curated bookstore and gallery space in the 7th arrondissement.

Saint Laurent Sushi Park Paris sits in the basement of the newly renovated Saint Laurent Rive Droite flagship. Its atmosphere is intimate and moody, accented by dark wood, waxed concrete, steel, and subdued lantern lighting. Bespoke details include dusky sculptural furniture and glazed ceramics by Daeyong Kim. The restaurant’s launch was unveiled through a short film directed by Pierre-Ange Carlotti and starring Lourdes Leon and Saint Levant.

Like its OG LA flagship, Sushi Park Paris offers an intimate tasting experience defined by finely crafted seasonal Japanese cuisine. Lunch and dinner seatings deliver a one-of-a-kind omakase journey executed by chef Peter Park, an inspiring experience balancing artistry and precision.

Sushi Park Paris is located at 8 Rue du 29 Juillet 75001 Paris, France; sushiparkparis.ysl.com

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

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

S/S 2025 heralds a new era of fashion eclecticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Designers continued to embrace the eclectic

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

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

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

Evening wear was re-examined

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

Faux fur was everywhere

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

Designers were ready to head outdoors

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

High-level craft remained key

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

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

At 9pm sharp yesterday evening (28 January 2025), Anthony Vaccarello staged his latest menswear show in the monolithic Tadao Ando-designed concrete rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection art gallery. Eschewing the traditional menswear calendar, which concluded in Paris this past Sunday, he instead chose to show during Haute Couture Week – a suggestion of the status that Vaccarello has brought to the house’s menswear line during his nine-year-tenure at Saint Laurent, which here drew Steve Lacy, Zoe Kravitz and Charlotte Gainsbourg to its starry front row.

Darkened save for a number of low-hanging chandeliers – a nod to the ballroom of Paris’ Intercontinental Hotel, where Yves Saint Laurent would house his couture shows from 1975 to 2001 – guests sat around the edges of the vast circular space, reminiscent of the secret menswear show the house held at the gallery in March 2024 (this season, the show was a less guarded secret, though was still a surprise until a week or so before). A worn-away parquet floor, meanwhile, was designed to evoke the ‘opulent salons of the past’, with Vaccarello saying he enjoyed the juxtaposition with Ando’s ‘minimalist lines and cool surfaces’.

Saint Laurent Menswear A/W 2025

Indeed, the idea of juxtaposition ran through the collection, epitomised by a fantasy mash-up of two ‘distinct personalities’, ‘an aesthete hungry for new experiences and a steady literary mastermind’. In the looks, this meant wide-shouldered bookish blazers, striped shirts and ties – reminiscent of a particular kind of bourgeois Parisian dress – worn with contrasting leather trousers and jackets, even thigh-high wader boots, which lent a suggestion of fetish and kink.

The American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, known for his sensually charged portraits of men taken during the 1980s, was one of Vaccarello’s inspirations. The designer said he imagined Mapplethorpe’s countercultural wardrobe clashed with Yves Saint Laurent’s classic Rive Gauche uniform of the same era. He called the collection one of ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ led by contrasts between ‘sombre and light, soft and firm, voluminous and tapered’.

In typical Vaccarello style, there was a powerful singularity to the collection’s look, which largely saw 1980s-inflected double-breasted tailored jackets on the top half, and leather trousers or boots on the bottom. Towards the end, he introduced flourishes of feathers, which crept around the necklines of overcoats or made up voluminous jackets, giving the illusion of fur.

As with the rest of the collection, they trod a masterful line between the classicism of Parisian menswear and something strange and seductive, a mood of carnal desire which has come to define Vaccarello’s vision for the house. Or, in Saint Laurent parlance, ‘a productive tension between temperamental opposites’ – a fantasy meeting between Mapplethorpe and Yves Saint Laurent, two men who defined the 1980s.

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Follow our coverage of Haute Couture Week S/S 2025.

There was a feeling of circularity to Anthony Vaccarrello’s S/S 2025 show for Saint Laurent, held at the house’s Left Bank headquarters for the first time since the Belgian designer staged his debut there eight years prior. In the time between, Vaccarrello has proved increasingly adept at translating the codes of the Yves Saint Laurent – a mood of powerful sensuality and gilded opulence, a clash of the masculine and feminine, an unabashed use of colour – into a sharp, contemporary vision which often centres on the impact of a singular silhouette.

Design Awards 2025: Saint Laurent’s designer doppelgangers

For S/S 2025, Vaccarrello evoked Yves Saint Laurent more directly, sending out a cast of models wearing riffs on the couturier’s personal uniform: louche, often double-breasted tailoring, wide across the shoulders and fluid in shape, worn with a tie. Among them was the model Bella Hadid in a rare runway appearance, donning a pair of Yves Saint Laurent’s signature thick-rimmed glasses.

‘No other house is as linked to a quintessential female archetype as Saint Laurent, whose ideal woman is more complex than the seductive perfection of classic muses,’ said Vaccarello of his era-spanning homage, a collection we’ve chosen to award for its dramatic doppelgangers. ‘As Yves Saint Laurent could have said: I am the Saint Laurent woman.’⁠

Find all the Wallpaper* Design Award 2025 winners in the February 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.

David Lynch, the unparalleled visionary behind canonical films such as Blue Velvet (1986), Wild At Heart (1990) and Mulholland Drive (2001), passed away this week (15 January 2025) at the age of 78. On Wallpaper.com, we pay tribute to the auteur by remembering his guest editorship at the magazine in October 2010.

Craig McClean has also written an obituary, recalling an anecdote from his meeting with Lynch: ‘That morning, we sat in the concrete cube that was this multidisciplinary artist’s painting studio, one of a series of similar structures slotted into the Hollywood Hills that comprised his home with his fourth wife, the actress Emily Stofle,’ he says. ‘We were, of course, drinking coffee,’ McClean continues. ‘And yes, it was damn fine, not least because it was a cup of David Lynch Signature Cup Organic House Roast (signature notes, according to my genial and welcoming barista from beneath a shock of silver quiff, ‘sweetness, smoothness, no bitterness even if it’s just pure, straight black espresso, packed with flavour’).

Lynch directed a four-minute-long commercial for his namesake coffee brand in 2011, featuring a close-up shot of a Barbie head held between his fingers. 20 years prior, he created a Twin Peaks-inspired series of adverts for the Japanese brand Georgia Coffee, featuring cast members from the TV series including Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper, Mädchen Amick as Shelley Johnson and Catherine E Coulson as the Log Lady.

Clearblue pregnancy tests and Alka-Selzer antacid tablets; Parisienne cigarettes and the PlayStation. These are just a few more products Lynch had a hand in marketing via short commercials. But here, Wallpaper* reflects on the times Lynch turned his signature surrealist lens to perfume advertisements for Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Lancôme, Jil Sander, Karl Lagerfeld, Dior and Gucci.

David Lynch’s dreamlike perfume commercials

Calvin Klein (1988)

Following on from the acclaim of Blue Velvet, David Lynch was commissioned to produce his first-ever commercial by Calvin Klein for its fragrance Obsession. Released in 1988 as a series of four black and white shorts titled Awake, Dangerous, Explore and Kissed, each tells the stories of four pairs of lovers (one of which is played by Heather Graham and Benicio Del Toro). Every film was inspired by a different novelist – Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Gustave Flaubert and F. Scott Fitzgerald – and included a voiceover reading excerpts from their writing.

Giorgio Armani (1992)

Giorgio Armani selected David Lynch to create the campaign film for his 1992 fragrance Giò. According to lynchnet.com, Mr Armani ‘personally’ phoned up the director asking for a concept, which Lynch then sent to him in the form of a short poem. The resulting advert Who is Giò? is a Lynchian neo-noir, with model Lara Harris playing a mysterious femme fatale flitting in and out of parties and around the backstreets of an unnamed city, as the paparazzi follows her trail.

Yves Saint Laurent (1992)

Giorgio Armani wasn’t the only designer seeking the talents of Lynch, with Yves Saint Laurent calling on him to dream up a commercial telling the story of the best-selling house fragrance, Opium. This time using colour - alongside his quintessentially dream-like dissolves and double exposures - a woman in a gold dress, with long red fingernails complimenting the perfume’s lacquered bottle, ascends the stairs to an apartment. Upon applying Opium to the nape of her neck, she is overcome with ecstasy.

Lancôme (1993)

Isabella Rossellini became the face of Lancôme in 1982. She would meet David Lynch a few years later during the casting process for Blue Velvet, where he remarked on her uncanny resemblance to Ingrid Bergman (not knowing that Bergman was her mother). Rossellini and Lynch entered into a relationship, with Rossellini also playing the role of Perdita Durango in Wild at Heart alongside a cast that included Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern and Willem Dafoe. Although parting ways romantically in 1991, they remained life-long friends and collaborators, with Lynch capturing Rossellini on film once more in 1993 for Lancôme’s fragrance commercial for Trésor.

Jil Sander (1993)

The Instinct of Life, David Lynch’s 1993 campaign film for Jil Sander’s now-discontinued fragrance Background, is set in a vast, arid landscape. Amidst smoke machines and vivid coloured lighting, a lone protagonist chases a black panther throughout the night, ultimately befriending the animal as the sun rises. It seems as though Lynch was trying out techniques for Lost Highway (1997), which was shot in California at Silurian Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert. (Lynch once said in a 1999 interview with Movieline that he liked to take on commercial work to ‘learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn’t be available to me’ for later use in feature-length films).

Karl Lagerfeld (1994)

Daryl Hannah never worked with Lynch on any of his feature films. However, she did collaborate with the director as the 1994 face of Sun Moon Stars, a fragrance by Karl Lagerfeld created by the designer for his namesake brand. In the commercial, Hannah assumes a role reminiscent of the Marilyn Monroe-esque ‘Hollywood blonde’, a character trope so often used by Lynch. Here, the actor is seen in a dream-like state, swathed in lilac silk and floating around a cosmic backdrop as she longingly muses on the solar system.

Dior (2004)

In 2004, during his tenure as the director of menswear at Dior, Hedi Slimane tapped David Lynch to direct the fragrance commercial for Fahrenheit. Set to a snippet of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls , a 20-minute-long jazz fusion track, Swedish actor Andreas Wilson is seen hurtling upward in a clinical chrome elevator as he begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of the natural world. When Wilson reaches the destination floor the doors open, revealing a heavenly expanse of orange sky. (Slimane’s long-time collaborator on make-up for campaigns and shows Aaron de Mey posted a tribute to Lynch on his Instagram, remembering this campaign shoot).

Gucci (2009)

David Lynch filmed his last perfume commercial in 2008 for Gucci (which also happened to by the first television ad for the Italian house). It starred models Raquel Zimmermann, Natasha Poly and Freja Beha Erichsen as the faces of new fragrance Gucci by Gucci. Above, watch the commercial in full, which was filmed in Paris and set to Heart of Glass by Blondie. Below, find a BTS look at the making of the campaign, which provides an intimate glimpse of the maestro at work and the uplifting atmosphere he cultivated on set. (He said in a 2017 interview with GQ that he never ran a working environment on fear). Highlights include Lynch smoking as he perfects a shot of cascading glitter and at a wrap party with the cast and crew – a moment in which their feeling of love and admiration for the director is palpable.

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.

2024 has been a frenetic year in style: in a not-comprehensive list, Givenchy, Chanel, Lanvin, Valentino, Dries Van Noten, Tom Ford, Celine and Bottega Veneta have all had new creative directors named in 2024, while Maison Margiela, Y/Project, and Fendi’s womenswear line are currently without a named designer at the helm (while rumours of further departures abound).

Amid this mood of flux, bubbling under is a newly liberated spirit of eclecticism and experimentation. There was Prada’s boldly individual S/S 2025 collection in Milan, complete with 49 entirely unique looks (‘we thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Miuccia Prada’s co-creative director Raf Simons); Alessandro Michele’s expansive and eclectic opening act at Valentino; or an ode to the joy of clothes at Matthieu Blazy’s S/S 2025 show for Bottega Veneta (it would be his final collection for the house, having been appointed as artistic director of Chanel earlier this month). ‘The power of wow,’ he described of the fantastical show.

Here, the Wallpaper* style team pick their own personal fashion moments of 2024, from Rick Owens’ 200-strong Hollywood epic in Paris to an Eyes Wide Shut-inspired JW Anderson show, and a slicked-back beauty look at Saint Laurent.

