Here’s what’s happening at Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week Turns Up the Volume With Bold Ideas and Major House Moments

Earthguardiansonline.com – Paris Fashion Week has moved into high gear, bringing together celebrity spectacle, packed sidewalks and a dense schedule of runway presentations across the French capital. Rihanna has been among the notable faces in town, while crowds have gathered outside venues hoping for a glimpse of their favorite stars.

The opening days offered a contrast between newer names and fashion’s largest houses. Monday put attention on emerging designers, including the creative pair behind Matières Fécales, Swedish designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson and LVMH Prize recipient Julie Kegels. By Tuesday, Dior and Saint Laurent had raised the scale with ambitious productions and highly polished collections.

As the week develops, the most memorable presentations have often been the ones using clothing, staging and movement to question familiar ideas about beauty, function and the body.

Maison Margiela Finds Beauty in Discomfort

Maison Margiela brought its distinctively unruly energy to the runway under the direction of Glenn Martens. The setting featured fading flowers, creating an atmosphere that was visually romantic but carried a faintly decaying scent. That tension mirrored the clothes: pieces that were elegant in construction yet deliberately unsettling in effect.

Models appeared in high boots without toes, sharply shaped blazers and shirts cut to expose the chest in dramatic openings. Floral patterns collided with the floral backdrop rather than blending into it. The collection continued Martens’ interest in using disruption as a design tool, resisting the idea that garments must be conventionally flattering to be compelling.

The house, well known for its split-toe tabi footwear, has long embraced an offbeat visual language. This latest presentation extended that approach through silhouettes that felt sculptural, strange and intentionally unresolved.

Rick Owens Sends a Futuristic Procession Across Water

At Rick Owens, the runway itself is central to the drama. Beginning high at the Palais de Tokyo and travelling over the fountain below, the sloped route gives each model the appearance of arriving from somewhere beyond the everyday world.

That otherworldly impression was especially strong on Thursday. Owens sent out prismatic looks built around tentacle-like forms, with tulle edging threaded through elastic cords. As the models moved, the cords bounced and shifted, making the garments seem animated by their own momentum.

The effect transformed walking into a kind of performance. Rather than treating fabric as a static surface, the collection emphasized motion, bounce and the changing outline of the body in space.

Issey Miyake Lets the Wind Become Part of the Look

Satoshi Kondo, who has led womenswear design at Issey Miyake since 2019, explored a more elemental question: can a garment use the air around its wearer as part of its design?

The show began with an interpretive dance created by choreographer Tess Voelker. Over roughly five minutes, Voelker and her group manipulated an immense sheet of pink fabric. It expanded dramatically as it caught air, resembling a mushroom cloud before collapsing again under the dancers’ control.

That image became a clear introduction to the final looks. Two extremely lightweight jackets and a skirt, made with nylon yarn and finished with a drawstring hem, were designed to capture breezes much like a sail. The idea was not simply visual. It suggested a form of clothing that changes as the wearer moves through the city, allowing weather and movement to shape its presence.

Balenciaga Continues Its Shift Under Pierpaolo Piccioli

At Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli presented a collection filled with bright acid-toned City Bags, expansive cummerbunds, capes and inflated flowers arranged as neck braces. More than a year into his tenure, the Italian designer’s direction remains notably different from the cynical, satirical sensibility associated with Demna’s version of the house.

One apparently simple garment captured that change especially well. A boxy pink shirt, in a shade close to the color often associated with Piccioli’s Valentino years, arrived with turned-up cuffs and a breast pocket. At first it resembled an ordinary work shirt. When the model turned, however, it revealed an integrated hood.

The shirt-and-hoodie hybrid had previously appeared under Demna, though in far moodier shades. Reworking the concept in rosy pink made the difference in creative attitude immediately visible: a familiar streetwear idea redirected toward warmth, color and theatricality.

Chloé Revisits the Archive for Rainy-Day Romance

Chemena Kamali’s latest Chloé collection drew from the designer’s continuing fascination with the house she has worked for over the past three years. Her archive research has produced several personal reference points, including the tailored 1972 “Noel” suit originally created by Karl Lagerfeld.

For Thursday’s show, Kamali reinterpreted the suit and layered it over delicate lingerie harnesses. She also looked back to raincoats from the 1950s, a starting point for some of the collection’s most immediately wearable outerwear.

Transparent vinyl macs in pink and smoky gray were worn over trench coats and highly decorative dresses. Their soft, rolling Inverness-style capes brought romance to what might otherwise have been strictly practical rainwear. Scarlet and traditional yellow slickers provided a sturdier counterpoint, each paired with an oversized sou’wester hat.

The styling maintained Chloé’s sense of relaxed glamour. Instead of rain boots, the models wore slingback pumps, turning weather-ready clothing into an outfit for a more polished, city-bound life.

A Jazz-Club Setting for Schiaparelli

In the Louvre’s basement, Daniel Roseberry constructed the atmosphere of an elegant jazz club for Schiaparelli. Black velvet drapes, chandeliers, cream-and-black carpeting and small bistro tables lit by lamps gave the room a warm, intimate mood.

The setting provided a fitting backdrop for a procession of glamorous eveningwear with the energy of a special night out. It also underscored one of the recurring themes of Paris Fashion Week: clothing is rarely presented as clothing alone. A runway can become a landscape, a club, a stage or a dream, giving viewers another way to understand the designer’s intentions.

With more shows still ahead, Paris remains a place where established labels and younger talents can share the same wider conversation. This season’s early moments have made one thing clear: the strongest collections are not settling for easy answers about what fashion should look like, feel like or do.