For her latest campaign, Sarah Burton chose to escape far from the London studios. Destination: the Croatian coastline, with its steep cliffs and rugged, mineral landscapes, for a shoot bringing together some of her longtime muses: Eva Herzigova, Kaia Gerber, Nyaduola Gabriel and Liu Wen pose against this spectacular backdrop, between rock and sea. Continue reading →

Sit down, we’re going to talk puzzles. Not the kind you shove to the back of the cupboard with 200 pieces missing, no: intarsia, that art form dating back to the 15th century which, unlike certain runway silhouettes, has never needed Photoshop to look timeless.

Here’s the principle, for the culturally illiterate Bimbos at the back of the room: you inlay thin pieces of different types of wood, sanded, carved and fitted down to the micron, not the “Macron,” until you end up with a three-dimensional image.

A 3D puzzle made by an artisan who had neither Pinterest nor an “Instagram deadline,” just the patience required to restore some ancient monastic masterpiece like Madonna, and probably failing eyesight from squinting at walnut shavings until they went down like the Titanic.

Textile intarsia takes that logic and transposes it into wool: unlike good old Fair Isle-style jacquard, where the yarn hangs around hidden behind the work like an ex you just can’t get rid of. Here, every colored section gets its own ball of yarn. No floating threads, no compromises: one color, one ball. Knitting according to the philosophy of “everyone has their place, everyone has their role,” almost a life lesson you could learn in a corporate training session rather than at evening classes at the Baron. Continue reading →

It is always easier to doubt someone else’s talent than to acknowledge that it exists. Today, I am being accused of writing with the help of artificial intelligence. Allow me to set the record straight.

Canal-Luxe has existed for nearly fifteen years. For fifteen years, I have written every article, every column, every fashion analysis on my own. At a time when artificial intelligence did not yet exist in the form we know today, the specialized press was already praising the quality of my writing. It is therefore not a machine that shaped my pen: it was time, passion, and a level of dedication I imposed upon myself long before these tools ever came into existence.

I understand that, in an era where doubt hangs over every piece of written content, suspicion has become an instinctive reaction. But suspicion is no substitute for knowing the facts. My style, my phrasing, and my editorial obsessions have not changed in fifteen years. This can easily be verified by revisiting my archives, published long before AI entered the conversation. Continue reading →

Hailed by a press that confuses hype with talent, his collections are endlessly showcased across every screen. The few killjoys who point out the constant “déjà vu” in his silhouettes are not enough to discourage him, nor are the criticisms of the carbon footprint of his fashion shows staged in the middle of nature. We still remember that lavender field in Provence, privatized in 2019 and mowed down for the occasion, or the 2021 show held under a rain of ostrich feathers, even though the industry was struggling to source them ethically. Continue reading →

Mathilde Favier, a well-known figure in the fashion world and Dior’s Director of Public Relations, died on Monday, August 17, in a road accident in the Deux-Sèvres region of France. She was with her partner, producer Nicolas Altmayer, when their car collided with a heavy goods vehicle. An investigation will determine the exact circumstances of the tragedy.

At Dior, Mathilde Favier was an indispensable figure. She was admired for her energy, her extensive network of contacts, and her talent. Yet, as is often the case in circles where power and appearances intersect, she was not universally liked. She had nevertheless built a remarkable career, moving from the press into fashion before becoming one of the most recognizable figures in the fashion house’s public relations world.

But the road knows neither Dior, nor fame, nor social status. It knows nothing of Dior. It does not distinguish the powerful from the anonymous. It moves forward, indifferent, and sometimes just a few seconds are enough for everyday life to be torn apart. An overtaking maneuver, a trajectory, a fraction of a second, and then… silence. Continue reading →

Breaking News: Karl Lagerfeld Has Allegedly Opened a Café… From Beyond the Grave. The rumors were true. After spending a few years overseeing the dress code for ghosts, Karl Lagerfeld has reportedly been granted a temporary pass from the afterlife. The official reason? “There wasn’t a decent espresso in heaven.”