Jason Hughes, fashion and creative director

‘As a longtime fan of Stanley Kubrick, it was a exciting to see Jonathan Anderson draw inspiration from the director’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut, for his A/W 2024 menswear collection which was shown in January in Milan. Most intriguing, though, was the collaboration at its heart: interspersed throughout the collection were paintings by Christiane Kubrick, the director’s artist wife, whose works appeared in the backdrop of her husband’s movies (and are particularly prominent in the interiors of Eyes Wide Shut).

‘Anderson said he was inspired by the way in which the paintings represented a kind of compulsion to create, intrigued by the way that despite her husband’s fame she remained an artist working in the margins. “There is something deeply personal about Christiane’s work. I get the feeling that there is no other way – she has to do it,” he said.

‘It was thrilling then, for Wallpaper’s November Art Issue, to visit Childwickbury Manor, the Hertfordshire manor house where Stanley Kubrick lived and worked for much of his career (Christiane still maintains a studio in the home and her paintings decorate almost every wall). Alongside photographer Kalpesh Lathigra, we shot the collection in the home an its grounds for what was perhaps one of the most unique fashion shoots I’ve ever taken part in. I’m so thankful for Christiane and the Kubrick family – especially her grandson Jack Elliot Hobbs – for letting us document such a special place. It’s a day I won’t forget.

‘Another highlight of 2024 was seeing the evolution of Duran Lantink, an Amsterdam-based designer who won the Karl Lagerfeld Award at the LVMH Prize 2024. For the past few seasons he has riffed on archetypal garments in extraordinary style, creating playful sculptural forms which look like the pieces are inflated under the fabric or have emerged from a cartoon. And, while there have certainly been precedents for his work – there is no doubt a debt to the “lumps and bumps” of Rei Kawakubo’s S/S 1997 Comme des Garçons collection – it feels entirely new. I can't wait to see where he goes in 2025.’

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

‘I always love attending Rick Owens’ shows – the American designer has an innate understanding of the spectacle of fashion, staging monumental presentations on the forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo which are at once strange, glamourous, rousing and eerie, and always entirely in his own design vernacular (hence why they attract hordes of black-clad disciples Owens affectionately calls his ‘freaks’). He is a true iconoclast.

‘In 2024 we were treated to two very different types of Rick Owens shows: the first, early in the year, saw him open the door to own Paris home, a “concrete palace” in the former French Socialist Party headquarters on the city’s Left Bank. It was about as intimate as a runway show can get: guests sat on his monolithic furniture, while a cast of Owens’ community walked through the various rooms – a twisted take on the traditional salon show.

’The designer said the move towards closeness was a response to the “barbaric times through which we are living”. Clothing suggested a feeling of intimacy, albeit in Owens’ subversive style – enormous shaggy twists of fabric, cashmere “space suits” and delicate branch-like structures adorned with sequins – as did the casting, a community of collaborators which he described “creatives who live their aesthetic defiantly and completely”. I know we all felt lucky to be invited into his world.

‘Later in the year, in June, an altogether different spectacle: a 200-strong take on the Hollywood epic, staged back at the Palais de Tokyo amid plumes of smoke. He called the parading figures – largely cast from local art schools – his “white satin army of love”. It was a response, he said, to the small capacity of the shows at home (he presented both his A/W 2025 men’s and women’s collections in the space), positing the curative effects of being en masse once again. “I felt bad about making attendance so restricted, so this time around I wanted to welcome everyone,” he said of the spectacular menswear show, which would be repeated for his womenswear show in September with additional confetti. “Expressing our individuality is great but sometimes expressing our unity and reliance on each other is a good thing to remember too”.’

Hannah Tindle, beauty and grooming editor

‘I loved Anthony Vaccarello’s tribute to Yves Saint Laurent himself at Saint Laurent S/S 2025, with exaggerated double-breasted suiting and thick-rimmed glasses. The show’s hair and make-up by Duffy and Pat McGrath was a masterful demonstration of restrained runway beauty.

‘Tapping into the androgynous mood, models were given slicked-back styles or nonchalant blow dries. (Although, look 41 included peek-a-boo waves à la Veronica Lake). For the face, McGrath created a flawless canvas alongside barely-there contouring and lightly pencilled brows. Lips had been kept the same shade as the model’s natural skin tone and mascara – if any were used at all – was untraceable.’

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

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

Christmas baubles for style fans

Bottega Veneta

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

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

Loewe x Suna Fujita

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

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

Celine

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

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

Prada

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

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

Hermès

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

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

Saint Laurent

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

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

Gucci

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

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

Loro Piana

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

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

Earlier this year, Jonathan Anderson described his S/S 2025 menswear collection as one of ‘irrational clothing’ – an embrace of the strange and the unexpected, inspired by the experimental attitude towards dressing he had witnessed among young people at Primavera Festival in Barcelona earlier that summer. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said at the time. ‘The eye has changed.... people want something that is really challenging.’

Anderson is astute with a soundbite, and the idea of ‘irrational clothing’ could equally have been applied to the womenswear collections shown this past month in New York, London, Milan and Paris. By and large, there was a marked disavowal of ‘quiet luxury’, seeing restraint thrown out the window in the pursuit of the bold and eclectic. If sometimes this led to a lack of cohesion – with designers seeming to ricochet between ideas – when it was done well, it made for some enlivening fashion moments. Such was the case at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a freewheeling collection that paid homage to individual style, traversing Prada eras and comprising 49 near-completely different looks filled with colour, texture and shifting silhouettes. A similarly eclectic approach provided transporting collections from Valentino, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Louis Vuitton, which were among the highlights of the season.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the S/S 2025 womenswear shows, from an embrace of the eclectic to a new mood in tailoring, and clothing where nothing was quite what it seemed.

The season was an homage to individual style

A Prada show is usually a barometer for the season, such is the knack that Miuccia Prada has for shifting the fashion needle, reimagining the familiar in oftentimes electrifying new ways (now, she does so alongside Raf Simons, her co-creative director and another fashion soothsayer). For S/S 2025, a radical new proposition from the pair: the decision to do away with trends or thematics entirely, choosing instead to present a freewheeling and eclectic collection that celebrated individual style. It was a riposte, said Mrs Prada backstage, to the way that the social-media algorithm smooths personal style and siloes us into social-media echo chambers. ‘We are driven by algorithms,’ she said. ‘We like things because people tell us to like them.’ As such, the pair spoke about rejecting the ‘derivative and expected’ for a stream of 49 near-entirely different looks that veered between sculptural high-shine silver skirts dotted with enormous eyelets, leather dresses with BDSM hooks and elements of trompe l’oeil (there were also feathers, bug-like sunglasses, and day-glo anoraks). It made for an enticing visual feast, ‘a Prada for each individual’. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

Also in Milan, Matthieu Blazy struck a similar mood at Bottega Veneta, which he described as an attempt to evoke a sense of childhood wonder (as such, the animal-shaped beanbag chairs were a reference to the scene in E.T. when the title character hides amid a closet full of cuddly toys). Blazy said that the collection began by thinking about a suited businessman taking his child to school while carrying their pink cartoon rucksack or lunchbox over his shoulder. The collection was full of such juxtapositions, seeing ‘Italian sartorialism’ clashed with playful flourishes, from tasselled wigs to blown-up tailoring and animal motifs. Like at Prada, barely two looks were the same, and it was a definitive statement that luxury fashion needn’t be discreet nor restrained – rather, it should spark joy. ‘[This collection] encompasses the joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ the designer said. ‘Last season was maybe more contemplative. But at the same time, we need beauty. We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’ In Paris, Nicolas Ghesquière felt similarly liberated – his 1980s-infused collection seemed to recall the flamboyant, individual style of the New Romantics, albeit with the designer’s always-futuristic sheen – while Alessandro Michele opened his tenure at Valentino with a musing on beauty that was as richly expansive as his collections for Gucci (he left the Italian house in 2022). Over the collection’s mammoth 85 looks were hundreds of elements, among them ruffles, feathers, polka dots, floral motifs, wide-brimmed hats, facial piercings, ladylike handbags (sometimes worn two-a-piece) and ribbon-tied pumps. Again as at Prada, it was a bold invitation to experiment with clothing – a maxim that defined the season.

Designers reimagined the everyday

Despite its more dramatic flourishes, Blazy’s latest collection for Bottega Veneta was rooted in the idea of everyday style (‘everyday adventures’, is how he described the collection’s mood). As such, objects like the plastic corner-shop bag – here recreated in heat-pressed nylon – were elevated onto the runway, alongside bunches of flowers (woven from leather), brown paper bags (more leather), and shopping baskets (also leather). Such transformations were also applied to clothing: this season, he continued to riff on everyday garments like jeans, crumpled T-shirts and corporate tailoring, albeit in luxurious style. ‘I was interested in the simple acts of fashion that happen everyday,’ said Blazy. Demna, creative director of Balenciaga, is also known for taking disparate objects – like crisp packets, toolboxes and rubbish sacks – and turning them into fashion accessories. This season, though, Demna looked towards archetypal garments, like denim jeans, and radically altered their proportions (his version sat perilously low on the waist). Elsewhere, dresses looked as if a classic trench coat had been tied around the body, while padded jackets were reshaped to recall Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ‘cocoon’ silhouette.

At Issey Miyake, models carried shopping-style bags filled with bunches of flowers, as if on a trounce to the market, while Anderson’s latest Loewe show featured feathered T-shirts handpainted with works by Vincent Van Gogh, including Irises and Sunflowers. Reflecting the designer’s idiosyncratic approach, these were not inspired by encountering the paintings in a gallery, but by the reproductions he sees on tea towels and T-shirts while driving to work each day past the tourist markets that line the River Seine. ‘We get so used to them that they become a kind of high-low culture,’ he said, placing what he called the ‘burned-out’ images in a new context as an attempt to shift the eye. ‘[They are artworks] we are always magnetically drawn to... There’s something that we want to be part of, something, even if we don't understand it.’ The same can be said for Anderson’s collections for Loewe, which continue to intrigue.

There was a tailoring redux

Backstage after that show for Loewe, Anderson touched on the evolution of tailoring at the house during his tenure. ‘Historically, tailoring was something Loewe wasn’t good at for a long time, but I think we’ve been able to do it right, and come up with a kind of signature,’ he said. ‘Tailoring is about the subtlety of the change, and it’s taken me years to understand that.’ His proposition here was a tailored jacket with long, gently flared sleeves and baggy trousers that twisted cleverly towards the waistline. The result was roomy and generous, though the silhouette – a move from a relatively narrow shoulder line towards the more voluminous weight of the trouser – was one of louche elegance. It was proof that tailoring remains fertile ground for designers, something Simon Chilvers discussed in the September Style Issue of Wallpaper*, in regards to men’s tailoring. Womenswear, if anything, allows for even more sartorial experimentation, unrestrained by the still-conservative mores of men’s suiting.

Such experiments were in evidence across the various cities: in Paris, Victoria Beckham turned blazers inside out or sliced tailored trousers down the leg to expose the pocket lining, while another trouser shape sat away from the waistline through clever use of corsetry (in New York, Tory Burch evoked a similar effect on skirts). At Dolce & Gabbana in Milan, jackets were inserted with a Jean Paul Gaultier-inspired ‘cone-bra’ (an ode to Madonna, who sat front row and inspired the collection), while at Emporio Armani, the designer revived his 1980s suit and tie for women with a multitude of iterations of the blazer, including those folded sharply along their front. At Seán McGirr’s sophomore show for McQueen, jackets were cut to evoke the feeling that they were being grasped close by their wearer to protect them against the elements. Though perhaps the most seductive proposition for this season’s tailoring was that at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello revived the languid, broad-shouldered tailoring of his menswear collection earlier this year – which was no doubt was inspired by Mr Armani’s tailoring of the 1980s – to evoke the wardrobe of Yves Saint Laurent himself, from a fluid black tuxedo (modelled by Bella Hadid who also wore the couturier’s famous thick-rimmed glasses) to beige and grey double-breasted tailoring.

American fashion was dissected

On the final Tuesday of New York Fashion Week was the first – and perhaps only – television debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Such was the anticipation there were fears that Luar’s runway show, due to take place that evening, would be underattended (it wasn’t: Madonna even made a rare front-row appearance), while those already travelling to London for the next fashion week leg made complicated plans to watch the debate while in the air (they managed, thanks to a BBC iPlayer live stream and aeroplane wifi). Which is to say, the upcoming election loomed large in New York, prompting a dissection of American fashion and what it represents – or what it could represent. Such was the case at Willy Chavarria’s latest show, which saw the designer present an homage to America’s immigrant communities, like those he grew up around in his home city of Fresno, California (Chavarria is the child of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father). He did so through riffs on uniforms: hotel managers, farm workers, and employees at electronics chain Circuit City, albeit in his distinct style, which instils a mood of elegance through abundant silhouettes and references to haute couture. ‘Given the time that we’re in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine a light on the people who make this country work,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘It’s about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Afterwards, guests were given a sticker to remind them to vote.

