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Mark our words – the autumn/winter 2025 edition of Paris Haute Couture Week will be one to remember. Not just for the outré, otherworldly fashion spectacles that the week inevitably brings, but also for the fact that a number of the shows mark the beginnings (and ends!) of some seriously significant chapters of fashion history. From Chanel’s final studio collection before Matthieu Blazy takes the reins, to Demna’s final bow at Balenciaga, following a seismic ten-year-stint at the house’s helm; Glenn Martens’ first show at Maison Margiela to Michael Rider’s Celine debut (technically not couture, but still!), we’re banking on a season brimming with the stuff that fashion dreams are made of. On y va!
Schiaparelli
Seeing Cardi B arrive for Schiaparelli’s autumn/winter 2025 Haute Couture collection with a live crow – that fluttering harbinger of doom – on her gloved hand set the tone for a darker-than-usual collection, dedicated to the surrealist fantasies that sprung from Elsa Schiaparelli’s mind during World War II. (Or, in Daniel Roseberry’s words, “to the period when life and art were on the precipice: to the sunset of elegance and to the end of the world as we knew it.”) Drawing on Elsa’s work through its depictions in the black-and-white photography of Man Ray and Horst, the designer put forth a mostly colourless portfolio of matador-inspired jackets, bias-cut suits, dresses embellished with blinking eyes, horse saddles transformed into organ-crunching corsets, and a red satin column constructed with a torso, breasts and one pulsating heart in its back. Edgar Allan Poe, be damned. Daniel Rodgers, fashion news editor.
Chanel
No one is having a better time in Paris than the 18-year-old Romy Mars, for whom, in between visits to the capital’s several Brandy Melville stores, Couture Week has presented itself like an unofficial debut into high-fashion society. It helps, of course, that her mother, Sofia Coppola, directed the opening Bal d’Été, and that she later sat front row at Chanel’s autumn/winter 2025 presentation, where there was no shortage of debutante-appropriate looks: fuzzy tweed coat dresses; sensible shifts with feather-trimmed capes of bouclé tweed; crystal-latticed slips with the shock of a lamé skirt; and heavily embellished puff-sleeve blouses with cascading ruffled hems. Inspired by the time Gabrielle Chanel spent in the English and Scottish countryside while courting the Duke of Westminster, this will be the last collection to have been conceived without a creative director at its helm. The house has yet to establish a VIP strategy for when Matthieu Blazy debuts in September, but it would do well to keep Romy – make-a-vodka-sauce-pasta-with-me-because-I-tried-to-charter-a-helicopter-from-New-York-to-Maryland-on-my-dad’s-credit-card-because-I-wanted-to-have-dinner-with-a-camp-friend – Mars on its roster. DR
Celine
At long last, after a seemingly endless merry-go-round of creative director changes at the helms of fashion’s leading houses, we’re finally getting our first treatises on the industry’s new lay of the land. Following on from Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut during men’s week was another hotly anticipated – though arguably more mysterious – first showing at Celine, where American designer Michael Rider – formerly of Polo Ralph Lauren – presented his vision for the house. Granted, following in the footsteps of Hedi Slimane – who held the top job at the label for seven years – and Phoebe Philo, whose 2010s tenure remains one of the most revered and referenced in contemporary fashion history – was always going to be a tall task, but it’s one that the ’til-now-IYKYK designer fulfilled with aplomb.
It was, in many senses, a confident synthesis of the hallmarks of his antecedents’ signature aesthetics – Philo’s razor-sharp, whittle-waisted tailoring, yen for elevated jolie laide graphics and chintz, and the emblematic Phantom bag all made appearance; Slimane’s slim-line sensuality and mod-ish flair coloured the menswear offering in particular. More than that, though, it paid homage to an archive that has long been relatively subdued – Celine’s storied equestrian heritage, for example, translated to proudly logo-ed sweatshirts and jodhpur leggings; its patrician bohemianism to the silk carrés and jangling gold charms styled throughout – while also narrating Rider’s own story as a designer. There was a distinct, old-school Ghesquière flair to much of the styling – particularly the contrast-toned tailored silhouettes with oversized, blade-sharp jackets and ballooning pleated pants, while the all-American prep to be expected of a man who literally just came from Ralph Lauren was a notable undercurrent. Never, though, did any single component overpower – this was a collection that was both eclectic and clear-sighted in its invocation of both Celine and Rider’s pasts, hinting towards a promising path ahead for their joint future. Mahoro Seward, acting fashion features editor
JW Anderson
Whenever Jonathan Anderson’s name has appeared in the fashion news cycle of late, it’s been with respect to his beast of a new job at the helm of Dior. Since the first chapter of what, in many ways, is a three-part debut (we still have womenswear and couture to come!) has now bowed, attentions naturally pivoted to a question that the Irish designer’s fans have been asking since the big announcement first came: what will happen with his namesake label, JW Anderson? Well, at a presentation in Paris at the start of Couture Week, the label’s new guise was unveiled. Rather than continue as a four-collections-a-year fashion line (in the classic sense of the term), the brand will pivot to operate as a lifestyle concept, centred on “things I like and [that] I would like to have around me. And everything has a story,” a line from a press release reads. The whole affair remains overseen by Anderson – and there are plenty of clothes on offer in the first drop, unveiled yesterday in a muted campaign shot by Heikki Kaski: Japanese denim jeans, Scottish argyle knits and sweatshirts bearing slogans lifted from the punchy, textual works of queer, Berlin-based artist Dean Sameshima.
