If creative directors and designers were nervous to back up the ‘great designer reset’ of SS26, it didn’t show. The week was an all-class spectacle where the most memorable collections took on extraordinary ideas that could be neatly applied to the ordinary.
The week at a glance
What makes a great collection? Would Chanel under any other name look as sweet? The short answer is, yes. While a combination of things makes Chanel what it has become in the last year (remember Matthieu Blazy only debuted his first collection for the French house one year ago), the obvious trait is the sense of excitement around it, which can only be compared to moments from the Karl Lagerfeld era. It is rare, because the effect hasn’t trickled across each and every luxury brand; it remains an outlier in desire, aspiration and most importantly, sales.
For Chanel, the challenge the label is focused on now is keeping its royal clients happy and shopping. Chanel doesn’t take pre-orders, and famously doesn’t allow ‘add to cart’ on its ecommerce channels, so launches are nothing short of chaos. “We’re all about managing scarcity, but it’s not because we’re not ordering enough,” Chanel President of Fashion Bruno Pavlovsky told WWD. “It’s because of the shelf life of our collections, which is two to three months on average.”
Chanel produces limited runs of 80 to 1,200 pieces per design, which means across 250 boutiques, no store receives more than four or five pieces. All part of the excitement.
It's a similar potion that Julien Klausner uses at Dries Van Noten to create a movie set of everyday costumes for real people, that merges maximalism and known shapes with heart: leopard skirts, smock tops, rugby jerseys and movie poster prints. It is amazing, and inspiring, in a world of naked dresses and formulaic ‘fits’, that people are so drawn to this style of haphazard, eccentric dressing.
And if you felt like the styling overall has begun to look like Celine under Michael Rider – especially from the recent menswear show – then you would be onto something. Not that Rider’s kooky, cool and inherently logical collections are being directly copied; it’s more the idea of a completely new character for each model, and accessories like hats and belts (see: the cummerbund) playing a major role in the silhouette. Or maybe it’s the idea that you can see the outfits on the streets of Paris, say, sitting comfortably with a Lime bike and baguette.
And it’s not like it's a bad place for designers to go. In attempts to emulate the Celine, Dries or Chanel level of desirability, we can only get better clothing, and more designers will feel compelled to move out of the realm of safety. These labels have proven consumers are smart, they appreciate styling notes and new silhouettes – and that they actually still listen to the fashion editors.
Runway highlights
After years of crafting the baseline of quiet luxury for in-the-know fashion people everywhere, The Row’s SS27 runway read like lifting the lid on the future of the brand. First, a pink-haired Gemma Ward campaign image (by far the most personality we’ve seen from the label), and now the antique lace and doilies, tapestry belts, and scarf tops that sat just so, seemed to move The Row out of its usual repertoire into a quirkier territory without appearing to try at all. The effect was perfect for fashion’s more optimistic mood.
Speaking of shifts, Nicholas Guesquiere’s dialled-back Louis Vuitton was one of the designer’s most wearable collections in years. Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent showed 63 looks all rendered in shades of gold - with no bags - and Miu Miu took a literal interpretation of sports to intellectual levels of modern dressing.
Elsewhere, capris and cropped pants continue their popularity across the collections, this time with kick flares and ruffles as seen at Loewe and Chloé. New shapes across traditional jacket silhouettes were prominent, with drop-shoulder jackets appearing in 10.2% of looks with 49 designers showing the trend across 177 looks, according to T-Fashion.
This was exemplified by Dior’s fun new bar jackets, and in the suite of leather bombers and trench styles that were prevalent across the week. Finally, it’s hard not to talk about the level of skirt-based outfits, from skirt suits to seductress pencil shapes and hip-draped asymmetrical designs. Where baggy jeans, cargos, and comfortable cotton pants once reigned, designers have brought the skirt back in ways that feel natural for daily dressing now.
The Trends
Here are a handful of the biggest trends from Paris Fashion Week Spring Summer 2027.
Satin saturation
Satin appeared in 20% of looks across the SS27 womenswear shows, up from 17.6% in SS26, which means 288 designers showed the trend across 2,048 looks. That’s a lot of silk. So, what’s going to take satin from its eveningwear roots into the now? The promise of its everyday use allows this fashion fabric to enter the mainstream wardrobe. This was seen throughout Paris in long boxer shorts at Ann Demeulemeester, the two-piece ensembles at Zimmermann and Louis Vuitton, blazers at Givenchy and military vests at Sacai.
Pattern play
As we discussed during Milan Fashion Week, the seemingly chaotic mish-mash of colors and layers is actually a calculated attempt at the “messy girl” direction fashion is moving toward. In Paris, pairing prints and patterns went beyond simply putting two floral prints together; it was more a comment on the return of playfulness in fashion and a wider acknowledgement of the many ways one can put together an outfit. Chanel, Valentino, Miu Miu and all tapped into offering customers personalized outfitting; their prints felt eccentric and collectible, rather than a passing ‘print clash’ moment.
Belts, belts, belts
Big belts, tiny belts, scarf belts, string belts and saucer-sized buckles. Belts have been one of the most obvious accessory stories of SS27, particularly pronounced in Paris. Celine’s Michael Rider showed supersized buckles and wide belts, Isabel Marant’s saloon-style, floral-encrusted versions sat perfectly against the bohemian aesthetic, and Dries Van Noten used classic leather styles to snugly cinch paperbag pants and skirts.
With the waist becoming less shapely throughout fashion month, fashion commentators have suggested that GLP-1 users, especially in the luxury sector, now need more belts to define the natural waist and to create the shape they may have lost – or simply hold up their designer clothes which have become too large. In any case, the belt has found a firm place in the assortment.
The sheer skirt continuum
Sheer skirts have dominated the past season, fitting in seamlessly with the exposed lingerie trends, and street-to-beach dressing in warmer weather. However, it appears the new way to merchandise these skirts is as double layers, adding beaded embellishments, using unusual fabrics and layering over numerous garments. Pinterest trends show 'sheer skirt' is trending upward over the last 6 months, however, it's slightly down over the year. So, rather than one garment doing the legwork for the whole look, layering up top and down below is giving new life to sheer layers that don’t exactly play well on their own in all public settings.
Yellow punch
Yellows, once a little colder, lemony, and of course, buttery, are now transitioning into warmer and more sensory tones like marigold, daffodil and banana, where Google searches for 'yellow outfit' are up 70% year on year. As fashion moves on for the dominant acidic shades like chartreuse, these punchy, lively yellows have a positive, natural vibration. The colour really sang when it was used almost comically in swimming trunks at Miu Miu, a raincoat at Chloe and in kick flares, shoes and collars at Loewe. According to Tagwalk the colour has grown 300% in collection share on last season.
The silent trench
The interesting thing about the trench coat isn’t its potential for a huge trend wave - the trench coat has always been in the working woman's and man’s wardrobe. The interesting thing is how ubiquitous but mutable it felt: the classic coat was being treated almost like a canvas for other products to be noticed. Its silent presence, yet constant redoing and reshaping across brands, made it one of the most popular items on the runways. In fact, searches for 'trench coat' have increased 60% year on year. It certainly fits in with Paris’s feel for practical, recognisable wardrobe pieces, and steps up as a key part of the utilitarian theme running through the week.