Other designers looked towards the history of American fashion: Tory Burch continued to reference figures like Claire McCardell, a pioneer of American sportswear, as inspiration for her breezy summer collection, while Tommy Hilfiger drafted Wu-Tang Clan to perform at his latest show, a reminder of the longtime synergy between his namesake label and hip hop music (the show took place on a former Staten Island ferry owned by the comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost). Sometimes it took an outsider’s eye: against the backdrop of the gleaming New York skyline in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Off-White creative director Ib Kamara staged his debut show in the city, in part an ode to founder Virgil Abloh’s American heritage. It made for a vivid, continent-swapping collection from the Sierre Leone-born designer, which celebrated America as a cultural melting pot. ‘I have vivid memories of what America, and New York in particular, represented in the collective imagination of Africans: a dreamland of utopias made real, a place of opportunities,’ he said. Also making his debut in New York was Belgian designer Pieter Mulier, who showed his latest collection for Alaïa in the dramatic spiralling atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, swapping from Paris for the season. Conjuring the easy glamour of figures like Charles James, Adrian and Halston, as well as McCardell, it was an exemplary collection that showed the rich potential American fashion history still holds for contemporary designers (it was a show that felt like it had been percolating since his exit from American powerhouse Calvin Klein, where he worked alongside Raf Simons, in 2018). ‘[This collection] is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris – of the body in motion, liberated,’ Mulier said. ‘As Alaïa always has been.’

Sometimes things weren’t what they seemed

Balenciaga’s S/S 2025 show began with what appeared to be lingerie, though on closer inspection was actually a series of nude bodysuits embroidered with bras, knickers and stockings for a playful visual trick. It captured a mood of disorientation which ran through the season, reflecting the menswear shows earlier this year. Back then, Anderson spoke about ‘things not being what they seem’ in his JW Anderson collection (inspired by the experience of hypnotherapy dredging up past memories), while at Prada the designers spoke about the idea of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’, a response, they said, to a world where these categories feel increasingly blurred. As such, the technique of trompe l’oeil – the illusion of one garment imprinted onto another – continued to be evoked by designers across women’s fashion month, from JW Anderson’s mini dresses decorated with faux buttons and zips, to printed fur collars and belts in-set into trousers at Prada. Meanwhile, at Moschino, simple white-cotton garments adorned with childlike impressions of trench coats and sailor’s scarves. A similarly illusory mood was conjured in pieces that appeared to have a life of their own – or, indeed lived a life already – whether purposely creased garments at Ferragamo, Bottega Veneta or Victoria Beckham, or dresses at Prada constructed with twisting wired seams. Set into skewiff proportions, they appeared to be leaping off the models’ bodies.

Revisit our coverage of New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks.

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

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

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

The best runway sets of S/S 2025

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

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

Bottega Veneta’s menagerie of bean-bag animals

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

Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work for Burberry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘A soft suit is just as practical as a tracksuit but, in daily public life, much more appropriate,’ says Giorgio Armani, the 90-year-old fashion designer, who, in one glorious swipe of a sentence (there will be more later), begins to lay bare some of where we happen to find ourselves with menswear in the autumn of 2024.

Saint Laurent’s A/W 2024 menswear collection, shown in Paris in March at the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection – the Tadao Ando renovated modern art museum in the 1st arrondissement – offered further illumination. An opening double- breasted suit jacket that was generous in shape – everything falling impeccably from a wide and stern 1980s shoulder, worn with a loose-cuffed trouser and tie – set out a convincing case for a tailoring mood pertinent with languid elegance. Creative director Anthony Vaccarello subsequently explained that this collection’s tailoring was based around the idea of the haute couture technique ‘flou’, in which the sole purpose is to make a garment as fluid as possible.

New elegance: unpacking tailoring’s new momentum

Despite the obvious nod to the past wardrobe of Yves himself, this collection’s ease – you could imagine it being worn by the dancers of Pina Bausch’s company for example, and they have always been persuasive on the fluidity of suiting – offered a way to do elegance that, even if it was a somewhat full-on proposition, did not feel stuffy. It’s a path that we are increasingly seeing mined by exciting emerging voices in custom tailoring, such as New York’s Ralph Fitzgerald or Swedish duo Atelier Saman Amel, who are putting their own stamp on the future of tailoring and dressing up.

The idea that suiting goes in and out of frontline fashion can become a flaccid conversation, with suiting and tailoring largely seen as the muscular guts of menswear. ‘The demise of the suit has been talked about for decades, and yet it survives; the tailored jacket still has a role to play; eveningwear has actually become more popular in recent times because I believe there is a renewed desire to be elegant,’ Armani says, on point. ‘To me, a suit remains the epitome of efficiency, modernity and ease. I find it more relevant now than ever before. But for sure, everything is a lot more comfortable than it was years ago.’ I ask him why Armani suits are having a moment – which they are. ‘Armani suits are popular because they never look stiff or unnatural.’

Tailoring does not exactly stand still – it’s always evolving – but equally, there are times when it gathers momentum. This season is one of those times. It’s been brewing since Covid. But there is a definite incoming shift toward the idea that formal is the new casual, which is not to say that you’ll suddenly want to wear a stiff three-piece suit at breakfast or return to in-depth conversations regarding the merits of Don Draper’s tie-pin. Rather, it is more about how formal menswear codes or classic garments can infiltrate a daily wardrobe and make it feel fuller. This new seasonal mood is also as much to do with styling things up or down, as it is about the clothes themselves.

That said, there are also plenty of bold new tailoring proposals flying about when you look. From directional designers such as Martine Rose – a suit blazer that knots in front, below its lapels, for example – to Magliano, founded in 2017 by Luca Magliano, whose work is bringing a breath of fresh air to Italian menswear with a mission to liberate the wardrobe from binary stereotypes while celebrating queerness.

Magliano’s A/W 2024 collection, shown on the steps of the Nelson Mandela Forum in Florence, saw his fantastically eclectic cast (experiencing tailoring with fresh eyes is made easier when you witness it embodied by characters rather than regular models) lead out with a lightly tailored single-breasted jacket stripped of a formal lapel and collar with seemingly random button placements. It was styled with mismatched, loosely cut trousers and a white T-shirt. Other experiments revolved around interesting twisting and tying ideas as jacket closures.

‘Reconstructed suiting’ was this season’s theme at Junya Watanabe Man. Watanabe has a strong reputation for consistently skewing men’s dress codes and, for A/W 2024, the designer showed blazers that had sliced open trousers attached to them to form a new kind of jacket silhouette. In one particular fusion, Watanabe brought together jeans and a blazer, forcing the formal-casual conversation into something with bite. After the show, Watanabe emailed a typically short point of consideration: ‘I wish for men of different generations to wear these suits.’ And surely they will.

‘In terms of the overarching mood within men’s clothes, I feel there is definitely a ‘return to elegance’ movement happening,’ says Dag Granath, one half of Atelier Saman Amel, who founded their custom tailoring house in 2015. ‘Silhouettes are becoming more sophisticated. I feel that the interest in sensationalism is over and people are focusing more on beauty now.’ A Saman Amel suit is made completely by hand and will take around 35 hours to make.

Having just opened their second atelier in London’s Mayfair – the first being in their hometown of Stockholm – Granath says they try not to think too much about a formal-casual dichotomy. Rather, their approach is to collaborate with their clients to create clothing that just effortlessly works. ‘Tailoring is moving away from being about occasions or having to wear it only for specific reasons,’ says Granath. For A/W 2024, their ‘Curated Looks’ – a series of proposals and ideas for clients to take inspiration from – are largely made from fabrics of their own development with a rich, dark palette of navy and charcoal, midnight brown and taupe.

Earlier this year, Davies & Son, the oldest operating tailor on Savile Row, worked with another incoming tailoring visionary, Satoshi Kuwata, who, with his label Setchu, won the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2023. Together, they have created three bespoke non-gender-specific outfits that take the rigours of Savile Row tailoring and marry them with Kuwata’s signature starting point of origami and the way in which a kimono can be folded and stored in a box.

‘I am not interested in designing for trends,’ says Kuwata, who recalls that his initial love of suiting came from seeing his father wearing them when he was young. When he finally made it from Japan to Savile Row, he says it was love at first sight. He eventually trained at Huntsman, as well as at fashion houses such as Givenchy. His genderless double-breasted ‘Origami’ jacket, inspired by vintage workwear and Savile Row cutting, features multiple folds to sublime effect. ‘A timeless approach is very important to me,’ he says.

‘A suit can be worn by all,’ Ralph Fitzgerald offers in answer to what makes a suit a great piece of design. Fitzgerald, based out of New York’s Chrysler Building, is making quite a name for himself (Marc Jacobs is a client), ‘cutting suits high up in the clouds in the most beautiful and iconic skyscraper’. Growing up in London, Fitzgerald says his early interest in clothes came from his mother taking him to London markets. His first suit, mod in style, was from Adam of London, in the Portobello Green Arcade. He trained under Douglas Hayward, of Mount Street Tailors, who dressed the likes of Roger Moore, Michael Caine and Steve McQueen, before working on Savile Row for Kilgour and Huntsman. He set up his own practice in 2023.

‘It’s a London cut, with a nipped waist, low button position and lower gorge,’ Fitzgerald says of his aesthetic, which also favours a strong shoulder and lightweight construction. ‘I love to work with cloth with texture over decoration – it’s importanthow the fabric plays with and absorbs light,’ he says. ‘I’m constantly collecting rare and unique fabrics; vintage cashmere, alpaca, flannels and twills.’ Fitzgerald says he’s been cutting a lot of double-breasted suits and tuxedos this year. ‘I believe men will always enjoy getting dressed up to the nines.’

As someone more likely to wish to dress like a figure in an Egon Schiele painting than up to the nines (the latest Schiele sartorial obsession being a 1910 portrait of publisher Eduard Kosmack wearing a murky green-brown, slope-shouldered jacket with no obvious fastenings that is housed at the Belvedere museum in Vienna), I find Fitzgerald’s energy inspiring. ‘I want my clients to be able to walk into any room and have no second thoughts or doubts,’ Fitzgerald says. One of fashion’s greatest attractions has always been its power to transform, and not just the way we look but also the way we feel, the way we move. The best tailoring has always been particularly momentous in that regard.

Models: Adam Khan and James Copestake at Xdirectn, Robert Knighton at Next London, KC McNaughton at Perspective, Zayd Ansa at First, Yom Peter at Genesis, Titas at Head Office, Thomas Garrick at Present, Tony Gilpin at Cococasts, and Oliver Rhys Henderson Casting: Cococasts. Grooming: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Photography assistants: Colm Moore, Joseph Barrett. Fashion assistant: Hayley Downes. Hair assistant: Motoharu Imaizumi. Skin assistant: Kosei Kitada. Production assistants: Minna Vauhkonen, Archie Thomson, Ady Huq. Special thanks to Rapid Eye.

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

If somewhat delayed, the heady days of high summer are almost upon us – and with them, a seductive new collection from Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent, which conjures the liberatory spirit of the season.

Captured by Henrik Purienne, a South African photographer known for his sensually charged, sun-soaked images often taken pool- or beachside, the evocative photographs star house muse, Polish model Anja Rubik, alongside Rosé, of K-pop group Blackpink.

Long hot summer: ‘Tan Lines’ by Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent says the evocative images depict ‘languid hours spent by the pool, tanning on the tennis court, or playing dress up to the sound of old cassette tapes’. As such, Rubik and Rosé lounge in the heat of the sun, reclining on inflatables or bicycles, by the pool or across oceanside rocks.

The collection itself – a continuation of sorts to last summer’s 37.2 collection – contains not just clothing and accessories (in one image Rubik devours chips from a miniature cone-shaped handbag; in another, she wields an enormous raffia tote), but a series of new pieces from the house’s Rive Droite line, which comprises Saint Laurent-branded ephemera and collaborations.

These include a Saint Laurent bicycle, which was developed alongside the Los Angeles-based brand Micargi, a tennis racket and balls (the former emblazoned with Saint Laurent stars) made in collaboration with Wilson, and a handcrafted chromed motorcycle helmet, which was created alongside British producer Hedon.