His first stop: Amsterdam, where he has supposedly opened a café just steps away from the brand’s global headquarters. The menu features specialty coffee, cinnamon rolls, buttery croissants, and cruffins… good enough to bring customers back from the dead. Well… almost. Continue reading →

Like people, perfume houses eventually find their way back to what they once were, as though time, after taking a thousand detours, were ultimately nothing more than a road leading home. Estée Lauder, whose golden age was marked by some of perfumery’s most celebrated creations, now appears to be following that very path.

We remember, or at least we should remember, for the memory of fragrances is a fragile thing, even more fragile than that of men, White Linen, Pleasures, Beautiful, names that once promised happiness bottled in glass. The brand, which has perhaps never stopped hoping to recapture those years, will launch a new eau de parfum on August 6: Glimmer, perhaps “a glimmer of hope,” cast into the world like a message in a bottle, buoyed by the slightly naïve yet deeply touching faith that accompanies every fresh beginning. At $160 for 100 millilitres and $130 for 50, the price of hope, if one may put it that way, varies according to the size of the bottle. Continue reading →

Once upon a time there was a young woman who believed you could stitch a broken world back together with a sewing machine and a handful of good ideas. Her name was Marina Serre. She was twenty-six, armed with genuine talent and the kind of innocence luxury conglomerates can smell from miles away, like vultures circling something that’s still breathing. Continue reading →

The winds of winter are about to blow over the ancient stones of Trinity College Dublin, as a humble invitation card, like the herald∗ (Middle Ages: an officer whose duty was to carry messages) of a new destiny, announces that Jonathan Anderson will unveil Dior’s pre-fall show on the fourth day of December.

For it was in this very city that young Anderson once took his first steps in the noble theatre of fabric, within the galleries of Brown Thomas, before his art extended to the brewers of dark Guinness under the banner of J.W. Anderson. And yet never before had he offered his native land the spectacle of a collection shaped by his own hand. So he returns, not merely as a designer, but as a son summoned back by the very soil that saw him born. Continue reading →

Origins and Education

According to some reports, Dgena Mouclier is the granddaughter of Jacques Mouclier, former President of the French Federation of Couture, Ready-to-Wear Designers and Fashion Creators. However, I have not been able to independently verify this family connection through reliable sources. If confirmed, this lineage would place Dgena Mouclier within a distinguished family tradition closely tied to the world of French haute couture.

She studied at ESMOD International, where she graduated top of her class in 2019, receiving the prestigious Aiguille d’Or (Golden Needle) award. Alongside her studies, she began an internship in 2018 with Master Artisan Franck Sorbier, the only officially recognized Maître d’Art in fashion in France. This experience became a defining influence on her journey toward haute couture.

International Recognition

Her technical expertise quickly gained international attention. In October 2019, the Chinese government selected her to represent and promote the craftsmanship of French haute couture during Shanghai Fashion Week and the Second International Textile Congress in Xequio. Continue reading →

To present a dress, some designers are content with a runway, a spotlight, and a model striding straight ahead with the expression of someone about to miss her train. Then there is Gaurav Gupta, who has quite clearly decided that a dress alone is never enough. You also need acrobats suspended from the ceiling, poetry recited in midair, and an audience in Mumbai tilting their heads upward as though awaiting an announcement from heaven rather than the opening of a fashion show. They call it the start of a runway presentation. I call it a declaration of war on restraint, and I have a particular fondness for wars of that kind.

For there is one essential thing to understand about the man. In Paris, he is granted a modest slot on the Haute Couture calendar, a carefully measured space, a handful of well-chosen looks, as though handing a wild beast a bone to gnaw on in the hope that it will remain quiet. Continue reading →

Chemena Kamali, artistic director of Chloé, has been named president of the fashion jury for the 41st edition of the Hyères Festival, running October 15–18 right when half of Paris heads south to shutter the holiday house before racing off toward the French Riviera’s happy hour.

