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5 stand-out shows at Paris Fashion Week AW24 – so far: from Dior’s graffiti logos and Saint Laurent’s sheer tops, to Chloé’s 1970s femininity, Rick Owen’s knit dresses and Undercover’s daywear

Paris Fashion Week autumn/winter 2024 featured established maisons like Dior and Chloé (pictured) as well as American-born, Paris-based designer Rick Owens. Photo: EPA-EFE

Paris Fashion Week has just begun, but it has already delivered some great moments.

From legacy houses such as Dior and Saint Laurent to independent designers and everything in between, not a day has gone by without something to delight showgoers.

Quintessentially Parisian looks from Isabel Marant’s autumn/winter 2024 collection shown during Paris Fashion Week in Paris. Photo: AFP
Rabanne’s Julien Dossena, for instance, keeps reinventing the label known for its shiny chain mail and disco vibe. This time around, he did it with a preppy take on all that shine and sparkle.

Designers such as Isabel Marant, meanwhile, never fail to distil the essence of the chic Parisian aesthetic that has come to define French fashion and influence the daily wardrobes of cool girls around the world.

A menswear-inspired look at Schiaparelli autumn/winter 2024. Photo: AP
For a heavy dose of glamour, you can always rely on Schiaparelli, the Paris-based brand revived by Tod’s Diego Della Valle and now helmed by American Daniel Roseberry. For autumn/winter 2024, the Texas-born designer toned things down a notch with more daywear at the historic brand, which has become a red-carpet darling and is best known for its showstopping couture creations.
A denim outfit from Schiaparelli’s autumn/winter 2024 collection shown in Paris during fashion week. Photo: AP

Here, in chronological order, are five highlights from the shows so far.

Dior

Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri paid homage to the Miss Dior line from the 60s for the brand’s autumn/winter 2024 collection. Photo: Reuters
You may know Miss Dior as one of the French brand’s bestselling fragrances, but it’s also the name of the label’s first ready-to-wear line, launched in 1967 by then-Dior designer Marc Bohan – who passed away last year – and designed by his assistant Philippe Guibourgé.

For the autumn/winter 2024 ready-to-wear show, Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri looked back at that time in the late 60s, when many Parisian houses started to make ready-to-wear for a larger and younger audience.

Chiuri always designs with women’s needs in mind; there’s a practical elegance to her creations that make them perfectly suited for everyday life. This season, that sensibility translated into wardrobe staples such as trench coats, biker jackets, skirt suits and A-line dresses, some of them printed with Miss Dior graffiti-type logos or embellished with beads.

An embellished skirt suit from Dior’s autumn/winter 2024 collection. Photo: Xinhua

As is often the case with Chiuri, she paid homage to a female figure: this time, Italian artist Gabriella Crespi, who collaborated with Bohan on home decor pieces back in the 60s. Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, known for her armour-like sculptures depicting the female body, was behind the set of the show.

Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni, known for her armour-like sculptures depicting the female body, was behind the set of the Dior autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: EPA-EFE
Dior is one of the very few luxury houses helmed by two women (Delphine Arnault is the brand’s CEO), which makes Chiuri’s unwavering celebration of women’s empowerment even more compelling.

Saint Laurent

Sheer chiffon tops at Saint Laurent autumn/winter 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE

If Anthony Vaccarello’s work at Saint Laurent could be summarised with one word, it would be consistency. All his collections have a distinctive feel to them, and for each outing, the designer always hones in on one idea and develops it with laserlike focus.

Like every season, the autumn/winter 2024 show took place a stone’s throw away from the Eiffel Tower, where this time around Vaccarello and his team built a structure housing two circular rooms covered in green velvet damask curtains.

The boudoir-like setting was meant to recall the interior of the couture salons of Avenue Marceau, the brand’s historic headquarters.

Transparency, a signature of the house since the days of late founder Yves, was Vaccarello’s obsession this season.

Models carried fur coats at the Saint Laurent autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: AP

Sheer chiffon tops paired with pencil skirts and dresses in the same transparent material were interspersed here and there with power-shouldered suits and three all-black outfits featuring stiff leather jackets.

Vaccarello is an avowed fan of fur, and this show had plenty: from giant fur bags with chain straps to chubby fur coats that models nonchalantly held with one arm. While clothing is meant to cover up and protect, Vaccarello also wanted to eradicate the distance between garments and skin, and “meld” them into one. The nude sheer tops clung to the models’ bodies, exposing their breasts.
Olivia Wilde attends the Yves Saint Laurent autumn/winter 2024 ready-to-wear show in Paris. Photo: AP
While women in the real world may not be ready to do the same, the brand’s loyal clients will have plenty to find in stores once the pieces hit retail in more customer-friendly versions. Unless they’re celebrities like Olivia Wilde, that is. The actor and director looked like the life of the party in a sheer top paired with a skirt from a previous collection.

