The fashion industry is in a moment of historic change: by the end of this season of shows, no fewer than 14 creative directors will have presented their debut collections at some of the world’s best-known brands, a seismic shake-up which will no doubt reshape the style landscape for several years to come (add to that a number of sophomore collections from designers who debuted last season and you really do have a new chapter in fashion).
And, while we have already had a handful of debuts in New York and Milan, it is in Paris that we will see the opening gambits from some major players: most notably that of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, taking place on the evening of Monday 6 October, a debut that has had fervent anticipation since the former Bottega Veneta designer’s appointment was announced in December. Elsewhere, Jonathan Anderson will present his first womenswear collection for Dior, while Pierpaolo Piccioli, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez and Duran Lantink will also have high-profile debuts at Balenciaga, Loewe and Jean Paul Gaultier respectively.
Here, in our round-up of our standout shows of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2026 – reported as they happen from the French capital – we will unpack these debuts, alongside a slew of other runway shows taking place across the week, from the blockbuster (Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent) to the avant-garde (Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens). For more PFW happenings, don’t miss out live blog.
Louis Vuitton
(Image credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton)
Though Nicolas Ghesquière has presented his collections numerous times at the Louvre across his tenure at Louis Vuitton – all the way back to his debut in 2014, which was held in the palace’s Cour Carrée – for S/S 2026, he chose the lesser-visited former summer apartments of Anne of Austria, Queen of France as his runway (in fact, the spaces are currently closed to public as they are in the midst of a renovation, opening again in 2027). Ghesquière said he had been thinking about the idea of intimacy, ‘the boundless freedom of the private sphere’.
In the opulent apartments, where Anne of Austria would once have roamed, Ghesquière presented a collection which reimagined hallmarks of ‘indoor’ dressing – swaddling robes, nightdresses, slippers – in imaginative style. As ever, it was an idiosyncratic melange of elements, traversing eras and styles – elongated pointed collars looked picked from a monarch’s wardrobe, while shaggy shearling collars, plissé ruffles and turbans suggested a louche 1970s glamour. Other elements seemed to recall domestic interiors: sweeping draped dresses could be read as curtains, while bows, tassels and opulent embroidered flowers evoked home furnishings.
As is Ghesquière’s skill, the borrowed elements were both recognisable and hard to place – his Vuitton woman is never restrained to a singular place or time. Instead, it was a testament, said Ghesquière, to the idea of individual style: ‘The ultimate luxury of dressing for oneself and revealing one’s true personality,’ he described. With this, it fits neatly into the season’s emerging theme: the idea of liberation through clothing, the freedom to dress as you please. Jack Moss
(Image credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton)
Lanvin
(Image credit: Courtesy of Lanvin)
Last week, Lanvin announced ‘Lanvin Blue’, a new signature colour developed by creative director Peter Copping and M/M (Paris) – a nod to house founder Jeanne Lanvin’s favoured colour, a fixation that began with the skies of Fra Angelico’s frescoes (over the French couturier’s career, she would develop 23 shades of blue in her Nanterre dye factory). At yesterday afternoon’s runway show, blue provided a bold backdrop to Copping’s sophomore outing for the house, which evolved the 1920s-inflected vision of his debut earlier this year. This included Jeanne Lanvin’s signature robe de style dress of the era – a garment that drew on the wide, panniered gowns of the 18th century, loosened from restriction and dropped at the waistline to reflect the decade’s radically changing dress codes (a version also opened this season’s show, featuring a trim of bows around the neckline and a ruffled hem).
The use of blue is symbolic of Copping’s vision for the house, which is rooted in the Lanvin archive, and Jeanne Lanvin herself – after his first show in February, he described it as an ‘homage’ to the couturier… ‘I sought to project the essence of her wardrobe today while imagining it on a cast of modern characters,’ he said. It is a leap between centuries that feels particularly pertinent this year – 2025 marks 100 years of art deco, the movement with which Jeanne Lanvin is most associated (in 1925, Armand-Albert Rateau – a leading designer and furniture maker in the movement – designed a trio of blue-coloured rooms in her apartment, now on display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs).