This will be the first edition under Valérie Duport, newly elected head of the Villa Noailles. The theme this year: femininity. Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen will preside over the accessories jury, while photographer Camille Vivier (already on display at the MEP in Paris) takes the helm of the photography jury. A return, then, to the traditional jury structure, after a tumultuous 40th edition where designers judged their own peers. The rest of the jury lineup? Details to follow in September.

“2026 marks a new chapter,” the organizers declared a phrase trotted out by every new leadership team since fashion was invented. Continue reading →

For a long time, I believed luxury was a fortress. I was mistaken. It is a frontier, and like all frontiers, it attracts those who dream of crossing it without a visa. Louis Vuitton has just learned this lesson in Beijing, where the courts are once again being asked to decide who owns a pattern, a question which, phrased differently, becomes: who owns a memory? Continue reading →

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally transforming the fashion industry, embedding itself into every stage of the business, from collection design to the purchasing journey. China best illustrates this acceleration: in a single month, Shanghai made “AI + Fashion” a national strategic priority through its 2026-2028 Action Plan, while Chinese companies launched more than 300 new AI products worldwide. This is no longer about isolated experiments, but a coordinated convergence of public policy, aggressive commercial deployment, and continuous innovation, turning AI into a genuine industrial pillar. Continue reading →

Kering has just crowned a new prince for Bottega Veneta. His name is Romain Spitzer, he will take up his post on September 1st, and as befits these modern courts we call luxury groups, he will answer to Luca de Meo, CEO of Kering, before finally taking his seat at the table of the executive committee that assembly where one speaks of turnover the way others, once, spoke of God.

He comes from next door, from LVMH, where he reigned over the Perfumes division of the Beauty house, with that quiet authority reserved for men who have proven themselves without ever raising their voice. Here he is now, a defector or rather a migrant, like those birds that change continents without ever changing skies. Continue reading →

There are houses that refuse to be confined by the comfort of their own legend. Rabanne belongs to that rare family which prefers the exhilaration of the future to the tranquility of memory. The appointment of Renaud de Lesquen as president, the departure of a creative director, and the unveiling of a new interpretation of its iconic fragrance, 1 Million Black, mark not so much a break with the past as the opening of a new chapter. For truly great houses never thrive on certainty alone. They move forward, carried by that curious alchemy in which boldness eventually finds its place in time.

Listening to Renaud de Lesquen, the ambition is unmistakably clear: to ensure that Rabanne remains one of the world’s most disruptive and culturally influential houses. Two ideas seem to define this vision: disruption and excess. Not excess for its own sake, but the kind that dares to shift boundaries, surprise the eye, and awaken emotion. In today’s beauty industry, where new launches arrive at a dizzying pace, true distinction may well lie in remaining unexpected. A brand no longer prevails solely through its creations, but through the singular feeling it leaves behind. Continue reading →

There are hours when the memory of peoples resembles those mysterious machines that abolish the distances of time. No sooner do we contemplate them than they set us down on the threshold of that dawn of the twentieth century, when Paris, clothed in her universal glory, seemed to have summoned beneath her sky all the nations of the earth. The iron tower, once an object of scorn, now dominated human hopes like those monuments that genius raises despite men, before they consent to admire them. It was the Universal Exposition of 1900; it was the moment when the Hôtel Régina opened its gilded salons to a generation of women whose names History did not yet know, because they were busy giving themselves that name. They no longer asked for freedom: they embodied it. Continue reading →

There is something both irritating and magnificent in the idea that a couturier could, on a July afternoon, transform a university campus into a cathedral. I have always believed that fashion, like literature, is only worthwhile when it possesses the rare ability to tell the right kind of lie: to invent a truth more bearable than the one imposed upon us. Continue reading →

Indifferent Nature, knowing nothing of men or their vanities, you had chosen, on this autumn day masquerading as summer, to drench the entire Palais de Tokyo in blazing heat. And it was beneath this most unseasonable warmth that Kévin Germanier, with the quiet irony of someone who has turned adversity into an art form, remarked that his collection seemed tailor-made for a heatwave.

