Paris Fashion Week: Get ready-to-wear sexy, seductive and spectacular clothes this winter

The best fashion designers are always equipped with a remarkable compass that helps shape our emotional, aesthetic and style tempo. At Paris Fashion Week (PFW), with a mega schedule of 72 shows and 37 presentations, that compass was whirling.

History has been at the forefront as Victorian dandies were on display at McQueen and Dior, who paraded 18th-century style doublets. There were shape shifting silhouettes (cubist tailoring at Junya Watanabe, padded hip maxi skirts and giant ruffled Jacobean shoulders at Alaia) and a taste for splendour; whether that be bejewelled baroque jackets at Schiaparelli; snapper back lambskin coats and tailored shorts at Hermès, or a floor length carnation red shearling fur coat at Balenciaga.   

The sheer array of concepts, the intricacy of craftsmanship and myriad points of view defy neat trend buckets. There’s a commitment in Paris to the extraordinary, to transcendence and to the ultimate seduction of deep-pocketed clients and fashion fans alike. Facing a luxury spending slump, designers are pushing ‘beyond’ on all levels.  

“I wanted to make things that can inspire, and that can never be replicated by fast fashion. The women in my life are lone stars - there’s no one else like them, and there could never be. I hope they, and all women, feel the same about these clothes,” said Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli.  

New beginnings

It was a week of standout debuts. British designer Sarah Burton, at Alexander McQueen for 26 years, made her start at Givenchy, where her former mentor and boss Alexander McQueen, and before him, John Galliano, have triumphed in the creative director position.

Burton, who is adored for her storytelling prowess as well as her remarkable aptitude for dressing real women (diverse ages and body types) began with a stack of Hubert de Givenchy’s sketches and patterns that had been hidden between two walls at the original maison and were discovered in 2018. It gave Burton insight into the spirit of the atelier and the hand of one of fashion’s most gifted couturiers who coined the Bettina blouse and Audrey Hepburn’s little black dresses in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  

But rather than pay strict homage, Burton let her powerful imagination soar and presented a study in stripped back elegance, starting with the literal foundations. There were pointy 50s brassieres and knickers under flounced hemmed mesh dresses, segueing into back to front sculpted tuxedo jackets and gorgeous chinoiserie embroidered opera coats.

The crescendo was a tulle strapless grand gown in sunburst yellow. With Cate Blanchett (last week sporting a curvy leather skirt suit straight from the runway), Timothée Chalamet and Ellie Fanning donning designs, the Givenchy world is sparkling again, and will be soon fuelled by the sale of ‘it items’ like the shiny ankle boots bearing the tag Givenchy 1952. 

Like Burton, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford opted for an intimate presentation – all the better to see his meticulous tailoring and colour palette that saw absinthe green fashioned into a duchesse satin-sleeved column dress, tiny sparkles on an immaculate tuxedo suit and languid men’s tailoring in violet and pistachio wool.  

Location, location! The ladies toilet might not be an obvious choice as a show set but Alessandro Michele turned to this place of intimate conversations and vanity as inspiration with models emerging from the red lacquered stalls (a cinematic take on Valentino’s famed red) to parade his deliciously frivolous gowns.   

“I imagined a public toilet: a counter-place that neutralises and suspends the dualism between inside and outside, between what is intimate and what is exposed, between the personal and the collective,” says Alessandro Michele, the Roman designer who is known for his philosophical thunk.

There’s lot to love between the sinuous fake fur-trimmed jackets; gold frill tiered evening dresses; silky slips worn over lace bodywear and neoprene hoodies. It was styled with a youthful freedom that eschews ladylike etiquette and signals Michele’s bid to woo a young fan club.

Since launching with a resort collection in 2024, Michele’s team are excelling in VIP dressing with a legion of actors donning Valentino’s ethereal, nostalgia-tinged confections.  

For his debut at Dries Van Noten, Julian Klausner, formerly head of women’s wear, captured the magic of the Paris Opera in resplendent form – baroque velvet coats dripping with jewels; a bolero made from silk curtain tassels; glimmering sequin skirts and emerald devoré velvet sarongs – that revelled in seductive drama. The brand, now owned by Puig, will open stores in London, Milan and New York this Spring.  

Fearless creativity

The Saturday schedule at PFW is always dedicated to the fearless creatives who work under the umbrella of the Comme des Garçons collective. Founder, the radical Rei Kawakubo, upturned bourgeois chic on its head with her black distressed ‘bag lady’ silhouettes in the 1980s.

To Led Zeppelin’s 'Stairway to Heaven', Kawakubo's protégé, Junya Watanabe, presented a vision with rock star guts, featuring leather and wool jackets with trapezoid protrusions (an acoustic enhancing design perhaps), bell bottoms and khaki M1 cocoons. His ‘rockers’ looked blissed-out in this sonic world. 

