PARIS — “I have anger against everything in the world, especially against myself,” said designer Rei Kawakubo in the statement released after her Comme des Garçons show Saturday afternoon. Anger isn’t always a bad thing. It has energy, and energy is precisely what’s missing in today’s fashion world, where reheated marketing is plentiful and real creativity is scarce.

Demna pointed this out in a voicemail that accompanied his latest Balenciaga outing, calling creativity the new luxury. The collection ditched the oversized looks that took farcical form at Vetements, exploring new, lighter and more streamlined territory. It was a step forward (and the video set was utterly hypnotic) but was it creative enough to address consumer fatigue?

Speaking of creativity, was Saint Laurent’s foray into hosiery as dressing a creative act or a joke? Probably it was a bit of both, with a hefty debt to the sheer looks devised for Bianca Censori by Kanye West. As a marketing message, it worked, even if little of it will work on a sales floor. But that’s the way the catwalk works at most major brands these days.

It’s smaller labels like Vaquera and Ottolinger that take the risk of actually selling what they present in shows. Both were in top form this season, one delving into tropes of wealth, the other boss dressing and clothing as armour. The brutalised tailoring at Ottolinger, in particular, looked awkward but full of energy. At Noir, Kei Ninomiya delivered powerful, colourful, iridescent goods that made for one of his best collections: a personal take on the very Comme silhouette of stompy shoes and frilly doll-like skirts, that had a jolly kind of lightness.

The temperature was certainly high and the energy soaring at Chloé, where Chemena Kamali set the clock back twenty years or so, mining the halcyon days of the house as the epitome of boho chic, complete with Sienna Miller sitting front row. It was an assured debut that wiped away memories of a more chilly recent past, restoring Chloé's position as a temple of warm, carefree, seductive femininity. And yet, it was perhaps a bit too nostalgic, a bit too much of a replica. Going forward, it will be interesting to see more Kamali and less brand code.

At Chloé, at least the execution was flawless. The same cannot be said of the other big debut of the week. At Alexander McQueen, new designer Séan McGirr left one scratching one’s head. McGirr is on a mission to bring back founder Lee’s more confrontational, hard-edged McQueen, but the results felt a little sloppy and vacuum-packed. What’s more, there were too many nods to the work of McGirr’s former boss Jonathan Anderson. Of course, McGirr, who took the reins at McQueen in December, hasn’t had much time to get his feet under the desk.

Going back to the roots was a common theme this season: a way to reassure clients in difficult times but also a way for designers and houses to reassess their codes and assert a stronger sense of identity. Nowhere this was more evident than in Isabel Marant’s unquiet mix of leather, mini skirts, studs, enveloping volumes and full on 80s references. It was pure Marant, with a lot of sass.

At Chanel, Virginie Viard did Deauville, complete with oversized, floppy straw hats, delivering her most cohesive, if not progressive, show so far. Stella McCartney went back to the tailoring with sparkles of her beginnings, in new, slouchy volumes. Groundbreaking it was not, but the product looked excellent.

Rick Owens, too, went back to his roots. Stripped bare of theatrics — give or take the ghoulish makeup and the tube concoctions in the finale — the collection was a luxuriously fluid flow of neutral and pictorial tones and essential shapes that evoked the “glunge” (as in glamour and grunge) origins of the label in the best of ways with a slight hint of melancholia.

Same but different is a given at Yohji Yamamoto, whose nth exploration of black through prismatic construction and poetry in fabric was as exciting as ever. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri was feeling kinetic youth in svelte shapes and easy dressing, but the message was carried by the “Miss Dior” graffiti painted loudly on many of the pieces.

