WHY KERING IS SAYING GOODBYE TO ITS PERFUMES
The creation, production, and distribution of perfumes follow an industrial model radically different from that of fashion or leather goods. It requires global logistical infrastructures, laboratories, a massive distribution network, and marketing capabilities suited to the luxury mass market. L’Oréal, the world leader in beauty, has mastered this model to perfection, whereas Kering—historically focused on fashion does not possess such executional strength. Selling or licensing to L’Oréal means relying on a more competent player to accelerate the growth of its brands.
By selling Creed and granting its beauty licenses for €4 billion, Kering immediately recovers substantial liquidity. These funds allow it to reinvest in its fashion houses—particularly Gucci and Balenciaga, which have faced recent challenges—and to finance their creative and commercial repositioning. In other words, rather than waiting for gradual revenues from fragrance, Kering prefers to reallocate capital toward its strategic priorities. Continue reading
THE GRAND MASS OF INFLATED EMPTINESS
Chronicle of a breathless “Hyères” festival! Sun, subsidies, egos and forty years already that Villa Noailles has fancied itself the Mecca of creativity, a kind of sanctuary where fabric becomes concept and good taste drowns beneath meters of “conceptual” latex. This year’s motto was clear: “The show must go on” in other words, it doesn’t matter if the house is burning, as long as we can still strut across the ashes.
And what a spectacle it was! Beneath a blazing sun logo (probably the only star allowed to shine brighter than certain jury members), fashion celebrated its grand mass halfway between a conceptual happening and a garage sale of the absurd.
The big winner was proudly announced: Lucas Emilio Brunner, a Swiss-Chilean apostle of the balloon, messiah of inflatable materials, graduate of “The Arch of the Back,” and convert to the Margiela liturgy. His vision for the future of clothing? Balloon knots on trench coats moving from animal bladders and intestines to squeaky polymers. A show that sounded like a fanfare for sad clowns.
But of course, it’s conceptual, and behind every squeak of petrochemical matter lies a deep reflection on “the collision between the Ivy League and the balloon.” Because yes who hasn’t dreamed of a meeting between Harvard and Aunt Danielle’s birthday party?
ARMANI HAS A NEW CEO
The Giorgio Armani Group has a new Chief Executive Officer: Giuseppe Marsocci. He succeeds Giorgio Armani, who also served as Chairman of the group he founded fifty years ago.
With his extensive experience and deep understanding of both the industry and the company, Giuseppe Marsocci was the most natural choice to carry forward the founder’s vision. His discretion, loyalty, team spirit, and the relationship of trust he has built with Mr. Armani over the years convinced the Armani Foundation to unanimously propose his appointment.
Born in Turin on December 20, 1963, Mr. Marsocci will report to the Board of Directors chaired by Mr. Dell’Orco, while Silvana Armani will be appointed Vice Chair.
With over thirty-five years of international experience in the fashion and luxury industryincluding twenty-three within the Armani Group Giuseppe Marsocci has served since 2019 as Deputy Managing Director and Global Commercial Director.
FM
THOM BROWNE, THE SAUSAGE DOG
Thom Browne celebrates the tenth birthday of Hector, his handbag hound, and proves that canine fashion rhymes perfectly with “supermarket jewel.” Ten years already since a dachshund wrapped in luxury leather started turning heads and emptying wallets proof that we’re always betrayed by our “Dogs.” Back in 2016, it was a joke, a canine wink at vanity. In 2026, it’s become a symbol of loyalty that of the customers who keep barking with delight at every new version. A capital “I” for “Iconic” luxury and when I see dogs greeting each other by sniffing each other’s rear ends, one has to wonder if the designer wasn’t an expert on the matter.
But let’s not be cynical: Hector now has his own mythology. This season, the pooch reigns proudly among interchangeable bermuda shorts because you have to keep reinventing the idea of the “new bag” when you keep selling the same thing. And since Thom Browne never does things halfway, the faithful companion even shows up embroidered into tweed intarsia and Mogador silk. You can almost picture the dog yawning in boredom amid so much seriousness.
