From Glenn Marten’s debut at Maison Margiela to Demna’s swan song for Balenciaga and Chanel‘s last studio-signed collection before Matthieu Blazy takes the artistic reins, there was excitement at Haute Couture Week Autumn Winter 2025—26 that took place in Paris from July 7—10, 2025.
Balenciaga
Controlled by the Fédération de la Haute Couture, Haute Couture Week is the most selective showcase worldwide, with luxury fashion brands’ exceptional creativity, diversity and artisanal skills on display. While French luxury fashion generates sales of around 150 billion euros and accounts for almost 2.5% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, it is difficult to quantify the revenues of the haute couture segment. But if we add up sales of the luxury brands accredited by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode… the total maxes thirty billion euros.
Though Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Valentino, Fendi, and Givenchy were absent, the spotlight shone on a roster of luxury fashion brands on the Autumn Winter 2025-26 schedule — from Chanel, Balenciaga, Victor&Rolf, and Iris Van Herpen to Giorgio Armani Prive, Schiaparelli, Elie Saab and Maison Margiela. Let’s take a closer look at the top shows of the season.
Top Shows At Haute Couture Week Autumn Winter 2025—26
Schiaparelli
With her wild imagination and revolutionary approach to fashion, Elsa Schiaparelli instilled a unique creative spirit to Twentieth-century design. Turning ordinary objects into some of the most memorable creations, her iconic collaborations with artists like Dalí, Cocteau, Man Ray, Jean-Michel Franck, and Giacometti, became legendary. For 2025-26, Schiaparelli presented ‘Back To The Future’ by Daniel Roseberry at Le Petit Palais, inverting archives to make them look futuristic. Schiaparelli’s iconic corseted silhouettes were replaced by a new exploration of drama, one that defines the waist and hips with unexpected techniques.
‘The entire show was in fact conceived as a surrealist trompe l’oeil, from the makeup to the fabrics, which include Donegal wool and high-shine satines. There are dinner suits, their skirts cut to the knee, their jackets embroidered in silver threads and iridescent blacks. We’ve also introduced the Elsa jacket, a sharp-shouldered piece that references archival work and which we’ve rendered in both cut and woollen fabrics, and bias-cut evening gowns, to introduce a new nightwear language that doesn’t rely on corsets and shapewear,’ explains Daniel Roseberry on the official website.
‘Then there are the fantasy pieces: Elsa’s iconic ‘Apollo’ cape, reimagined here as an enormous spray of diamanté bijoux in three layers of metal starbursts, galvanized in different shades of black, gunmetal, and satin silver; a tulle ‘Squiggles and Wiggles’ dress, with shell-shaped 3-D embroideries atop a poof of white silk organdie, complete with black silk organdie parasol; matador-inspired jackets and coats, encrusted with baroque pearls, metallic leopard spots, black jet beads, all in codes of the Maison; and, finally, what I’m calling our ‘Eyes Wide Open’ embroidery, a dress with a hand painted iris motif, encased in resin Cabochons, embellished with metallic thread lashes and lids, and a waterfall back of silk tulle.’
Iris van Herpen
Iris van Herpen, widely heralded as one of fashion’s most forward-thinking designers, bridges fashion, nature, art, and science. Since its establishment in 2007, the Maison has combined innovative techniques with traditional couture craftsmanship, resulting in sensorial designs that beautifully capture the intricacy and diversity of the natural world.
‘Sympoiesis’ by Iris van Herpen was an artistic wildcard at Haute Couture Week. For nearly two decades, the couturier has worked in communion with the organic and the technological. Within Sympoiesis manifests the growing fragility of their interdependence. Van Herpen turns to the expansive, life-giving force of the ocean as a conceptual gateway, bearing witness to its ecological transformation and transcribing it into cloth via translucently layered textures, liquidised forms, and silhouettes that surge and wane as the tide.
Working with biodesigner Chris Bellamy, Iris van Herpen transformed living bioluminescent algae into a gleaming evening gown that quickly went viral on social media. In fact, Nature magazine also covered the fashion news. This was truly groundbreaking in both sustainability and technology.