These latter pieces give a sense of the broadened, curatorial scope of JW Anderson – beyond fashion, the brand will serve as a platform for the sale of objects, curios and artworks convened by Anderson. In a sense, it feels like a way for fans of the polymathic designer to step into (and shop from) an ever-shifting moodboard – a holistic expression of what’s making him tick – from gardening tools to loafer-inspired satchels; Mary Stephenson paintings to reissued Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs. In many senses, it feels like an analogue approach to what he achieved at Loewe – less because of the remit of the project, more because of the intentional interdisciplinarity at the heart of it. That’s accented by the aforementioned campaign, which features a culture-shaping cast of figures that, ultimately, are all Anderson’s collaborators and friends: curator Bengi Unsal and actor Ben Whishaw; artists Anthea Hamilton and Pol Anglada; designer Bella Freud and director Luca Guadagnino. If they’re all in, you should be, too. MS
Balenciaga
“Fashion lives on the edge of tomorrow, driven not by what we know, but the thrill of discovering what comes next,” read the opening line of Demna’s show notes at his final Balenciaga presentation. “It is the expression of our need to evolve, to make sense of change before it arrives, to dress the future before it has a name.” Indeed, few designers have been so forward-looking as this one, a man with arguably the most influential, and button-pushing, creative mind of the past decade. This is, after all, the same person who dragged the storied maison through 275 cubic metres of mud for spring/summer 2023, less than six months after unleashing a snowstorm for autumn/winter 2022, where models in lycra carried bin bags in testimony to his experience of being a child refugee fleeing the war in Georgia in 1993. Demna changed how people dress, and what constitutes luxury fashion.
And so, we are here, in a simulacrum of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s original couture salon above the brand’s historic 10 Avenue Georges V flagship, with (deep breath) Michelle Yeoh, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Kai Schreiber, Katy Perry, Cardi B, Lisa Rinna, Aya Nakamura, Salma Hayek, Justine Skye taking in Demna’s swansong. The collection represented a decade of his most tumultuously influential brain work – basque-hipped skirt suits with swooping necklines and hardcore shoulders; cloche ball gowns; frame-swamping tailoring; cartoonishly sinister shoes; plainly quotidian puffers – all of which reached its apex when Kim Kardashian emerged in a shaggy coat shrugged over a boudoir-ish slip as a disembodied voice over listed the first names of those within his Balenciaga family. Across town, at the Kering headquarters on Rue de Sèvres, is a framed print-out of a rejection email Demna received when he first applied for an internship at Balenciaga as a graduate in 2007.
Armani Privé
As those of you who have visited the (still running!) exhibition at Armani’s museum space in Milan will know, Armani Privé – the Italian label’s top line – has long been regarded as a paragon of cinematic elegance and exquisite craft. Giorgio Armani’s latest collection for his namesake couture line was, of course, no exception, comprising a celebration of what many (read: I) would consider the chicest tone out there: black. A contemplation of the diversity and textural wealth of the visual spectrum’s darkest hue, this was also a reflection of Mr Armani’s design philosophy, spanning spiffy, sharp-shouldered tailoring in decadently embroidered wools and plush, thick velvets; roomy, mandarin-collared jackets with sparkly frogged closures with elegant slips of skirts; and, of course, the requisite glamazon gowns, some with risqué (though never gauche!) plunging necklines, others with lavish trims of jewel-tone plumes – with most looks styled with Paris-appropriate sparkly berets, bien sûr. Though Mr Armani may not have stepped out to take his bow at the close of the show, the strength of his presence was unmistakeable. MS
Maison Margiela Artisanal
Less than 48 hours before unveiling his vision for Maison Margiela, Glenn Martens sat down with Vogue’s Luke Leitch. The details of his much-anticipated debut were duly safeguarded, but the designer promised the effect would be “quite loud”. The truth is: the 49 spectral figures that roamed the decaying, subterranean chambers that served as last night’s venue, moved with a fearsome silence. Even the most involved looks – among them a sheath dress encrusted with who-knows-how-many deadstock costume jewels, and a metallised explosion of a duchesse satin gown Martens previously put forward during his guest stint at Jean Paul Gaultier – took on a moribund awe, the heads of each entombed in elaborate, oxygen-robbing masks. Those face coverings were just one tug on the umbilical cord linking Martens – a self-professed “child of Martin Margiela” – to his predecessor. To wit: plastic-wrapped bodies recalled the founding designer’s infamous dry-cleaning collection; while biker jackets, a house staple, were papered in antique wallpapers, gesturing to the interiors of their shared Flemish upbringings. The anatomically impossible corsets – most effectively displayed beneath draped, jersey dresses – felt like a discreet nod to John Galliano’s tenure. And as for the “loud”? Well, the show ended with editors hurling themselves into a technicolour pit of balloons. DR
This article was originally published on British Vogue.
