The Top 10 Shows of the Season

PARIS — Fashion month ended with a bang as Chanel provided BoF editors on the ground in Paris with a unanimous pick for best show of the season: Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection melded craft innovation, design convictions and an emotional narrative, shifting perception of France’s biggest couture house in a matter of minutes while boldly celebrating its 115-year heritage.

“Let people say this show could have been edited down so the message was more clear. More clear for who? I’m not here to dissect the work for you. I’m not interested in ‘the clear message.’ We don’t live in a world of clear messages. Ambiguity is very powerful,” Blazy told The Business of Fashion‘s Tim Blanks in an exclusive preview. After seeing the season’s most anticipated show, we were inclined to agree.

At Versace, too, a new creative director chose to dive straight into the deep-end: Dario Vitale wiped away the house’s glossy, massif-ied runway image of recent years, instead showing a densely layered-on mess of ideas in a debut that blew past expectations. The internet was divided over the show — which was seedy, kitschy, sartorial and sexy in a completely different way than what’s usually expected from the brand. Dissecting this one to make a clear message for the mass market might not be easy — but the designer gave the company plenty of raw material and raw emotion to work with.

Many of the brands with the strongest shows this season celebrated their clients’ individuality. There was no shortage of distinct characters on the runway at Chanel, Versace and Dior, where freshly installed designer Jonathan Anderson said he hadn’t wanted to create a “clone zone.”

For that reason (and the strength of a subversive, vibe-shifting presentation centred around a film by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn), Gucci’s Demna gets an honourable mention despite not staging a full-on runway show. His collection of archival designs catalogued and celebrated the different people who wear and have worn the brand, lessening pressure to deliver a more comprehensive reboot— for now.

Classic glamour was a frequent fixation this season, resulting in a glut of seductive but same-same eveningwear across several labels. Not so at Givenchy and Erdem, both of whom did glamour right: showing collections that told a fresh story and honed the labels’ respective points of view while still offering plenty of elegant clothes for elegant (and wealthy) women.

Momentum was another concern going into this season. In a year of designer turnover — with many brands opting for radical change in response to a downturn in sales — how to keep up the pace at brands which are doing well? Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez introduced fresh heat in their vision for Loewe, where they succeeded Jonathan Anderson earlier this year. Miu Miu (the growth engine of Prada Group) leaned into its trademark formula of twisted styling and surprising celebs, but managed to not feel formulaic.

Elsewhere, our editors were more divided: Was Alaïa alluring or off-putting? Was Jil Sander perfect or a little too predictable? But these shows still made BoF’s top 10 list: Their designers did what they set out to do, and the people who liked the shows loved them.

– Robert Williams