Iris Van Herpen
Rahul Mishra
Rahul Mishra champions slow fashion with traditional Indian crafts. His eponymous label finds its genesis in ideas of ethical sustainability that present fashion as a tool to create participation and empower local craft communities in India by boosting the circular economy in their villages. The luxury fashion brand’s slow process of hand-weaving and hand embroidery allows the designer to build sustainable livelihoods for more than a thousand artisans. Ms Suzy Menkes regards Rahul Mishra as India’s ‘national treasure’.
The Indian designer, presenting his fourth collection in Paris, beautifully showcased Gustav Klimt’s motifs using zardozi and dabka. The collection took over 2,000 artisans to create, like the full-length dress with fine floral hand embroidery to create the effect of a garden. ‘An integral part of our New Delhi team are our karigars i.e. hand embroiderers and tailors who are the foundation of our brand. We are a large family that includes hundreds of people including local craftsmen and workers’, says the designer.
The opening look—the most striking in the showing—was a heart-shaped gold, sculptural dress with a sequined corset, reflecting the theme of exploring the seven stages of love: attraction, infatuation, love, trust or reverence, worship, madness and death. A heart-shaped black dress closed the couture showcase.
Giambattista Valli
Giambattista Valli launched his eponymous brand in 2005, heralding his first ready-to-wear show in Paris where he had moved from Rome to realize his dream of creating a Maison. In 2011 he showed his first Haute Couture collection and became an Official Member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.
This season Giambattista Valli skipped the runaway for a presentation held in Maison Valli and introduced by a ceremony during which the French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, awarded the fashion designer the medal of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters for his achievements. For Haute Couture N°29, Valli invited his guests into a dreamscape of nymphs and muses, where the bucolic meets the divine. A soft rebellion of silhouettes drawn from the hush of a garden, Valli recognises his eternal muses: the Valli Girls. Simple and soulful.
Chanel
Held in the Salon d’Honneur at the Grand Palais in Paris, Chanel Fall-Winter 2025-26 Haute Couture show explores the imagination of a place: 31 rue Cambon. In a setting inspired by the first Haute Couture salons of the House where Gabrielle Chanel had initiated a return to simplicity, the silhouettes came in shades of ecru, ivory, brown, green and black. A symbol of abundance dear to the couturier, wheat ears ran through the collection as jewelled buttons or embroideries highlighting the savoir-faire of the Haute Couture ateliers.
The mirrored staircase, the beige palette, the unique atmosphere of the Haute Couture salons and the apartment of Gabrielle Chanel: the Fall‑Winter 2025–26 Haute Couture show explores 31 rue Cambon, the Chanel Haute Couture address for over a century. Ambassadors and friends of the House Lorde, Gracie Abrams, Romy Mars, Sofia Coppola, Kirsten Dunst, Xin Zhilei, Wang Yibo, Keira Knightley, Penélope Cruz, Ramata‑Toulaye Sy, Marion Cotillard, Hannah O’Neill, Laufey and Sakura Ando were in attendance.
Balenciaga
Founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga in 1917, Balenciaga continues to define modern couture with innovations to form and technique. For the Balenciaga 54th Couture Show, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Yeoh, Naomi Watts, Cardi B, Patrick Schwarzenegger, and many more made their way to the couture salons for Demna’s final show, closing his decade-long tenure.
Per the official website, Demna says, ‘This collection is the perfect way for me to finish my decade at Balenciaga… Garments are sculptural and intricate in their construction, while embracing minimalism and reduction in their architecture. Notions of lightness and comfort feature throughout, alongside an exaggerated hourglass created using reengineered ‘comfortable’ corsetry…
The lightest possible technical silk bomber jacket; a ‘business’ blouson in summer-weight taffeta, followed by the airiest car coat ever. A puffer coat with no side seams and a cashmere-vicuña maxi coat are cut with a biker attitude… References to M. Balenciaga run throughout—consciously, and subconsciously. The Danielle suit, a recreation of a houndstooth ensemble she wore in 1967, is cut with the Cristóbal Balenciaga attitude she embodies.’
