Paris Haute Couture Week spring/summer 2026 was, above all, about succession – and, as a result, one of the most history-making seasons in recent memory. Valentino’s show took place barely a week and a half after the death of the maison’s founder, Valentino Garavani, while three further firsts arrived in the form of Jonathan Anderson’s debut haute couture collection for Christian Dior; Matthieu Blazy’s for Chanel; and Silvana Armani’s for Giorgio Armani Privé, following the passing of her uncle, Giorgio Armani, who built the house, in September 2025. Elsewhere, Victoria Beckham entered a new echelon of cultural import after being named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, while the multi-millionaire couture collector Mouna Ayoub auctioned off 131 Dior pieces from her archive, with the highest-selling lot – a dress from John Galliano’s tenure – passing into new hands for €510,000.
Perhaps that helps explain why, even as the familiar couture pageant unfolded – Connor Storrie front row at Saint Laurent’s off-schedule autumn/winter 2026 menswear show, Rihanna at Dior – one question began to feel inescapable: what is the relevance of haute couture, fashion’s most luxurious and rarefied realm, at a moment when the world itself appears so precarious? Tilda Swinton, backstage at Chanel, offered a measured response. “Art should never be seen as a luxury,” she said. “It’s an essential contribution to human society, and couture, of course, falls under that. Think of how many people work in the ateliers. Every piece carries the labour and spirit of so many hours, eyes and hands.” She continued: “That’s part of what, in Korea, they call ‘intangible cultural property’, and as such, it’s incredibly valuable. We need art now more than ever. It’s our saving grace. It’s where we can still dream, still bring our best selves. You don’t have to own couture to appreciate or understand it.”
With that in mind, here are the five key takeaways you might have missed from the spring/summer 2026 edition of Paris Haute Couture Week.
Schiaparelli’s bejewelled caper, starring Teyana Taylor
Straight out of the gate on Monday morning, Daniel Roseberry unleashed “Isabella Blowfish” on the world: a campy, spiky ode to the late collector Isabella Blow, who was as uncompromising in her personal style as Roseberry is on behalf of the Schiaparelli customer. While Blowfish and a duo of “Infanta Terribles” stalked around the show space, it was Teyana Taylor who manifested the designer’s no-crystal-spared approach to style on the front row. Statuesque in the merest whisper of a lace dress and a suite of heist jewellery – including a replica of a 19th-century tiara owned by Empress Eugénie, which was pilfered from the Louvre last season – this was a case of life imitating art. Give this woman the Oscar already! Her awards season campaign surely reached its apex as the paps flashed her making the grandest of entrances. Alice Newbold, fashion features and news director.
Dior’s humble beginnings
Serendipitously, Jonathan Anderson’s haute couture debut for Dior aligned with the British Vogue team’s weekly fashion features meeting. There were audible coos and gasps during an impromptu live screening, as Anderson’s radical New Look was ushered forth in a show tent lined with mirrors that reflected mossy cyclamen bouquets trailing from the ceiling above. In a story that will go down in fashion folklore, Anderson took inspiration from a dream meeting with Dior’s former creative director John Galliano, who gifted him – in a high-low flourish befitting the Irish designer’s aesthetic – a cyclamen in a Tesco shopping bag. The Stephen Jones-designed cyclamen earrings which exploded from models’ ears in fronds of delicate fabric will no doubt grace numerous magazine covers in the coming months, but it was the brooches – resembling portrait miniatures surrounded by textural petals – that I’d happily crash the equivalent of a house deposit on. Laura Hawkins, fashion features and jewellery editor.
Valentino’s Art Deco opulence
Between Kate Moss strolling through the Ritz in a crepe silk satin, reconstituted vintage fur robe embroidered with cherry blossoms, and Alexa Chung partying in a fringed Anna October silk cape-dress, a feeling of 1920s opulence has been bubbling up throughout the week. All that came to a head in Alessandro Michele’s spring/summer 2026 Haute Couture collection for Valentino, in which models posed inside Kaiserpanoramas – a form of stereoscopic entertainment that predates cinema – wearing all sorts of capes, draped dresses and caftans topped with elaborate feather headdresses. Taking place less than a week after the passing of 93-year-old founder Valentino Garavani in Rome, the show began with a clip from Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor, in which the designer, on the eve of retirement in 2008, remembers how he fell in love with fashion. “I was dreaming about movie stars, about everything beautiful in the world.” He would’ve been happy to see actress and Hollywood scion Dakota Johnson perched in the audience. “I am always,” she said, “grateful to witness beautiful art at work.” Daniel Rodgers, fashion news editor.
Armani’s new chapter
In a season of debuts from male tastemakers lending their eye to the rarefied world of women’s couture, how about a moment for Silvana Armani, Giorgio Armani’s niece, who took the reins after his passing? Her life at Armani Privé began two decades ago, and so she is perfectly positioned to hold the couture client’s hand during the next chapter of their journey. Her first proposal? No hats – a quintessential Armani signifier that, she said, didn’t feel modern. It wasn’t all daywear over dazzling gowns, the last look was a bridal dress designed by Mr Armani for his final Privé show that was never revealed. It was a pitch perfect passing of the baton – a quiet display of confidence during a very loud season. Alice Newbold, fashion features and news director.
The implausible lightness of Chanel
In tweed jackets designed to feel like cardigans, skirts sitting low on the hip and handbags slung on chains to leave the hands free, Gabrielle Chanel was in constant pursuit of lightness, emancipating women from the gussets, garters, corsets, whalebones, plackets, false hair and brassières of their time. Clothes, she once said, should be “a machine for living in”, which is something Matthieu Blazy echoed backstage at his debut Haute Couture presentation for the maison, describing the collection as “clothes for women to go to work, to go to a play, the cinema, whatever”. Formerly known for his crystal-encrusted masks at Maison Margiela and intrecciato leatherwork at Bottega Veneta, Blazy’s vision at Chanel is, in comparison, weightless: skirt suits, 2.55 bags and trompe-l’œil jeans cut from transparent organza. As for the avian motifs – feather-effect dégradé velvet pyjamas, a bridal skirt of wafer-thin slices of mother-of-pearl – “I was interested in birds,” Blazy said. “They are free, because they travel, because they come from everywhere. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for women.” Daniel Rodgers, fashion news editor.