All The Highlights From Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week

Glenn Martens took over the creative reins at Maison Margiela in January, succeeding John Galliano (who firmly established the brand's Artisanal couture show as the stuff of legend). The third creative director at the brand, Martens has big shoes to fill. This week's collection was an impactful debut, echoing Margiela’s own penchant for avant garde, thought-provoking clothes. Shapes and forms were inspired by medieval architecture of the Northern-European Renaissance, he said, references to 16th century Flemish and 17th century Dutch artwork were woven throughout. Meanwhile, models' faces were masked, a nod to Margiela himself, who preferred to draw focus solely on the clothes themselves during shows. For Martens, it seems, couture really is all about craft, creativity and sartorial provocation.

Kim Kardashian is a regular on the fashion week front rows. But this couture week, the star swapped the frow for the catwalk, to mark the end of an era at Balenciaga: creative director Demna's final collection for the house after a 10-year tenure. Denma is a master of taking the ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary, playing with proportion and perspective to deliver his high fashion take on everyday clothes. The designer summed up his swan song as 'Couture renditions of archetypal garments form my ultimate wardrobe—building on what I consider the raison d’être of this métier as something that needs to exist outside the ballroom.' This couture season, that translated to a biker-cut coat made from cashmere-vicuña (the ultimate luxe fabric that's worth more than gold); corduroy made from 300 kilometers of tufted embroidery; and a jewellery collection created by Lorraine Schwartz totalling over 1,000 carats. Wow.

He was inspired, he said, by traditional dress codes of La Bourgeoisie and Old Hollywood, also paying homage to icons like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor — Kardashian walked dressed in Taylor's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof slip, a faux mink coat made from feathers slung over the top. Demna's successor, Pierpaolo Piccioli, attended the show too, alongside names like Naomi Ackie, Michelle Yeoh, Nicole Kidman and Kyle MacLachlan. 'This collection is the perfect way for me to finish my decade at Balenciaga,' Demna said. 'I have come as close as possible to being satisfied in this endless pursuit of impossible perfection.'

'Far from monotonous, black reveals an entire spectrum of shades and possibilities,' the show notes for Giorgio Armani Privé's AW25 collection read. Sleek and seductive, it was proof that when it comes to after-dark glamour, black is never a boring choice.

In fact, Mr Armani has always been drawn to black, believing it has the ability to transform a simple silhouette into 'a timeless icon.' This season, his signature push and pull between the masculine and the feminine was evident in the slim fitting tuxedos that oozed sensuality, and cropped velvet blazers styled over crisp white shirts with bowties; while floor-length gowns brought the drama, some with dangerously low cut v-necks, others with full tulle skirts or super-sized bow adornments.

When you think of modern-day haute couture, wearability isn’t the first word that springs to mind. But Chanel reminded us that the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel herself introduced a new effortlessness and ease of movement to women’s wardrobes during the early 20th century — and it was an approach that was mirrored in this season’s haute couture show in Paris. For its last collection designed by the studio before new creative director Matthieu Blazy makes his big debut in September, Chanel went back to its roots, drawing on a key inspiration that captured the imagination of its founder and helped shape many codes of the house we know and love today: the British countryside.

This season was ‘an ode to the harmony of nature and the texture of fabrics,’ the show notes explained. Iconic tweed pieces took on relaxed silhouettes, embellished with fringing or feathers, or given an after-hours glam up with gold accents or jewelled buttons punctuating the collection’s largely black and white colour pallette. Elsewhere, wheat ear motifs were subtly woven into the collection, while trousers were painted and carefully embroidered, as were satin crêpe dresses.

For his latest couture collection, Daniel Roseberry transported us both to the past and the future, with a collection that explored surrealism, fashion as art, and timeless beauty. Roseberry was inspired by Elsa Schiaparelli's decision to leave Paris in June 1940, setting sale for New York, during the Second World War. It was a time that not only marked the end of a decade, but also the end of a revolutionary period of fashion design in Paris, and the beginning of modern era of war.

'If I focused obsessively on the past, could I actually make a collection that looks as if it was born in the future?,' Roseberry explained in the show notes. 'Gone are the expected markings of modernism; what remains is something elemental, a return to principles that in turn feels revolutionary.' The collection, he explained, is all about looking back, inverting the Schiaparelli archives, to create something that is futuristic. 'This collection reminds you that looking backwards is nothing if we can’t find something meaningful to bring into our future.'

A week of couture shows kicked off with a much-anticipated ready-to-wear from Celine’s new creative director Michael Rider, the Phoebe Philo-era alum who returned to the brand to succeed Hedi Slimane. In a letter published the day of the show, Rider described his homecoming as both ‘incredibly emotional’ and ‘a complete joy,’ adding that Celine is all about quality, timelessness and style, ‘ideals that are difficult to catch, and even harder to hold on to, to define, despite more and more talk about them out there. We worked on translating them into a way of dressing.’ For Rider, Celine is more about an attitude than a distinct aesthetic; it was about how clothes can signal who you are and what you stand for.

This made for a debut collection that was wide ranging, with pieces for every occasion and to suit every taste, styled in such a way to add a certain effortless Parisian je ne sais quoi. Skinny-skinny jeans or barrel leg denim? Exaggerated tailored blazers or a slim fitting boucle jacket? Oversized leather biker bombers, or shrunken argyle knits? Balloon trousers or second-skin jodhpurs? Take your pick. An array of LBDs (itty-bitty and floor-length hemlines) were teamed with soft leather jazz shoes or ballet flats, and cardigans were thrown atop jumpers and outerwear. The silk scarf, meanwhile, was cemented as a must-have accessory. It was full of clothes that become a part of our lives, he explained, ‘that may capture a moment in time but also speaks to years and years of gestures and occasions and change, of the past, the present and the future, of memories, of usefulness and of fantasy, of life really.’