Rounding out fashion month for another season, Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 arrives as energised as ever – from historic houses to runway debuts. Here, in a rolling report, Wallpaper* updates you live from the shows

The finale of Dior S/S 2023. Photography by Adrien Dirand for Dior

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 looks set to round out fashion month in climatic manner – from spectacular shows courtesy of France’s historic houses (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, Saint Laurent and Hermès among them) to a new wave of emerging designers showing across the city (Ester Manas, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Ottolinger and more), Europe’s spiritual home of fashion feels as energised as ever. New additions to the nine-day schedule include Victoria Beckham, in her Paris debut, Ib Kamara, who reveals his vision as art and image director of Off-White, and a contingent of Japanese designers making their womenswear return after two years of Covid-19 restrictions, including Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamato (Issey Miyake will also show its first collection since the eponymous founder’s death earlier this year). 

Here, in a rolling report, is the best of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023, as it happens.

Rick Owens once again used the vast forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo – this time, its central fountain shooting a monumental spire of water high into the air – to backdrop a collection inspired by the figures of ancient Egypt, and biblical epics he would watch as a child (the inspiration points were similar to his men’s show this past June, when he said of Egypt, ‘I found great comfort in the remoteness and scale of its history’). A feeling of ritual and ceremony permeated the collection: silhouettes were draped around the body (the opening look felt like a play on the mantled statues of classical antiquity), shoulders were peaked, the shape of a jacket evoked the shell of a scarab beetle (a creature ancient Egypt saw as symbolic of eternal life). A black hooded clock was monastic in proportion, while a final flourish of tulle – Rick Owens’ take on the ballgown – provided a dramatic closer.  Most striking, though, was one of the collection’s fabrications – an otherworldly ‘gelatinous’ leather which had been treated with glycerin to appear sheer. 

Acne Studios’ S/S 2023 collection marked ten years since the Stockholm-based label began showing its collections in Paris. To celebrate, Jonny Johansson imagined a ‘twisted wedding party’, a mood reflected in the all-pink set, which came complete with rumpled satin sheets and shell-adorned candelabras by nail artist Sylvie Macmillan. ‘I wanted to put a spin on the classic, kitschy wedding, referencing everything from the tablecloth to the chandelier, the wedding-night bed sheets, the bride’s shoe, the bows, and the cute flowers,’ said Johansson of the collection itself, which riffed on the archetypes of wedding nuptials in the label’s eclectic, undone style. Delicate layers of lace, transparent tulle adorned with flowers, and girlish bows and hearts set a romantic mood, while spikey accessories, battered leather, and the brand’s signature denim provided a tougher counterpoint. ‘I find weddings fascinating because they are always a melting pot, and they kickstart a lot of aesthetic choices,’ Johansson continued. ‘There’s something cute, kitschy, sweet about weddings – but also something serious, tense, and vulnerable.’

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen continue to bring their distinct brand of ascetic luxury to Paris Fashion Week, presenting a typically restrained – but entirely desirable – collection for S/S 2023. There was, of course, plenty of brilliant outerwear – broad-shouldered coats with hems almost touching the floor; a trench, grasped over the chest with the hand – while a feeling of sensuality came from the silhouette, subtly nipped at the waist and flaring slightly towards the hips, or diaphanous layers which wrapped around the body. A passage of looks saw the designers forge new ground in an exploration of the intimacy and imperfections of handcraft, from a homespun crochet dress and top – the various knitted patterns lending them a feeling of collage – to swathes of delicate netting, intricately stitched with hundreds of shimmering crystals.

‘A suit used to equal a job interview or a formal occasion, but now the suit is cool again,’ Paul Smith said at his S/S 2023 menswear show earlier this year, a thematic thread which continues into the designer’s latest womenswear collection. Contemporary riffs on tailoring provide the collection’s nexus – a sleeveless blazer, with an angular closure is worn with tailored shorts, while a play on the three-piece suit comes in matching satin shirt, overlaid bustier and trouser (Smith calls it a more ‘youthful’ take on the formalwear staple). Elsewhere, an after-hours mood permeates the collection – Smith says he drew particular inspiration from his musical icons of the 1970s and 80s – in louche silhouettes and tuxedo-inspired elements, which ‘blur the lines between day-to-night’. Despite this, the collection retains a resolutely relaxed mood, with gently ruched dresses, oversized trench coats, and soft-to-the-skin boucle, jersey and satin epitomising Smith’s uncomplicated, easygoing approach. 

