Haute Couture Week is the dizzying pinnacle of Parisian fashion, where a rareified handful of houses and designers – each one meticulously vetted by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode – are allowed to show on schedule, abiding by a strict set of rules. At heart, these centre around haute couture’s raison d’être: that each garment is made-to-measure to a client’s proportions, using labour-intensive processes which can see a single gown take hundreds of hours to complete.
The rules state that to retain a haute couture designation, a house must keep a Parisian atelier – the workshop at the centre of a couture house – employ at least 15 full-time staff, and present a collection of at least 25 designs each fashion season. It means an equally exclusive client base – there are an estimated 4,000 couture active buyers in the world, a minuscule number compared to those purchasing ready-to-wear.
That said, the haute couture shows have become marketing opportunities for the world’s biggest houses, a fantastical circus of elaborate show sets, imaginative design, and celebrity-filled front rows (A-list only). As such, as much as the garments on show are for a select few, the week nonetheless influences the style zeitgeist: some of fashion’s most memorable moments have taken place on the haute couture stage.
This season is particularly interesting. Though a number of houses are sitting A/W 2025 out – like Valentino, where Alessandro Michele has chosen to show couture just once a year, Jean Paul Gaultier, where new creative director Duran Lantink is still settling in, and Dior, where Jonathan Anderson will host his first couture show in January – there is still plenty to look out for. These include Chanel’s final outing by the in-house ‘Creation Studio’ prior to Matthieu Blazy’s debut in September, Demna’s last haute couture show at Balenciaga before he moves to Gucci, and Glenn Martens’ anticipated debut at Maison Margiela.
Alongside our daily report on the shows, to bring Haute Couture Week to life this season, the Wallpaper* editors on the ground will be offering a real-time look at the weekend’s happenings – from behind-the-scenes glimpses to access to the shows, presentations and parties. Stay tuned. JM
What to look out for this week
We’ve compiled five moments to look out for this Haute Couture Week as proceedings begin this morning in Paris. These include Glenn Martens’ debut at Maison Margiela (he replaces John Galliano after a 10-year tenure), Demna’s swansong at Balenciaga (the Georgian designer will head to Gucci this summer), shows from the couture heavyweights (with a few notable absences), and a new vision for Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson’s eponymous London-based label JW Anderson, which will be revealed later today.
READ: Haute Couture Week A/W 2025: what to expect
‘There was a foundation to build on’: Michael Rider makes his debut at Celine
Taking place yesterday on the eve of haute couture week in Paris, Michael Rider presented his debut collection for Celine – an astute opening act which balanced the house’s recent legacy with a fresh, contemporary vision which nodded to his American roots. ‘I did not want there to be a sense of erasure. There was a foundation to build on. That to me felt modern, it felt ethical, it felt strong,' he said after the show, with moments which nodded to the tenures of Hedi Slimane and Phoebe Philo (he worked under the latter at the house from 2008-2017). But this was no rehash – read our full review of the show below. JM
READ: Michael Rider’s joyful Celine debut: ‘I’ve always loved the idea of clothing that lives on’
The invitation for Glenn Martens’ Maison Margiela debut is a spoon
There has been surprisingly little revealed about former Y/Project creative director – and current Diesel creative director – Glenn Martens’ debut collection for Maison Margiela, which will be revealed on Wednesday evening. A teaser this morning on the Maison Margiela Instagram featured a spoon – painted to resemble a wallpaper backdrop – being scratched away by a disembodied hand, while the invitation, which arrived this morning, comprises another spoon encased in a typically Margiela-white box. What does this mean? Who knows – but a quick Google shows that a bracelet made from a repurposed spoon featured in Martin Margiela’s A/W 2025 artisanal collection, which may or may not be a clue. JM
A closer look at Michael Rider’s Celine debut
Michael Rider’s Celine debut gets even better the more you look at it – particularly up close, as we did this afternoon at a re-see of the collection. There are some particularly brilliant accessories which capture the sense of play that the American designer said he wants to bring to the Parisian house, from handbags with smile-shaped zips to touristy charm bracelets and boots with blown-up horsebit fastenings. ‘I would never want to be perceived as cynical, having a sense of humour in the luxury space is a beautiful thing,’ he said post-show. JM
At Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry looks back to look forward
Schiaparelli’s Monday morning slot has come to mark the start of Haute Couture Week, seeing the steps of Paris’ Petit Palais taken over by a coterie of Daniel Roseberry’s high-profile devotees – today, they included musicians Dua Lipa and Cardi B, the latter (somewhat inexplicably) brandishing a real-life pet crow. The show itself was a typical dramatic exploration of form, though among Roseberry’s sculpted, contouring silhouettes – including a gown which evoked the saddle of a horse, here crafted from satin – there was new ease in the line of gowns inspired by the liberated, corset-less cuts of the 1920s.