At Hermès, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski managed to bring a hefty dose of sensuality to the proceedings. She did so by mixing horseriding references with bold nods to motorbiking, and it worked. For his sophomore outing at Ann Demeulemeester, Stefano Gallici deftly avoided just repeating the brand’s codes, exploring new and exciting territories. If the show was weighed down by a sense of gloom, it was more the mise en scène and casting than the design. Letting in some light and stepping out of the black box could make the intricate beauty of the pieces more apparent. Victoria Beckham has left the days of skimpy dresses (and immaculate tailoring) behind her and embraced a new somberness that is surely a sign of maturity. The heavily conceptual, Margiela-indebted inflection, however, looked a little out of place.

Nowhere were the theatrics louder than at Mugler, where a devilishly perfect spectacle that played with the progressive unveiling of the set that ultimately exposed the backstage meant one almost forgot to look at the dresses, which were closer to un-dresses but still powerful. What designer Casey Cadwallader has achieved at Mugler is remarkable: he has brought over-the-top excitement back to the brand, and it works.

The breathing set and soundtrack over at Courrèges were impactful and poignant, the perfect topping for a collection that managed to perfectly merge the architectonic and the erotic, and featured some beautiful coiling, twisting, covering and revealing pieces that were intensely sexual without the cliches of sexy dressing. The strategically placed pockets that evoked masturbation achieved just that, but there was more: the way Nicolas Difelice charges his work with the raw energy of desire is unique, as sleek as it is soulful, and this makes him one of the most interesting, and yet underrated auteurs working in Paris today.

The goings got a little confused at Rabanne, where the brilliant Julien Dossena showed a captivating but messy mash-up of this and that (perhaps it’s time for Dossena to spread his wings and fly elsewhere). Confusion reigned at Off-White, too, where what was good about IB Kamara’s collection (the graphic bursts, in particular) got lost.

On the flipside, things were almost too focused at Valentino’s supremely elegant, if a bit uptight, exploration of black as both silhouette-maker and texture-enhancer, and The Row’s magnificent foray into couture shapes and Saturday morning ease with an exotic tingle.

Elsewhere, Dries Van Noten delivered an eye-watering, idiosyncratic journey into the beautiful oddities of bright, acidic colour and billowing shape, a mismatch of glitz and classicism, day and night. Marine Serre served up a fast-paced slice of life at the market with her signature crescent moon prints. Givenchy’s studio team presented a faultless take on chilly elegance. Schiaparelli found a newfound sense of camp strictness. Giambattista Valli concocted a well-edited homage to Lee Radziwill. Quira did expressive yet immaculately clean tailoring. And Louise Trotter’s Carven offered an abstract take on ladylike. The outing was clearly indebted to Phoebe Philo and The Row, but Trotter’s tenure at the brand is full of potential.

Celebrating his tenth year at Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière was very much in time-travel, retrospective mode: he went as far as reviving Marc Jacobs’ grunge heyday. As usual, the outing was a feat of showmanship and workmanship, but it was all so abstract, it looked like the nth virtuoso exercise with little meaning beyond the catwalk. When Ghesquière started at Vuitton in 2014, he brought an inspired pragmatism to his work that got lost along the way.

Leave it to Jonathan Anderson to blend collage and a quest for purity for a truly fashion-forward outing at Loewe. Sure, his work for the house at this point adheres to a kind of scheme, not exactly a formula, but it does so in a way that is always mind-expanding. This season the exploration of class was both hilarious, optimistic and sharp, never literal and yet immediately graspable, with a level of execution that felt like couture. Also remarkable in his collage approach was Jun Takahashi, who at Undercover ditched the theatrics — so touching but at times so distant — but kept the poetry to explore, in his own way, the notion of the everyday. Banal it was not: a feast of open, sliced, multipurpose shapes that was captivating.

Is anyone thinking about “body positivity” anymore? Some are, but it’s practically only Ester Manas who has kept empowering all womanly shapes through a beautiful vision that glorifies personality regardless of size. The work of Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre is not a gimmick, and the authenticity that oozes through makes it exceptional.

