Views: 20
Haute Couture week is upon us, and Paris is alive with the clack of A-listers’ heels on pavement. This season, there are a number of highly anticipated sophomore couture presentations, from Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and a second solo outing from Silvana Armani. Couture season provides an opportunity for Creative Directors and their ateliers to lose themselves in craft and the archives, as well as take measured risks in a fashion ecosystem increasingly driven by commercial imperatives. As new creative forces take the helm at some of fashion’s greatest luxury houses, this provides us with an opportunity to gain insight into their unfettered creative ambitions. It also gives us a teaser of what the biggest names in Hollywood will be taking to the red carpet when awards season rolls around. Indeed, Law Roach was front row at Schiaparelli to whisk one of Daniel Roseberry’s creations straight off a model and onto Zendaya at the London premiere for The Odyssey.
Below, our favourite moments from the week.
Ashi Studio
Saudi couturier Mohammed Ashi looked to the enchanting, dark romanticism of fairy tales for his latest collection, casting his models as Victorian heroines in ragged bridal garments navigating a dangerous, fantastic forest full of feathered and horned creatures. The collection drew inspiration from the mid-20th century’s most extravagant spectacles, referencing the legendary surrealist balls hosted by Carlos de Beistegui and Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild — soirées famously attended by the likes of Salvador Dalí and Grace of Monaco (formerly Grace Kelly). But it also dealt in contrasting motifs of innocence and danger.
Animalistic elements like cowhide, minute antlers on sheath dresses and feathered, figure-hugging gowns added a sense of danger to proceedings, making the ragged, wandering brides seem all the more vulnerable. A final dark illusion was an eggshell-white lacquered leather corset designed to resemble the cracked surface of a porcelain doll. Fractured, feral and otherworldly Ashi’s heroines still convinced us of the appeal of getting lost in the woods.
Robert Wun
Robert Wun has always revelled in the fantastic, and for his Fall 2026 couture collection, the designer looked to the whimsy of children’s fairy tales and the toy box. Playful ballerinas, suspended ribbon fascinators, and floating bird motifs evoked the dark, enchanting world of Brett Helquist’s illustrations for the gothic 90s children’s books Series of Unfortunate Events.
Beneath the playful narrative lay Wun’s signature technical mastery as soft fabrics into surreal, architectural silhouettes. Rendered in a bold, colour-blocked palette — seen on Cardi B in a striking crimson fishtail dress with a spherical bodice outside the presentation — the show was, as always, both joyful and full of dark intrigue.
Fendi
Attendees were whisked from Paris to Rome for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s highly anticipated, off-schedule couture debut for Fendi. Staged at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the runway wound through a reprised 1985 Karl Lagerfeld exhibition, creating a poignant dialogue between past and present. Chiuri looked to the Roman house’s rich history and its founding sisters, seamlessly weaving Fendi’s signature stripe motif through delicate, diaphanous fabrics. Mirroring the shift seen at Chanel, Dior, and Armani, the collection eschewed rigid, traditional couture structures in favour of loose and fluid silhouettes that moved with the body. The result was an exercise in soft power, both grand and effortlessly wearable.
Elie Saab
Elie Saab broke with the relaxed silhouette trend for a collection that focused on strictly formal and traditionally couture silhouettes. Drawing inspiration from Truman Capote’s legendary Black and White Ball, Saab delivered sweeping gowns rendered in sumptuous silks and brocades, complete with cinched waists and red-carpet-ready trains. Models wore elegant masks to symbolise the transformative element of evening dressing.
Steering away from his signature heavy embellishments, Saab exercised a masterful restraint, focusing instead on sculptural pleating and shifting, dégradé colour palettes that balanced the corsetry and sculptural skirts with a sense of fluidity and movement. While globally renowned for bridal and traditional couture, the house also nodded to its expanding ready-to-wear arm and a series of sharp, sculptural suits felt like a nod to this brand evolution.
Balenciaga, Colour Wheel
Pierpaolo Piccioli’s masterful eye for colour took centre stage for his highly anticipated debut at Balenciaga. Honouring the explosive, architectural silhouettes originally pioneered by Cristóbal Balenciaga, Piccioli injected the runway with vibrant neons, fuchsias, burnt oranges, and mint greens under the Parisian sun.
Movement dictated the collection. Hourglass dresses, hooded cloaks, and bouncing feather-embellished garments populated the runway—most notably a dramatic, curled organza balloon dress rendered in fluorescent pink. True to the house’s current ethos, Piccioli balanced historical references with cutting-edge tech. The designer utilised 3D-scanned body data to build custom mannequins for precision leather stretching, and introduced Amsilk—a bioengineered silk alternative created via DNA editing and protein engineering that boasts 2.5 times the strength of steel.