The latter was in part inspired by Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, a contemporary of house founder Elsa Schiaparelli, who Roseberry said ‘liberated women from the corset’ and would create an iconography of design which would redefine haute couture forever (the house she founded, Chanel, will show its latest couture outing at midday tomorrow). Meanwhile, Elsa Schiaparelli’s own radical spirit – shaped by her relationship with the Surrealists – emerged in flourishes of trompe l’oeil, a bejewelled version of her ‘Apollo’ cape, and gowns that appeared like the body had been twisted back to front. ‘This collection reminds you that looking backwards is nothing if we can’t find something meaningful to bring into our future,’ he said. JM
Jonathan Anderson reveals his new ‘curated’ vision for JW Anderson
‘[The] things I like and I would like to have around me. And everything has a story,’ is how Jonathan Anderson describes his newly refreshed vision for JW Anderson, the London-based label which propelled him to international fame (he now juggles it alongside an expansive new role as creative director of Dior’s men’s, women’s and haute couture collections). Doing away with a runway show format, his new vision comprises ‘an ever-evolving, seasonally-updated, selection of twisted classics’, with each one related in some way to local craft. He revealed Act One in Paris today with a Spring 2026 Resort collection, ushered in by a new logo and lookbook starring Joe Alwyn, Luca Guadagnino, Anthea Hamilton and Bella Freud, among others.
Fans will recognise several of the pieces – Anderson describes it as a ‘best of’ and a ’prelude to new evolutions’ – like knitted jumpers featuring intarsia houses, versions of the ‘Loafer’ bag, and twisted cargo pants, though newness arrives in silk jacquard boxer shorts, bug prints and slogans like ‘Anonymous Lovers’, taken from Berlin-based artist Dean Sameshima, whose work often evokes vintage queer ephemera. Presented at Paris’ Galerie Joseph, the collection sat alongside what will be a new offering of homeware, art and curiosities, curated by the artist in a changing roster – from jars of Houghton Hall Estate honey to Jason Mosseri’s Hope Spring Chairs, Charles Rennie Mackintosh re-issues and Murano glassware.
The ‘radically reprogrammed’ JW Anderson will centre around a new store design by architects Sanchez Benton, which was previewed today in the space: ‘an ambience that is enveloping and familiar; a grammar of warm materials and colours that embodies a feeling of the handmade and beautifully-crafted.’