‘Elapsed time, looking forwards, glancing backwards,’ were the evocative starting points of Nicolas Di Felice’s latest collection for Courrèges, symbolised by a stream of sand which poured from the ceiling onto the circular runway below – as if attendees were suspended in a giant hourglass (the spectacle was created by French artist Theo Mercier; the sand was made from nut shells ‘obtained from 100% renewable raw material’). He did so by looking towards the ocean (‘time leads back to nature’), the annular sand-covered runway also evocative of a beach – ruffled-haired models held their shoes in hand, as if wandering home the morning after (rave culture has been a prescient inspiration for Di Felice during his tenure at the house so far). It lent the collection a certain fluidity, which referenced both Di Felice’s sleek minimalism and the futurist innovations of the house founder. A series of flou dresses, for example, took their body-skimming line from a 1974 zippered dress, while a wetsuit created in 1981 ‘evolved’ into a leather jacket. Metallic halter swimsuits, spiky silicone dresses – their unique texture evocative of coral – and scuba fabrics completed the beach-side look, which was both recognisable and unexpected at once. ‘To look at the past as we look to the idea of the future,’ he said. ‘As a way to create for the now.’

‘Radical fluidity’ described Anthony Vaccarello of his glamourous S/S 2023 outing at Saint Laurent, reimagining the enveloping sheath dresses worn by American choreographer Martha Graham – which traced the line of the body and often stretched from head to toe – as diaphanous hooded eveningwear, which also recalled Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘capuche’ dresses of the 1980s. Indeed, the era proved to be something of a theme of the collection, not least in a brilliant array of power-shouldered outerwear – from elongated leather trenches to elegant floor-length wool coats – drawn from the archive and yet contemporary in their boldness of shape (such cinematic silhouettes have been a focus of Vacarello in recent seasons). Set against the usual backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, it was a blockbuster show which closed Paris Fashion Week’s first full day in electric manner.

Florentine noblewoman Catherine de Medici has become one of European history’s most evocative figures, bringing the riches of her realm – the Republic of Florence, prior to Italy’s unification – to 16th-century France and its royal court through her marriage to King Henry II. Among them, delicate Burano lace, the corset, and platform heels, her imports reshaping Parisian fashion and arguably defining feminine dress for centuries to come. The seductive appeal of De Medici provided the starting point of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s S/S 2023 collection for Dior, which explored women’s ability to exercise power through fashion. ‘The power of fashion becomes the art of woman,’ read the collection’s notes. ‘An art of invention, able to redefine the city of Paris over and over again, each and every time.’

Presented amid a rich Baroque-inspired cardboard ‘cave’ created by French artist Eva Jospin, Chiuri conjured De Medici’s spirit through a 21st-century lens – from swathes of intricate lace to panniers, corsets, and rich, ceremonial silhouettes (billowing sleeves, elbow-length gloves, symbolic embroidery). Contemporary elements were woven through the primarily black collection (De Medici wore only black after the death of her husband; Chiuri noted it was a colour with particular visual power) from toggle fastenings to denim, alongside cargo pants, bomber jackets, and trench coats. ‘Fashion dialogues with reality through artifice; the garments of the Court are transformed.’

There was, of course, an autobiographical thread that wove through the collection – Grazia Chiuri herself is an Italian in Paris; she too is attempting to make her mark on the way people dress in both the city and the world beyond. Time will tell Chiuri’s own influence, though the success of her tenure so far – Dior’s revenues are estimated to have tripled in her time on the job, bringing in close to $7 billion dollar profit – shows she is striking a chord with women with collections that, like De Medici’s wardrobe half a millennium before, encompass both power and desire. 

Stay tuned for more Wallpaper* coverage from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 §

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