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Runway Reviews

Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Debut: Pavillon des Folies

05 Dec 2024

At Valentino, a new era is unfolding. Marked by a familiar exploration of times past, endless frills and flounces, and an unmistakable maximalist air recognizable from miles away, newly appointed creative director Alessandro Michele finds his spot at the house for his very first runway show this Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2025.

Entitled “Pavillon des Folies”, Michele’s PFW debut collection is an exploration on the meaning of beauty as an enduring inspiration for life, unveiling... Read More

Chanel Fall-Winter 2024/25 Haute Couture

31 Jul 2024

Presented by the Fashion Creation Studio, the CHANEL Fall-Winter 2024/25 Haute Couture collection pays tribute to the Palais Garnier, in Paris. Playing a key role ever since its creation, in both the history of fashion and the House, this hotspot of performance and elegance, where everything is about glances, gazes and putting oneself on display, is today hosting the CHANEL runway show. Sophisticated, luxurious, theatrical, the collection reveals itself in the outside corridors surrounding... Read More

Milan Fashion Week 2024: Focus on awareness

21 May 2024

At the latest Milan Fashion Week runways designers were striking a more serious note that encouraged investment buying. Bold new directions appeared to be on pause, as fashion houses doubled-down on signatures that sell. A celebration of fashion it was not – rather a moment of reflection.

The schedule’s top-billing designers took the mic to stress the positive role fashion can play, while acknowledging – without being specific – the increasing turbulence the world is facing.

Gaurav Gupta 'Aarohanam' at Paris Couture Week

02 Apr 2024

Aarohanam is ascension. A Sanskrit word that has a deep spiritual significance marking the journey of a being from the gross to the subtle, from solid to sublime, from darkness to light. This phenomenon inspires the collection. It portrays elevation from reason to innocence, letting go of every construct to become one with the natural design of existence. Much like the movement of a snake’s journey as it sheds old skin to emerge anew, reborn. It is reflective of the concept of kundalini -... Read More

Schiaparelli: An Everyday Sensation

13 Feb 2024

In her private album, the actress Marisa Berenson describes a pivotal moment in the early career of her grandmother Elsa Schiaparelli. It was 1927, and Elsa was admiring a friend’s sweater. Upon learning it was made by some Armenian knitters, she tracked them down and commissioned a sweater of her own, which, Berenson writes, “she specified should look like the primitive drawing of a child in prehistoric times.” That piece, with its deliberately imperfect trompe l’oeil bow and its surrealist... Read More

Max Mara Resort 2024 takes a fresh look at florals

31 Jan 2024

When the weather map turns from yellow to orange to deep, deep red, smart travellers look north for the cool spots. Max Mara feels right at home in Scandinavia, thanks to its hip metropolises and the accessibility of Nordic design. But epic natural landscapes and a folklore redolent of mystery and magic offer Max Mara a new dimension. Scandinavia’s progressive character goes back a long way. History remembers Vikings for ruthless plundering, but who knew they also sewed the seeds of Nordic... Read More

Valentino Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2023-24

15 Aug 2023

For the Valentino Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2023-24 Valentino show, a Château is, to Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli, a metaphysical entity, a context that can itself be recontextualized. Witness to a past time, a space bears traces of the lives lived within it – formerly emblematic of notions of elitism and status, a Château can today reject its history, to be recalibrated. Nameless and universal, a Château can exist as an everyplace for everyone, can become a forum for a new... Read More

Elie Saab Haute Couture: Symbols of abundance

01 Aug 2023

The Elie Saab Haute Couture Spring/Summer 23 moves in such currents of richness and symbols of abundance. Each majestic piece is intricate and ornate, carefully created with impressions from the natural scenes and rituals of the revered kingdom of Thailand, where rich cultures of gilded splendor inspire the imagination and artistry of Elie Saab. To inaugurate the captivating celebration, she begins her perpetual rise alongside her partner, and together, in splendid harmony, they emit... Read More

Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection

22 Mar 2023

For Chanel’s Spring-Summer 2023 Haute Couture collection, Virginie Viyard and Xavier Veilhan headed to Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment at 31, Rue Cambon and found inspiration in the collection of objects, sculptures, drawings representing lions, does, stags, birds and camels displayed at this emblematic address. Reinterpreting the apartment’s bestiary in an exquisite way fit for a Couture collection, this world of animals came to life through embroideries on short tweed suits and coat dresses,... Read More

Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023

13 Feb 2023

In 1308, the poet Dante Alighieri began what would be his masterwork, The Divine Comedy, a 14,233-line poem divided into three books: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

We all know this work, by name if not by heart. And yet when I revisited it recently, I was struck by something I’d missed when I first encountered it—not the horror of hell that Dante conjures so vividly, nor the sense of despair that overcomes you as you descend further and further into the realm—but by how the story... Read More