Pierpaolo Piccioli closed Paris couture week with Balenciaga’s biggest haute couture statement since 2020, sending out ballooning gowns, hooded feather cocoons and a finale look engulfing Gigi Hadid in rooster feathers.
Across four days and 30 houses, the season converged on three themes: exposed or erased bodies, escapist fantasy and technology pressed into service of handwork.
Balenciaga used 3D body scans, hand-molded leather and cashmere, and a strapless gown built from 24,150 gazar shreds, while Iris van Herpen dissolved the figure into about 30,000 hand-blown glass beads.
The week’s theatrical mood ran from Chanel’s fairy-tale beanstalk set to Elie Saab’s masked-ball glamour, even as a heat wave, Middle East conflict and jittery markets framed the shows.
Couture’s experimentation matters beyond a few hundred clients because luxury houses are using new designers — including Piccioli, Jonathan Anderson and Matthieu Blazy — to revive a sector emerging from a two-year slump.