Undercover

Back-to-basics clothes at Undercover’s autumn/winter 2024 collection. Photo: Undercover

Undercover’s Jun Takahashi’s homage to banal clothes has been one of the best moments in Paris so far. The Japanese designer’s autumn/winter 2024 show couldn’t be more different from last season’s, which featured those buzzed-about “terrarium dresses” with live butterflies flying inside them.

For autumn/winter 2024, he went back to basics, which made for a poignant statement amid all this talk of ordinary clothes and “quiet luxury”. Who needs fabulous, glittering dresses when the world is going topsy turvy?
Yoga mats at Undercover’s autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: Undercover

Instead of the usual soundtrack, Takahashi used the voice of German director Wim Wenders reading a gripping story narrating the day in the life of a woman. The clothes and attitude reflected the text. Models carrying grocery bags, yoga mats and other mundane items were clad in simple outfits such as tank tops paired with jeans, and cardigan-and-pencil skirt combos.

An everyday look with some sparkle at Undercover’s autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: Undercover

But here’s the twist: some of the pieces were embellished with sparkly tinsel and made with a method that Takashi calls “adhesion”, which blended completely different materials in the same garment.

It was a genius take on ordinary clothes that was anything but ordinary.

Rick Owens

A fluffy top at Rick Owens’ autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: Rick Owens

One of the great things about a Rick Owens show are its guests. The Paris-based American designer normally holds his shows at the Palais de Tokyo, where his avid fans, decked out in his monochrome creations, are as much of a visual draw as the clothes on the runway.

This season, however, Owens decided to bring things home – in more ways than one. He held the autumn/winter 2004 show at his apartment on the left bank of Paris. It was a very intimate affair, which may have not provided the street-style spectacle of the outside crowds, but certainly didn’t lack the wow factor.

He also went back home more figuratively. The collection was named after Porterville, the small town in California where he was born and a place he longed to leave as a child to get away from bullying and his strict upbringing. (His father didn’t allow him to watch TV and instead exposed a young Owens to fantastical tales that enriched his imagination, as he explained in the show notes.)

A maxi dress with platforms at Rick Owens’ autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: Rick Owens

Needless to say, the clothes had very little to do with Owens’ sunny home state. The designer has built a cultlike following thanks to his uncompromised vision. It almost feels like he has created his own world, one populated by otherworldly creatures moulded in his image.

This doesn’t mean, however, that his clothes, including those from this collection, are not meant for real life.

A striking look paired with boots at Rick Owens’ autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: Rick Owens
The knitwear dresses, sharply shouldered jackets and zippered boots he showed for autumn/winter are extremely desirable, while the more out-there pieces, which Owens designed in response to “the barbaric times” we live in, will please his diehard collectors of his work. (Remember the doughnut jackets from last year?)

And for those who want a piece of the Rick Owens magic, the brand’s bestselling shoes and distressed leather jackets are always there to keep the brand’s machine running.

Chloé

The Chloé autumn/winter 2024 show at Paris Fashion Week marked the debut of designer Chemena Kamali. Photo: EPA-EFE

It’s hard to keep track of the revolving door of creative directors who have been at Chloé over the last two decades. So has the brand finally found its perfect match in recently appointed creative director Chemena Kamali?

The quintessentially feminine Parisian label was founded by a woman, Gaby Aghion, and previously helmed by female designers including Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney and Gabriela Hearst, as well as the late Karl Lagerfeld. Kamali, who joined the house from Saint Laurent and worked at Chloé 20 years ago, made her debut with the autumn/winter 2024 show – which ticked all the boxes.
Possibly the coolest trousers at fashion week, courtesy of Chloé autumn/winter 2024. Photo: AFP

The collection was everything a Chloé collection should be: feminine but not too girlie, luxurious but not too precious, a bit retro but still au courant, and definitely Parisian but not in a cliché way. Kamali mentioned the 70s as an inspiration, but the vibe was very of the moment.

Chain belts with “Chloé” in cursive script at the brand’s autumn/winter 2024 show. Photo: AFP

The boho-chic frilly chiffon dresses that have always been a signature of the house made an appearance, and were paired with knee-high boots. Stand-outs ranged from the fringed leather pants with pleated chiffon bell bottoms to the capes and jackets in patent leather, not to mention what is likely to be one of the hottest items next season: the chain belts emblazoned with “Chloé ” in cursive script.

Chloé’s creative director Chemena Kamali hugs her child at the end of the autumn/winter 2024 show in Paris. Photo: EPA-EFE

Kamali, who took her bow with a big smile and hugged her child, who was sitting front row, said that the collection was about “intuition, freedom and an instinctive female energy”.

It was a promising new start for a brand that could do with a much-needed dose of energy.

  • From February 26 to March 5, the French capital is buzzing with the fashion world attending shows from legacy houses like Dior and Schiaparelli, to independent designers
  • Olivia Wilde rocked Saint Laurent’s sheer top while Rick Owens designed in response to ‘the barbaric times’ we live in; meanwhile, Chloé’s newly appointed Chemena Kamali celebrated 1970s femininity