In a season filled with designer musical chair sagas (apart from Jean Paul Gaultier taking helm as Creative Director of Diet Coke, which was harmonious), their inflicting drama came through in the clothes. From blood and crimson reds to slick black leather, Paris Fashion Week was bursting with drama, driving home why it’s a week to excite and evoke. We pin-point some its highlights and showcase exclusive back and front-stage shots from the Peachoo and Krejberg showcases, above.

Nicola Formichetti and co-designer Sébastien Peigné unleashed their most ambitious show yet, re-imagining Thierry Mugler’s 1997 Insects collection. Sculptural white cashmere, neoprene, and elongated fur sleeves floated on stage in futuristic shapes once rendered only by the namesake designer. All the while the poetic Dries van Noten took the eastern influence that’s become this season’s motif, and cut engineered prints into their fluid asymmetrical shapes.

Saturated fuchsia kept reappearing and not only at Phoebe Philo’s intimate presentation for Céline, where bold fur coats clashed against her proverbial minimalist updates, but at Stella McCartney, where she infused it with Yves Klein lace applique. The big guns, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, opted for loucher dresses-over-trousers shapes and bigger, bolder backdrops; Chanel’s cave of crystal stalagmites and Vuitton’s decamped train station (with porters carrying heritage trunks in time for a major
exhibition at Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs).The current talk of the town, Haider Ackerman, took his sinuous silhouette for a walk under autumnal leaf shades with tailoring that streamlined the female form the way only he could. If that wasn’t thrilling enough, the ever tongue-in-cheek Alber Elbaz celebrated his ten years at Lanvin with a romanticised collection of best of’s: intense pop colours on hourglass ruffles, black velvet dresses and coats kicking out from the hips, and glistening embellishments on rich, boxy satin. It was an exaltation of the modern woman that is sure to maintain Lanvin’s escalating allure.

But the icing on the cake came from the satirical Rei Kawakubo who sent down exaggerated cocoon coats and dresses pressed so flat out from the body shape, they resembled paper doll dresses, some in block Lego colours, others with childlike prints. As models walked in complete silence she poked fun at minimalism, or maybe just quietened the Chinese whispers riding waves through the autumn/winter season.

Words: Modesta Dziautaite

Pictures: Amina Nolan