
Louis Vuitton: Nicolas Ghesquière has taken guests to the Cour Marly and the Pavillon de l’Horloge of the Louvre, and for A/W 2018 the designer erected a futuristic show set in its Cour Lefuel. The space, designed by Hector Lefuel in the 1850s, under the government of Napoleon III, originally acted as an entrance to the palace for horses and carriages. Ghesquière had more interstellar transportation in mind, creating a set which resembled Star Wars’ Millennial Falcon, a platform which showcased a hybrid collection of spliced up designs for a wardrobe of the future. Photography: Grégoire Vieille

Chanel: last season, Karl Lagerfeld created a Verdon Gorge-inspired water world – complete with cascading waterfalls and mossy cliff faces — at the Grand Palais in Paris. For A/W 2018, his naturalistic showset theme evolved, branching out with an expansive runway carpeted by autumnal leaves, resembling forest clearing. Guests sat on long wooden benches, surrounded by magnificent oak trees, which extended to the glass-domed ceiling of the Grand Palais, an ethereal woodland world à la Chanel, in the heart of bustling Paris. Photography: Olivier Saillant

Christian Dior: for A/W 2018, artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri took a cut-and-paste approach to set design, with a runway space at the Musée Rodin covered with a kaleidoscopic collage of 3000 poster images. Chiuri’s collection was inspired by the Left Bank student protests of 1968, that also swept across cities around the world, and the emancipated outfits of its female rebels. The show set- produced with regular collaborator Bureau Betak — was awash with magazine covers, protest posters and call-to-action slogans, and took 150 people three weeks to create. Photography: Adrien Dirand

Coach 1941: last season, creative director Stuart Vevers erected a runway set evoking a glittering cityscape, but for A/W 2018 he had a more naturalistic leaning, dreaming up a showset resembling a moonlit forest. Moss, leaves and spindly trees lined the set, one also populated with televisions. During his tenure at the creative helm of the New York-based label, Vevers has imbued his collection with images inspired by American mythology, and the spooky scene recalled the American gothic, conjuring images taken from the pages of Hawthorne or Poe. Photography: Daniel Salemi

Calvin Klein 205W39NYC: in his continued collaboration with artist Sterling Ruby, chief creative officer Raf Simons has cemented his pom-pom and quilt strewn vision of Americana, one brimming with references to pop-art, silver screen heroines and prairie landscapes. Simons’ vision has also veered into the sinister, with the designer nodding to blood-splattered American horror flicks. This was a genre evoked in Ruby’s A/W 2018 show set at the Old Stock Exchange in New York, an apocalyptic barnyard scene, boasting dilapidated barns painted with Andy Warhol artworks, and air conditioning tubing hung ominously from windows. In a final nod to cinema, Sterling created a crunchy runway floor, littered with 50,0000 gallons of popcorn.

Loewe: creative director Jonathan Anderson devised a welcoming domestic scene at his regular Maison de l’UNESCO show location, one populated with exhibition cases of artworks by Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo, a roaring fireplace designed by EW Godwin and rows of chairs inspired by Godwin’s chimneys. On each chair lay a copy of Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, Dracula or Don Quixote, all featuring an exclusive Loewe cover shot by Steven Meisel. The show’s soundtrack was equally calm inducing — a Michel Gaubert-produced mix featuring the spoken word mindfulness track Burgs, by Mt Wolf.