A study of Old Hollywood glamour can be seen in Demna’s ode to Elizabeth Taylor worn by Kim Kardashian: a ‘mink’ coat made of embroidered feathers, worn over a ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ silk slip. To complete this tribute, she wears Elizabeth Taylor’s iconic diamond pendant earrings from Lorraine Schwartz’s private collection.
Giorgio Armani Privé
A refined expression of contrasts, Noir Séduisant explores the sensual architecture of black through sculptural tailoring and textures that move between softness and structure. Bow ties and tuxedos echo masculine precision, while sheer details, pavé crystals and fluid dresses heighten a feminine allure. This is the language of elegance spoken in black, unveiled at Palazzo Armani in Paris.
Elie Saab
At a salon privé in Paris, le beau monde falls silent as a coterie of newcomers sweeps through the door. Radiant in sumptuous silks and adorned with lustrous pearls, they embody a new kind of muse—one who exudes irreverent elegance with every step. Introducing La Nouvelle Cour, Elie Saab’s Autumn-Winter 2026 Haute Couture is a sumptuous playground for the modern woman—one who plays by her own rules.
Fusing opulence with attitude, the collection reimagines glamour through sculptural silhouettes and sensual detailing. In the volumes and velvet excess, French corsetterie is reborn with elegance and strength. Ribbed with ebony velvet, sculpted into metallic masterpieces, or paired with cascades of lace, corsets celebrate the body. Volumes add drama and movement to moiré sheaths. A palette of macarons contrasts with imperial black and gold. And floral bouquets bloom boldly across both print and brocade.
Bows, beaded across sheer chiffon or billowing at the back of feathered gowns, weaves a spell of mystery. As evening turns into nocturnal revelry, shoulders are cloaked in floor-skimming velvet capes. And when midnight strikes, all eyes turn to the bride, adorned in an ornate gown richly embroidered in moonlit flowers, and crowned with an extravagant overskirt in tones of shimmering pearl.
Victor&Rolf
Victor&Rolf unveiled ‘Angry Birds’ – its Autumn Winter 2025 Haute Couture collection: a parade of fifteen pairs of identical garments that explores the expressive potential of presence and absence, of spectacular and subtlety. The idea was simple and effective: identical dresses come out in pairs, one puffed up to an nth degree and stuffed with colourful feathers, the other limp and deflated. One was voluminously stuffed with vibrant and colourful cruelty-free fabric feathers, sculpting an exuberant, couture-inspired silhouette. Its alter ego was left unadorned, resulting in a fluid, softened silhouette. Technically identical, yet entirely transformed — a refined study in contrast and transformation.
Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela unveiled its Artisanal 2025 Collection at Haute Couture Week. In his debut at the maison, Belgian designer Glenn Martens honoured its legacy for provocative, avant-garde design, including face coverings — an invention of founder Martin Margiela, a conceptual designer who covered runway models’ faces to keep the spotlight on the clothes.
Held at the Le Centquatre in the 19th arrondissement, Martens sent out trenchcoats crafted with transparent plastic or oil paint applied to men’s jeans. The show notes clarified that repurposed materials included lining fabrics, vintage leather jackets and discarded costume jewellery.
Per WWD: ‘The Bruge-born designer referenced the medieval architecture and atmosphere of Flanders and the Netherlands, his prints of flowers and game based on 17th-century still-life paintings, and then given a 3D aspect by overlaying illusion tulle over details like the wings of the hunted birds. One dress in mother-of-pearl duchess satin recalled the eerie statue on the cover of the 1987 Dead Can Dance album ‘Within the Realm of a Dying Sun,’ the head of the wearer draped in mourning.’
Maison Margiela
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Jasmeen Dugal is Associate Editor at FashionABC, contributing her insights on fashion, technology, and sustainability. She brings with herself more than two decades of editorial experience, working for national newspapers and luxury magazines in India.
Jasmeen Dugal has worked with exchange4media as a senior writer contributing articles on the country’s advertising and marketing movements, and then with Condenast India as Net Editor where she helmed Vogue India’s official website in terms of design, layout and daily content. Besides this, she is also an entrepreneur running her own luxury portal, Explosivefashion, which highlights the latest in luxury fashion and hospitality.