Duran Lantink has the verve of a sculptor in enhancing, distorting and morphing curves in quite an expressionist way, and is fast asserting himself as an auteur who can go beyond clothing that just looks good in photos. Similarly, Zomer, the collaborative effort of Imruh Asha and Daniel Aitouganov, was a foray into arty dressing (with quite a bit of Loewe) that, thanks to a playful kindergarten approach, felt fresh and light rather than pretentious. Sacai’s armour was graceful and just a tad martial, working as both physical and psychological protection, while Junya Watanabe the goings got wonderfully abstract. At both Uma Wang and Niccolò Pasqualetti (another new one to watch closely) there was a kind of totemic poetry to the distance between body and clothing, a design element polished by the exacting eye of stylist Samuel Drura.

Welcome bolts of creativity came, in particular, from Issey Miyake and Miu Miu. Satoshi Kondo, has proven to be the heir Issey-san needed, at once free to move forward but respectful of the Miyake method. Reflecting on the brand’s founding idea of “one piece of cloth,” Kondo explored the almost primaeval, certainly radical intention that sits at the bottom of the act of wrapping. It was dressing reduced to its rawest state and turned up to maximum power.

Meanwhile, at Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada was at her most seditious and bourgeois, delivering a comment on the classics that was about styling as much as it was about the freedom to be as one wants, at any given moment. She focused on age and ageing, delivering the energising reminder on the psychological power of clothing that everyone needed.

PARIS — “Everybody has their idea of what Ann Demeulemeester stands for as a brand,” says Stefano Gallici, whose sophomore collection for the house that Ann built will be revealed Saturday night at Espace des Blancs Manteaux. “It is usually a narrow misconception anchored to a view that wipes away the inevitable and charming complexities of Ann’s vision. There is more to this house than the stompy boots, the dangling straps and even the slouchy tailoring, or the black, even though they are still here.”

“I am trying to offer my unfiltered point of view,” he adds.

With a directness that reads as assured rather than arrogant, Gallici — a lanky beau with the curly mane of a faun, the skinny frame of a rocker and the melancholic gaze of a poet — gets right at the problem that haunts houses like Demeulemeester — and Helmut Lang, for that matter — who suddenly lose their founder mid-career: the risk of turning what was a vision into a set of soulless, commercial codes.

After Ann left her namesake brand in 2013, its identity drifted here and there as its fortunes waned. In 2020, Italian retail guru Claudio Antonioli came to the rescue, acquiring the brand through his Milan-based Dreamers Factory incubator. For a few seasons, he released collections designed by a studio team that were heavy on slouchy tailoring. Then came the short-lived tenure of Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who, despite bringing new energy to the turnaround efforts with a punchier look, exited the brand last May after a single season amid disagreement with management.

In the spring of 2023, Antonioli made the bold move of promoting Gallici, who was already part of the studio team and trained at the Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy’s most progressive fashion school, to the role of creative director. “Stefano, despite being young, was an easy choice for me: for the work ethic, for the passion he nurtures for the brand and, not least, for his genuine interest in the project as an exploration of style, not as an exercise in self promotion,” Antonioli explains.

Gallici has a stronger connection to Ann’s legacy than his predecessor, but he is adamant that he’s not trying to be a copycat, replicating the archive ad nauseam. His gaze is drawn towards specific moments from the brand’s past in which sharpness, even sexiness, came to the fore; the barbaric, wild tones that emerged in certain collections. There is also a subterranean vibe to what Gallici does that is entirely his own: rooted in music the way Ann’s work was rooted in poetry.

At Christmas, Gallici sent out vinyl LPs with the soundtrack to his first show. For tomorrow’s presentation he is collaborating with composer and sound experimenter Neuf Voix, who will perform live. “Sound is an integral part of my vision, and the whole mindscape I aim at building for Ann,” he says.

