In a city like Paris, fashion is as much about ideas as it is aesthetics, and each season reveals a dialogue between designers, revealing shared preoccupations that transcend individual houses. This year, taut silhouettes took centre stage, reinforcing the industry’s enduring fascination with precision and form. Some, like Rick Owens, were bound by house codes of sculptural display, while others (see: the Miuccia camp) continued to revisit structure in feminine forms.
Christian Dior
Case in point: Dior’s corset-laden presentation brought life back to boning and structure. Maria Grazia Chiuri’s collection summoned the spirit of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – replete with crinoline, white-crimped collars, velvet jacquards and lace. Chiuri’s Dior has always been dreamy, but this time it was lanced with starched hats, stiff-ended materials, and a dosing of gender nonconformity. Autumn winter 25 extended the boldness of Woolf’s text through the fabric story told at Dior. “Women at the beginning of the last century – they were breaking the rules, wearing men’s clothes, and men too,” Chiuri said before the show, taking inspiration from their ever-fluctuating wardrobes to design her own. “To be transversal in our day today is very important.” And the silhouettes that took charge were assured – no matter the wearer.
Vivienne Westwood
Andreas Konthaler’s 30-year residency continued with 56 Westwood tailored looks on the sixth day of Paris Fashion Week. Models were fitted in sharp, plaid creases, styled in neckties that swept the floor. In memory of his late partner, Konthaler’s Westwood also celebrated hats: vast, rigid constructions somewhere between a pork pie hat and a fedora.
Velvet and tulle rounded out shoulders with padding. Trench coats pulled gravity to the floor. The show notes declared “There’s nothing sexier than a suit!”, and Konthaler integrated this ethos by revising the form with adornment. Never precocious, everything remained artful with the Westwood sentimentalities still at the fore of the presentation.
Miu Miu
Since 1993, Miu Miu has been Miuccia Prada’s girlish, younger offshoot. At root of both of Mrs Prada labels, however, is a spirit of femininity that anchors women in the modern age of dress. This year’s display was named ‘Femininities’, and proved the very same. Brooches, knee-high socks paired with flat brogues, riding hats and buttery sweaters provided a textural depiction of womanhood in its cusping stage – the transitions between girl and woman interweaving every aspect of the show.
At the Palais D’lena, hemlines consistently reached the knee – all but erasing the memory of those infamous Miu Miu miniskirts. Though the garments remained rich in narrative, structure took on new dimensions with fur accessories and sleek cloche hats atop polished, flyaway-free hair. For the women Mrs Prada dresses, structure is a lifeline to the past to reprise for today.
Rick Owens
At ‘Concordians’, Rick Owens has ascended to his final form, whatever that may be. The high concept was signature black, pleating which skirts the flow of logic and textured leather. The show was an isolationist pit where tautly made looks emerged from a white-shrouded haze.
The collection was inspired by Owens’ early years living in the Italian town of Concordia, where form would begin to crop up through his designs. Asymmetry wound its way back into the collection, as did hyperstylised draping and deconstructed gowns. Only this time, skin bared out from punctured holes. Everything echoed the Rick Owens we know: dark, brutal, sharply wielded.