Other pieces include a boules set (clad in a chic leather carrier akin to the house’s handbags), vast square beach towels, and candles encased in earthy ceramic pots. Together, it is a transporting capsule, whether heading to far-off climes – or simply trying to recreate them at home.

Saint Laurent’s ‘Tan Lines’ Rive Droite collection is available here, while the clothing and accessories capsule is available here.

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September, so said legendary American Vogue editor Candy Pratts, is the January of fashion. Following a brief summer break after the conclusions of menswear and haute couture – which took place over June and July – Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 arrives in New York next week on September 6 2024, with subsequent stops in London, Milan and Paris. Think of it as a new fashion term.

The schedule is now set, with a few surprises along the way. Among them, the news that Pieter Mulier will show his next Alaïa collection in the city on September 6, heralding the start of fashion month. It is over four decades since the house’s eponymous founder, Azzedine Alaïa, first showed in the American city, when he presented a collection in September 1982 to an audience which included Andy Warhol and Paloma Picasso. No doubt Mulier – who has garnered plenty of high-profile devotees of his own – will draw a similarly starry crowd. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren will show the day prior with a special show in the Hamptons on September 5. London-based label Cos has also announced a return to New York, having shown last season in Rome.

Elsewhere, it will no doubt be the season of debuts: chief among them is the much-anticipated arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Eyes will also be on Givenchy, Chanel and Dries Van Noten which – at the time of writing – are each without creative directors.

Here, everything Wallpaper* knows about Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: what to expect

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 (6 – 11 September 2024)

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 will begin – unofficially – on September 5, as American fashion behemoth (and member of the Wallpaper* USA 400) Ralph Lauren presents his latest collection in an exclusive show in the Hamptons, the beachside Long Island locale which has long played host to the rich and famous. ’The Hamptons is more than a place,’ said Lauren in a statement. ’It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that drew artists here decades ago. It has been home, my refuge and always an inspiration.’

The day afterwards, Pieter Mulier will show his latest Alaïa collection in New York, four decades after Azzedine Alaïa first showed in the city in 1982. It will be his second time showing outside of Paris – an intimate show at the designer’s brutalist home in Antwerp, Belgium took place in 2023 – and will no doubt be one of the highlights of the schedule. ’A city close to Pieter Mulier’s heart and the maison’s,’ said Alaïa on Instagram. It will be accompanied by ‘a series of exclusive moments’ which will take place in the city from 6–8 September. Meanwhile Cos – which last season showed at Corsie Sistine in Rome – will return to New York with a show on September 10 in Brooklyn. ‘New York is a dynamic city with so much character – it’s a place of inspiration, full of interesting and creative people,’ says the brand’s design director Karin Gustafson. Another new arrival is Off-White, who under creative director Ib Kamara will swap Paris for New York, showing on the afternoon of Sunday 16 (the title of the show is ‘Duty Free' and will take place at Brooklyn Bridge Park). Nanushka will also debut at the week, showing on the afternoon of September 7.

Elsewhere, expect a continuation of the Tory Burch renaissance as the designer presents her S/S 2025 collection on the evening of Monday 17, while New York stalwarts Coach, Michael Kors and Carolina Herrera will all show during the week. Wallpaper* USA 400 members Willy Chavarria and Peter Do, the latter showing his third collection for Helmut Lang, will round out the schedule, alongside rising names Zankov and Diotima. Tommy Hilfiger has also confirmed a spot on the week’s schedule, having initially been absent. He will show his latest collection at 6.30pm on Sunday 16.

London Fashion Week S/S 2025 (12 – 17 September 2024)

Beginning slightly earlier this season to avoid a clash with Milan Fashion Week (which starts this season on September 17), London Fashion Week will continue its 40th birthday celebrations with a packed schedule comprising the usual slew of energetic, emerging labels amid a smattering of more well-established names. Of the latter, Burberry will remain the chief draw for international editors visiting the city – Daniel Lee will show his fourth runway collection for the British label – while JW Anderson will present another agenda-setting collection on Sunday morning, his usual slot.

Other names showing this season are Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Erdem, Ahluwalia and Aaron Esh, alongside a new edition of London-based incubator Fashion East (participants are yet to be announced). Watch out for Derrick – Luke Derrick’s burgeoning London-based label had plenty of buzz last season for its sleek, contemporary riff on men’s tailoring – and Nensi Dojaka, who returns to the schedule after a hiatus. Feben will also return to London, having shown last season with the support of Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Look out too for the rebirth of Kent & Curwen, with the British label having been purchased by Chinese golf brand Biem.L.Fdlkk Garment in 2023.

London Fashion Week will also have a new home this season, the central Newgen space moving from Old Selfridges Hotel back to 180 Strand.

Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025 (17 – 23 September 2024)

Milan Fashion Week will run a day longer this season, part of a re-jigging of the fashion month schedule led by Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ’I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said the organisation’s president Carlo Capasa. ’[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

As such, the week will begin with Fendi on September 17, the Roman house presenting its S/S 2025 collection at 3pm (this time, the show will take place on a Tuesday, as opposed to its usual Wednesday). Elsewhere, expect a continuation of Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ set which it revealed as its menswear show in June (the house’s womenswear sets usually riff on their menswear predecessors ), alongside similarly blockbuster shows from Gucci, Versace, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Bottega Veneta.

Absent from this season’s schedule is Tom Ford – after the departure of creative director Peter Hawkings earlier this month – and Giorgio Armani, the latter showing in New York off-schedule in October. Also currently absent are MSGM and Blumarine (David Koma will show his debut as creative director next season), while Central Saint Martins graduate Susan Fang will show with the support of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday morning.

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025 (23 September – October 1 2024)

No doubt the biggest moment of Paris Fashion Week will be the arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will present his first runway show this September (the ex-Gucci creative director’s first collection for the house, titled ’Avant les Débuts’ was revealed in a surprise lookbook drop this past June). ‘It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a maison de couture that has the word “beauty” carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace,’ said Michele in a statement issued after his appointment in March 2024. He will show on the afternoon of Sunday 29.

A number of other houses – among them Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Chanel – are currently without creative directors. Givenchy is absent from the schedule (the new creative director will likely debut in February 2025), Dries Van Noten is slated to show on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 (it will be the first show since the eponymous creative director exited in June), and Chanel will retain its usual spot on the morning of Tuesday 1 October. An otherwise busy schedule – as has become the norm for the city – will include shows from Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens, Dior, Saint Laurent, Hermès and more. Balenciaga, meanwhile, will show on the evening of Monday 30, shifting from Sunday morning.

In other news, Paris label Coperni will host its S/S 2025 show on October 1, 2024 at the so-called happiest place on earth – Disneyland Paris. Founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer have said the collection will blend ‘magic with reality, paying tribute to the beloved Walt Disney Animation Studios movies of our childhood’. Meanwhile Ganni, the stalwart of Copenhagen Fashion Week, will shift to Paris this season, following the appointment of Laura du Rusquec, previously of Balenciaga, as CEO this past April.

Stay tuned for more from Women’s Fashion Month S/S 2025.

Hard and soft, sweet and sharp: Pre-Fall 2024’s most intriguing looks are defined by a play on texture, seeing clean lines and pin-sharp tailoring meet shaggy, enveloping fabrics and touches of romance, from knitted candy-pink bows to twisted leather flowers. Whether the crackled vinyl of a Sportmax jacket, Alaïa’s delicate twists of merino wool, or layers of faux fur, shearling and leather, these are pieces that call out to be touched (and, indeed, treasured).

Captured in a series of portraits by Milan-based photographer Mattia Parodi and Wallpaper* creative and fashion director Jason Hughes, Dutch model Renee Does wears the defining looks of the Pre-Fall 2024 collections – from Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello to Bottega Veneta, Chanel and Celine – backdropped by a textural collage of draped fabric, modernist furniture and concrete. The story was originally featured in the Design Directory July 2024 Issue of Wallpaper*, on international newsstands now.

Pre-Fall 2024: the defining looks of the season

Model: Renée Does at Viva London. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Tomi Roppongi at Julian Watson Agency using Bumble and Bumble. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Byredo. Set design: Stilema Studio at Tristan Godefroy. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistants: Pablo Gallegos, Tom Green. Fashion assistant: Samela Gjozi. Interiors assistant: Ady Huq. Digi tech: Jess Segal/

A version of this article appears in the July 2024 Design Directory 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.

As Salone del Mobile 2024 and the wider Milan Design Week got underway this week in the design capital, one thing quickly became clear: the majority of the fashion contingency among the schedule was in a reflective mood.

While some brands looked to design masters past, others mined their archives: Bottega Veneta worked with the Le Corbusier Foundation to re-interpret its LC14 Tabouret Cabanon stool; Yves Saint Laurent collaborated with the Gio Ponti archive to create an exclusive porcelain collection; and Gucci presented archival re-editions in its now-signature Ancora red from the likes of Tobia Scarpa and Venini.

Elsewhere, Hermès and Armani placed their new furniture and design creations beside the sartorial objects that inspired them (with Giorgio Armani sharing personal photographs that span his career) and Loewe worked with its Craft Prize alumni to create 26 unique lamps that spotlighted the time-honed craft techniques that still exist around the world.

It’s a move that reflects a recent trend in their primary medium of fashion, where reminders of iconic codes are increasingly served up to highlight the importance of respecting the signatures that stand the test of time.

Here, in our comprehensive round-up, is the Wallpaper* edit of the best fashion moments at Milan Design Week 2024.

Fashion moments at Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week 2024

Armani Casa

Held once again in Palazzo Orsini on Via Borgonuovo (also known as Armani HQ), Armani Casa’s Salone installation took visitors on a journey of the places founder Giorgio Armani has been most inspired by during his illustrious career. His travels have taken him far and wide – all over Europe, as well as Japan, China, Saudi Arabia and Morocco – and over the years, homages to the craft and skill he has discovered in each have appeared in his ready-to-wear collections. For this installation, called ‘Echoes From The World’, he placed his exquisite couture creations and his own personal collection of souvenirs (from Samurai swords to kimonos) alongside new pieces of furniture such as the Venus console with a hand-painted lacquered glass top backed in gold-leaf to give a luminous shimmer in the room dedicated to China and the blue velvet bed in the room celebrating Morocco that took months to make (only seven centimetres of this fabric can be woven in a day and this bed took 12 metres of material). A highlight waiting at the end of the show was a room with supersized images from Armani’s private photo album in a few of the locations celebrated here. ‘For this edition of the Salone del Mobile, I imagined a “cinematic” journey to the countries that have always inspired me: places and cultures that spark highly personal reworkings,’ shared Armani, adding: ‘I like to present myself to the public in the most authentic and direct way possible.’

Hermès

Taking over the sprawling La Pelota space for the week, Hermès presented ‘Topography of Material’, an installation conceived ‘to create a dialogue between roots and movement, between materials and know-how’, shared the brand. Suspended below foot-level on a diagonal catwalk of sorts, guests were welcomed by 16 intersecting floors that brought together 16 different types of stone, ten types of earth, four types of wood and many variations of terracotta brick all sourced from either Italy or France arranged in intricate ways to celebrate the skill of timeless handcraft. It formed a powerful introduction to the presentation of objects itself as this year Hermès made a point to highlight its own enduring codes. Behind a 35m-long and 6.m-high suspended black wall lay objects from the house’s archive juxtaposed with recent masterpieces and objects making their debut. For example, the silver Timour choker necklace from 2002 sat beside the new Diapason D’Hermès chair designed by the Hermès Studio this year in homage to the piece of jewellery; the original Mangeoire pouch from 1949 (used to feed horses) stood beside the new Derby leather buckets, also launched this year; and the Drag travel bag from the 2010s was presented next to Jasper Morrison’s Equilibre chair for Hermès from 2020. As intended, it effectively presented the virtues in time-honed skills and luxurious designs that retain a forever relevance.

Valextra

Valextra worked with Bergamo-based Studio Temp (with whom it also collaborated for Casa Valextra) on its Valextra Vocabolario concept that transformed its John Pawson-designed Via Manzoni flagship into the Valextra Spa. The idea was to highlight the exceptional care that goes into each of Valextra’s leather goods, from the hands that craft them to the after-care that the brand offers its clients. Inside a huge, simulated sauna, guests were invited to sit and observe the brand’s artisans hand-painting its signature black lacquered Costa edging onto handbags in real time. In the pink-carpeted space around, the brand’s new Assoluto collection – a three-piece capsule crafted from Econyl – was unveiled as machines worked in real time to 3D-print the new Iside Onda handbag. Combining state-of-the-art handbag development and best-in-class customer service through a radical architectural lens, it beautifully captured the DNA of this Milanese brand.