For man, in the solitude of creation, is forever in competition with the elements. When the sky burns, he burns as well, though with a fire he alone commands and shapes. Thus the Swiss designer unveiled one of his most incandescent creations: necklines plunging as deeply as the soul into its own abysses; cuts baring the hips as one strips away a truth long believed concealed; spirals of fabric and loops of rhodoid arranged with the same silent patience that Vigny attributed to the dying wolf, enduring without complaint.

He called his work The Sulphurous, a title rich in ambiguity, carrying within it both the sulfurous scent of scandal and the brilliant spark of ingenuity, as though beauty could only emerge through the acceptance of a small, willing damnation. Continue reading →

AI Is Redesigning Fashion: China Takes the Lead. Should France Be Concerned?

Artificial intelligence is no longer operating on the fringes of the fashion industry. It is steadily embedding itself into every layer of the business and is beginning to reshape its very foundations, from collection design to the purchasing journey. What was considered experimental only yesterday has now become a fully fledged infrastructure, and luxury houses, whether they welcome it or not, must adapt to this new reality. Continue reading →

Goodwood, July 30... and the entire fashion menagerie is already stirring. Out come the hats, the porcelain laughter, the carefully rehearsed expressions… the Magnolia Cup, they call it… charitable, they say… as though charity had ever needed embroidered silks and VIP grandstands to exist, as though we hadn’t already perfected the ritual with balls, galas, and society auctions where money merely changes pockets between two glasses of lukewarm champagne in exchange for a tax deduction. Continue reading →

Thus come to an end the long, mournful echoes of a bygone era. After thirty-seven years of a reign as discreet as it was sovereign, Véronique Nichanian has left the gilded ateliers of Hermès, the way one leaves a familiar forest at dusk, with the quiet grace of someone who knows that nothing ever truly dies. The House, like those old Breton manors weathered by the winds of the English Channel, still bears the imprint of her genius within its walls.

Now, however, a new dawn begins. With it comes Grace Wales Bonner, a British spirit shaped by the sea and by the meeting of cultures, reminiscent of those ancient navigators who carried several civilizations within them at once. In January, she will unveil her first collection, like a confidence patiently nurtured through the silence of countless creative nights. Until then, the House has chosen restraint: a softly lit showroom, an intimate presentation, far removed from unnecessary spectacle. Continue reading →

It was inevitable, and yet what a delicious charade it is. Jacquemus, the little pisutu, is returning to the sea, not to reflect upon anything, that would be asking far too much, but simply to stage, once again, his favourite set: the one that costs a fortune in logistics and delivers ten times as much in publicity. Continue reading →

The sun, blazing down on the black benches, felt like a sentence being carried out, as guests took their seats with visible apprehension. They lingered in the shade of the trees surrounding the runway, stretching out their hands like beggars toward bottles of cool water that had already turned lukewarm. Owens chose this open-air furnace, this motionless basin where the heat shimmered above the water, to unveil his new partnership with Adidas: sport as a dry liturgy, three-stripe tracksuits slung low on Tyrone Dylan’s taut hips, “Climacool” windbreakers swollen like chrysalises, and a promise of freshness offered to a runner before the race. Absurd in this setting, perhaps sublime tomorrow.

Then came the models, frighteningly thin, draped in black polyester capes that trapped the heat like acts of penance, or encased in rigid rubber cage-trousers that echoed with every step. They descended the stairs, crossed the suspended metal walkway above the water. They did not fall, or only just, despite towering boots, thick soles, and the merciless heat. The audience held its breath. Owens has always sent ghosts down the runway in a world after the end. That day, the apocalypse was no longer a vision. It had become the set itself Continue reading →