What truly drives women’s fashion? Is it meant to empower us, or does it merely exploit our vulnerabilities? Does it help us forge new identities, or constrain us?
These pressing questions lingered after a recent Paris Fashion Week, which featured designs that seemed to conceal, restrict, silence, or even obliterate the women wearing them. We saw garments that morphed women into otherworldly figures or confined them to aprons. Many styles hinted that suffering and limitation were the unspoken price of engaging with fashion. Despite the buzz around emerging designers, a troubling dystopian undercurrent was undeniable, making it clear that these clothes sent a complex and inescapable message about women.
Nicolas Di Felice’s collection for Courrèges, otherwise a study in elegance inspired by the sun and rising heat, controversially obscured many models’ faces, shielding them from onlookers. While these coverings might have been intended as protection, the implication that women needed to be hidden was deeply troubling.
Models at Courrèges wore face coverings, obscuring their features.
Thom Browne’s collection featured oversized, layered suiting, sometimes adorned with unusual appendages, giving models an otherworldly appearance.
Thom Browne presented a whimsical narrative of extraterrestrials landing on Earth, translating this into elaborate, layered, and oversized suiting, often with peculiar attached appendages. These designs transformed the wearer into more of a decorative art piece than a human. While his classic, meticulously crafted suits in plaid, chiffon, or beads were present, the ‘women-from-another-planet’ ensembles largely eclipsed any looks that might have offered freedom of movement.
This trend followed Alaïa’s ‘cocoon’ bodysuits, which visually trapped the arms, and Maison Margiela’s unsettling mouth guards that contorted faces into strained grins. Even Alessandro Michele’s otherwise improved Valentino collection, featuring elegant velvet pencil skirts and silk blouses, was marred by models who appeared alarmingly thin, bordering on starved.
Seen here: Alaïa’s arm-trapping ‘cocoon’ bodysuits and Margiela’s provocative mouth guards, distorting models’ faces.
Matières Fécales aimed to redefine beauty standards, yet overlooked the impractical, seemingly torturous footwear given to models.
This trend of disregard extended beyond individual designers. The once-celebrated size inclusivity in fashion has nearly vanished from most runways, with the notable exception of Matières Fécales. This brand, founded by Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, aimed to challenge conventional beauty by showcasing classic silhouettes on diverse body types, regardless of size, gender, or age. However, their mission was undermined by the models being forced into footwear so uncomfortable and poorly fitted that they struggled to walk.
These fashion statements are released into the world without mediation, open to interpretations that extend far beyond the protected environment of a runway show. For designers to ignore the implications of their creations is, at best, a display of willful ignorance, and at worst, disingenuous and potentially harmful.
Duran Lantink, following his Jean Paul Gaultier show featuring flamboyant rave-wear – including a bodysuit designed to mimic a man’s physique on a woman – claimed, “I don’t want to get political because it’s a dangerous thing to do nowadays.” Yet, creating clothes that enable women to express their identity is fundamentally a political act.
Miuccia Prada grasps this dynamic profoundly. She has skillfully molded her Miu Miu collection into a powerful exploration of women’s daily attire, recontextualizing and empowering it through fashion. Her journey began post-pandemic with office uniforms reimagined into provocative ensembles, then evolved to last season’s bullet bras, transformed into symbols of feminist strength. Now, she presented a thoughtful reflection on aprons, which she described as emblems of “the truly challenging lives of women throughout history, from factory floors to the domestic sphere.”
Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu collection explored the apron, revealing a deeper, less ‘frilly’ meaning.
However, unlike her previous groundbreaking collections, this apron-focused concept, despite the glamour of floral, canvas, and lace layered over visible lingerie or adorned with jewels, didn’t quite achieve its intended transcendence. This might be because aprons still strongly evoke themes of economic disparity and the “tradwife” movement, making them awkward subjects for high-end fashion.
Consequently, the most impactful collections of the season were those that prioritized wearable clothing – designs crafted for real-world movement and activity, rather than merely for marketing spectacle, social media virality, or the designer’s personal ego.
This emphasis explains the profound influence of Matthieu Blazy’s trendsetting Chanel show. The same holds true for the collections by Dario Vitale at Versace, Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga.
It’s also why Daniel Roseberry’s move away from the corset at Schiaparelli was so pivotal. Similarly, a closer look at Lanvin reveals Peter Copping’s beautiful, contemporary interpretation of Art Deco draping, while Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten showed promising progress with his geometric designs.
Highlights include Peter Copping’s modern Art Deco drapes for Lanvin and Julian Klausner’s developing geometric sensibility at Dries Van Noten.
Michael Rider’s second collection for Celine evoked Parisian street style with flared minidresses, elegant silk scarves, and sophisticated coats.
This is why The Row, with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s clever layering—a pencil skirt atop a full skirt, multiple button-ups, or three tank tops at once—felt like a practical and stylish approach to everyday dressing. Similarly, Michael Rider’s second collection for Celine, evoking the vibrant energy of Parisian life in the Palais Royale gardens, was captivating. He effortlessly merged haute bourgeois trench coats, edgy skater dresses, classic chinos and blazers, all accessorized with luxurious silk scarves.
As Rider explained after his show, his vision wasn’t about creating the ‘most fabulous person in the room,’ but rather the one wearing the finest, most empowering coat.
In essence, he aimed to design pieces that would liberate women, enabling them to confidently step out and achieve whatever they desired.