What You Need to Know About the Paris Haute Couture Collections

I hopped off my rented electric bike just as it started raining. As I waited for one of the men at the door—a model, surely, moonlighting as a man with an iPad looking after a coveted guest list—a handful of black cars lined up on the quiet street in the 7th arrondissement in Paris. Two women descended from one of them, one with a fur coat (real, I presume; fox, not mink) over her shoulders. The other carried a crocodile Lady Dior bag.

We were walking into Villa Dior, a destination for very important clients (VICs) following Jonathan Anderson’s debut couture show for the label earlier that day. This was presumably the first time that Dior had invited a select few members of the press—lucky me!—to participate in the client mixer, a cocktail party-cum shopping event during which VICs can see, and potentially order, the collection.

My assumption is that Dior wanted us to see the clothes up close in the newly renovated space, as well as witness the enthusiasm with which the droves of clients engaged with the collection.

Both delivered. Anderson crafted a remarkably considered couture lineup that encompassed knitwear, tailoring, and an abundance of embellishments that included minute beading, featherwork, and even ceramics. While the collection seemed surprisingly merchandised at the show — it’s rare to see such an abundance of handbags and logos on a couture runway — it unfolded beautifully at the villa, where each piece had its individual moment to shine, unencumbered by stoles and handbags and earrings and multi-layered styling.

As I had also seen a few days earlier at a high jewelry appointment at Dior, some clients took notes on their phones or notepads, while others captured photos as they picked up hand-embellished jackets or impressively belabored feathered skirts from the racks. Placing them against their bodies to fit with the same confidence and ease those in my tax bracket do at, say, Uniqlo, I realized that some experiences are truly universal, even as I wondered if I should even be touching the couture.

“Couture should stay couture,” a woman next to me said to her companion, disapprovingly, as she looked at a knit dress. It’s a sentiment I heard many times this season, mostly from onlookers, as Millennial designers like Anderson and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel take the leap to design for the last bastion of old world luxury. It’s also a sentiment I often disagree with, as did another woman I overheard, this time speaking in Spanish: “I loved it, I want everything,” she said, waiting for her turn to hold a floral black jacket that a Chinese woman was photographing. As reported by Puck, only fewer than a dozen looks available were left to purchase from the US region’s allotment.

I followed two elegant blonde women into a room where handbags were being exhibited in wooden vitrines. I felt as if I had stumbled into a gallery of objects from the 18th century at the Louvre.

“Every bag is one of a kind, so if you see one you like…” explained a member of the Dior team. The women started discussing a selection of clutches, each displayed next to its name, hand-written in French. (Rêveries d’iris read the card next to one made of two kinds of jacquard and decorated with a beaded flower.) “Trés chic” offered one of them, before the other turned her attention to a Lady Dior bag covered in black and orange feathers. Her glance then seemed to focus on another. Its card read: “Lady Dior bag in black molded alligator… limited edition in collaboration with Magdalene Odundo.”

As part of the roll out of his debut couture line, Anderson hosted both the Villa event and a panel conversation with Odundo, an acclaimed ceramics artist, moderated by curator Olivier Gabet at the Musée Rodin. Select key pieces from Anderson’s collection are on display at a special gallery space, the same one where the show was held, through this Sunday, February 1. They are placed next to others by Christian Dior himself, plus works by Odundo. The idea is to establish parallels between Anderon’s work and the heritage of Dior, but also acts as an excuse to invite fans to see the clothes up close. (Unlike museums in Paris, Villa Dior is not free for all on the first Sunday of each month.)

Anderson has the right instinct in trying to score with both clients and fans with one swing. He also understands that collections like his are consumed differently in each context. “Sometimes it’s nice to see a garment without the interference of the human being, because you see it as form,” said Anderson at the talk: His collection could at times look stiff on the runway — though each piece, even the most structured ones, were surprisingly light. Experiencing it both as clothes on a rack and pieces in a museum was fascinating. The collection is comprised of unique and impressively made clothes, yet they left a more lasting impact as objects in the exhibition. This is perhaps because I experienced them like any other museum goer at a gallery filled with precious things: As an object you can’t touch, and will never own.

“Democratic” is how Tilda Swinton described Blazy’s approach to couture to me when I spoke to her after the Chanel show, which took place at the Grand Palais inside a Smurfs-like village with little mushrooms and trees all covered in the same optimistic shade of baby pink. (Gracie Abrams told me it reminded her more of Horton Hears a Who!) Swinton was referring to the way in which Blazy’s singularly focused collection contextualized couture for today: No corsets or extravagant gowns in sight, but rather skirt suits, dresses, and even a pair of trompe l’oeil “jeans” in featherweight fabrics, often topped off with beadwork and feathers.

If there was any criticism of Blazy’s work at Bottega Veneta, where he worked prior to taking the top job at Chanel, it is that it could at times appear heavy — lots of materials, including woven leathers and chunky knitwear — fashioned into oftentimes hulking silhouettes. I was a fan, but understood the sentiment. While this couture outing at first seemed to address those detractors head on, the idea was dissipated by the understanding that Blazy was up to something greater; turning Chanel into a contemporary proposition. “It could have been made in the 1930s!” Swinton quipped, nodding at how Blazy so accurately hit the mark of Coco Chanel’s original ethos of ease.

