Chanel: Ready-to-wear AW16
A big show, but not a big top. Chanel stripped it all back to virtually nothing at the Grand Palais, a super-size salon with several thousand seats, spectacular - but very different to an airport or French brasserie. The show
Sonia Rykiel: Ready-to-wear AW16
Julie de Libran has established her Sonia Rykiel woman - or rather, women. But this season, she took us out of the shop (where only so many women can fit) and into the Beaux Arts round the corner, to get
Giambattista Valli: Ready-to-wear AW16
We wish we were Valli girls. They get the loveliest dresses, the prettiest embroideries, and the best seats - Lee Radziwill, sister-of-you-know-who and Giambattista Valli’s unofficial house mother, was sat front row this parade of dresses made in her image.
Hedi Slimane’s Surprise Saint Laurent Couture Show
Gilt-Plaques chairs engraved with names. No music - only a sound announcing the numbers as each model descended the marble staircase of an haute couture house. What was this, 1985? Yes - look at the shoulders! Oh, wait, no, it’s
Hermès: Ready-to-wear AW16
Hermès is a simple but difficult proposition: layers of house history to evoke, millions of items to sell. Oh, and a bunch of press and buyers to get excited as the season pulls to its close. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski is a
Sacai: Ready-to-wear AW16
Love was the theme at Chitose Abe’s Sacai show - and the fashion world loves Sacai (us included) so how appropriate? It was play on the declaration that “love will save the day” - the characters of the statement re-imagined
Stella McCartney: Ready-to-wear AW16
Stella McCartney’s show was all about signature Stella. What does that mean? Well it’s less about an actual item of clothing - although obviously there were plenty of them - and more about a mood or attitude. There was plenty
Hermès: AW16 Live Stream
Fashion, direct to your computer screen. We'll be live streaming Hermès' AW16 show today, right here, via the wonders of the world wide web. It all begins at 3.30pm GMT so ignore the necessity to well, work, and fall instead into a gloriously
John Galliano: Ready-to-wear AW16
The bias-cut slip dress is a foundation of the entire John Galliano label: Bill Gaytten, the house of Galliano’s creative director, is a technical wizard. So this collection returned to what both he and the house do best, which is
Givenchy: Ready-to-wear AW16
With models whizzing around a wooden maze in central Paris, Riccardo Tisci recreated all the drama and magic of Ancient Egypt for Givenchy. He loves a bit of mystery, does Tisci. This season, he fused Egyptian culture with sixties psychedelia
Roland Mouret: Ready-to-wear AW16
The coven! Roland Mouret’s dark, attitude-laden and bewitching winter collection was kind of a coven of witches - albeit ones practising white magic, the kind that may spirit away a pair of his pointy-point stilettos rather than cast anyone down
Céline: Ready-to-wear AW16
Phoebe Philo is plugged in to what women want to wear - and how they want to feel. A sense of easy, of practicality, of simplicity and precision. All those elements came through in her winter Céline show, in the
Balenciaga: Ready-to-wear AW16
A couture attitude - that was the notion of Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga debut. It wasn’t couture, of course - it was, in fact, decidedly ready-to-wear, rooted in the wardrobe of everyday (parkas, suiting, fur-collared belted coats) but given a sense
Nina Ricci: Ready-to-wear AW16
It’s all about sex at Nina Ricci. I mean, it wasn’t always, but Guillaume Henry has fixated on seduction as emblematic of the Nina Ricci house, and hence he’s dressing women in full-on on-the-pull gear, in slithery lingerie slips and
Acne Studios: Ready-to-wear AW16
D-rings and tyre soles and jack-wires and utilitarian stuff was all over the place at Acne Studios. It reminded us a bit of that CBBC show “Bits”, where they’d make, say, a chocolate factory from a load of old boxes