Bottega Veneta

Bottega Veneta presented ‘On The Rocks’ at the Palazzo San Fedele, a special location for the house as it was the setting for creative director Matthieu Blazy’s first show and is its soon-to-be HQ. Partnering with Cassina and Fondation Le Corbusier, the brand honed in on the iconic LC14 Tabouret Cabanon stool that it described as ’a timeless icon of Le Corbusier that embodies the excellence of the Cassina carpentry workshop’. First conceived by the designer for his Côte d'Azur cabin, it was inspired by a washed-up whisky box he found on the shores beneath the residence, hence the title of the installation, which saw several iterations piled high, one on top of the other, reminiscent of a jagged coastline. This isn’t the first time Blazy has affiliated himself with the object; at his recent A/W 2024 womenswear fashion show set, guests sat on bare wooden versions. For Salone, they came in the same rendering but also covered in the brand’s famous intrecciatio leather to create 160 limited editions.

Loewe

Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson primarily worked with alumni from the brand’s prestigious Craft Prize on his first-ever lighting installation at Salone del Mobile. Staged at Palazzo Citterio in the heart of the Brera Design District, the presentation featured one-of-a-kind lighting designs from 24 artists who the brand has either worked with or supported in the past. Remarkably, it was the first time that any of the featured makers had worked with light, which accounted for the originality on display. From Enrico David’s curved Onyx table lamp that features the face of a woman on closer inspection and Dahye Jeong’s spherical structure using an ancient weaving technique using horsehair, to Young Song Lee’s hollowed-out calabash fruits covered in twisted mulberry-tree paper and Dame Magdalene Odundo’s cinched leather hanging lamps (above), each captured the celebratory spirit of Loewe in the world of craft and design that promotes and helps preserve the most exquisite techniques from all over the world. While each of the 24 pieces was for sale at the start of the week, by 5pm on the second day the majority were – predictably – all snapped up.

Gucci

Gucci’s creative director Sabato de Sarno’s ‘Ancora’ campaign continues to thrive in Milano as the brand unveiled Gucci Design Ancora in its newly reopened flagship on Via Montenapoleone. Entering through a carpeted staircase surrounded by lacquered walls in the dark red ‘Ancora Rosso’ hue that is a signature of the De Sarno era at Gucci, visitors were presented with an antidote in acid green when they reached the top. Inside this starkly saturated mini maze, architected by Guillermo Santomà, were five objects De Sarno had chosen from several Italian masters over the years that had been re-issued in the Ancora-red hue for the occasion. The Le Mura sofa by Mario Bellini for Tacchini from 1972; the Clessidra rug from an iconic design of Piero Portaluppi made by CC-Tapis; the Storet tallboy by Nanda Vigo for Acerbis in 1994; the Opachi vase by Tobia Scarpa for Venini in 1960; and the Parola lamp by Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni for FontanaArte in 1980 each stood in their own space to be admired from all angles. ‘Through Design Ancora, Gucci doesn’t simply celebrate old icons, it creates new ones,’ said Michela Pelizzari, founder of P:S Agency, which co-curated the project. ’The aura emanating from the brand spotlights five pieces by Italian masters that are perfect from a design standpoint but less known to the general public.’

Thom Browne

For his Salone del Mobile debut, Thom Browne took over the Palazzina Appiani to unveil his collaboration with the 160-year-old home textiles expert Frette with his performance, entitled Time To Sleep. True to his reputation for subverting traditional settings and concepts into unexpected scenarios, Browne placed six identical beds under the frescoes in the Hall of Honour and had models undress themselves before getting into bed. In the models’ getting dressed, rather than undressed, to sleep, Browne intended to ‘challenge the audience to question the role of dress in public life’, highlighting that the act of sleeping is just as important as the hours we are awake. ‘I think it's so much more interesting, and it elevates the product launch, when you create an installation that transcends the specific world that it’s in,’ Browne told Wallpaper* during rehearsals for the performance. The collection, which is available immediately, comprises sheets, blankets, terry-towel and cashmere robes, bath towels, and a quilted bath mat in crisp white cotton-sateen. ‘The reason I wanted to work with Frette is because they’re the best at what they do,’ added Browne.

Saint Laurent

The Paris-based house turned the clock back to 1953 and the private collection of Anala and Armando Planchart who commissioned the legendary architect Gio Ponti to mastermind their hilltop Venezuelan villa overlooking Caracas. On finishing the project, Ponti commissioned artisans from his native Italy to help furnish the space and turned to Ginori 1735 to create a collection of porcelain plates featuring motifs from around the villa and the couple’s initials. It is these plates that creative director Anthony Vaccarello curated and had reissued by the ceramic experts for Saint Laurent’s special installation in the cloisters of the Chiostri di San Simpliciano. Displayed in oscillating tubes on a raised platform that mirrored the height in which they originally lived in Villa Planchart Segnaposto, the presentation marked a coming together of multiple design icons.

Prada

Once again collaborating with FormaFantasma (above), Prada staged its Prada Frames seminar discussions on the theme of Being Home. Throughout the week, luminaries in different fields came together – including Paola Antonelli, Brigitte Baptiste, Kate Crawford, Jack Halberstam and David Van Severen – to cover myriad topics that were contextualised by Alice Rawsthorn. Each of the 17 sessions took their leave from different rooms around the home: for the bedroom, Gulsum Baydar and Philippe Rahm discussed the bedrooms role as a comfort zone; for the living room, Jayden Ali and Jack Halberstam were in conversation with Andrés Jaque exploring the rituals of diaspora communities in architectural spaces; and in the library, Isabella Rossellini and Mary Kuhn examined the relationship between humans and nature in the home, past and present. Staged each year to invite people out of their everyday lives and explore new and alternative analysis of familiar situations, it continues to be a highlight. Read more about Prada Frames.

Issey Miyake

60,000 bamboo skewers were used to create the one-of-a-kind carpet collaboration between Issey Miyake and the Dutch collective We Make Carpets. Famous for transforming everyday objects into artistic works of beauty, the artisans channelled Issey Miyake’s own skill at finding the sweet spot of robust-delicacy with the piece that was created by inserting the skewers one by one by hand into a thick piece of foam. The resulting patterns emerged organically as their dipped ends started to create surface patterns. Issey Miyake praised the group’s tenacity in making something meaningful without the need for ‘fancy gadgets and advanced technologies’, praising their labour-intensive and synchronised teamwork in bringing the piece to life. Transported flat to Milan city centre from where it was crafted in the Netherlands, in a nod to the national emblem it was presented resting on wooden beams crafted from tulip trees at the Via Bagutta flagship.

Versace

‘If These Walls Could Talk’ is an apt name for Versace’s Salone del Mobile presentation staged in its original atelier, the Palazzo Versace on Via Gesu. As many a fashion aficionado will know, it is at this residence that many of the fashion house’s famous catwalk shows have taken place over the years (including that 1991 show that birthed ‘the supermodel’) and where many of its globally recognised logos and icons were first designed, including the Medusa, Barocco and Greca emblems. They were omnipresent through this presentation that guided visitors from room to room, with even more opulence around each corner – an experience heightened by an audio experience created in collaboration with Radio Raheem for each space. They featured pieces new and reworked including The Medusa ’95 Conversational Sofa, the La Greca Bed and the Lady Desk, each a conversation starter in the space they stood.

Loro Piana 

Paying tribute to the late Milanese designer and architect Cini Boeri, Loro Piana showcased the most iconic pieces from her archive and presented them in its famously luxurious interiors fabrics. The collaboration with the official archive of Boeri, marks not only what would have been the year of Boeri’s 100th birthday, but the year Loro Piana also celebrates its centenary. Honouring Boeri’s insistence that furniture should be engaged with at all times, visitors to the presentation were encouraged to touch and sit on the pieces as they moved through the space. ’The thinking of Cini Boeri is extraordinarily contemporary,’ shared Francesco Pergamo, Director of Loro Piana Interiors. ’Just as extraordinarily contemporary remain the pieces we have chosen to exhibit together with Arflex and Archivio Cini Boeri, and to dress with our fabrics.’ Featured in the presentation are the famous modular Strips system, that won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro in 1979, the corresponding bed, the Bobo and Boborelax armchairs and the Botolo Chairs that have been covered in the brand’s ‘cashfur’ and made in a limited edition of 100. ’The dual centenary of Cini’s birth and the founding of Loro Piana has offered us the opportunity to contribute to the appreciation of the architect's figure,’ added Pergamo, who revealed plans to work with the archive on additional projects over the next three years.

Fendi Casa

Welcome to the world of Fendi Casa where the family keeps growing. This year, the Via Manzoni space was masterminded by Silvia Venturini Fendi and realised by Controvento creative collective. Together, they kept the house’s ‘double F’ logo of the house front and center, creating intimate spaces that invite people to cosy up, much like the emblem. The perfect example lies in the new Fendi F-Affair sofa by Controvento that is an interlocking platform of seats and suspended tables presented with a champagne bucket and glasses. It was joined by other collaborations in the sumptuous sofa department, the F-Stripes by Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba and the Sohoft by Toan Nguyen. Existing families grew their brood, too: Thierry Lemaire’s Parsifal sofa was joined by the Mrs Parsifal armchair; Stefano Gallizioli’s Adrianand’s Audrey chair was complemented with square-shaped Audrette chairs; and Cristina Celestino's Ottavia chair was delivered of a sister, the Lazy Ottavia armchair.

Zegna

Zegna staged something of a takeover of Milan as it released its new Rizzoli tome, Born In Oasi Zegna. Named after the 100km of forested land north of Milan in the Biella Alps where its founder Ermenegildo Zegna initiated a reforestation programme in 1910, the book marked a moment for the brand to celebrate both its values and association with the city of Milan. In celebration, mini Zegna-branded newsstands (‘edicolas’) that are famously found on most corners were giving out limited-edition tote bags, while over in the piazza in front of the landmark Duomo, tulips transported in from the area were being planted in the square’s new flower beds. ’The project aims to convey the value and urgency of respect for the Earth and nature, as well as the importance that urban green spaces can bring people closer to natural ecosystems and the protection of biodiversity and social responsibility,’ shared the brand, ’concepts that are fundamental to Oasi Zegna.’

Dolce & Gabbana

Fresh from setting the city alight with its extravagant Milanese exhibition, ’From the Heart to the Hands’, Dolce & Gabbana staged an intimate reveal of its new interiors offering, The Dreaming Collection. Here, it was all about sitting comfortably, as the Moss Curved Sofa, which sits on a polished metal base in black nickel, and the DG Casa Moon Island armchair (above, which the brand said was ‘reminiscent of a warm embrace’) were joined by the Moon Island Sofa – designed to steal the spotlight in any room it’s in, much like everything this brand turns its heart and hand to.

Lanvin

Parisian house Lanvin looked towards its heritage for its installation at Milan Design Week; specifically, Lanvin Decoration, a furniture and decoration line which was first introduced by founder and couturier Jeanne Lanvin in 1920. Lanvin united with Rooms Studio – founded by two Georgian designers Nata Janberidze and Keti Toloraia in 2007 – for the project, which saw the pair curate a number of their pieces, including a series of sculptural chairs and benches, which were displayed at Lanvin’s Milan outpost.

Is there an item of clothing as reassuringly perennial as the trench coat? Much of this is down to the way it provides the perfect transition between seasons – those intermediate, indecisive moments when your winter coat feels too heavy, but it is too cool to do away with outer layers entirely. Though the trench has never just been about function: from the women of film noir to the insouciant Burberry-clad supers of the 2000s, it has long encapsulated an easy elegance, its enduring silhouette achieved by the most simple of actions – the tying of a belt around the waist. 

This season’s designers riffed on the wardrobe fixture in a myriad of ways, as captured here in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper* by London-based photographer Theresa Marx and Wallpaper’s fashion and creative director Jason Hughes. From Maximilian Davis’ layered satin trench at Ferragamo to Daniel Lee’s drop-waisted riff on the classic Burberry trench, or Dolce & Gabbana’s sensually charged (but surprisingly functional) sheer PVC raincoat, each is a uniquely chic interpretation of the classic trench coat – equally fitting for bright spring days, and inevitable April showers, ahead.

The trench coat, reimagined for S/S 2024

Model: Honey Ordoñez at Next Management London. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Kei Takano using Oribe. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Yves Saint Laurent Beauté. Set design: Amy Friend at Lalaland. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistant: Tom Porter. Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt. Set design assistant: Fei Yang. Hair assistant: Motoharu Iwaizum.

