It Rained Happy, Sad & Angry Tears in Paris, the True City of Showgirls
Goodness gracious, what a month it has been. With Paris having now wound down, we really ought to take a breather, after such surprise-heavy fashion weeks and all the marvelous debutantes that entailed.
New York threw a fest of pinstripes, polkadots, and lots of brown, whereas Milan gave us bulky shoulders, baggy pleats, and bold pops of color. But so, what happened in France then?
Well, let's just say the hotly discussed inaugurations of Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier, Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, and the Proenza Schouler founders at LOEWE (sharp inhale), offered plenty of foretelling style cues to pluck from for Spring/Summer 2026.
While some of the above were more warmly received than others, they were all united in their expression of hunger for newness while keeping each one eye at their rearview mirrors.
At Balenciaga, this meant a variety of modernized flashbacks to the (g)olden days of Cristóbal and nods to his favored balloon, babydoll, and sack shapes. Bulbous skirts, platform flip flops, feathers, and a range of Demna-evoking, bug-like eyewear completed a collage of references that felt at once fresh and familiar.
Similarly, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez took over from Jonathan Anderson (now at Dior), and made sure to further nurture the artisanal oddballness that has become so inherent to LOEWE.
The accessories were weird, the clothes even weirder, and the shoes perhaps Paris' weirdest, but impeccably crafted all the same, in translucent gummy and vibrant leathers, oversized one place and fitted in others.
But the grand finale (and emotional climax) of Fashion Month was, of course, ex-Bottega Veneta creative director Matthieu Blazy's Big Bang moment at Chanel.
Reflected in everything from the intergalactic set design to the dance music soundtrack and elegant bending of Coco-isms, this debut was meant to signal a restart — one in total devotion to the legacy, codes, and, well, universe of the house. Boxy tweeds, floral embellishments, and boyishly dropped waists confronted, ever so eye-winkingly, the masculine with the feminine, in true Chanel fashion.
'Twas a line-up of shows that really reckoned with the dichotomies of hard versus soft, of fluidity to structure, the fun opposite the serious.
Designers this time around made us laugh, cry, and curse at what we witnessed, across what was a season of runway presentations with the force of fiction's best hero and villain tales.
Talk about the Life of Showgirls, huh?
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