The collection revisits American preppy style it’s trendy again that same mix of model student and neurotic banker, updated with a touch of nostalgia. Browne adds corsets (because why not?), and it takes a certain boldness to turn summer memories into structured grey corsetry. But after all, when you’ve made a dachshund into an icon, nothing’s impossible anymore. Continue reading
GABY AND PHILIPPE A LEGACY OF ELEGANCE AND INTELLECT
Her name was Gabriella Hanoka, but the fashion world would come to know her as Gaby Aghion. Born in Alexandria on a March morning in 1921, in the golden light of cosmopolitan Egypt, she already carried within her that blend of Eastern grace and French audacity that would one day revolutionize couture.
In 1952, in a Paris still marked by postwar austerity, Gaby founded a house that would become legendary: Chloé the first name of a friend, Chloé Huisman a symbol of youth and freedom. She did not simply create a brand; she created a concept: luxury ready-to-wear, a visionary idea at a time when fashion swore only by haute couture.
With six designs drawn by her own hand and entrusted to a talented seamstress, Gaby walked the boutiques of Paris, knocking on doors with the quiet determination of someone who knows she carries a revolution within her. Soon, the elegant women of Saint-Germain and the free spirits of Montparnasse recognized themselves in her creations fluid, feminine, modern. Her connections in Parisian high society did the rest; the name Chloé slowly found its place in the firmament of fashion. And soon after, she would discover Karl Lagerfeld. Continue reading
GOODBYE PARIS HELLO RIYADH
It had to happen eventually: poor Paris, stuck in its traffic jams and strikes, now sees its great rival rising on the horizon Riyadh. Yes, Riyadh, where fashionistas arrive not in overcrowded Ubers, but in limousines and private jets with massaging seats and perfectly chilled air at 19°C, as palm trees politely applaud their arrival.
Stella McCartney yes, that Stella McCartney will close the biggest season ever staged by Riyadh Fashion Week, with more than thirty shows (no small feat). Alongside her, Vivienne Westwood (in her very Saudi “desert princess chic” version) and a whole cohort of local talents are already ready to bury Parisian runways under a golden sandstorm of modernity.
Since its 2023 debut, Saudi Fashion Week has climbed at private jet speed to become an unmissable event on the global fashion calendar. The talk here is of sustainability, heritage, streetwear and, above all, XXL luxury. You’ll find Tima Abid, Atelier Hekayat, Abadia, Hindamme, 1886… names still unknown to the Marais snobs, but likely to become famous faster than a traffic jam on Place Vendôme.
THE GRACE OF FASHION STYLE
There are beings whose clothing becomes the reflection of their soul, and Diane Keaton was one of them. Each fabric she wore seemed to gather a fragment of her thought; each accessory, a tremor of her free spirit. It was a style all her own a wide-brimmed hat worn like a diadem of defiance, glasses that filtered the world’s light, vests or turtlenecks embracing the discreet grace of a woman’s neck, ties or scarves chosen not to seduce but to signify independence. Pleated trousers, as ample as a breath, harmonized with jackets sometimes tweed, sometimes velvet and in that blend of daring and restraint, she found her truth.
They called it the “Annie Hall style.” They were mistaken. It was not a role but a revelation the “Diane Keaton style.” From her very first appearance in Woody Allen’s film, this language of clothing became an eternal signature and consecrated her as an icon. An Oscar was bestowed upon her, as one crowns a muse for her brilliance, yet even then, the tribute fell short of what she embodied: the freedom to be oneself.
Fifty years passed, and fashion, like a river, changed its course; but Diane remained faithful to her own shore. Designers often came to draw from it, copying her lines, imitating her light. On red carpets, she could still be seen a clear, determined silhouette dressed sometimes in a masculine suit, sometimes in a flowing dress cinched with a wide belt, as if to remind the world that elegance is first and foremost an inner vow.
Last year, she lent her grace to fashion shows Ralph Lauren’s in New York, Thom Browne’s in Paris where her presence seemed to bless contemporary creation with a benevolent gaze. At seventy-nine, she still carried within her the quiet fire of beginnings. Continue reading
WHEN GRANDMA’S BAG BECOMES A FINANCIAL ASSET
Once the sacred territory of dusty flea markets and grandma’s handbags retrieved from the attic, this market now represents a tidy sum of $320 to $360 billion by 2030. Yes, you read that correctly: your antique leather totes and forgotten heels now have a global market value. Who would have thought that Grandma, with her slightly old-fashioned sense of style, was actually sitting on a goldmine under her bed?
This market already accounts for 8% of the global fashion and luxury market and could reach 10% by the end of the decade. That’s 10% annual growth three times faster than direct sales. In other words: while some queue for the latest brand-new Birkin bag, others are dusting off their grandmothers’ treasures and striking it rich.