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

Throughout his career so far, British designer Kim Jones has proved adept at channelling the energy of subculture into the vaunted ateliers of Paris’ historic houses. At Dior, a heady infusion of salon and street has seen him celebrate five years as artistic director of the men’s collections – a veritable lifetime in the spinning merry-go-round of creative directors elsewhere.

The S/S 2024 anniversary collection – which references the work of previous Dior creative directors Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior himself – sees footwear inspired by Ray Petri’s Buffalo Collective, a rebellious British creative movement which would come to reshape the landscape of 1980s fashion. Here, Buffalo’s signature chunky, lugged-sole loafer is rendered in silver-toned tweed decorated with the house’s emblematic cannage motif – a symbolic clash of agitator and establishment.

A closer look at Kim Jones’ S/S 2024 Dior Men accessories

Meanwhile, the same fabric adorns a new version of the house’s saddle bag, a perennial accessory first introduced by John Galliano in 2000. This functional riff, the ‘Saddle Twin’ bag, comes with a removable handle and adjustable calfskin strap, allowing it to be carried in a multitude of ways: clutched in the hand, as a cross body, or looped over the shoulder.

‘Dior is an haute couture house... at the heart of Dior is silhouette, shape, technique and fabrication of the very highest order. I like to think that in my five years of being here I have never forgotten this,’ Jones said after the show. ’It’s a culture we have inherited from womenswear past and applied to menswear present. And for the first time in our collections, it is a collage of influences from different Dior predecessors and eras we wanted to pay tribute to at once – together with some of our own.’

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

Set design: Thomas Conant. Photography assistant: Matt Bramston

The Dior Men S/S 2024 collection is available now on dior.com.

dior.com

Founded in 1971 in St Tropez, Vilebrequin is known for swimwear collections that capture the allure of the French Riviera in its 1970s heyday. It’s the same heady period during which, in the French capital, Parisian fashion stalwart Ines de La Fressange was dominating the runway as a teenager (her modelling break came at age 17 in 1974).  A decade later, she would be the first model to sign an exclusive modelling contract with Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, alongside walking for houses including Christian Dior, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and more, before founding her own eponymous label.

Paris meets St Tropez: Vilebrequin x Ines de la Fressange

Now, Vilebrequin and de la Fressage – both symbolic of French style and taste – have united for the first time, collaborating on an exclusive swimwear range that couples effortless Parisian design with Vilbrequin’s vision of a relaxed, riviera lifestyle. Indeed, the collection itself draws inspiration from summertime in Paris – and days spent lounging on the banks of the River Seine – with timeless swimwear cuts and a breezy palette reflecting the colours of the French flag, in navy, red and white, while a mood of Riviera ease runs throughout.

‘The beach is where Vilebrequin was born. And it’s where we belong. Every summer since 1971, it’s been the backdrop to an art of living in the sun,’ Roland Herlory, CEO of the French swimwear label, previously told Wallpaper*.

The collection features 14 pieces for women and seven for men, including swimwear, T-shirts with Vilebrequin’s notable turtle emblem, shirts, tunics, pea jackets, and trousers crafted from lightweight organic cotton and linen. ‘The modernity shared by Vilebrequin and Ines de La Fressange Paris transcends generations, reinventing the elegance of French holidays spent in the city or by the sea,’ says the brand.

Vilebrequin is no stranger to collaboration. Last year, it created a technicolour swimwear collection with Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel, while other recent collaborators have included Off-White, Bape, Deux Femmes Noires, Sylvie Fleury, John M Arleder and more. Elsewhere, collections draw inspiration from colourful art movements, from the Memphis Group to Pop Art.

The Vilebrequin & Ines de La Fressange Paris collection will be available online and in selected stores from April 2024

vilebrequin.com

A charred desert of Murano-glass cacti, a damask-curtained boudoir, a simulacrum of an art gallery – this season’s runway sets were an exercise in the theatre of fashion. Here, we select 12 of the very best runway sets and show spaces of A/W 2024 fashion month, which concluded in Paris last week.

Best runway sets of A/W 2024

Saint Laurent

For Anthony Vaccarello’s sensually charged A/W 2024 show, a boudoir-like mood was conjured by the show set, which comprised two vast circular rooms lined with emerald damask curtains. The curtains, said Vaccarello, were a nod to those found in the house’s historic haute couture salon on Paris’ Avenue Marceau. 

Read our review of the show here.

Jil Sander

Designers Lucie and Luke Meier said that this season they were thinking about sound and the way it influences our ’emotions, desires and needs’. As such, the warehouse space on the outskirts of Milan had been transformed into a green-toned ’smooth and immersive capsule’, populated by a series of blown-up cobalt-blue horns.

Read our review of the show here.

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière returned to the Louvre’s Cour Carrée for his tenth-anniversary show for Louis Vuitton, the location of his debut as creative director for the house back in 2014. This time, a dramatic installation by artist Philippe Parreno – made in collaboration with film production designer James Chinlund and sound designer Nicolas Becker – centred around an enormous orb, which crackled and flashed as the show began.

Read our review of the show here.

Prada

A continuation of the menswear show in January, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest OMA-designed show set featured a lush forest floor – complete with springs of real water, ferns, grass, pebbles and soil – encased beneath a gridded floor of futuristic clear perspex, to extraordinary effect. 

Read our review of the show here.

Bottega Veneta

Matthieu Blazy collaborated with Cassina to organise a special edition of Le Corbusier’s LC14 Cabanon stool – here in burnt wood – for the 350 guests attending his A/W 2024 show. In the formerly industrial Milanese space, they were combined with a burnt wood floor and enormous Murano-glass cacti to create a ’barren’ desert-like landscape inspired by Calabria in the south of Italy. Together, it provided an apt backdrop for a show celebrating regeneration and resilience. ’In a world on fire, there is something very human in the simple act of dressing,’ he said. 

Read our review of the show here. 

Loewe

The ’small but intense’ paintings of Albert York provided the backdrop for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Loewe collection, which subverted aristocratic dress codes in the designer’s typically idiosyncratic style. As such, it was the largest exhibition of the American painter’s work outside of the United States, where his devoted following included the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

Read our review of the show here.

Dior

Continuing a tradition of collaborating with international women artists on her show sets, at the centre of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s A/W 2024 runway was a series of sculptures by Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni. Evoking ceremonial figures of women, created from cages of cane, the house said they capture a feeling of ’protection and transformation’.

Read our review of the show here.

Hermès

Hermès’ A/W 2024 show came complete with a downpour: as the show began, rain fell from the ceiling of the Garde Républicaine space, providing a dramatic backdrop to Nadège Vanhee’s latest collection, which was titled ’The Rider’.  ‘Astride a horse or a motorcycle… boldly she rides on,’ said Hermès. 

Read our review of the show here.

Acne Studios

A series of blown-up armchairs and footstools crafted from recycled black rubber tiles provided the centrepiece to a full-throttle collection from Acne Studios. They were created by Villu Jaanisoo, an Estonian artist who lent the existing pieces for the show. ’I was basically deep into a “racing” mode [last year], into everything related to racing, and I stumbled across these amazing pieces,’ Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johannson told Wallpaper*. ‘They symbolise the mood I was trying to create, and they do so in a modern way.’

Read more about the Acne Studios show set here and read our review of the show here.

Balenciaga

At Balenciaga, floor-to-ceiling screens surrounded the runway, an attempt to capture the dizzying feeling of scrolling on your phone. Created by Demna alongside Berlin-based studio Sub, the flashing AI-created images – which spanned photorealistic natural landscapes and glimmering cityscapes before descending into glitchy internet-style graphics – reflected the eclectic nature of the collection, which featured DIY ’one-minute’ dresses made from a collage of other garments. 

Read our review of the show here.

Chanel

The centrepiece of Chanel’s A/W 2024 show was an enormous curved screen which bisected the interior of the Grand Palais Éphémère and played a short film starring Penelope Cruz and Brad Pitt as a pair of lovers. Around it circled a wooden runway designed to evoke the boardwalk at the French seaside town Deauville, where Gabrielle ’Coco’ Chanel opened her first millinery store. 

Read our review of the show here.

Fendi

Vast drapes of silk, in various sorbetto-hued tones, divided Fendi’s Via Solari showspace into a series of more intimate ’rooms’ to showcase Kim Jones latest womenswear collection for the house. They recalled those found in Roman statuary, one of the inspirations for this season’s collection in a nod to Fendi’s home city of Rome.

Read our review of the show here.

The whispers of a secret Saint Laurent show came to fruition on Tuesday evening (5 March), as Anthony Vaccarello staged his latest menswear collection in the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, closing out Paris Fashion Week A/W 2024.

Saint Laurent’s secret menswear show

As most of the British press whizzed off into the night on motorbike taxis to make the final Eurostar back to London after Nicolas Ghesquière’s ten-year anniversary show for Louis Vuitton at The Louvre, a select few joined a group of carefully selected attendees a five-or-so minute walk away at the contemporary art gallery, which opened in 2021. A former corn store – hence its circular design – the building was rebuilt in the late 19th century to become the city’s stock exchange.

Ando’s intervention to Bourse de Commerce’s central room – which sits under the vast original cast-iron dome – also provided the backdrop to Vaccarello’s A/W 2023 menswear show in January of last year. The Japanese architect’s stark, cylindrical concrete wall, reflects the monumental rigour of Vaccarrello’s collections – often defined by a singular repeated silhouette – as well as the interplay between past and present at the heart of Saint Laurent.

‘It was about regenerating the historic monument: honouring the memory of the city inscribed in its walls, and inside, placing another structure,’ said Ando at the inauguration of the gallery, which houses the collection of Francois Pinault, the founder of the Kering group (Saint Laurent is part of the luxury conglomerate’s portfolio). 'A composition establishing a living dialogue between the new and the old, creating a space full of life as a place dedicated to contemporary art should be.’

For this latest show, models emerged from one of the rotunda’s openings, here edged in calla lilies, anemones and orchids (a nod, said Vaccarello, to the shows of Yves Saint Laurent) and into the deep-pile carpeted space. Looping the circular runway, the silhouette was louche and double-breasted, with wide-shouldered tailoring, trench coats and variously coloured ties recalling 1980s office wear. The only real diversions from the look were a series of high-neck silk tops and enormous rubber jackets and hats.

As such, it felt a stricter proposition than Vaccarello’s recent menswear collections, whereby elements of glamour – pussybow fastenings, wrapped and draped silhouettes – set a more romantic tone. Here, there was a different sensuality at play, the loose cut of the tailoring reminding of Giorgio Armani’s 1980s collections, which represented a newly liberated mood in menswear (epitomised by Mr Armani’s costumes for Richard Gere in American Gigolo). Vaccarello talked about the formal silhouettes of the opening looks ’dissolving’ as the show goes on – ’fluid, with an intentional slouch, an illusion of fabric turning liquid’.

The show follows Saint Laurent’s S/S 2024 menswear show, which took place in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, the modernist art museum designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in one of his final commissions. Vaccarello’s travelling menswear presentations – which tend to run for one season in Paris, the next somewhere further afield – have also taken place in the Moroccan desert and a beach in Malibu, California.

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Yves Saint Laurent opened his first Rive Gauche store in September 1966 at 21 Rue de Tournon, in Paris’ 6th arrondissement. Located in a former antique store in a Left Bank neighbourhood largely known at the time for its distinctly bohemian clientele – the arrondissement is also home to the Beaux-Arts de Paris art school – it would be the first boutique to sell ready-to-wear clothing by an haute couture designer. ‘I’d had enough of making dresses for jaded billionaires,’ said the designer, who went on to open Rive Gauche stores in London and New York. In 1969, he opened an outpost for men.

A 2011 exhibition on Rive Gauche, subtitled ‘La révolution de la mode’ (the fashion revolution), proves the fashion store is as much a part of Saint Laurent history as cut or silhouette. It’s a mantle picked up by the current creative director Anthony Vaccarello, who each season reinterprets elements of Yves Saint Laurent’s oeuvre in his own seductive style – befitting the house’s Parisian origins, the Belgian designer’s collections have largely been shown with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop, breaking into its glimmering light show at the collection’s climax.

Saint Laurent’s monumental new Paris store

In 2019, Vaccarello opened his own version, Rive Droite (‘Right Bank’), across the River Seine on Rue Saint-Honoré, taking over the former location of cult concept store Colette. Inspired by Rive Gauche’s democratic approach, the wunderkammer- like store houses one-off projects and collaborations, which might span exhibitions, art books or various Saint Laurent-branded ephemera, from skateboards and bicycles to speakers and coffee cups. Meanwhile, a sister store was opened later that year on LA’s Rodeo Drive. ‘Saint Laurent was a very youthful brand in the 1960s and 1970s,’ Vaccarello said at the time. ‘It shouldn’t become something sacred and untouchable.’