Here, the era’s liberated spirit came in billowing silk blouses, diaphanous twisted dresses and draped headscarves, while surface decoration – in beading and sequins – recalled deco motifs. As we reach the mid-point of our own (perhaps not so) roaring twenties, the idea of freedom through clothing that Jean Lanvin sought feels more vital than ever – a parallel Copping cleverly struck in this sophomore show. Jack Moss
(Image credit: Courtesy of Lanvin)
Courrèges
(Image credit: Courtesy of Courrèges)
Nicolas di Felice’s mind was still on the beach – or, indeed, looking forward to next summer spent on one, the time when this collection will arrive in stores. Swapping his usual square-shaped runway for a circle (still conceived alongside artist Rémy Brière and Matière Noire, longtime collaborators), Di Felice imagined a ‘solar ascension’, designing a collection that was built around the heat of the sun on a summer’s day – specifically, from 21 degrees in the morning to 30 degrees in the heady warmth of the afternoon (in the showspace, this was imagined by the light changing from cool optic white to a warm, sunlit yellow).
Protection was a theme: the opening looks featured cleverly draped hats that shielded the models’ faces (the design was a reinterpretation of a piece from the house’s archive), while sculptural dresses took inspiration from sun visors. Skin-bearing looks provided a juxtaposition, with swimsuit-style bodysuits, mini dresses and tank tops featuring graphic cut-outs – a contemporary nod to the house founder’s space-age silhouettes. ‘Melting’ metal jewellery completed the look, which continued Di Felice’s astute reinterpretation of André Courrèges’ pioneering spirit. ‘As designers, it’s our duty to provide a unique point of view,’ Di Felice told Wallpaper* earlier this year. ‘It’s one of the many, many things I admire about André Courrèges: he wasn’t afraid of radical thinking.’ Jack Moss
(Image credit: Courtesy of Courrèges)
Dries Van Noten
(Image credit: Photography by Victor Virgile/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
It was the day of sophomore shows: after Peter Copping’s at Lanvin, Julien Klausner swiftly followed with his own second womenswear collection for Dries Van Noten (between his debut and now, he also showed a widely acclaimed menswear show this past June). There were no signs of the tricky second album here – the Belgian designer is already honing a vision for the label that is undeniably ‘Dries’ (Klausner worked on the brand’s design team for some years before taking the role), but has its own feeling of freshness and play. An eclectic use of colour and print (longtime hallmarks of the Antwerp-based brand) continued to define the collection, which saw clashing motifs of flowers, stripes and polka dots slowly blown up in size as the show went on – all the way to the closing looks, where the patterns became bold abstracted forms. It felt an apt companion piece to the menswear show earlier this year, where stripes and sequins were used to similarly striking effect. ‘Approaching this collection, I had in mind the Dries Van Noten wardrobe that I always loved – traditional yet daring, the different layers of dressing up,’ he said back then. This collection delighted in a similarly audacious spirit – one laced with the romance and sensitivity which defined Dries Van Noten’s best collections. Jack Moss
(Image credit: Photography by Victor Virgile/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Stella McCartney
(Image credit: Courtesy of Stella McCartney)
Stella McCartney drafted Helen Mirren to serve as the opening act for her S/S 2026 show, which took place yesterday evening at the Pompidou Centre. Clad in a grey suit from the British label, Mirren read the lyrics of The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ – a song McCartney chose for its plea for unity (so the story goes, the song began life as an attempt by John Lennon to write a campaign song for LSD advocate Timothy Leary’s Governor of California run). Its central message, said McCartney (herself a longtime activist), felt particularly pertinent in turbulent political times – ‘Come together for humanity, animals and Mother Earth,’ was the designer’s own appeal to the gathered audience. In the collection, this was figured through typically innovative fabrications, free of animal cruelty and with meticulous sustainable credentials, from ‘Fevvers’ – a plant-based alternative to animal feathers – to Pure.Tech, the first ‘programmable’ fabric that ‘absorbs and neutralises pollutants including CO₂ and NOx’. The latter was applied to deconstructed denim, part of a collection which was built on the idea of juxtapositions: ‘masculine and feminine, grounded yet ethereal’. Wide-shouldered power tailoring – a redux of last season’s ‘Working Girl’ look – and baggy carpenter trousers represented the former, while sequined minis, froths of ruffles and body-wrapping gowns captured a contemporary femininity. Jack Moss
(Image credit: Courtesy of Stella McCartney)
