Saint Laurent FALL 2025 READY-TO-WEAR

 In the interim before Matthieu Blazy’s much-anticipated debut, Chanel constructed a huge black ribbon-shaped set at the Grand Palais, the better to tie the fall show to Coco’s codes. Much as the haute couture was earlier this year, this was a case of continuity-Chanel by the Fashion Creation Studio at the Rue Cambon, fulfilled with a light-ish air.

How to make the tweed suit a hot fashion item again? Blazy will be expected to perform that transformation, but for the moment, the Chanel design team drew a veil over the task by softening a few short tweed looks with longer over-layers of trompe l’oeil tulle. A couple of these delicate superimposed silhouettes had bows at the neck—a cute way to segue into the Chanel ribbon theme.

First, though, there were more strategies for blurring the edges of tweed suits and shifts. One revived Coco Chanel’s own white-ruff signature—amazing in the way she wore it herself in chic contrast to a black jacket (it’s an accessory which also popped up at Dior and McQueen this season). A short multicolored tweed shift grew cream chiffon ruffles at the hem, shoulders and neck in a cute way.

As the set suggested, the design team had brainstormed just about everything you can do with a Coco ribbon bow: tie it at the neck, print it, sequin-embroider it, cut it out, knit it, put it in the hair. Of course, the black satin bow tied in the neck of a silk blouse is truly an identifier, a classic ‘owned’ by Chanel if not in legal copyright, then in spirit. In its purest form, it’s a styling trick that looks great on practically everyone from 14 to 94. When you see it in any other collection, you think: oh, a curtsey to Chanel.

That’s not to say everything went completely right with harnessing the season’s ideas. Karl Lagerfeld got away with multiple variations on all of Chanel’s themes because of his playful, punning wit and the fact that he didn’t have that much reverence—as he never stopped mentioning—for Coco herself. The anonymous in-house design team (probably including many trained at the court of Karl) don’t have anything like that freedom at the moment; nor the leadership that edits their skills and ideas to make an essentially exciting fashion show.

Watching the show, you could pick out the gorgeous silk-satin billow-y sleeved poet blouse, think the oversizing of the pearl Chanel necklaces looked fun and find them desirable. But you had to wonder who was it who set the rule of the Chanel running order? The show exhaustively ran through all the set-pieces: tweeds, followed by print dresses, followed by knits, followed by party dresses. Every category was exhausted. Quite possibly it was Karl Lagerfeld who set that template, winking satirically at the old school Coco Chanel way of showing a collection when he took over as new broom in the early 1980s. But does it have to be that way forever and a day?

Chanel has an internal team who know the brand playbook inside out. What’s needed is a new approach that respects and extends their talents, while creatively throwing everything else up in the air. Over to you, Matthieu Blazy.

Daniel Roseberry has heard a lot of congratulations since the Oscars on Sunday night. He dressed Wicked’s Ariana Grande in a strapless bustier gown with a crenelated 3D peplum—the Venus on the half shell number—from Schiaparelli’s January haute couture show, adding nearly 200,000 crystals to its tulle skirts to ensure she would really sparkle.

The runaway success of Roseberry’s couture collections has spurred significant cultural awareness of Schiaparelli; Sleeping Beauty is wide awake, let’s say. But made-to-measure can take a company only so far—ready-to-wear clothes and accessories are the real heartbeat of luxury brands. And don’t forget perfume. Elsa Schiaparelli’s Famous fragrance, the one in the Mae West-shaped bottle, is begging for a relaunch. And that’s why the label turned up the heat this season, graduating to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. A front row stacked with the industry’s power brokers signaled the growth opportunities that are seen here.

“It’s so interesting being in this moment: I do feel like we’re entering a second golden age of Schiap,” Roseberry said backstage. Not that the pressures of building the business have softened his more fantastic, outré instincts. Explaining his starting point, he noted, “all of the women I know are dressing for themselves and other women. I was imagining a global pandemic where mankind,” as in just men, “ceased to exist and women inherited the earth. What would they do with the remnants of male archetypes?”

That meant we got a lot of suits with 1940s shoulders and super nipped in waists—“old Hollywood masculine tropes, but looked at through the female gaze,” Roseberry explained. One of them was embellished with what could have been a showgirl’s corset. Cowboy motifs that played up Roseberry’s Texan roots came into the picture too: big silver buckled belts circling the waist, leather pants with laces up the side like chaps, and a real gunslinger of a leather coat with grommets and fringe and quick-draw pockets. The sexy piqué viscose knit dresses tied with velvet bows were designed to evoke snakeskin, the cowboy’s quarry, maybe.

Otherwise, Roseberry worked on adapting his couture explorations for the ready-to-wear market, “industrializing” what the atelier has achieved by hand with a pair of remarkable ribbon dresses that undulated over curves and an all-over sequined gold dress that sucked them in, at the expense, it must be said, of much freedom of movement. So, how does a Schiap woman kick back? In a beaded pajama set; even when she’s lounging she’s wearing something statement-making. It’s an enviable existence, this post-men apocalypse Roseberry has dreamed up. More good news: the surrealistic jewelry that Schiaparelli fans collect like candy has also been industrialized, meaning it still packs a punch but weighs half as much.

We’ll never look at Valentino red the same way again. That’s the thought that came to mind stepping through the bathroom doors into Alessandro Michele’s show space, an enormous public restroom bathed in lurid red light—a gender-neutral restroom, as this was a coed show. Michele himself described the set as Lynchian, as in the late movie director David Lynch, but I saw The Shining, by Stanley Kubrick, via The Substance.

This was Michele’s second ready-to-wear show for the brand. The reaction to his first was mixed, with some suggesting that the former Gucci creative director wasn’t trying hard enough to reinvent. The sound of a toilet flushing told us all we needed to know regarding how he felt about that criticism. Officially, the show was about exploring the performative nature of intimacy (hence the public-private space of the lavatory). But as one of fashion’s thought leaders on gender fluidity—Michele’s very first Gucci show gave us the men’s pussy-bow blouse—he could also have been providing a sharp commentary on the rising tide of anti-trans hate.

At a preview in Valentino’s Place Vendôme headquarters, Michele focused on the challenge of updating the house’s legacy. “It’s complicated here: You have to find a balance between contemporary maximalism and making it relevant because otherwise you risk the brand being frozen. So I’m trying to manipulate the past to make it now.” He did that by grounding the collection in a more familiar reality. Look 2’s slouchy tweed pants, V-neck sweater, and faux-fur jacket could easily slide into a street style photo gallery, and Look 8’s peekaboo bustier top and high-waist ’70s jeans wouldn’t be out of place at Caviar Kaspia late night. Michele also worked on a collaboration with Vans, but his efforts extended beyond the denim and sneakers to the show’s undone, almost work-in-progress spirit. The hems on all the pants had been let down, and models wore their hair back in knit headbands and balaclavas—no blowouts here. And then there were the bodysuits, unsnapped over lacy tights.

While he made efforts to recast Valentino for the more casual lifestyles we live today, a long dress with a cat’s face, which echoed the porcelain kitty bag on last season’s runway, said that Michele’s not going to feel guilty for being himself. And for a special-occasion dress, he’s hard to top. Today’s came in silk georgette and lace in a mix of acids and pastels embellished with crystals and bows (one of those house motifs that’s hard to make look modern). There was also a striking black number with a deep plunge and a high slit, which struck a more minimal note.

Valentino Garavani is a decorous man, and until his retirement in 2008, the house was associated with a jet-set politesse, high-flying but ultimately genteel. Michele is designing in more anxious, anarchic, social-mediated times. There was one thing for sure about this eccentric performance: You couldn’t look away.