The new collection explores fragility and strength with a kind of pagan rawness and a renewed colour palette that includes deep reds and pale flesh tones. The line up features greatcoats inspired by Joseph Beuys’, raw edged leather aprons and long pleated skirts, with tufty sheepskin and shaggy knit collars adding a wild touch. There are also some negligé and lingerie-like slip dresses which, mixed with harder pieces, look unexpected and fresh.

“I see the archive as a forest in which to enter and get lost, picking things up as I go along,” muses Gallici. “It is a journey of discovery as much as it is one of self discovery.”

PARIS — A wind of aesthetic restoration is currently hitting the fashion system. The clear message from the haute couture week that closed on Thursday night in Paris was the return of dressmaking, whichmostly made for clothes that were wearable, if a little boring. This wasn’t a season of dreams. It was about opulent realism.

A certain straightforwardness has always been important to Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, whose take on the house’s lexicon is at once pragmatic and sensitive, direct and fuss free. Her work, which relies quite heavily on Dior’s archive, lacks the thrill of the new, despite her endless artist collaborations — this time the set featured giant silhouettes of Ottoman dresses, devised by Isabella Ducrot — and heartfelt feminist messages. And yet the clothes are always very flattering: a woman talking to women, which helps to explain Dior’s big success.

In recent seasons, her couture offering has been simple but impeccably rendered and the latest outing was the same, inflected with a 1950s feel, complete with full skirts, nipped waists and spherical kitten heels, and interesting juxtapositions of utilitarian cottons and regal moiré silks. Memorable it was not. But it was honest.

Over at Chanel, Virginie Viard is another woman designer talking to women, albeit in ways that are not always easy to decipher. The queues outside Chanel stores speak to the enduring clarity and desirability of the brand. But Viard’s collections often point in many different directions at once. This season it was everything from ruffs to tweed, from short and svelte to draped. The link was her stress on the lightness and translucency of tulle, but the results looked more flimsy than grand.

Say the word tulle and Giambattista Valli immediately comes to mind. His familiar gowns made from metres and metres of the material were again part of the mix this season, but even Valli was feeling slightly stricter. He explored the pencil-thin, graphic side of his own personality, rendering his vision of femininity — blooming and delicate, but also sensual and fierce — in a fresh way.

There was a giddy kind of freshness at Armani Privé, where Giorgio Armani went against the aesthetic tide with a bolt of playfulness. His never ending show could have done with a tighter edit, but the offering burst with sparkle, colour and a collage of very Armani-esque exotic references. It wasn’t for everyone, but one thing is undeniable: on the verge of turning ninety at the helm of a company fast approaching fifty, Mr Armani still has the drive, stamina and courage to chart new waters.

On paper, Simone Rocha and Jean Paul Gaultier made for strange bedfellows, but in reality, the results of Rocha’s guest designership at Gaultier Paris were a joy to behold, offering real emotion in an otherwise rather unemotional season. The pairing of ruffly infantilism and glamorous seduction worked because by accepting otherness into her own code, Rocha opened up to a lot more possibilities and shades of femininity than she usually does.

There was a stream of romanticism running through the collection, but it was dark, sultry, intoxicating even — thorn-shaped breast cups, anyone? — and a offered a sense of exploration of the infinite complexities of womanhood, from innocence to seduction. The results were touching, amplified by a cast of women of different ages and shapes (a rarity in the age of Ozempic) and a superb score by Frederic Sanchez.

Robert Wun was equally romantic and dangerous, in a much kinkier kind of way. Give or take one or two Viktor & Rolf references, this gruellingly slow show was a feat of intricate pleating, more intricate corseting and stains turned into embroideries.

Pierpaolo Piccioli knows how to stir emotions. Maria Callas singing the aria “Casta Diva” on the soundtrack at a show held in gilded Parisian salons is probably one of the tritest couture clichés of all time, but it was still elating. In top form and reaffirming his status as a master colourist, Piccioli was on a mission to modernise couture by making the shapes streamlined — and at times, in the parkas and cargo pants, sportswear-inspired — while keeping the process true to the ethos of the atelier. There were a lot of Yves Saint Laurent in his 1970s heyday references, and some grand gowns thrown in for good measure, but overall the outing was an assured iteration of Piccioli’s very own mannerism. It was a bit overdone at times, but when he opted for colourful rien the designer truly shone.

