29 September 2026 |
Milan, that’s amore, but all roads lead to Paris! We’re crossing the border for the grand finale of fashion month, with one last round of shows, collections and fashion-week madness before we call it a wrap. Here’s everything that’s going down at Paris Fashion Week SS27.
Matières Fécales
For SS27, Matières Fécales did the unthinkable and turned Place de la République into a runway – it is said to be the first fashion show ever held on the communal square. Ninety-nine models, every one a person of colour, walked three chapters titled Family, Tribe and Gods, as design duo Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton wove the setting into the story.
With Rihanna, Rick Owens, Michèle Lamy, Daphne Guinness and Gigi Goode looking on, a procession of white opened proceedings – wrapped draping, sculpted tailoring, cross-marked kurtas and modest headscarves pulled from Bhaskaran’s multi-faith childhood – before the first act closed, disarmingly, on the designer beside his mother, sister and niece. Then came the punk and protest scenes that raised him: distressed leather, military tulle, unravelled knits and metal spikes, offset by the irreverence of Christian Louboutin‘s curved flip-flop heels and a French tricolore reading “Resist”. The frame kept widening, and by the final act, handwoven Burkina Faso cotton and embroidered Varanasi silks (the Indian textiles used for saris) had swelled into grand evening wear, with one gown constructed from 300 metres of tulle.
For the finale, hyper-real statues of blindfolded billionaires were carried around the plinth – a pointed echo of last season’s The One Percent collection. It was an enormous, occasionally chaotic production, but its most affecting moments were its most personal. TP
Hodakova
This SS27, Ellen Hodakova Larsson took her practice to sea, looking to sailing, marine tackle and the battered beauty of materials shaped by time. The collection moved through waxed cloth, sails, fishing net and rope, transforming utilitarian remnants into dresses, tailoring and sculptural layers. There was plenty of transparency too, with wet-look pieces revealing the body underneath, while leftover leather was painstakingly worked into a crocodile-like finish. On the runway, sea salt underfoot sharpened the collection’s aquatic mood. Even the beauty played with illusion, with painted eyes appearing on closed lids. As ever with Hodakova, the clothes found new purpose in what already existed, but this season pushed that instinct into more elemental territory: salt-stung, slightly strange and beautifully undone. It made old materials feel newly seductive, without sanding away their history. Talia Panayi
Julie Kegels
Julie Kegel’s SS27 begins with an unlikely starting point: an apple. To be more specific, the Jonagold apple, one she eats every evening before going to bed, and the apple that famously fell on Isaac Newton’s head. From there, Apple of the Day becomes a collection that explores the duality of light and heavy and a study of the ways things fall.
Kegels’ idea of gravity isn’t as simple as something being weighed down; instead, she considers it a force. It’s almost mystical, keeping us grounded and giving weight to things that matter. It’s a thought ripples through the garments – each one pulled earthward.
Leggings and low-slung nylon tights hang unusually low, beneath the crotch, giving familiar silhouettes an off-kilter quality. Other materials like denim, jersey and suiting follow the same downward pull –shoulders appearing to slip from their intended position. Elsewhere, dainty sequin bras are reduced to their bare-bones outline, over skintight bodysuits and jersey tops, reminiscent of fragments left behind.
The palette of the collection is similarly grounded. Nude tones and soft beiges sit beside chocolate brown, white, black, sherbet pinks and muted greys. Softness runs through the collection, even when the clothes are deliberately made to look as though they are sagging and falling. Then there was the Edelweiss embroidery. Its flowers designed to look pulled towards the ground, weighing dresses down at the hem. The apple might’ve been the simplest idea in the collection, but it gave everything else a place to fall. Mateo Carmona
Top image: photography courtesy of Matières Fécales.
