Sweltering through hot haute couture.
Everybody suffered beautifully.
There are heatwaves, and then there are Paris Couture Week heatwaves, where billionaires, editors, and women wearing approximately 6 kilos of hand embroidery collectively discover that sweat stains are, in fact, democratic. By Tuesday morning, everyone’s makeup had migrated a few millimeters south. By Wednesday, handheld fans had become the season’s most coveted accessory. By Thursday, I had one question for anyone willing to answer it: Is it very couture to be this hot?
Teyana Taylor didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, it’s very couture. It’s very demure,” she laughed. “I love being hot... everybody else is like, ‘Ooh,’ but I’m perfectly fine—it feels amazing.” Meanwhile, internet patron saint of LOL Quenlin Blackwell argued that perspiration is practically a styling trick. “Looking greased is chic,” she told me. “Chic is on the cusp of messy... but not nasty.” Brenda Weischer was optimistic: “Sweating is couture—it’s hard to produce liquid.” Sure, babe. Aidan Zamiri, however, refused to indulge the fantasy. “No.”
Personally, after spending 5 days power-walking across Paris in Saint Laurent loafers that slowly became steam rooms, sitting through outdoor shows in 95 degree heat, and watching women glide past in couture while I silently negotiated with my deodorant (firmly in my purse at all times FYI), I’m inclined to think everyone was right. Couture is fantasy. Sweat is reality. This week, they happened to be wearing each other.
Sophomore collections are funny things. The first gets judged on promise. The second gets judged on permanence. Matthieu Blazy’s second Chanel couture collection felt like watching somebody settle into an impossibly difficult yet deliciously chic language. Storybook references ran through everything, from the opening guipure suit and miniature book to ducklings morphing into swans on embroidered buttons and vines creeping up heels. Little secrets hid inside linings and pockets, rewarding a second glance (my neck hurt, and for good reason). His couture feels warm, intimate, and wonderfully alive. Oh, and i-D cover star Alexa Demie had us all tripping over each other to capture her beauty (hashtag content) and bask in her insane aura. I’m straight now, apparently.
Jonathan Anderson’s second Dior couture outing approached things from almost the opposite direction, treating fabric like sculpture and construction like an engineering exercise disguised as beauty. Pleating, knotting, and draping became the vocabulary rather than decoration, with flashes of Indian craftsmanship and references to Lynda Benglis filtering through without ever feeling like homework. If Chanel asked you to disappear into a fairy tale, Dior invited you to admire the mechanics behind the illusion.
By Thursday, Paris had reached the point where standing still qualified as cardio. Of course Balenciaga seated everyone outside. There is probably something poetic about seeing your first Pierpaolo Piccioli couture collection while slowly evaporating in direct sunlight. I was too busy sweating through polyester to ruminate. Much has already been made of how much Valentino lingered in Piccioli’s Balenciaga couture debut. Maybe so. But after ready-to-wear collections that felt sportier than we’re used to from the designer, I welcomed seeing Piccioli feel unmistakably like himself again. His gift has always been emotional couture, and I’d much rather watch him begin from his own strengths before letting them gradually collide with Balenciaga’s house codes.
Then came Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier, the clear high of my week. Fashion crowds are paid in social capital to look impressed, and this time they actually were. Jean Paul Gaultier himself spent the entire show smiling and reacting like an especially enthusiastic FROW fan. Lantink brought his surreal proportions and sculptural instincts into couture without sanding away any of the oddness that makes his work sing, whether through impossible forms, exaggerated hips that felt closer to wearable sculpture than tailoring, or gowns that twisted and spiraled around the body like they were still being formed. There was even a flamingo moment! J’adore!
It’s not so often that couture week produces a designer people suddenly can’t stop talking about in hotel lobbies, outside shows, or halfway through bad coffees between appointments. This season, that person was Michael Stewart. Standing Ground’s couture debut possessed the sort of quiet confidence that does’’t need to announce itself. Staged inside the Irish Embassy before a room packed with some of fashion’s most experienced eyes, the collection expanded everything Stewart has been building over the last few years without losing the restraint that makes his work distinctive. Bias-cut ivory gowns skimmed the body with almost impossible precision, while sculptural draping and quietly architectural silhouettes proved you don’t need fireworks to make couture feel momentous. When I spoke to Stewart the day before the show, he admitted, “I’ve never been excited about a show before. Now I finally am.”
When your couture debut features Saskia de Brauw and Kristen McMenamy, you’re probably doing something right.
Schiaparelli: Daniel Roseberry sent ghostly faces peering from the backs of dresses, inflated latex tentacles snaking around the body, and silicone molded to resemble skin. Wild.
Robert Wun: Robert Wun closed with a model engulfed by a cloud of oversized black balloons, a few suspiciously phallic, because nobody stages existential dread quite like he does.
Germanier: Germanier threw a maximalist party where every sequin, bead, and upcycled scrap seemed to have consumed three espressos.
Manish Malhotra: Manish Malhotra brought unapologetic glamour, embroidery so intricate it bordered on optical illusion, and a welcome reminder that couture’s center of gravity has never belonged to just Paris.