Blazy has been put in competition with Anderson by industry onlookers — fashion people love a dash of drama — and whose debut would come out on top was the talk of Paris prior to the shows. But they couldn’t have been more different in approach. Anderson said he was thinking of women in the 1930s who would leave the opera in a gown with a clutch and a fur stole draping over one shoulder — in brief, he was going for the glamour of the old world merged with the style of today. Blazy said he was thinking of women wearing his couture all over — to work, the store, at home. While much of the world has the idea that couture consists only of gowns made to be worn to galas and film premieres, the small subset of people who can actually purchase it wear it everywhere, whenever.

The few reactions from clients I overheard at the show were positive. Others I spoke to directly called it delightful and covetable. “Relatable” is a word I heard at least thrice. The most robust feedback came from an avid couture shopper I spoke to later. She said that while Blazy’s Bottega Veneta was not for her, she could see herself buying his Chanel, particularly this collection.

“I will miss Karl [Lagerfeld] forever,” she said, “but it’s time to move on.”

Paris Haute Couture week takes place in late January and early July each year, and each time it kicks off with Daniel Roseberry’s show for Schiaparelli. This season, Roseberry went “turbo,” as he said at the label’s couture salon on Place Vendôme. In his usual cheekiness, he recreated the jewels from the Louvre heist and put them on Teyana Taylor, who sat front row, securing himself a healthy dose of Internet engagement. He also made extravagant, extraterrestrial silhouettes covered in feathers with protruding claws and wings and even scorpion tails. It was as fantastic as it was outlandish, and his best collection in recent memory. Online pundits said it was a little reminiscent of the work of the late Alexander McQueen — a reductive and superficial comparison that hinged mostly in their shared use of avian motifs.

While some designers make couture worthy of viral internet momentum and a fashion fanatic’s dreams, it can be less clear if it makes for proper commercial propositions. But in Roseberry’s case, his couture is a commercial hit. Not unlike Coco Chanel herself, he has achieved something singular in this century: To produce a new haute couture uniform. If society women had Chanel tweed skirt suits then, the über wealthy today have those plus a black Schiaparelli one with mismatched golden buttons (a nose, an eye, a hint of bijoux). They wear those like a badge of honor as they climb up the stairs of the Petit Palais to attend Roseberry’s shows.

This season, couture week fixture and famed-client Fredrik Robertsson arrived in one of those paired with a Schiaparelli high-jewelry face-piece. He took a drag out of a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the bit not covered by the golden lips hovering over his own. Lauren Amos, another well-known client who is also the founder of Antidote, a fashion forward retailer in Atlanta, seemed ecstatic after the show, running around eager to take pictures of the models before they retreated to the backstage area. “Amazing!” she said, as she shimmied in a dramatic black frock.

Alessandro Michele’s second Valentino couture show was another standout. Michele’s designs, which often offer reverence to the past, fit right in within the kaiserpanoramas — an early-20th century invention — in which he showed his collection. It was a voyeuristic, memorable, and strangely sexy experience, and the clothes were great, too. Michele has found the sweet spot between his penchant for theatricality and some honest-to-goodness, wearable clothes. “I want everything!” a VIC told me over Instagram DM shortly after.

Valentino Garavani, the house’s founder, passed away just over a week before Wednesday’s show. Michele faced a dilemma: To alter his scheduled show to play out as a tribute, or keep it as-is and honor the late designer further down the line. He seemed to have opted for the former, and to great effect. A terrific show was the best ode Michele could have given Mr. Valentino.

Silvana Armani, the niece of the late Giorgio Armani, who died in September of 2025, was faced with a similar conundrum. This was the first Armani Privé show since the her uncle’s passing, and her first flying solo. (Silvana has been the head of the women’s style office at Giorgio Armani, the company, for years, designing the women’s collections at Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani, the label, under her uncle.) She presented an honest effort. Looking past the excess of a seafoam green color (the collection was titled “Jade”), the clothes paraded around the second story of the Palazzo Armani seemed to delicately aim to modernize the Privé labe — they were more sensual, mostly unfuzzy, and seemed to be aimed at a wider age demographic.

“I found it very elegant, very Armani,” I overheard a woman, likely in her mid 50s, telling another in Spanish. They were both wearing Privé looks from past collections. “I would wear most of it,” she said. Her friend replied, visibly less moved: “I don’t know, a lot of it felt very young, for a flat [chested] girl,” she said, “I think Giorgio understood us a little more.”

Michelle Pfeiffer, a longtime Armani customer who was seated next to Kate Hudson, Gemma Chan, and others at the Paris show, appeared convinced. “That was beautiful,” she said when we coincidentally took the elevator together. As we walked out into a hallway packed with models, still in their runway looks, she said quietly: “Armani would be proud.”

The most extravagant of scenes, however, did not take place during couture week but two days prior. Véronique Nichanian showed her final collection for Hermès after helming the menswear side of the business for 38 years. The mega-show took place, fittingly so, at the Palais Brongniart, a 19th-century stock exchange commissioned by Napoleon. Usher and Travis Scott were in attendance, with the former signing a VICs’ Birkin bag.