The Best of Paris Haute Couture Week: 9 Artful Fashion Moments
Brands such as Balenciaga, Chanel, Schiaparelli, and Jean Paul Gaultier drove home the importance of craft and image building via their made-to-order collections
While some may hesitate to classify fashion as high art, citing its inherent relationship to utility, such an argument falters when it comes to the rarified world of Haute Couture. True couture is liberated from any constraints of necessity. It serves as a pure canvas for exceptional skill, a rich artisanal history, and unbridled imagination. And like the fine-art world, this creative pursuit does not exist in a vacuum; it is sustained by a commercial framework where commerce and culture coalesce. For the Fall-Winter 2026 Haute Couture season, the maisons used the opportunity to parade luxury’s virtues, ostensibly creating the desire needed to boost a sector that has been in a slump following the post-COVID boom. The week delivered several high-profile debuts, a comeback, demonstrations of innovation, and even a new Haute Couture category: shoes.
1. Balenciaga
Perhaps the most anticipated Haute Couture debut was Pierpaolo Piccioli’s at Balenciaga. However commercially viable his predecessors’ offerings were for a time, not all fashion pundits endorsed black plastic garbage bags as designer handbags worthy of the storied house. Piccioli, while perhaps linear in his design language, delivered a glamorous collection that echoed its founder: large, bulbousvolumes and strict lines created a wow-factor effect. Shown in the garden of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, complete with a hedge maze, the outdoor location seemed tone-deaf in the extreme heat, so strong that several editors’ phones overheated and shot down.
2. Jean Paul Gaultier
Jean Paul Gaultier’s Duran Lantink made his Haute Couture debut at Jean Paul Gaultier, perhaps the week’s most lauded debut. Lantink combined state-of-the-art technologies such as 3D printing and TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) and thermoplastic polyamide materials to create ‘steroidal’ 3D shapes on garments, using padding—often distorting the body—as a wink at Marie Antoinette’s 18th-century garments. In this rendition, bustles morph into wasp-like tails, and crinolines channel cascades of tulle at different points on the body. Flowers encased in a clear breastplate case evoke the Queen’s bedchamber while Capri-style pants mimic men’s ‘habit à la Francaise’ breeches.
Both designers’ use of volume recalled artists such as Nikki de Saint Phalle and Fernando Botero, whose exaggerated, rounded body forms echo that sculptural scale.
3. Fendi
Meanwhile, in Rome, Maria Grazia Chiuri drew her own artistic connection by showing at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, where she restaged a 1985 Fendi show curated by Karl Lagerfeld to mark his 20th anniversary. Though the newly appointed Chief Curated Officer didn’t look back, she focused on craft and offered a louche, flowing collection with nods to Art Deco that, without close inspection, might be mistaken for ready-to-wear.
4. Boloria
Olivier Theyskens made a welcome comeback during Haute Couture for the newly founded house Boloria, formed by the Belgian group Weareone World. It’s a welcome return for Theyskens, whose talent deserves a platform that can support it. While technically a ready-to-wear collection of men’s and women’s styles, it was heavy on drama and sartorial dressing, with Theyskens’s draped silhouettes, hard and soft elements, and dark romance. The result was a lineup of great outerwear, layered menswear, and gown-like silhouettes with dramatic flowing skirts.
5. Schiaparelli
Backstage, following his latest Schiaparelli Haute Couture outing entitled “The Call of the Void”, Daniel Roseberry explained the non-traditional materials used to create his sea-life-inspired creations, continuing his molded breastplates and adding interior lighting to mimic bioluminescent aquatic life. He also cited Matthew Barney’s “The Cremaster Cycle” as inspiration.
“We discovered a studio outside of Paris that makes 3D photorealistic babies for French film productions, as you can’t use children under three months in the productions. We met these incredible young silicone experts who create the most lifelike babies. We poured the silicone they use into sheets, using it as a fabric to reimagine the building blocks and fabrication for the collection,” Roseberry explained. Thus, in lieu of silk, satin, lace, and taffeta, think silicone, latex, and pools of paint baked and sculpted into clothes.
6. Iris Van Herpen
Iris Van Herpen’s latest outing, “Sonic Starquakes,” brings Haute Couture to astrophysics and the wonder of the universe. Van Herpen referenced sonic vibrating stars, exploding supernovae, galaxy geometries, and the volatility of plasma and its vibrations caused by celestial quakes, as well as the musical experimentation of Victorian artist and inventor Margaret Watts Hughes (1842–1907), including vocal trials on the Eidophone. The result? As expected, Van Herpen’s runway is full of otherworldly beings. The Helix Nebula dress was equal parts fashion and science experiment as it contained plasma—the fourth state of matter—in hand-blown glass forms with charged particles that, when they touch the body, become luminous. The illuminating garment’s shoulder detail and 10,00 glass spheres with UV light attached to tulle took top billing in the show.
7. Rahul Mishra
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free,” read Rahul Mishra’s show notes for his latest Haute Couture collection, “Devi, the Eternal Muse.” The expression referenced Michelangelo’s sculptures, but Mishra also looked to the Indian tradition of carving stone deities, muses, and gods from sandstone, granite, and basalt in temples. Several looks in the collection recreated the statues, sculpting with hand embroidery to create a trompe l’œil effect on featherweight garments.
8. Chanel
Chanel’s Mathieu Blazy is probably ranked neck-in-neck with Jonathan Anderson at Dior as the designer wunderkind of the moment. Both showed their sophomore Haute Couture efforts this season. Blazy ventured into whimsical territory—he referenced the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk—that seemingly had little to do with the house’s founder or with Karl Lagerfeld’s work or inspirations. That said, motifs such as mushrooms and birds, reminiscent of previous collections and campaigns, appeared throughout. The strongest message to break through was the mousseline interpretations of classic Chanel silhouettes, signaling a lighter mode of dress and rendered in louche shapes for what one critic referred to as “the anti-Ozempic” style.
9. Roger Vivier
Fauna was also present at Roger Vivier, which introduced shoes as part of the L’Atelier des Papillons collection for the first time after launching Gherardo Felloni’s “Pìece Unique” Haute Couture bags in 2023. Under Felloni’s creative direction, the one-of-a-kind styles highlight the brand’s skilled craftsmanship. The papillon motif reflects styles created for various brands, such as Christian Dior, during the 1950s and 1960s by Monsieur Vivier. Conceived on the brand’s signature Choc heel and the sneaker, first introduced in 2018, the shoes highlight bead embroidery, hand-painted feathers, organza, macramé, sculpted metal, and crystal work. A charming effect is trim antennae extending from the vamp of the shoe to mimic the delightful insects.