Paris Haute Couture Week arrived with the unmistakable sense of a guard changing, as three designers brought fresh force to some of fashion’s most scrutinised stages. Pierpaolo Piccioli’s first couture collection for Balenciaga was the standout, marrying emotional colour with the architectural discipline of one of fashion’s most exacting houses. Jonathan Anderson began his couture chapter at Dior with sculptural intelligence, while Michael Stewart’s Standing Ground became the darling of the week, proving that his rapid rise has been built on rare craft, conviction and a ready-to-wear language already worthy of the atelier.
Schiaparelli
Daniel Roseberry’s latest couture proposition arrived with the force of something hard-won, shaped, as his welcome note suggested, through a process that resisted easy resolution. The result carried Schiaparelli’s surrealist instinct into more intimate territory, where transformation seemed to sit close to the body rather than merely announce itself as spectacle. Fantasy remained central, but its charge came through texture, tension, wit and the handmade strangeness that has always given the Maison its bite. Roseberry moved beyond the familiar images of recent seasons, proposing a Schiaparelli language that felt alive, uneasy, richly crafted and thrillingly strange.
Chanel
For his second couture collection, Matthieu Blazy looked to a vintage book of fairy tales found in Gabrielle Chanel’s apartment, using the story to animate the Maison’s codes. Guipure lace suggested climbing beanstalks, minaudières took the form of sleeping bears, and small treasures appeared in linings, pockets and fastenings. Beneath the charm sat remarkable discipline, with the ateliers’ savoir-faire expressed through sharp tailoring, fluid movement and richly worked surfaces. Rather than dressing princesses, Blazy imagined women as protagonists, giving Chanel Haute Couture a fresh narrative built on craft, wit, interior detail and belief.
Dior
Anticipation carried particular weight for Jonathan Anderson’s first couture presentation, given how deeply the discipline is embedded in the Maison’s history. He approached the atelier as a place of sculptural possibility, drawing on Lynda Benglis to explore fabric twisted, knotted, pleated and transformed around the body. The Bar jacket offered a precise connection to architectural house codes, while hand-plissé, draped bows, iridescent surfaces and soft metallic netting brought tactile movement. References to Indian chintz, Gujarat, Santa Fe, and Benglis’s Peacock series introduced a broader cultural rhythm, defining a couture language grounded in sculpture, surface, and craft.
Balenciaga
Arguably the most outstanding show of the week. Stepping into one of couture’s most exacting houses, Pierpaolo Piccioli brought emotion, colour and human warmth to an architecture built on rigour. His first haute couture collection for the Maison began with the atelier, placing the hand, the body and the maker at the centre of the proposition. Sweeping volumes, sculptural coats, neo-gazar forms and feathered constructions developed with Philip Treacy gave lightness a commanding physical presence. Vivid colour moved through the collection with feeling, while hidden structures and precise cuts honoured Balenciaga’s discipline, defining a debut shaped by craft, scale, purity and quietly spectacular force.
Stéphane Rolland
Few couturiers understand the power of an entrance quite like Stéphane Rolland, and this season he found a fitting muse in Dalida, the Egyptian-born performer whose life moved between Mediterranean heat, Parisian reinvention and public grandeur. Rather than simply mine her glamour, Rolland translated her duality into luminous white columns, sculptural capes, elongated coats and fluid silhouettes that carried both strength and fragility. As crimson, black and silver entered the palette, the emotion deepened. Crêpe, gazar, chiffon, organza and satin were worked with agates, mother-of-pearl, crystals and porcelain, giving each gesture weight, polish and purpose.
Standing Ground
Michael Stewart’s first couture presentation felt less like a debut than a coronation quietly earned, given how often Standing Ground’s ready-to-wear has carried the rigour, refinement and hand-finished ambition of the atelier. Since founding the label in 2022, the Irish-born, London-based designer has risen with unusual speed, winning the inaugural LVMH Savoir-Faire Prize in 2024 before arriving in Paris with the assurance of a true perfectionist. Inside the Irish Embassy, embedded beading traced smoke-grey tailoring and velvet columns, while moulded corsets with Mr Pearl brought discipline to volume. The finale, Kristen McMenamy in a 4,000-hour Carrickmacross lace, made the point.
