If last year’s haute couture shows were overshadowed by the hype surrounding the Olympics Games in Paris, the Spring/Summer 2025 season pulls fashion back into focus. It certainly helps that The Louvre has just opened its first major exhibition spotlighting fashion’s oldest tradition, titled Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces. The museum is showcasing over 100 looks and accessories from 45 different fashion designers, including Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and the master of them all, Cristóbal Balenciaga.
While The Louvre looks to haute couture’s past, the runway shows happening in the French capital from 27 to 30 January will show us haute couture’s future. A noteworthy name on this season’s Paris Couture Week calendar is Alessandro Michele, who will debut his first haute couture collection for Valentino on 29 January. Sohee Park, founder of the London-based fashion label Miss Sohee, has also been hand-picked by the Fédération de la Haute Couture to show her collection as a guest designer on the calendar. Speaking of guest designers, Jean Paul Gaultier has also tapped Ludovic de Saint Sernin to create a one-off couture collection for his fashion house, following last season’s collaboration with Courrèges’s Nicolas Di Felice.
Iris Van Herpen is absent from this season’s line-up; the innovative Dutch designer told WWD that she will now show her haute couture shows once a year, in July. And while Chanel is set to present its haute couture collection on 28 January, it will be the work of its in-house design studio, not Matthieu Blazy, who was announced as the maison’s artistic director of fashion activities last December. The former Bottega Veneta designer will only make his Chanel debut in October 2025.
There is still much to see, with the likes of Schiaparelli, Dior and Giorgio Armani on the calendar. Stay tuned for the latest updates on the Spring/Summer 2025 haute couture shows in Paris.
Chanel
Chanel’s fashion show at the Grand Palais marked the maison’s 110th year of devoting itself to haute couture. The presentation was rightly graced by some impressive guests: Blackpink’s Jennie and Kylie Jenner rubbed shoulders, Dua Lipa and Lily-Rose Depp shared a laugh, and Depp’s mother Vanessa Paradis posed for photos with Marion Cotillard. While many celebrities on the front row were clad in black—Coco Chanel’s signature colour—there was a rainbow of looks that came down the two looping C-shaped runways. The collection’s colour palette went from day to night, beginning with the soft pastels in the opening looks (a standout is the pale pink chiffon gown with feathers). The tweed jackets with puffed shoulders that followed offered richer purples, pinks and yellows, eventually leading to a high point: a halter-neck dress in fiery red. The evening dresses traded black for blues, as seen in a billowing sky-blue cape worn over a minidress sparkling with cerulean and indigo sequins. To close, a wash of whites and beiges: Mona Tourgaard’s white gown, with its glittering piping and delicate knots, looked ethereal in comparison to the veiled Chanel bride’s ensemble of a sequin jacket and a sheer, high-low dress.
Armani Privé
Let there be light, said Giorgio Armani for his 20th anniversary Armani Privé show. The Italian designer’s haute couture collection, presented at the gilded Palazzo Armani salon in Paris, was titled Lumieres, which translates to “lights”. Indeed, as some 90 elegant ensembles came down the runway, a sparkle could be found here and there. The show open with relaxed yet refined jackets, trousers and vests in shining silk. Armani’s fascination with various material cultures across China, India, Polynesia, Japan and North Africa was apparent in the collection’s soft colours, striking silhouettes and elaborate patterns. The collection’s handcrafted embroideries, drawn from “the opulence of India” as mentioned in the show notes, covered entire ensembles in glittering crystals and beads depicting floral and paisley patterns. Japan’s “linear elegance”, meanwhile, could be found in the fine micro pleating of Armani’s strapless gowns. The show closed with the 90-year-old designer himself, walking down the runway with his Armani bride clad in a flowing, beaded caftan jacket and a crystal-embellished headpiece—a woman “illuminated by a clear, lunar light”.
Schiaparelli
“I’m so tired of everyone constantly equating modernity with simplicity. Can’t the new also be worked, be baroque, be extravagant?” asked Daniel Roseberry while backstage at the Schiaparelli Spring/Summer 2025 haute couture show. The designer answered himself: his Icarus collection featured extreme silhouettes, largely achieved by tight corsets that the likes of Kendall Jenner, Alex Consani and Mona Tougaard could walk in. Some of these corsets came with structured, almost alien-like hip bones that further emphasised the models’s hourglass figures. (The hourglass is significant to the house of Schiaparelli which, in 1937, launched its Shocking perfume in a bottle shaped like Mae West’s figure.) In rejection of minimalism, Roseberry lavished his designs with embroidery, feathers, pearls and beautiful beadwork. He also used sumptuous fabrics like duchess satin and tulle, which were favoured by couturiers of the last century (think Madame Grès, Charles Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret all of whom Roseberry referenced for his collection). The fabrics were further worked upon with draping and pleating—resulting in marvellous designs that are worth more than a second look.
Dior
Ahead of Dior’s Spring/Summer 2025 haute couture show, the maison revealed a key inspiration for the collection: Dorothea Tanning’s 1943 painting, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The American artist, as well as fellow artist Leonor Fini, brought a woman’s point of view to the Surrealist art movement—which about sums up how their work caught the attention of Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri. Also on Chiuri’s moodboard is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which made her reflect “on the moment of transition between childhood and adulthood and how this moment is represented in a transformation of what we wear.” At Dior’s fashion show in the Musée Rodin, Chiuri turned models into “punk Alices” with feather headpieces fashioned like mohawks. What they wore was less rebellious: models were fitted into corsets, cage skirts and tailcoats, paired with romantic touches like lace culottes, sheer panels and puff sleeves. The whimsical lampshade dresses stood out with their visible crinolines; they were inspired by Christian Dior’s Cigale dress from the 1950s, which was updated by Chiuri with a shorter hemline. Chiuri also looked to Yves Saint Laurent’s 1958 Trapèze collection for Dior, resulting in elegant silk coats and dresses with loose, liberating silhouettes. As models walked along the runway, lined with Indian artist Rithika Merchant’s colourful artwork, their mini crinoline dresses trailed with ribbons of fabric—a nod to the unravelling dresses worn by the two young girls in Tanning’s painting.
This article was last updated on 29 January 2025.
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