Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025 showcased a stunning array of diverse styles, from understated luxury to gothic chic, reaffirming the French capital’s status as fashion’s most versatile hub.
The Global Fashion Capital
Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025 continues to draw fashion professionals from around the globe, largely due to the extraordinary diversity of contemporary fashion found in the French capital. While other fashion capitals have become known for specific styles—commercial in New York, exploratory in London, and chic in Milan—Paris stands apart with its remarkable versatility. Featuring 109 events for the Fall-Winter 2025-2026 season, Paris has cemented its reputation as the city where creativity flourishes in countless forms, as brilliantly demonstrated during the shows held over the March 8-9 weekend.
Hermès Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025: The Epitome of Understated Luxury
No brand embodies understated luxury quite like Hermès. The company, a leader in craftsmanship since 1837, takes pride in its French manufacturing heritage, avoids logo display, and refuses to sell its most coveted bags online. Its outstanding financial performance in 2024—€15.2 billion in sales and 15% growth over 2023—has only strengthened the brand’s commitment to its founding principles.
This dedication extends to its fashion shows, typically held at the parade of the Garde Républicaine as a nod to the brand’s origins as a saddler. The audience generally includes figures from French cultural life, from director Rebecca Zlotowski to actress Amira Casar. The decor remains elegantly understated: a simple dirt floor and curved walls echoing the shape of horseshoes.
Since 2014, Nadège Vanhée has been developing the women’s line, refining her vision of an equestrian-inspired wardrobe that balances power and sensuality. “What interests me is the tension that arises from paradoxes: playing on strength and vulnerability, structure and letting go. It’s part of the essence of Hermès,” she explains.
The collection features outdoor-ready outfits for chic bikers and riders—zipped jackets, leather pants, and equestrian-inspired boots—alongside more sensual pieces like revealing leather dresses and shape-enhancing knitwear. The color palette centers on deep browns, blacks, and anthracite, extending to accessories that include new iterations of the iconic Bolide and Birkin bags, designed in 1923 and 1984 respectively but still remarkably relevant. At Hermès, consistency remains the cornerstone of success and this Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025 collection highlights that.
McQueen Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025: A Gothic Romance
At McQueen, Sean McGirr presented his third collection, building on the darkly romantic vision he began developing in his second showing. The Irish designer, born in 1988, drew inspiration from fellow Irishman Oscar Wilde to create a mixed wardrobe of nocturnal dandies with Victorian influences.
The Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025 collection opened with black wool gabardines and suits featuring gigot sleeves, contrasted with stark white blouses adorned with intricate lace and collars made from layered, rippling silk. The aesthetic then evolved toward greater extravagance, with long, transparent ribboned dresses in bold absinthe green or blood-red. This fluidity contrasted with statuesque sheepskin furs resembling plush armor. The finale presented even more dramatic silhouettes with imposing dark dresses embroidered with light-catching stones.
While well-executed, the collection occupies a gothic-chic fashion space that has seen few competitors since Riccardo Tisci left Givenchy in 2017, yet somehow falls short of being truly convincing. Perhaps the venue—the Jardin des Plantes geology and mineralogy gallery, with its long hall and polished parquet flooring—worked against the dark narrative McGirr was attempting to convey. The collection ultimately lacked the spark needed to give these nocturnal creatures genuine authenticity.
Valentino Paris Fashion Week Fall-Winter 2025: Baroque Maximalism
Alessandro Michele, a master of theatrical presentation, created an extraordinary setting for Valentino. Guests entered through a narrow door into a gray vestibule, followed by a second door opening onto a gigantic public-restroom set featuring rows of dozens of doors with glimpses of feet beneath them, washbasins, mirrors, and dramatic red lighting.
This unconventional decor reflects Michele’s exploration of intimacy, designed to help viewers reach their “deep core” in contrast to “the masks that mass society seems to force on us.” In his statement, referencing philosophers Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Romano Madera, Michele describes public toilets as “a counter-place that suspends the dualism between inside and outside, intimate and exposed, personal and collective”—an ambitious conceptual framework.
Models emerged one by one from the doors, creating a mesmerizing ballet set to deafening music that rattled the mirrors. The collection exemplified Michele’s signature baroque, maximalist style—ruffled dresses, extensive lace, abundant embroidery, and cascades of ribbons. Playful elements included thick apple-green socks worn with sequined sandals, a dress embroidered with a rhinestone cat’s head, and countless bows adorning high-necked dresses.
These visually striking pieces were balanced by more commercially viable items: perfectly flared wool pants, retro shearling coats, practical all-weather outerwear, and geometrically patterned sweaters. This approach offered a more accessible, wearable range that could appeal to Valentino’s established clientele who may have felt alienated by Michele’s initial over-the-top designs, while allowing the designer room for reinvention.
Balenciaga: Disquieting Normality
Demna, Balenciaga’s designer since 2015, has consistently delivered some of fashion’s most striking presentations, with scenography (recreations of the European Parliament, snowstorms, apocalyptic settings) that underscores complex themes including political and social conflict, the war in Ukraine, and climate crisis. For this collection, guests navigated a labyrinth of high black walls.
“It’s reminiscent of the backstage at a fashion show, where the creative process begins. The shape of the labyrinth is symbolic, evoking both fashion and our current era. We live at a time when many important decisions are being made,” Demna explained. This statement prompts speculation about the designer’s own crossroads, as his collection—resembling a retrospective of his work over the years—felt more like a conclusion than a fresh chapter.
Exploring “the concept of normalcy,” Demna presented a series of everyday characters: slightly rumpled office workers, teenagers in tracksuits (a collaboration with Puma), gym-goers in torn T-shirts revealing sculpted physiques, and night owls with hoods pulled low and sunglasses concealing exhaustion. His signature manipulation of proportions and distinctive details—impressive riding boots, studded motorcycle gloves—lent these familiar figures a disquieting quality. Several impeccable designer dresses completed the collection.
“Fashion is all about the garment. Finding the right proportions, the right cuts, that’s what counts,” the Georgian designer emphasized after the show. “Look, for the first time I’m wearing a suit because I’ve finally managed to design one suitable for me!” The once introspective, activist Demna appears to have evolved into a more cautious, measured designer, both in concept and execution.