Is society’s circus of celebrity and media-entertainment waning? Hardly, but it was interesting to see Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry ditch the outlandish decoration which has made him a darling of the loudest red carpets to focus on structure, keeping the hand as heavy as required and the silhouette bold and in your face. There was a lot of Alexander McQueen in his Givenchy years, but this was also Roseberry’s most assured Schiaparelli outing yet, where the wild surrealism that stems from the brand’s DNA was somehow tamed and made less obvious.

If even eternal pranksters Viktor & Rolf go bourgeois, one just has to sit down and take notice. The duo’s all-black outing was their most conservative in recent times, and even though the little black dresses, gowns, trench coats and tuxedos came, each, in four iterations and progressively elevated levels of scissoring and chaos, they still looked very proper. At Patou, meanwhile, the sense of strictness looked very fresh, in a 1940s kind of way, making for a collection that was as light and as pleasurable as a breeze.

This was ultimately a season of technique over image. That was true at Alaïa, where Pieter Mulier’s latest ready-to-wear offering was all about reduction to virtuoso technique. By now, Alaïa founder Azzedine is a memory. But what remains of his legacy at the house he built is a sense of statuesque femininity and a will to create beauty through dressmaking and the dedication to craft. By working with circular shapes and one single merino wool thread, Mulier achieved a newfound softness that ultimately looked like a reconciliation with the curves of the female body. Not all of it worked — the mille-feuille dresses were a bit clumsy and some of the coiling dresses a bit contrived — but overall this was an assured step forward.

At Fendi, precision was on Kim Jones’ mind, making for a chilly exploration of the merging of structure and decoration. Never mind the flou, figure-hugging draping and ribbed knit pieces, it was the architecture of the dresses that came to the fore. Best were the simplest concoctions: tellingly the box-shaped yet ineffable first and last looks, a hint to a new direction redolent of Roman master Roberto Capucci’s linea scatola.

Leave it to John Galliano at Margiela to blow everything away with a magnificently crazy celebration of the transformative powers of clothing: a way to alter oneself and to alter reality. Truth be told, it was all so deranged Belle Epoque that it felt totally John, not a shadow of Martin Margiela in sight. Everything was infused with an air of pauperism and the beauty of the worn. This was a fashion moment in every respect, from the luscious spectacle to the corset silhouette for all genders to the beautiful freaks gliding by. And the results were divinely decadent, both nostalgic and progressive.

PARIS — The men’s fashion week that ended on Sunday was mostly a battle between the quiet and the bold; the volume turned up or kept low. Being loud, of course, can come in many forms, however. And if things got tacky at Louis Vuitton, where Pharrell Williams served his wealthy, money-flaunting audience an American West fantasy where more was definitely more, Rick Owens released a powerful howl that was inventive, liberating and, despite the deliberately grotesque tone, strangely soothing.

The endeavour resonated perhaps, in part, because it was refreshingly intimate, held in Owens’ own mansion on Place du Palais-Bourbon, where the designer explored humongous shapes of almost inhuman proportions, as well as elegant elongation, playing with draping and huge volumes, with texture and colour. That he involved a bunch of equally boundless renegades in the creation of the collection — Straytukay did the inflated rubber boots, Leo Prothman theKiss boots, Matisse Di Maggio a range of rubber pieces — created a sense of community. If fashion’s unchained animals are rare specimens today, they gather in the church of Rick Owens, torch-bearer of invention and winner of the season.

