Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights: Dior to Alaïa

Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025 is the closing act of the season, arriving in the French city this week with a packed schedule of runway shows from industry titans – among them Dior, Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent, Chanel and Givenchy, the last marking the much-anticipated debut of former Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton. Her opening gambit for the storied Parisian house will take place on Friday morning (7 March 2025). After piquing interest with a butter-yellow suit for Timotheé Chalamet at the Oscars this past Sunday, it’s fair to say it will be the week’s most talked about runway show.

Elsewhere, Haider Ackermann will make his debut at Tom Ford, having succeeded Peter Hawkings earlier this year, Julian Klausner will host his debut show for Dries Van Noten, and Alessandro Michele will unveil his sophomore ready-to-wear collection for Valentino after a lauded couture show in January (those awaiting Matthieu Blazy at Chanel, though, will have to wait until September for his official arrival). A handful of intriguing younger names also populate the schedule, including LVMH Prize-winning designers Duran Lantink and Hodakova, while the usual contigent of Japanese designers – among them Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya – will no doubt present thought-provoking collections in their typically experimental style.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025, as it happens.

Alaïa

Marking a return to Paris after showing at New York’s Guggenheim Museum last season, Pieter Mulier staged his latest collection in the Alaïa atelier on Rue Servan. Populating the space were a series of monolithic heads in roughly hewn unfired clay by the contemporary Dutch artist Mark Manders. Mulier said he was drawn to the works for the way they appear to stand outside of time or place: ‘Manders’ work fascinates me – each of his sculptures seem itself a work either in progress, or marked by the passage of an imaginary time, reminiscent at once of many different cultures,’ he said. ‘And that idea of a non-linearity – of space, and of time – was inspiring.’

The idea of non-linearity – of garments which traversed time and space, a ‘beauty outside of any era or geography, free of boundaries’ – ran through the standout collection. Referencing at once ancient deities (on his Instagram prior to the show, he posted a carved Bronze Age figure of a woman, captioned ‘Modern Venus’) and the archival designs of house founder Azzedine Alaïa (notably, a focus on hooded silhouette and pleats), the resulting garments were what Mulier called ‘kinetic sculptures’. Romantic flourishes came in heart-shaped cut-outs and flower-like pom poms at the neckline, while looping gowns – held in place with twists of metal – continued the ‘gravity-defying’ silhouettes of last season.

‘The message is about singularity, individuality, the eternal strength and resilience of women, empowering them through their clothes,’ Mulier continued. ‘That always inspired Azzedine, and it always inspires me – the strength of beauty.’ JM

Dior

The idea of metamorphosis was at the centre of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest collection for Dior, an idea reflected in a theatrical mise-en-scène by the experimental American theatre director Robert Wilson which recreated the dawn of time in his symbolic style (from jagged glaciers that rose from the floor to a pterodactyl which zoomed across the space). Grazia Chiuri’s collection had also begun with something elemental, at least in fashion terms: the white shirt, which she linked with Gianfranco Ferré, who led the house in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and who was an influence here.

The foundational garment became a jumping off point for an exploration of historic dress codes, layered under corsetry or dramatically ruffled and elongated at the cuff, chiming with the Elizabethan-inflected frock coats, ruff-inspired pearl necklaces and flared-waist crinoline gowns elsewhere (Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and its time-travelling, gender-shifting protagonist, were another inspiration). Meanwhile, tough black leather met playful faux-ermine stoles, while slouchy parka-style outerwear prevented the collection from feeling like costume. Grazia Chiuri also reintroduced the John Galliano-era J’Adore Dior T-shirt, including a version given new life with patches of delicate lace. ‘A femininity that imagines possible futures by mixing evocations of a past,’ the designer described. JM

Stay tuned for more from Paris Fashion Week A/W 2025.