For those who live and die by fashion, there is no greater thrill than attending a Comme des Garçons show. Every element makes it a singular experience: The ravenous fan kids lined up outside the venue, dressed head-to-toe in Rei Kawakubo’s intricate, otherworldly creations. The clients and buyers and collectors, united in their love of the brand. The designers who ache for inspiration these days, waiting for the show to start so that they can breathe in a little bit of Kawakubo’s magic.
This season, that magic felt more important than ever. The moment the first look hit the runway–something of a suit dress made of classic men’s pinstripe fabric that had been sculpted into undulating waves—everyone in the room knew we were about to be blown away. In a season where heart-pounding fashion moments have been few and far between, the exhilaration couldn’t have come sooner.
The pinstripe creation gave way to a few more Comme-ian distortions of traditional menswear tailoring, followed by elaborate, floral-bedecked hot pink and red dresses with ruffles and abstract-looking bows. Velvet layers of single dresses were stitched together to make one, while elsewhere pleating and pintucking gave way to amorphous shapes and silhouettes.
It was all a reminder of the power of great clothes, the kind that leave us feeling protected but also hopeful and inspired. The sense of optimism was ripe—in the fashion, and in the community that comes together around Kawakubo, a beautiful swirl of collective otherness.
A similar feeling took hold at both Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto. The former was inspired by the music and the attitude of Jimi Hendrix. It was rock-n-roll and punk and Watanabe at his finest, with jackets made of wigs and shape-shifting tops and dresses. Yamamoto’s women had their own kind of middle finger-to-the-man attitude, with mixed-material coats and dresses constructed with twisted, knotted fabric and geometric paneling and embroidery.
At the end of Yamamoto’s show, groups of models walked out together and, in what felt like a choreographed act of defiance, took off their long black coats, turned them inside out to reveal the purple lining, and swapped them with one another. It was a communal movement among women, a chance to share in each other’s similarities and differences. The dance felt poignant at a time in history where women need to stick together more than ever.
How to dress for the harsh realities of the moment has been on the minds of many designers this season. The word “armor” keeps coming up, but although we want to feel protected, isn’t it sometimes more productive—and inspiring—to feel uncomfortable? To wear clothes that push our own boundaries, even just a little bit?
Junya Watanabe Ready to Wear Fall Winter 2025
You don’t have to wear a coat made of wigs to do that. For some, coloring outside the lines of fashion might be as simple as trying a Akris dress embroidered with layers of thickly-cut fringe. It might mean wearing the leather jacket, trousers, and top-handle bag that Hermès rendered in mossy green, or the grey wool pants that Sacai’s Chitose Abe covered in big black paillettes from the knees down. Or the blouse with extreme pleating at the neck and wrists from Sean McGirr’s bold new McQueen. One might find a similar rush in Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, where massive shoulders and jewel-toned hues offer a vision of modern power dressing that’s far more exciting than your average workplace uniform.
Making the familiar unfamiliar is something that Demna has been doing at Balenciaga for the last ten years. In his Fall 2025 collection, he did it with a bathing suit that came with a long train and a puffer coat fashioned into a belted evening gown. But he also found a softer approach this season, focusing on the simplicity of a beautifully designed, everyday suit, and athletic wear befitting dudes walking around the Champs Elysees. “We live in a time where everybody wants to be a main character,” Demna said backstage. “It’s like a video game. But what do we really want from fashion now? What I want to do now is make great clothes for the customer who relates to the aesthetic and for people who experience fashion, rather than those who speculate about it.”
What Demna was referring to was the rumor mill swirl about what creative director will go to which giant luxury brand and when. It’s all the fashion industry wants to talk about and frankly, it’s getting boring. To Demna’s point, it is far more important to focus on those who are the real future of fashion, the independent labels that are giving us fresh ideas and building original codes of style that are all about taking up space.
Balenciaga Ready to Wear FW 2025
Rick Owens is the godfather of independent fashion movements, and following in his platformed footprints this season have been plenty of hungry young talent making much-needed noise. Hodakova is one, as is All-In—two labels that use upcycled and found materials to craft ready-to-wear with punch and personality. Cynthia Merhej of Renaissance Renaissance is subverting and recontextualizing femininity and romance, while Laura and Deanna Fanning are building a new world of kooky silhouettes and textured layering for cool girls at Kiko Kostadinov.
Marine Serre showed her fall collection inside Paris’ Museum of Money this season, a move meant to comment on the trials and triumphs of any emerging brand. Her collection centered around bourgeois notions of style and the idea of helping women to feel elegant and sensual. She achieved this with exaggerated “New Look” silhouettes, lady gloves worn with pretty corseted dresses and furs, and one dress made entirely of silver steel watch bands.
“I want other independent designers to know that it is possible to build a brand,” Serre explained after the show. “I think it is important for them to know in this difficult financial time. And it’s also to say [to the luxury brands and conglomerates] that we own Paris too.”
Serre’s message was one of the most profoundly optimistic of the season. Even though the show wasn’t built on the scale of a luxury brand with billions of marketing dollars behind it, it made an impact because it stood apart, because she has built a business on her own terms and is encouraging her peers to do the same.
Backstage at Duran Lantink
Duran Lantink’s brilliant fall collection also made a big impact this season. The designer showed in an office space full of people in cubicles who stampedpaper as they sang opera from lavalier microphones. Lantink is succinct when he speaks about his collections, but that’s probably because his designs can do all the talking.
The show opened with model Mica Argañaraz wearing a second-skin top molded to look like a man’s chiseled torso. Those of us watching the show perked up immediately, and the good vibes kept going. Lantink’s collection featured his now-signature ready-to-wear that defies proportion: structured dresses and tops with silhouettes that look as though they’ve been inflated with helium and frozen in a forever state of pouf.
In pursuit of creating the characters he calls “Duranimals,” he mixed up animal prints with camouflage and plaids and put some models in too-big hunter hats. The collection had a little bit of everything: sharp design, raucous humor, good and bad taste. There were butt-revealing pants and, of course, the closing look you’ve probably already seen all over social media: a male model named Chandler wearing another second-skin molded top with big, bouncy boobs that shook and jiggled as he walked.
After the show, it was easy to find fashion editors, critics, and industry vets calling it one of their favorites of the season. That’s probably because it pushed them out of their comfort zones with the boobs and butts and outrageously beautiful new proportion play and piled-on prints. Or because it made them laugh and made them think. Or maybe it’s because they got a view into what the future of fashion might hold, thanks to those designers who dare to be different.
