As another Paris Fashion Week draws to a close, we thought it would be fun to hand out a few awards to the designers and shows that made the most… distinct impression on us. Was it a good impression? A bad impression? A complete head-scratcher of an impression? Read on to see for yourself.
Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Klausner has been knocking it out of the park since taking over from Van Noten in late 2024. Those are some big shoes to fill and he has proven himself more than up for the task. His Spring 2027 collection was colorful, confident, and bursting with gorgeous prints, all of it masterfully balanced by a designer who clearly knows exactly what he is doing and keeps getting better and better.
This show was absolutely wild. The leathers were amazing, as always, but overall it had something of early 2000s Heatherette about it. Maybe it was the stark contrast of the all white runway with the bright pink body suits and the club kid styling and accessories. And while Heatherette never created anything with Watanabe’s precision, skill, and craftmanship — their versions of these looks would probably involve a fair amount of hot glue and staples — let’s not pretend that a pregnant Ciara walking the runway in a giant chandelier hard hat wouldn’t have looked utterly at home on Richie Rich and Traver Rains’ Bryant Park runway. Is that shady? A little. But this collection was clearly intended to provoke. And it did.
Rumors have been swirling for months that Vaccarello is out after this season. Not that he’s doing a bad job or anything. His most recent collection was a gilded triumph, but it also felt very much like one long finale. If it is, at least he’s going out with a bang.
Vaccarello might have won this award, but he wasn’t the only nominee. After all, whispers within the industry are that Chemena Kamali is slated to take over for Vaccarello at Saint Laurent, which would make Spring 2027 her final collection for Chloé . True, she’s only been at the brand for a few years, but she worked under Vaccarello for a long time as head of women’s ready-to-wear at Saint Laurent, so she knows the brand and Kering’s executives well, and at this point she’s more than proven herself capable of leading a major fashion house. Her most recent Chloé collection, like every collection she’s created since taking the reigns in 2023, was an absolute stunner. It also included a few Laurent-isms in the form of a caftans, billowing long sleeve dresses and tops, and that black “Le Smoking” jumpsuit, that made us wonder if she isn’t already designing with YSL in mind. Also, there were her show notes, which were so wistful and earnest they read to us like a goodbye letter.
We also find ourselves wondering if Spring 2027 might not be Nicholas Ghesquière’s swan song at Louis Vuitton. True, it was probably his most wearable collection in years, but since when does Ghesquière care about wearability? No shade, but hasn’t Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear under him always been a sort of futuristic anime-inflected art project? Like, no one actually buys these clothes. They don’t even stock most of them in the stores and they never really have. And LVMH has always seemed to be fine with that. After all, Ghesquière is one of the greatest designers of his generation and the clothes are really just there to contextualize the bags anyway. So why does this collect…