Fashion months’ finale — otherwise known as Paris Fashion Week — kicks off on Monday February 26 with over 70 shows and 38 presentations scheduled. From Miu Miu to Mugler, the nine-day calendar is filled to the brim with storied luxury houses, which will no doubt draw a slew of stars into the city.
But this season, a number of hotly anticipated moments have already caught our attention. On Thursday, Virgil Abloh’s brand Off—White will return to the runway for the first time since 2022. Ibrahim Kamara was announced as Abloh’s successor shortly after his death in 2021, and has so far produced two larger-than-life collections (one which took place on a dusty otherworldly runway in front of a huge mirrored orb). In an interview with Business of Fashion, Kamara described his forthcoming collection “Black by Popular Demand” as “playful and fun.”
Later in the day, Chemena Kamali will make her directorial debut at Chloé after being appointed last October. Kamali, who takes over the helm from Gabriela Hearst, began her career at the maison in 2007 under cult British designer Phoebe Philo. “My heart has always been Chloé’s,” she said in a press statement. “It has been since I stepped through its doors more than 20 years ago. Returning feels natural and very personal.”
A model presents a creation from the Fall-Winter 2024/2025 ready-to-wear collections by CFCL during the Paris Fashion Week, in Paris, France, on Feb. 26, 2024. (MeetEurope/Handout via Xinhua)On Saturday evening, all eyes will be on Seàn McGirr as he reveals his first collection for Alexander McQueen. McGirr is the third ever creative director to run the house, after only McQueen himself and close friend Sarah Burton, the latter whose directorship lasted 13 years. McGirr, who follows the houses’ tradition of being a Central Saint Martins alumni, previously oversaw ready-to-wear at landmark British brand JW Anderson.
And finally, Louis Vuitton are set to wrap up festivities with a show that also marks creative director Nicolas Ghesquière’s 10-year anniversary at the brand. From staging runways everywhere from the Louvre to Rio de Janiro’s Niteròi Contemporary Art Museum, there’s no doubt Ghesquière’s tenure will be commemorated with a bang.
Meanwhile, the Dior show that opened this year’s Paris fashion week, staged in a white box the size of a provincial airport installed in the Tuileries Gardens, was a homage to the modernising instincts of Bohan, designer of Dior for 28 years, who died last year at the age of 97. The current creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, has instincts that tend to veer left-of-centre, and it is the lesser known Bohan, rather than the famed Christian Dior, who she feels a synergy with in the Dior archives.
It is probably not entirely accidental that while television audiences are watching The New Look, a dramatisation of the often dubious wartime escapades of Coco Chanel, Christian Dior and their contemporaries, this Dior catwalk was emblazoned with the name Miss Dior, spray-painted in capital letters across coats, suits and handbags. Christian Dior’s French resistance heroine sister Catherine, for whom the Miss Dior perfume was named, is the most sympathetic character in the drama, so this was an opportune moment to remind a global audience of this particular member of the Dior lineage. The actor Maisie Williams, who plays Catherine, was a front row guest at the show.
But storytelling on a scale this grand operates at several levels, and the plot strand Chiuri was keen to explore backstage before her show was how Bohan, in searching for fabrics and silhouettes best suited for clothes that could accommodate different body shapes, “found a new silhouette for the modern woman. He introduced trousers, and straight jackets – because a jacket with a waist is intended to be tailored to one person, and each body is different. He was thinking about how his clothes could speak to a new generation of women.”
This translated on the catwalk into that version of Parisian chic that leans into a Rive Gauche, Gauloises-scented moodboard: tight black polo necks worn with swinging gold pendant necklaces, wide-legged denim, and gently flared trousers with matching tunic tops.
At eight days long, Paris fashion week now dwarfs those in Milan, New York and London. A bumper schedule of 108 shows and presentations reflects the pre-eminence of a city that is home to fashion’s most powerful luxury groups.