And it’s no longer just a hipster hobby: brands have finally realized that resale is a strategic channel to woo Generation Z.
BUYERS DISAPPOINTED BY PARIS FASHION WEEK
Paris, usually so vibrant during fashion week, seemed drowsy this time as if the city itself had lost touch with its own magic. Buyers from around the world had hoped for the rebirth of a creative spark, yet they found themselves facing an unexpected dullness.
At the bottom of the rankings, Matthieu Blazy’s first collection for Chanel came as a cold shower. Deemed the weakest debut and one of the most disappointing shows of the week, it left an unfinished impression a faint echo where a thunder of applause had been expected. Saint Laurent, too, appeared to lack fire, and both houses struggled to compete with Alaïa. Shein was also very disappointed.
The fashion capital seemed drained of energy dull, uninspired, devoid of creativity and emotion, with barely a few moments worth remembering.
In the hushed salons where orders are placed, buyers shared a common concern. The momentum of young designers was nowhere to be found, and the promise of renewal seemed to fade away. They feared that next season’s displays would bear the marks of this creative drought: muted tones, shapeless silhouettes, and the echo of a prevailing weariness.
MAXHORA THE CARPET OF MEMORY
I remember that evening somewhere in Johannesburg, I think. It was for the fifteenth anniversary of Maxhosa Africa. The light fell softly over the carpets that had been laid out before the show. There was in the air an almost domestic warmth, a blend of incense, wool, and silk… I no longer knew whether I had come for work, or simply to find a fragment of the past. Continue reading
THE FIFTH ELEMENT CHANEL
Last night in Paris, the planets bowed. Beneath the dome of the Grand Palais, the universe held its breath: Chanel had just entered a new era. Matthieu Blazy didn’t simply present a collection he launched a voyage to an asteroid. After months of silent gestation, the century-old house projected itself into the future with the serene force of a star aware of its own light. The Chanel galaxy was reborn — denser, more vibrant, perhaps even more human. Continue reading
SACAI: THE UNFINISHED THREADS OF SPRING
In her house of silence, in Paris, Chitose Abe opened a window in time. Spring stepped In, barefoot, holding in its hands needles of air and shreds of cotton.
The garments began to breathe. The jeans borrowed the tenderness of the wind, the t-shirts learned the grammar of clouds. A tank top, a crumpled prayer, covered itself with jet-black dreams: the night had fallen asleep upon its shoulder. Continue reading
DURAN LANTINK THE SPECT OF THE MEDIOCRES
Upon discovering Duran Lantink’s first collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, I admittedly felt strangely bewildered. On Sunday, October 5, 2025, amid the hushed tumult of the runway show, the Dutch designer, who emerged from obscurity in 2018 thanks to Janelle Monáe and her daring pantsuits reminiscent of a woman’s nymph in the Pynk music video, had already provoked outrage. Continue reading
CHLOÉ THE MAUSOLEUM OF NOSTALGIA
They say that one day, in a house on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the dresses began to breathe. It was the breath of Chemena Kamali, new guardian of the Chloé temple, whispering to the fabrics of oblivion and rebirth. For two years, she has been summoning the spirits of lightness and sun, searching through the archives as one would search for relics in a perfumed crypt.
Under her hands, sheets of cotton twist like prayers, faded flowers regain their color, and the ghosts of Karl Lagerfeld wander among the mannequins, their silhouettes brushing against the mirrors. They say she learned her enchantments at Alberta Ferretti, where women once wore their dresses like dreams of sea and salt.
But the spring she promises is not an ordinary one: it is born not of soil, but of memory. The babydoll skirts, the tops tied like seashells, the floral prints scented with the past all seem to drift in a golden light that even time itself has forgotten.
In a corner of fashion’s sky, the spirit of Gaby Aghion still smiles. She, the founder the one who once made freedom walk down the runway at Café de Flore and Brasserie Lipp must look with tenderness upon this new generation trying to clothe the soul in cotton and remembrance. Continue reading
VALENTINO: RED AND DELIRIUM
It’s true that after turning Gucci into a Venetian bazaar for children of the moon, Alessandro Michele wasn’t suddenly going to embrace minimalism at Valentino. But was it really necessary to repaint Rome in the colors of Saint-Germain-des-Prés after a bad trip to San Francisco?