A first look at the Chanel show set
A first look at the runway exit for Chanel’s A/W 2025 Haute Couture show today, which marks the last collection by the house’s ‘Creation Studio’ before Matthieu Blazy’s debut this coming September. Inspired by 31 rue Cambon in Paris, ‘the only Chanel Haute Couture address for over a century’, the show set features vast beige drapes, sofas and an ornate doorway. JM
Chanel looks to ‘nature and wide-open space’ for A/W 2025 couture collection
Staged amid a plush show set designed by Willo Perron – the bevelled mirrors around the outside evoking those at 31 rue Cambon, the house’s haute couture atelier – Chanel’s A/W 2025 collection was inspired by ‘nature and wide-open space’ (left on each seat was a golden ear of wheat). Designed by the Chanel in-house Creation Studio in their last outing before the debut of Matthieu Blazy this September, the clothing itself saw riffs on the tweed suit adorned with beading and feathers and grounded with heavy boots – like those one might wear for countryside walks – while another bouclé tweed was meant to evoke the texture of sheepskin. Closing the show, this season’s bride emerged in diaphanous layers of white tulle – in her hand a bouquet of wheat ears, a symbol of ‘abundance that Gabrielle Chanel held dear’. JM
Roger Vivier’s ‘Pièce Unique’ handbags are inspired by roses
Roger Vivier’s ‘Pièce Unique’ handbags are aptly named for their rarity – only two are created of each style, with one going straight into the house’s archive (the other is sold to one of a handful of high-spending clients). As such they can be considered the haute couture of accessories, this season uniting with historic Parisian embroidery workshop Maison Lesage on floral adornment across the eight bags, inspired by a rose motif found in the footwear brand’s archive (Lesage themselves have a couture pedigree, working with numerous houses – most notably, Chanel). Much of the embroidery and embellishment was discovered by creative director Gherardo Felloni by rooting through Lesage’s own archive – ‘boxes of beaded appliqués, forgotten textures, fragments of antique grandeur’ – for what he calls ‘not homage, nor reproduction, but interpretation.’ It always makes for one of couture week’s more unexpected delights. JM
Revisit our interview with Demna on his ‘thoroughly modern’ Balenciaga couture
Today marks Demna’s final haute couture collection for Balenciaga, a swansong for a ten-year tenure at the house before he departs to Gucci later this year. Reintroducing the couture line in 2021, it has become one of the purest expressions of his vision at the house: a reinterpretation of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s legacy through cutting-edge technique and a frisson of subversion – case in point, a pair of trompe l’oeil trousers painstakingly hand-painted to give the illusion of denim.
For the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, Dal Chodha spoke to Demna about his 52nd haute couture collection, and how he is instilling a mood of modernity into the most traditional of mediums. ‘I always knew that couture had this kind of magic to it, of being an experiential way of wearing clothes,’ hes said. ‘I just wondered if it would still be like that. The world we live in is so oversaturated with information, colour, visuals. We’ve become numb to the beauty of the world. Why don’t we see the beauty anymore? We need it to survive as a human race. I don’t want to be numb to the sunset.’
READ: ‘What is beauty?’: Balenciaga’s Demna on creating thoroughly modern haute couture
Demna hosts his Balenciaga swansong in the house’s historic couture salon
‘Fashion lives on the edge of tomorrow – driven not by what we know, but the thrill of discovering what comes next,’ wrote Demna in a letter distributed to guests before his final haute couture show for Balenciaga this morning (later this month, he will officially move to his new role as creative director of Gucci). Taking place at the historic couture atelier on Avenue George V, the intimate show featured appearances from Isabelle Huppert, Naomi Campbell and Kim Kardashian on the runway, while a soundtrack saw Demna’s colleagues and collaborators each read out their first name – a touching recognition that a fashion house goes far beyond its marquee name.
Clothing riffed on archetypes in architectural style, from trench coats to tuxedos, while a series of colourful nipped-waist dresses – one falling away into iridescent layers of organza – lent a sugary femininity (feathers and slip dresses, like that worn by Kim Kardashian, captured a similar mood of Hollywood glamour). ‘Couture renditions of archetypal garments form my ultimate wardrobe – building on what I consider the raison d’être of this métier as something that needs to exist outside the ballroom,’ Demna described.
It closed, as is couture tradition, with Demna muse Eliza Douglas as the bride (she wore a structured Guipure lace gown he called ‘the ultimate minimal sculptural gown that represents everything [Balenciaga] stands for’) before the designer took to the runway for an emotive final goodbye to the house which has propelled him to international fame. ‘[This] is an expression of our need to evolve, to make sense of change before it arrives; to dress the future before it has a name,’ he said. JM