Meanwhile, Kei Ninomiya at Noir pursued his vision of engineered sculptures (he never uses seams or zips) in joyful designs like a gown made of giant rainbow textural bows, or one in resin-coated candyfloss-like swirls. The mission? “To achieve expression impossible with just fabrics,” says Ninomiya.  

At Comme des Garçons, the indefatigable Kawakubo explored questions of size and aimless repetition to an audience of visionaries, including lensman Paolo Roversi.  “Smaller is stronger,” stated Kawakubo. “Recently we feel that big business, big culture, global systems, world structures maybe are not so great after all,” she notes of her pathway. 

To that end, she set about imploding and distorting classic tropes, such as the pinstripe and houndstooth skirt suits that opened the show, with jackets boasting helter-skelter 3D shapes, and skirts with jutting-out angles. That amplification continued, including a sheath dress in shades of pink velvet made from multiple stacked pattern parts, topped by a mutant-fringed hat with two crowns. Kawakubo’s perverse twist on perspectives and angles is akin to viewing a Picasso.   

Body work

Exploring identity, sexuality and the anatomy, Dutch designer Duran Lantink is a big talent who moulds fabric, exaggerating the female hourglass. This season, sleek sheaths with foam padded contoured hips, animal print leggings and coats with exaggerated curved shoulders appeared in a faux workspace setting. In Lantnik’s Orlando world everything is fluid: a male model paraded in silicon boobs, while a female model wore a vest made to look like a rippling torso.  

Anatomy is also at the core of Pieter Mulier’s terrific vision for Alaïa, and he works in the footprints of Azzedine Alaïa himself. Developing highly technical materials – skin-fine jersey, wool that looks like fur - he champions innovation and the kind of sculptural proportions that turn mere mortals into otherworldly sirens.

Hips are eroticised with fringe hula skirts, jackets given giant snaking tubular trims, and sensuous dresses draped, slashed and tied. 

Physical splendour is why women adore and seriously collect Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli. The creative has fused his Texan roots with Schiaparelli’s flamboyant artistry in wasp-waisted jackets, body contouring dresses constructed from satin ribbons, and bejewelled pagoda shouldered trophy tops. 

Note: big buckle belts, cordovan leather handbags and western boots are back in high style at Schiaparelli - and ready to stroll grand boulevards and rodeos alike. 

Women on the move

Women who move inspired the creative studio at Chanel. The Grand Palais was transformed with a giant spiralling ribbon and bow installation.

House tweeds were cut into elegant linear suits featuring coat dresses over flared trousers in shades of raspberry, ochre and khaki, topped with sombreros. Bomber jackets were trimmed with ribbon ruffles while tulle capes and robes veiled miniskirts and shorts. Giant pearls were everywhere, even making a signature heel.

It was wildly pretty and highly versatile, but the real oomph of innovation will be witnessed in October when incoming artistic director Matthieu Blazy makes his debut.  

Respect for women who get things done (and don’t look back) is a motivation for Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski at Hermès, who masterfully worked leather, silk and cashmere into high-functioning luxury such as reversible coats, saddle flap shorts and marbled velvet tube dresses with skin revealing zippers. “Sculptural, resilient, seductive,” is Vanhée-Cybulski's holy trinity - and the mantra is attracting a consistently high turnover at this heritage maison.   

Travellers in Time and Space

Fashion is a portal into the past, into the future, and Seán McGirr is deftly playing with history and time in his third collection for Alexander McQueen. Embracing the sartorial precision of the neo-dandy were ruff-necked lace blouses, peeping above fitted torso jackets, gold bullion embroidered cloaks, and a series of flamboyant chiffon dresses in fuchsia or iced lilac, made of giant furls and plumes that might have been teleported from a Victorian music hall. 

Travel is a real money maker at Louis Vuitton, with its 19th century trunk making giant accessories even bigger business. The set design team transformed L'Étoile du Nord, a building adjacent to the Gare du Nord, into a giant concourse catwalk for a cast of models styled as traveller archetypes: the sporty dude, the footloose beauty, the musician, the uniformed corporate worker, the multi-tasking mother.

Nicolas Ghesquière’s anthropological study proved heart-warming and made for thrilling viewing. The vast collection featured latex raincoats, divine silk slips with giant ruffles, hooded knit coats, giant cloche hats, slouchy boots, leather-trimmed cape coats (all the better for going incognito), and gabardine flying suits.

Fictive belongings were packed into striped mini trunks, roll bags, LV monogram violin cases and hip slung bags. The track? Kraftwerk’s 'Trans Orient Express'. The moving silhouettes were filmed and screened through the windows on the floors above, with the human parade then dissolving into the blur of a bullet train. And it all sweetly aligns - hospitality and travel group Belmond is owned by LVMH, and the Orient Express is the cherry on top of its expanding portfolio cake. 

As thousands of fashion folk headed back to airports and rail stations, Ghesquière made a grand salute to the wonder and privilege of travel.