On Sunday, at nap time, in the Piazza Dati sacred temple of Italo–Parisian couture the neo-hippie sanctuary on LSD, Michele held his grand mass for Valentino. The setting? A dark hall with ceiling lighting that irritated Di Meo, sitting next to Marisa, who was made up like a stolen car. An inclusive fashion festival sponsored by a Pantone color.
On the runway, a procession of baroque angels dressed in crumpled taffeta, lace, and drapery vaguely reminiscent of an over-ironed opera curtain. The models seemed to recite a pagan prayer to lost beauty, repeating, so far, so good. It was pure Michele: a blend of bourgeois woman in search of sex and a chic Notting Hill flea market.
The fans cried genius, the investors simply cried. The new Valentino, apparently, wants to “reconnect the soul of the house with the youth of the world.” Translation: sell Zara-style shirts to Gen Z kids convinced that nostalgia is sustainable and production in China is artisanal. All, of course, at prices that would make a Saudi princess blush. Continue reading
BALENCIAGA 2026
The house of Balenciaga, founded by the master of Getaria, is entering a new era. From now on, it is the Italian Pierpaolo Piccioli, former artistic director of Valentino, who takes the helm. A bold turning point for the historic brand, known for its avant-garde spirit and mastery of volume.
When Pierpaolo Piccioli landed in Paris to assume his new role as Balenciaga’s creative director last June, he went straight from the airport to the brand’s archives, where he spent three days eagerly studying dresses he had only ever seen in photographs. Continue reading
SARAH BURTON’S SECOND ADVOCACY FOR GIVENCHY
Sarah Burton’s first runway for Givenchy had already betrayed signs of an over-manufactured sensibility, and her second confirms the slope: a couture of loud affirmation in the Chiuri vein, believing itself feminist simply because it exhibits. The clients, living trophies of this supposedly liberating fashion, paraded that evening in a pale yellow duchesse satin pea coat, cinched in black, as if to proclaim loudly and clearly their right to ostentation.
We are told of the lightness of deconstructed jackets, now reduced to the limpness of a cardigan, as though stripping away all structure were synonymous with freeing women. Progress indeed! Erase poise to better expose. And that coat-dress of once majestic curves, now undone, its lapels ripped from the shoulders to let fall, miserably, the straps of a bra. Emancipation served up as freedom at any price, under the pretext of deconstruction.
The full vocabulary is there: gaping collars, slanted jackets, hems hitched up, skirts dragged barely below the navel like a misfitted cloth fastened in haste. The body is no longer celebrated but turned into a noisy battleground of claims, a loud textile manifesto that mistakes provocation for power. Burton herself admits it: “the mind for business, the body for sin.” Thus the message of female power reduced to a shop-window slogan, Marilyn Monroe recycled in black-and-white motif to wrap a counterfeit ideology. Continue reading
ON THE WATERS OF OWENS’ WORLD
The procession of “Owensgroupises” filed in line with quiet discipline, awaiting their oracle. True to his fierce singularity, his models stepped onto the still waters of the Palais de Tokyo fountains, like an ancient procession crossing a mirror of azure. Hieratic figures, draped in modern boldness, they wore trouser-boots so towering they could make the ” Burj Al Arab” blush. Thus, the swell of skirts embraced the wind of sails for shipwrecked souls. Continue reading
PACO RABANNE 2026
The show opened with singular silhouettes, veiled behind titanic glasses vast portholes that evoked less elegance than the wreckage of a maritime market. Was it a castaway of fashion approaching us, crowned with a diver’s mask, or the House of Rabanne itself, drifting through the troubled waters where beauty’s dreams go astray?
Once, it dared bronze armors, draperies forged like meteors fallen from the sky. Today, it offers us nothing more than trinket necklaces, those glass tears that gleam without radiance, destined to be forgotten as soon as they have flickered.
The aesthetic wavered, undecided, between the scraps of a hardware store and the remnants of a naval arsenal, lacking the prophetic vision that once opened horizons of steel and stars. Some spectators, indulgent, claimed to see there the allegory of fashion itself submerged, struggling against the undertow of time. Others, harsher, perceived nothing but a grotesque parade a ready-to-wear weighed down by heaviness and vain irony.
