Runway review: the S/S 2016 womenswear season’s most sensational sets

Philipp Plein: The catwalk was transformed into a moving conveyor belt at Philip Plein’s surreal Milan show thanks to Thierry Dreyfus’ production company Eyesight. Surrounded with spotlit robotic machines, the models were sent down the catwalk like cars on a production line, handed accessories by robot arms as they went, while in the background drones hovered in the air as a robot rock band provided the soundtrack

Céline: A colour blocked tent installation and rhythmic soundtrack conceived by Danish artist FOS set the stage for Phoebe Philo’s latest show for Céline. FOS, otherwise known as Thomas Poulsen, has previously worked with Philo to create a series of furnishings for Céline’s stores. At the French house’s S/S 2016 show, his billowing swathes of orange, blue and yellow fabric hung from the ceiling, while below the models walked across a sand-covered catwalk

Coach: Creative director Stuart Vevers commandeered New York’s Highline for his first womenswear runway show for the brand since he took the helm in 2013. Housed inside a huge, specially constructed glass box above Hudson Yard, Coach’s meandering glass runway was lined with wild flowers and grasses that echoed the prairie prints of Vevers’ dresses. Photography: Mitchell Sams

Antonio Marras: Artist Mahmoud Saleh Mohammadi’s installation ’Touch With Eyes’ provided the backdrop for Antonio Marras’s runway in Milan this season. Models donning the intricately detailed pieces – inspired by the work of state-imprisoned Soviet-era Armenian artist and director Sergej Iosifovič Paradžanov – emerged from a curtain of overlapping Kilim rugs and made their way down a runway strewn with giant styrofoam boulders connected up to a network of ropes

Carven: Design duo Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud were inspired by early female scuba divers for S/S 2016 and their showspace also reinforced this sporty spirit for adventure as each model made their way through a clear plastic ’pressure’ chamber

Gucci: Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele presented his second collection for the label at Scalo Farini, a former train station, where a carpeted catwalk stretched along one of the old platforms. To add to the swirling oppulence of his pink snake print carpet – a motif that also featured on an embossed mule – Michele seated guests with studded black bamboo chairs upholstered in turquoise fabric and headed his catwalk with a series of antique room dividers featuring prints from the collection

Marni: The Roy Lichtenstein-esque colours of Marni’s collection positively shone against the subdued concrete backdrop of the Viale Umbria venue. Made up of intersecting geometric shapes in chalky hues of pink, brown and grey, the graphic layering of the set echoed the shapes found in the collection itself

MSGM: At MSGM Massimo Giorgetti took the lighting rig off the ceiling and installed it vertically on the wall of his spring show to create a showstopping backdrop for his skate culture-inspired collection. The mash-up of strobe, tube, and spot lights flashed throughout the show highlighting the collection’s many dangling chains, hoops and metallic tassels

Miu Miu: A monolithic gold and silver foil-covered installation designed by AMO dominated the runway at Miu Miu. The audience, seated on wooden chairs around the edge of the room looked on as Miuccia Prada’s psychedelic, blue-lipped housewives clad in ruffled pinafores and 1970s print house dresses wove in and out of the structure’s multiple angled archways

Opening Ceremony: Creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim paid tribute to architect Frank Lloyd Wright with their latest architecture-inspired collection and accompanying show set which took the form of an indoor garden with carved concrete pillars. The set’s growing garden – which featured lemon and fig trees, rosemary bushes, white and purple cabbage patches, eggplant, and squash – was arranged into circles based upon drawings of Cloverleaf, an unbuilt 1942 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, housing development conceived by Wright. The distinctive carved concrete pillars were based upon the intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that can be found within many of Wright’s designs, including Cloverleaf

Public School: Oversized white building blocks punctuated the all-black set at Public School. Scattered haphazardly across seating and along the runway, the rectangular white blocks were conceived by New York-based practice Snarkitecture

Prada: For its September womenswear outing, Prada chose to recycle the impressive set from its S/S 2016 menswear show that made its debut back in June. Designed by long-time collaborators AMO, a maze of low-hanging, steel-framed, curved and rectilinear sheets of corrugated plastic glass that reflected and refracted the light hung at varying heights above a series of elliptical concrete benches

Emilio Pucci: For his runway debut at Pucci, Massimo Giorgetti conjured an under the sea theme with shimmering sequins and ocean-themed prints. Models paraded his new Pucci directive along a dimly-lit runway flanked by suitably atmospheric glowing pink curtains that allowed the sequins to sparkle

Valentino: The Italian label’s stellar S/S 2016 collection called for an equally impressive set, and Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccoli did not disappoint. The tribal-inspired collection was showcased to a thumping beating drum soundtrack within a dark timber-lined auditorium assembled in an oval-esque arrangement

Rodarte: Flickering, multicoloured tube lights were hung vertically from the ceiling at Rodarte, where Bureau Betak used dried foliage, branches, chicken wire and loose strands of coloured knitwear to create a dazzling light show. Photography: Daniel Salemi

Sportmax: Young Amsterdam-based Italian designers Formafantasma took charge of Sportmax’s show set this season with a design inspired by Gio Ponti’s midcentury Villa Planchart in Caracas. Stretching down from the ceiling and across the floor to form the catwalk, sunshine-hued lengths of translucent PVC film helped to define the space and brought a little warmth to the otherwise grey interior of Milan’s Palazzo delle Poste – an early 20th century post office building designed by Luigi Broggi

Roksanda: Set designer Gary Card, who created Wallpaper’s Awards show set earlier this year, was inspired by storage units and stacked parcels when designing the set for Roksanda’s runway show. Held at the Seymour Leisure Centre in Marylebone, London, Card used curved MDF blocks lit by pink and yellow lighting to create an architectural landscape for Roksanda Ilincic’s models who were decked out in the designer’s signature colour-blocked shapes

Suno: Casting angular patterns down the runway, the bright blue geodesic dome structures created by set designer Andrew Ondrejcak at Suno continued the central geometric theme running through Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty’s S/S 2016 collection

Bonpoint: The Parisian childrenswear brand continued spring’s vegetative theme for their catwalk show, which was surrounded with leafy green shrubbery and low lying grasses. Photography: Dominique Maitre

Thom Browne: One by one, the models at Thom Brown’s New York show took their place within an open, timber-frame school house built in the centre of the set. Filled with rows of chairs, and a black composition notebook neatly placed at each one, the framework was lit by multicoloured lights, providing the perfect backdrop for Browne’s school uniform-inspired show

Hermès: Villa Eugénie set the scene for Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s second Hermès show with a total palette clense of the house’s Paris show venue whereby the runway was blurred in with the guest’s elevated seating. Photography: Camilla Alibrandi

Tommy Hilfiger: The American designer’s no-expense-spared set transported his New York audience to the turquoise waters of Mustique this season. Designed by Randall Peacock, Hilfiger’s slice of the Caribbean came complete with a beach, boardwalk runway, palm trees, a giant swimming pool and a palm topped beach hut