In a poignant finale, Piccioli took his bow alongside his entire atelier staff, shifting the spotlight to the artisan hands that construct the garments. “This collection is the result of the work of the people in the atelier,” the show notes read. “Human beings who are couture, because couture is made by the people who live it.”
Jean Paul Gaultier, Uncanny Valley
At Jean Paul Gaultier, guest designer Duran Lantink leaned heavily into the house’s legacy of subversion, pushing the sculptural limits of the human form.
The collection leaned into the uncanny valley, utilising distortions that have become familiar in the age of AI hallucinations. It all felt a little Backrooms. Everyday staples like denim jackets were contorted using couture principles and traditional forms — pinstripe tailoring, classic black evening gowns, and utilitarian outerwear — were warped.
Lantink’s primary reference points, however, spanned centuries. The modern digital distortion was informed by a 40-year-old book on Gaultier’s desk: the graphic, topiary-like silhouettes designed for choreographer Régine Chopinot’s 1985 piece Le Défilé, which were juxtaposed against an exploration of Marie Antoinette, focusing on the historical art of occupying physical space through exaggerated volume.
Schiaparelli, Enter The Void
Schiaparelli always opens couture week with a bang and this season Daniel Roseberry took a leap “into the void” pivoting away from conventional couture materials. Titled The Call of the Void, the collection explored technical materials like latex used for gowns that would usually be crafted in silks, satins and velvets. Roseberry he partnered with a special effects studio outside Paris to develop poured silicone sheets and sculpt hyper-realistic breastplate corsetry.
There was a strong marine element at the presentation: signature Schiaparelli sculptural fringing “lit up” like jellyfish tentacles, natural seashells, pearls and baked fish scales embellished gowns and flowers that had been fed sugar water to preserve them were painstakingly embroidered onto prim 1950s silhouettes made of latex. Karli Kloss, who had somehow jetted straight from Taylor Swift’s wedding to the runway, appeared in a sculptural powder-blue ensemble while Bad Bunny sat front row in a couture suit, providing the requisite celebrity boost, but the star of the show was undoubtedly Roseberry’s indefatigable imagination.
Dior, The Knotted Subject
Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore couture presentation for Dior was inspired by the work of sculptor Lynda Benglis, and came hot on the heels of the news he designed Taylor Swift’s couture wedding dress. Drawing inspiration from Benglis’s tactile yet fluid works, Anderson presented a considered dialogue between form and subject, incorporating the distinctive Dior house codes through the lens of nature, organic shapes and rigidity versus fluidity. The runway featured intricate, hand-worked surfaces: micro-plissé organza, metallic satins, and copper lamé were twisted, knotted, and frayed into sculptural architecture.
Several new bag styles weer co-designed with Benglis including a metallic plissé Cigale and a new sculptural interpretation of the Bow bag. Given Swift’s gown is yet to be unveiled, all eyes were on the final bridal moment: a fluid, soft chiffon and delicate lace column gown that featured off-the-shoulder straps and draped into an asymmetric train. There were overtones of Shakespeare’s Ophelia, a literary figure pertinent to Swift’s oeuvre, but hawk-eyed fans will have to wait for a glimpse of her look.
Chanel, Into The Woods
For his second couture collection, Matthieu Blazy beguiled his audience, transforming the Grand Palais into a fairytale storybook. Inspired by a copy of Charles Perrault’s Les Fées discovered in Gabrielle Chanel’s private library, Blazy applied a whimsical lens to Chanel’s house codes. Blazy’s light, youthful touch was seen in signature tweed suits woven in silk chiffon. A model opened the show in a translucent “tweed” trompe l’oeil set that revealed a red bralette.
Fluid silk mousseline gowns floated down the runway, adorned with tangled gold chains and raw-edged pearls that felt casually thrown on. Subverting expectation, Blazy closed the show with a flawlessly cut, off-the-shoulder Little Black Dress rather than his bridal look — a fitting nod to Coco Chanel’s independence.
Giorgio Armani Privé, Secrets of the Boudoir
Silvana Armani delivered a masterclass in quiet sensuality with her sophomore solo couture outing for Armani Privé, appropriately titled Boudoir. The collection was a study in seduction through discretion, focusing on fluid proportions and an impeccably soft hand. Masculine, sharp-shouldered jackets and impeccably tailored trousers were rendered entirely wearable through the use of plush velvets, liquid silks, and delicate, shimmering stones.
A brilliant note in the collection was its illusory colour palette; what initially presented as a sea of classic black revealed itself upon closer inspection to be “faux black”— a deep, rich spectrum of midnight blues, forest greens, slate teals, and rich crimsons. But there were a few boldly seductive notes, including a sheer top and a draped-from-the-nipple gown (will we see Armani Privé on Chappell Roan?). Amid a season often dominated by loud gestures, Armani reliably carves out a space of uncompromised, practical elegance.
The post See The Key Moments From Haute Couture Week A/W26 appeared first on ELLE.