Far from the metal dresses which, in the heroic years, seemed to clothe women with an as-yet unexplored future, this 2026 collection resembles a Saturnalia of bad taste, where imagination drowns in the stagnant waters of vulgar chrome. Critics, divided between laughter and sighs, nonetheless bowed to one merit: Paco Rabanne knew how to capture attention. But to please? For that, like the stifled diver, one must resurface and breathe pure air once again where art regains its grandeur and fashion its immortal reason for being.
BALMAIN BETWEEN ST TROPEZ AND MARRAKECH
Wednesday evening, Olivier Rousteing raised, on the edge of the sumptuous ballroom of the InterContinental in Paris, a singular ode to femininity. His collection, stripped of the armors that once made the glory of the “Balmain army,” allowed itself to be caressed by the sea breeze. As in the days when Yves Saint Laurent, in the ochre gardens of Marrakech, transfigured the desert into a palace of colors, Rousteing too seemed to seek the impulse of a fashion that breathes, that pours out, that surrenders. Continue reading
FENDI EMBRACES MARIA CHIURI’S MONOTONY
Fendi has made its choice sorry, the Lord has spoken and it is Maria Grazia Chiuri who takes over the artistic direction of the Roman house. This appointment comes in the midst of a chaotic reshuffle: Kim Jones’s departure, once expected to embody the creative breath of both haute couture and ready-to-wear, has left a void that Fendi is now scrambling to fill. Silvia Venturini Fendi, meanwhile, has been asked to step back, relegated to the more symbolic role of honorary president but given her last collection, this hardly comes as a surprise.
The thorny question remains: is Maria Grazia Chiuri truly the embodiment of Fendi’s future? Her years at Dior left a mixed legacy. Celebrated for her feminist slogans, criticized for a style often deemed repetitive, the Italian designer has hardly achieved unanimity. Before that, at Valentino, she worked in tandem with Pierpaolo Piccioli… and some still wonder whether she was ever truly the soul of the duo. Continue reading
MADONNA, GOD BOY, AND JOCOMBE IN PLS
Big bows and old lace that’s about as faithful a summary as you can get of Nicolas Guesquière’s latest show for Vuitton. The staging is as stable as a Windows 98 system on life support, swinging between awkward hybrids and copy-pastes from Milan Fashion Week. You can tell the inspiration made a pit stop at Malpensa before taking off.
But the real ambition? To push the brand deep into the bowels of the Louvre, with heavy-handed red carpets. The result: Madonna storms in with her “god boy,” the only young man who looks like he’s carrying his bag to kindergarten, while an army of extras straight out of a Netflix catalog pretends to be “iconic.” You spot a former B-movie wizard, an influencer in wildlife-documentary mode, and even a guy swearing he dubbed a dolphin in a Spanish production. It was all about laying the groundwork for the brand’s triumphant entry into the Louvre, in “express museum-ification” mode.
The couture cherry on top: the First Lady, self-proclaimed eternal muse, walks as if the red carpet were an extension of the Élysée steps. Her peck on “little Nicolas” wasn’t an affectionate gesture but a sort of bureaucratic stamp: “Seen and approved by the Republic.” At this level, we’re no longer talking fashion, but textile diplomacy.
DGENA DM SACRA NOVA
This collection was born from a secret oath between the splendor of yesterday and the vigor of today (says the designer). From the magnificence of the French court, she borrowed grandeur, brocades, solemn braids, and radiant crosses; but instead of letting them slumber in the dust of palaces, she set them against the wild momentum of our century, so that they might clash and fertilize one another in a dazzling embrace.
Each garment is a burning cuirass: it protects, it adorns, it proclaims. It is a silent language that crosses the centuries, a grammar of drapings and symbols that speaks to restless souls. She has shaped these armors with regenerated fabrics, proud cuts, signs carved like prayers, questioning humankind about its time, its identity, its spiritual quest, at the heart of a storm-stricken world.
Three breaths preside over this edifice: the quest for the invisible, the defense of one’s own, the impulse of combat. Three immemorial forces, engraved in the human soul since dawn, which she has translated into silhouettes, into icons, into attitudes standing like statues of flesh amidst the crash of the present. Continue reading
ERMANNO SCERVINO SPRING 2026
Once again, Ermanno Scervino has given free rein to his taste for the exceptional. Guided by his passion for precious fabrics and couture-like craftsmanship, the designer has created a collection conceived as a declaration of love to women — women who are at once free, modern, and eternally elegant.