The house’s latest opening is more ambitious in scale. Located on historic Paris shopping boulevard Champs-Élysées, it marks the first full-scale showcase of Vaccarello’s reimagined ‘store concept’ for the house (a teaser came in 2022 with the opening of a store on Boulevard Saint-Germain, offering ‘a first glimpse of what will evolve into his new architectural vision for Saint Laurent’). It comes as the Champs-Élysées enjoys something of a renaissance as numerous fashion openings, alongside some major renovations – like the vast new Louis Vuitton ‘project’ at number 103 – anticipate the arrival of the Olympics this summer.

‘I wanted to realise one of Yves Saint Laurent’s wishes when he arrived in Paris and said he wanted his name to be written in fiery letters on the Champs-Élysées,’ says Vaccarello of the outpost, located at number 123. Behind the 19th-century building’s decorative Haussmannian façade – itself renovated for the project – are several stone-clad rooms that house Vaccarello’s latest collections and reflect the designer’s rigorous, monumental approach to design, so often defined by the visual impact of a silhouette. His recent menswear shows, with their dramatically pitched shoulders and narrow-waisted tailoring, are a good example of this philosophy, set against modernist, temple-like show locations, such as Tadao Ando’s concrete-clad rotunda in Paris gallery Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection or Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.

Indeed, the stark architecture of the latter (Van der Rohe’s last major construction and an enduring emblem of the modernist school) inspired Vaccarello’s monumental S/S 2024 womenswear show set, produced by Bureau Betak, which featured a series of enormous stone and marble walls lining the runway. ‘A modernist set of kaleidoscopic, mineral surfaces, affording views of the Eiffel Tower while highlighting its soft elegance,’ is how the house described it at the time. 

This same fixation with surface and materials extends to the store, which can be seen as an architectural continuation of the set (Vaccarello noted that the S/S24 collection signalled something of a shift in approach, moving towards simplicity and pragmatism, albeit instilled with the ‘assertive sophistication’ synonymous with the house). Undulating textures of marble and stone dominate the double-height foyer space and can be found throughout the four-floored store, which is punctuated by simple rails of clothing. The result is a seductive assemblage of surfaces: some raw, cracked and brutal, others softer, like a vast grey carpet flecked with blue, evoking hunks of lapis lazuli still embedded in rock. Vaccarello says he hopes to capture a mood of ‘sophistication, modernity and timelessness’.

The space is also populated with works by American sculptor Donald Judd, including a pair of painted aluminium chairs, while wooden seating by Austrian-born American architect Rudolph Schindler and enormous custom-made marble display tables continue the mood of architectural reduction. On the upper floor, a VIP suite (a contemporary evocation of Yves Saint Laurent’s haute couture salon) features an enormous circular mirror, while glass doors lead out to a lush private garden. Vaccarello says he hopes people ‘forget about their phones, [and just] enjoy the experience of the space’.

And, if Yves Saint Laurent’s name is not entirely ablaze in the fiery letters that he desired, then a neon light sculpture by Welsh conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans hanging in the foyer – an illuminated collection of intertwining shapes and forms – offers a gleaming waymarker for Vaccarello’s luminous architectural vision ahead, where he reimagines the couturier’s legacy anew.

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

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

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

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

S/S 2024 womenswear looks for escape and discovery

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

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

Saint Laurent continues its expansion in Paris – where it recently opened a vast new flagship on Champs-Élysées – with its latest project, Saint Laurent Babylone, a store entirely devoted to art, books and culture. 

Situated at 9 Rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, the new cultural store's name references the ties that Yves Saint Laurent and partner Pierre Bergé had to the Sèvres–Babylone neighbourhood (the pair moved to 55 Rue de Babylone in 1970). 

Inside Saint Laurent Babylone

Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s current creative director, said that he wanted the space to emulate the iconic Saint Laurent Rive Gauche boutique, which opened in 1966 and later spread roots to the Sèvres-Babylone neighbourhood.

Capturing Paris’ longtime links with literature and the arts, inside the store the specially curated collection of books, prints, and tomes are laid out across minimal marble countertops in soft creams and whites, emulating the surrounding Haussmannian architecture.

Meanwhile, the large dusk blue and white rug adds to the textural landscape, accompanied by a minimal wooden table to sit around when jotting down fleeting ideas. The walls are stripped back, revealing off-white plastering, lending the space an industrial air.

Each item selected for the store, from SLRD editions, publications, out-of-print musical recordings, and original productions, was curated entirely by Vaccarello.

And, Saint Laurent Babylone is more than a traditional bookstore – over the coming months, the store will be transformed into an events space varying from live music sessions to author readings and signings, and a space to inspire those who enter.

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Our Style Issue celebrates the mood of escapism and fantasy which permeates the S/S 2024 collections with a round-up of contemporary style that draws inspiration from around the world and invites us on a journey of discovery.

Our newsstand cover is by photographers Melanie + Ramon and our fashion & style director Jason Hughes, who were granted exclusive access to Balenciaga’s history-steeped haute couture salons to capture Demna’s latest transformative couture collection. The Georgian designer also opens up to Dal Chodha about instilling a feeling of modernity into this most traditional of mediums. (Fans of the house should also see our review of ‘Cristóbal Balenciaga: Master of Tailoring’, currently on show in Atlanta.)

Our limited-edition cover, meanwhile, available to subscribers, takes a more classic trip, seeing the season’s most transporting looks photographed across the otherworldly volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands. 

There’s also the return of the Wallpaper* Glossary, our essential guide to this season’s defining codes, which revels in the art of dressmaking, combining feats of craft with flights of imagination. Elsewhere in the issue, we distil the new season’s escapist mood down to 12 key pieces and objects to covet. 

Rem Koolhaas talks us through the drama and fantasy of the runway show, bridging the worlds of architecture and fashion, with a look at the dramatic sets that OMA/AMO has created for Prada over the last 25 years. As Vésma Kontere McQuillan writes, ‘It has revolutionised the fashion show as spectacle and pushed the boundaries of what is expected from a runway presentation’.

In Tuscany, writer Scarlett Conlon delves into Ferragamo’s rich atelier and archive to discover how Maximilian Davis, the brand’s brilliant young creative director, is exploring the storied Italian house’s ultra-sophisticated heritage in order to inspire its future.

In Paris, meanwhile, we’re granted a glimpse of Saint Laurent’s new flagship Champs-Élysées store, designed by creative director Anthony Vaccarello, which features marble, concrete, dark wood, Donald Judd chairs, a Cerith Wyn Evans neon sculpture and seating by Rudolph Schindler – a true vision, and a clear sign of architectural direction from the house. 

Finally, an enormous thank you goes to Jason Hughes, Jack Moss and Tracy Gilbert, our much-travelled fashion team; you have truly made this a Style special to remember. We hope you enjoy the trip!

Sarah Douglas
Editor-in-Chief

The March 2024 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print from 8 February, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Juergen Teller is known for seeing the beauty in the mundane. The renowned German photographer strips back the shiny lacquer of perfection to reveal authenticity – often by injecting humour into his candid celebrity portraits and fashion editorials. His latest exhibition, ‘i need to live’, is now on display at Triennale Milano (until 1 April 2024), after its inaugural showing in Paris’ Grand Palais Ephémère.

Juergen Teller ‘i need to live’ at Triennale Milano

Saint Laurent united with Juergen Teller as the sponsor of this career-spanning exhibition that presents more than 1,000 works. Expect to discover imagery that is both personal and commissioned, giving visitors a chance to dive into events that have shaped Teller’s life.

The exhibition is curated by Thomas Weski in collaboration with Teller and his wife and creative partner Dovile Drizyte. Teller’s uniquely twisted perspective has shaped the showcase, which celebrates the beauty and fragility of life.

‘i need to live’ explores Teller’s artistic evolution from the early 1990s, spanning photography, videos and installations, and includes a photographic series created for the exhibition. Discover personal imagery of Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Björk and her son in Iceland, and self-portraits of Teller from childhood to the present day.

Also featured is a series in which Teller and Drizyte explore their relationship, marriage and parenting, ‘defined by a characteristic mix of serious and intimate but often humorous characters created in a grotesque style’, says Stefano Boeri, president of Triennale Milano.

'i need to live' is at Triennale Milano until 1 April 2024

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

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

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

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

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

Courrèges

Dolce & Gabbana

Dries Van Noten

Acne Studios

Hermès

Wooyoungmi

Ferragamo

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

Givenchy

Alexander McQueen

Carven

Isabel Marant

Bottega Veneta

Miu Miu

Paul Smith

Fendi

Dior

Prada

Balenciaga

Marni

Valentino

Loewe 

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

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

According to Saint Laurent CEO Francesca Bellettini, Saint Laurent’s vast new workshop just outside of Florence is built on a simple premise: ‘to develop the most desirable leather goods in the world’. 

The gleaming L’Atelier Maroquinerie – ‘maroquinerie’ is a French term for the art of leather craft – certainly seems fit for the task. Spanning 28,700 sq m, the space contains a panoply of specialist equipment which marries technical innovation – one of the main aims of the space is to develop new techniques – with the traditional know-how of the region (the outskirts of Florence contain several such workshops for other major fashion houses). 

The workshop will largely focus not on producing the Saint Laurent accessories available for sale; rather, it is deemed by the house as a ‘research and development’ facility, whereby the experienced artisans will work on new ways of using the material in ‘highly specialised’ prototypes and samples. They will also produce a small number of one-off accessories for the house’s most loyal clients. Each product created will be the pinnacle of the maroquinerie medium – perhaps a useful comparison is the art of haute couture dressmaking.

Inside Saint Laurent’s L’Atelier Maroquinerie

‘Bringing together the development of both accessories and leather goods, the atelier will be an environment for sharing expertise, generating ideas and encouraging experimentation,’ Bellettini continues. On a more practical level, it will also be the house’s go-to for repair and after-sales support, offering a ’repair and refresh service’ for European clients.

Alongside the main workshop, L’Atelier Maroquinerie will also provide an educational element for a new generation of craftspeople, training both newly hired employees and offering courses for those already working in the atelier. Both school and atelier are housed in what was formerly known as the ‘Palazzo delle Finanze’, renovating several buildings on the sit which were previously unused for decades. The regeneration is completed with areas of green space.

’We are very glad to have relocated and expanded the atelier in Scandicci, as we have long since recognised the artisanal and managerial skills of the people here and the heritage of the region for outstanding craftsmanship,’ concludes Bellettini. ’L’Atelier Maroquinerie will combine generations of knowledge with new levels of innovation.’

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Our top 10 watch and jewellery stories from 2023 are chosen by watches & jewellery editor Hannah Silver. From unexpected watch partnerships to a host of artistic references, designers this year have enjoyed breaking new ground. Enjoy our favourite watch and jewellery moments of the year with these standout stories (in no particular order) celebrating a spirit of collaboration.

Top 10 watch and jewellery stories of 2023

01. Saint Laurent partners with Girard-Perregaux for first watchmaking foray

Girard Perregaux’s original Casquette watch, launched in 1976, broke traditional watchmaking codes with its tubular LED display and quartz movement, while its avant-garde shape was a refreshing antidote to the classic dials prevalent at the time. Although not officially called the Casquette, it was quickly dubbed so by a legion of loyal fans eager to see its return. 

Following Girard-Perregaux’s 2022’s re-release of the Casquette watch, the brand this year unveiled its latest iteration, the result of a collaboration with Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello has rethought the futuristic watch in black ceramic and PVD-treated grade 5 titanium, making for a result both strong and light. Designed to arch comfortably around the wrist, the watch sees the addition of a chronograph and a time display showing the time in a different location, a new and useful feature.

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02. Six artists interpret Repossi’s ‘Antifer’ jewellery collection with new works

To mark the tenth anniversary of the launch of its ‘Antifer’ collection, Italian jewellery house Repossi created five new designs, as well as three pieces of high jewellery. In the set of rings, stacked rows of precious metals cut asymmetrical silhouettes for the first time, while the classic proportions of the ‘Antifer’ motif are teased into an elongated peak. Hoop earrings and a long pendant necklace with a fully pavéd symbol are elegant new additions, while a chain necklace in pink gold playfully works the motif into its links. Repossi also collaborated with six artists, who interpreted the collection to create artworks for a Paris exhibition.