The way Walter Van Beirendonck has remained a true fashion animal, largely outside the system, for almost forty years is admirable, as is the unique way in which he merges the cartoonish with the sexual, the humorous with the aggressive. His latest outing was a riot: otherworldly creatures in various states of clothed abstraction carrying, each one, their own music in the form of a ring-speaker.

Back in Paris after a hiatus of a few seasons, Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhar Isik went utterly personal at GmbH, in a Palestinian-inspired collection that was a clear reaction to the war and wider Islamophobia that has gripped much of the western world. Introduced with a heartfelt speech by the designers, this was an outing full of gravitas and heavily redolent, in the best of ways, of Miguel Adrover’s wonderful take on Middle Eastern references. There was an elegance that wove through the round cuts, the keffiyehs, the somberness and the seduction: a reminder that beauty can be a saviour.

Miharayasuhiro went for supersizing this season, which is nothing new, but his take on it was so extreme — the models looked like adults imitating kids wearing adult clothes — and it was poignant. King of mega-sizing Hed Mayner, meanwhile, went classic, as in suit and tie for the office and trainers for daily commutes, showing a surprisingly humorous side that felt fresh and progressive.

Playfulness was a welcome addition at Homme Plissé Issey Miyake, too, where the creative collaboration with Ronan Bouroullec translated not only in a series of bulbous prints, but also in a bevy of multipurpose shapes that allowed for various interactions between clothing and the wearer, and a joyous sense of freedom. Meanwhile, at Kiko Kostadinov: the angular cuts and surface tension that gives his work the permanent allure of costumes devised for some obscure, art-house sci-fi movie. In other words, there is a vision there, but Kostadinov’s intent could use some clarifying.

The emphasis on classicism and tailoring that was all over Milan also popped up in Paris. Most inventive of all was Junya Watanabe, who used his tailoring prowess with resourcefulness, creating pencil thin coats by attaching sliced trousers to blazers (very Martin Margiela, truth be told) and capes by sewing sleeves to the bust of coats, all while keeping the look rough and a bit punky.

At Sacai, Chitose Abe continued to explore hybrids and items of clothing with multiple functions, but her approach is becoming more and more architectural as time passes, much to her benefit. Her tailoring skills remain remarkable, and her idea of the uniform is affirmative.

Elsewhere, the broad-shouldered tailoring at Louis Gabriel Nouchi was seductive and superhuman, but also positively inclusive due to the transversal casting, and yet the brand needs to define a stronger voice and a sharper focus past the idea of linking each collection to a book, which is growing thin.

At Yohji Yamamoto, it was badass and maudit slouchy elegance as ever. The Japanese master has probably said all he has to say in terms of masculinity, and he has entered a phase of maintenance, but his work is still a joy to behold.

At Hermès, where Veronique Nichanian is a force of her own, the tailored lines were slim and the spirit rebellious, her graphic take on elegance at once timely and enduring. Meanwhile, at Paul Smith it’s always about classicism with a twist, which this season came in the form of quilted, workwear-inspired vests that went on top of everything.

Grace Wales Bonner has a hand so soft it is almost impalpable, and yet there is strong power to what she does, and a good energy in her ability to gather a creative community. This season she delivered a take on Americana that felt particularly light and easy, and exquisite because of that.

Tailoring is always playful and complex at Kolor, where Junichi Abe produced a powerful collection, reworking a bunch of classics in his own peculiar way, at once deranged and proper.

At Givenchy the interim effort developed by the team after the exit of former designer Matthew Wiliams was an exploration of the idea of the gentleman, with feminine touches like the headscarves and feathers, and a certain dryness. A show devised by a headless team is always hard to judge. This one seemed a bit directionless at times, but there was a sensibility at work.

At Amiri, slouchy and glitzy formality on the edge of adolescence and adulthood, with a charming and all-defining LA ease to it, made for a collection that marked a step up for this fast-growing brand.

In a season of tailoring and the strictly codified, classic representation of the male that typically accompanies it, the case for soft masculinity was not completely missing. On the contrary, the merging of tailoring and fey masculinity produced some noteworthy results, from the pleated skirts and shrunken double-breasted jackets at Comme des Garçons, where Rei Kawakubo was feeling light and spiritual and managed to make even black seem sparkly and giddy, in a pearly kings and queens kind of way, to Valentino’s graceful yet dry rethinking of the suit and what revolves around it.

Valentino designer Pierpaolo Piccioli has long been involved in a battle against toxic masculinity, but this was the first time he truly delivered on the idea and the results felt viable. This happened because he operated within the frame of formality, hollowing everything out from the inside while keeping the silhouette exact and the spirit light, and avoiding the trap of a young look at any cost.

Dries Van Noten was in top form, another winner of the season. By playing with the notion of the unexpected, and working on a tall and slender but also slouchy and easy line, Van Noten proved a master colourist while adding the surprise of sensuality and playfulness in the zippers that allowed sweaters to come undone, in the combination of items that had had an impromptu energy to them, all if it grounded on super-flat slippers that looked like balled shoes and made the silhouette truly dance.

Speaking of dance, at Dior, Kim Jones opted for a Rudolf Nureyev-inspired collection that was probably his most assured since the start of his tenure at the house and coincided with the launch of couture for men. Exploring Nureyev’s persona and unique sense of style on- and off-stage, Jones delivered an effort that was light and streamlined, fey on the one hand, exuberant, even opulent, on the other. Not all of it glued, and a less referential hand would have probably helped, but as a spectacle the show, choreographed by Baillie Walsh, with music by Max Richter reinterpreting Prokofiev, was truly moving.

Also wonderful as a show was Kenzo, which took place in the grand main reading room of the Bibliothèque Nationale, amongst books, wrought out woods and gilded stuccoes. This was a magnificent backdrop for a rather predictable collection that was the nth reiteration, albeit slightly more focused, of the East meets West topic that is the defining ethos of the house.

In Paris, the contingent of realist designers working on perfectly normal yet utterly special wardrobes meant for everyday use keeps growing, each with their own unmistakable touch. Lemaire is certainly the leader in this school of thinking: what Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran do with clothes that truly meld with the wearer and allow personality to shine though is outstanding. This outing was particularly soft and layered, and benefited from being shown in the label’s whitewashed Marais headquarters.

Officine Generale’s Pierre Maheo manages to capture the quintessential Parisian touch in everything he does. His work has an immediacy and an elegant spontaneity that explain his unstoppable success.

A welcome new addition to the calendar, Auralee, the brainchild of Japanese designer Ryota Iwai, has always been about normal but beautiful clothes. His debut catwalk show was exquisite in every sense, from the colour combination to the allure the looks exuded: that of memorably subtle passers by met on the street. In comparison, the first catwalk outing from 032c, the line that started as merch for the eponymous magazine and has grown into an endeavour of its own, felt both heavy handed and deja vu.

Idris Balougu showed his Winnie collection in the aisles of the American Library: a fitting ambience for a collection of perfectly normal clothes with a slight forced air of cool student to them. Coolness is fine, but it cannot be a substitute for substance.

Leave it to Jonathan Anderson to bring the tritest normality — tracksuit bottoms worn with white sport socks and trainers, anyone? — to a grotesque level of social commentary on thirst traps and the levelling up of today’s culture, making Loewe the other standout, truly authoritative effort of the season.

The collection was as conceptually twisted as it was plain, visually engaging (thanks to the collaboration with artist Richard Hawkins that extended from set to clothing) as it was technically masterful (many of the looks featured items that were attached one to the other, from the shoes up to the jacket, forming one single piece), making for multilayered meaning served with blatant directness and sardonic humour. Everything today is on the same level, a collaged reality of this and that, co-existing on the same plane: this was the idea, which made for a bit of a commentary on the state of affairs in fashion, too.