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03. Pin your hopes on Chanel’s new watch

The humble pin cushion is behind the latest watch from Chanel, with Arnaud Chastaing, the director of Chanel’s watchmaking studio, taking inspiration from objects whose architecture centres around their function. Chanel watches traditionally take their design cues from the French maison’s world – from the winding of a distinctive embellished leather handbag chain around the wrist to evoking the form of a No. 5 perfume bottle stopper or imprinting tweed on a dial. 

With the Mademoiselle Privé Pique-Aiguilles watch, it’s the pin cushion that Gabrielle Chanel often toted on her wrist in her role as seamstress that acts as muse. Cutting a playfully oversized silhouette, the tweed motif version features the pattern of a tweed jacket, trimmed with 92 diamonds, underneath a domed case evoking the shape of a pin cushion. It’s dotted with the tools of an atelier, such as thimbles, scissors and tape measures, all drawn in sculpted gold. 

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04. Completedworks turns its reductionist vision to bags

A preoccupation with the relationship between form and function meant a move into fashion accessories was perhaps inevitable for London-based jewellery and homeware brand Completedworks. For the past decade, its artistic director Anna Jewsbury has infused ceramics and jewellery with a sculptural sensibility, presenting everything from vases that appear to have been casually scrunched in the hand to offbeat, playfully proportioned earrings. Now, she turns her sharp eye to bags.

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05. ‘Bauhaus goes American!’: Louis Erard and Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry’s playful new watch

A bold geometry defines the watches created in a collaboration between US-based Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry, Swiss watchmaker Louis Erard and French watch designer Alain Silberstein. Alain Silberstein’s love of primary colours meets playful details – such as the smileys rather than the traditional date in the date window – in new watch sets, which include 72 Louis Erard x Alain Silberstein for Stephen Silver La Semaine watches. Special box sets also contain both Louis Erard x Alain Silberstein for Stephen Silver Le Régulateur and La Semaine watches.

‘This piece is a great representation of the sensibilities of Alain Silberstein, the renowned French watch designer,’ says Jared Silver, president of Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry of La Semaine. ‘It is bold, playful, and whimsical. We wanted to collaborate with him because he shares much in common with the attitudes of our collectors here in Silicon Valley, who enjoy their watches with a sense of fun. As the watch's USA edition, we wanted to bring in the quintessential Americana colours.’

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06. Björn Weckström’s epic sculptures and chunky jewellery shine a light on the human condition

For Finnish sculptor and jewellery designer Björn Weckström, the frailties of the human condition are a lifelong preoccupation. His sculptures, which expose the challenges facing mankind, are epic in scale and cast in an eclectic mix of materials: marble, bronze, glass and resin. The 88-year-old artist draws on both his Nordic heritage and the decades he spent in Italy, as a lecturer at the University of Pisa from 1979, for works that capture his fascination with Greek mythology, imbuing the familiar forms of the gods with an empathetic humanity.

While Weckström has always been intrigued by the possibilities offered by materials, he originally manipulated these on a smaller scale, beginning his career as a jewellery designer. ‘I always wanted to be a sculptor, but, the fact is, my family was very much against it,’ he tells us from his home in Espoo, Finland. ‘My grandfather was a jeweller, but I wasn’t so interested. We made a compromise and I went to the [Finnish] Goldsmith School and started with the small things – it was a good time. I could make things look different. I wanted to take it to a higher level where it’s so free, you don’t have any function. It’s like a piece of art.’

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07. Reimagined Cartier Baignoire watch is a fitting homage to the original

With its minimalist mood and simple silhouette, the reinterpreted Cartier Baignoire is part bangle, part watch, and references key moments in Cartier’s design history. Originally conceived in 1912, the Baignoire is commonly thought to take its name from the French word for bathtub, but it actually refers to VIP seats at the opera. ‘It was where the wealthy people sat,’ explains Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s image, style and heritage director. ‘There were six seats together, with a kind of barrier around them.’

Reinvented numerous times since its inception, today’s Cartier Baignoire subscribes to the poetry of reduction in its elegant play with precise geometrical forms. Designed to be worn as close to the wrist as possible, the flat face is a sleek foil for the contours of the bracelet. The design ‘is linked to our culture as a jeweller’, says Rainero. ‘When you’re a jeweller, [you are considering] the right fitting to the body, and beyond that, the way an object that you have on your body accompanies your movements, so it’s not a constraint, but, on the contrary, it adds magnificence to your movement. That is the key. This is the essence of being a jeweller, and in our way of creating watches, we always have it in mind – it’s second nature and obvious for us to stay true to it.’

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08. Chaumet spotlights the golden age of jewellery design in Paris

To step into the Chaumet exhibition, ‘Un Âge d’Or’, in Paris is to step back in time, into an era where avant-garde design entered the jewellery mainstream. Held in Chaumet’s home on the Place Vendôme, the exhibition, curated by Vanessa Cron, celebrates designs from the period 1965 – 1985, with jewellery from the brand joining exquisite objets d’art.

Furniture by Pierre Paulin, tapestries by Victor Vasarely, a ‘Togo’ sofa designed by Michel Ducaroy with Floraly fabric, a Gavrinis rug, fashion by Dior and Paco Rabanne and lithographs by Andy Warhol set the scene for the jewellery, which was in its most experimental era. In a direction spearheaded by René Morin, who joined Chaumet in 1962, and later by Pierre Sterlé, who joined the maison in 1976, jewellery became playful. 

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09. Aymer Maria jewellery gives historical references a modern spin

‘I have always been fascinated by the concept of wearing a piece of art as jewellery. I remember looking at my mother’s 1980s costume jewellery pieces by Yves Saint Laurent, Butler & Wilson and that sort of stuff. The big shoulder pads, the style, the red lipstick was a real wow for me as a child,’ relates Ruth Aymer, founder of Aymer Maria, a contemporary jewellery house that takes the built environment in all its iterations as a muse and conduit to deeper truths.

Aymer, who was raised in London and is of Dominican and Sierra Leonean heritage, didn’t immediately actualise her observations into an intention to found a jewellery house. However, the seeds of ambition were further germinated by childhood walks in London’s Pimlico and Belgravia, where Thomas Cubitt’s terraces ‘were so pleasing to see, from the symmetry of houses to the stucco fronts and columns’. Only as an adult, after the pandemic provided the necessary pause, did her ideas finally percolate. ‘I thought, “If I don’t start now I never will!'” 

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10. Feast your eyes: Nadine Ghosn brings cutlery-inspired jewellery to the table

Everyday items take on a precious significance in the hands of jewellery designer Nadine Ghosn – featured in our Wallpaper* USA 300 – who brings a mischievousness to eating and drinking accessories in her recent collection, Youtensils. A spoon dipped in diamond-encrusted Nutella, gold straws that wind their way around the wrist, and a name spelt in alphabet-soup letters comprise a playful take on the quotidian, all in Ghosn’s signature tongue-in-cheek style.

‘I am attracted to the things that we may not notice or honour daily that help us to live a better life – the hidden, the unrecognised,’ says Ghosn. ‘I didn’t come from a conventional jewellery background. When I first shared that I wanted to explore jewellery, I was led to two limiting beliefs: that the competition is fierce, and that I would fail. I had nothing to lose and everything to prove. 

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Sumptuous materials, unexpected textures, the feel of clothing on the skin: the Resort 2024 season, which heralds the arrival of a new year in fashion, is all about the pleasure of touch. 

As seen in the January Next Generation Issue of Wallpaper*, Paris-based photographer Matthieu Delbreuve unites with Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes to capture the material pleasures of the season. 

Material pleasures: Resort 2024 reach-out-and-touch womenswear

Like the coated knitwear of Pieter Mulier at Alaïa – a potently desirable mix of the slick and soft – or an extraordinary sequinned dress from Maison Margiela, whereby each pailette is actually made from rubber, a trick for both hand and eye.

Elsewhere, an opulent melange of textures: shimmering monogram chainmail from Gucci (originally shown in an extravagant show in Seoul), soft knitted herringbone by Daniel Lee at Burberry, or billowing faux furs from Givenchy, Victoria Beckham and Jil Sander by Lucie and Luke Meier.

And, backdropping it all, the textures of home: swathes of high-pile rugs and carpets, leather chairs, or the distinct texture of Mario Bellini’s 1972-designed ‘Le Bambole’ armchair for B&B Italia.

Model: Ashley Radjarame at IMG. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Anna Cofone using Oribe. Make-up: Sandra Cooke using Byredo. Interiors: Olly Mason. Set build: London Art Makers. Photography assistant: Arthur Jung. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Samela Gjozi. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Post-production: Retouch and Post. 

A version of this story appears in the January 2024 Next Generation Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

Paris’ Grand Palais Ephémère reflects the shimmer of the Eiffel Tower in its delicately arched windows, an elegant setting for Saint Laurent’s latest artistic endeavour – as the official sponsor of ‘i need to live’, a new career-spanning exhibition from photographer Juergen Teller.

Running in Paris from 16 December 2023 to 9 January 2024, the exhibition is organised by the Réunion des musées nationaux Grand Palais, with full support from Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. Expect to be taken through Teller’s most memorable works, spanning images, videos and installations, alongside a new photographic series created for the exhibition, each in his distinct, idiosyncratic style.

Saint Laurent Rive Droite: Juergen Teller

Alongside, a special lifestyle collection – carefully curated by Anthony Vaccarello and Juergen Teller – will be available as part of Saint Laurent Rive Droite, a ’cultural destination’ in Paris and Los Angeles that houses the brand’s collaborations and limited-edition projects.

’Juergen Teller is a tremendous photographer whose intelligence, humour, and respect make his work a veritable introspective game, where flashbacks are both tributes and allusions to the founding myths of the Maison Yves Saint Laurent,’ says Vaccarello. ‘Our collaborative work for Saint Laurent is all about the search for origins as a creative driving force.’

Teller is best known for his candid, seemingly off-the-cuff portraits of celebrities and models, often injected with humour and a uniquely twisted perspective. Now one of fashion’s best-known image-makers, he has worked with numerous fashion houses and brands on seminal campaigns, including with Vaccarello at Saint Laurent, solidifying a natural artistic pairing.

Other projects have seen Teller work with his wife Dovile Drizyte on series that explore their relationship, marriage and parenting, ’created in a grotesque style’, as Saint Laurent describes.

The exclusive lifestyle collection is a trove of homeware, decorative objects, clothing, accessories, and vinyl, with each piece adorned with Teller’s imagery. To neatly tie the collection together, an elaborate selection of books, magazines and further publications related to Teller’s work will be displayed in Rive Droite stores in Paris and Los Angeles. These include the 40 books Teller has published alongside Gerhard Steidl of Steidl Verlag, Göttingen. 

After Paris, the exhibition will be shown at the Milan Triennale in spring of 2024.

‘i need to live’ is on show from 16 December 2023 to 9 January 2024 at the Grand Palais Ephémère in Paris.

The collection is available at Saint Laurent Rive Droite stores in Paris and Los Angeles and on ysl.com.

grandpalais.fr.

Sculpted silhouettes, warped weaves, razor-sharp cuts – men’s tailoring is imbued with a spirit of subversion this season, as designers and brands seek to rework and reimagine the suit. Their spoils arrive at the beginning of a season filled with potential for dressing up; here, as taken from the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper* – photographed by Daniel Riera Fashion with fashion by David St John – a selection of that tailoring ready to make an impression over the celebratory winter months ahead.

Razor-sharp men’s tailoring to make an impression this winter

Take the unexpected proportions of Gucci’s elongated double-breasted blazer and wide-legged tailored shorts (top left), a playful top-heavy silhouette nonetheless conjuring the Italian elegance at the heart of the label. Or from Fendi, an immaculate single-breasted suit whereby the trousers are overlaid with a diaphanous apron-like skirt (below); when it was first shown in Milan, creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi said she was inspired by the outré dress codes of infamous New York nightspot Studio 54. 

Others riff on classic tailoring archetypes, like Dolce & Gabbana’s take on the white tuxedo – here cut with a narrow sculpted waist – or the shrunken two-tone lapel of a double-breasted suit by Maximillian Davis at Ferragamo which recalls military uniforms, here reimagined with a minimal rigour. 

Model: Przemek Szubert at Riches Mgm. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Grooming: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Hair Rituel by Sisley. Digi tech: Marc de Miguel. Fashion assistant: Molly Swatman. Retouching: La Cápsula Fotográfica. 

A version of this story appeared in the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 9 November, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!