Dior Summer 2027 - Jonathan Anderson at Paris Fashion Week

DIOR SUMMER 2027 during Paris Fashion Week

Jonathan Anderson Takes Dior Into the Tuileries

written ALBAN E. SMAJLI

The Bassin Octogonal in the Jardin des Tuileries almost disappeared beneath Dior’s Summer 2027 set. A narrow white runway crossed the water, mature camphor trees rose from the basin and mist drifted around their trunks, leaving the models to emerge through foliage before coming sharply into view. From the surrounding white pavilion, the construction felt improbably calm for one of Paris Fashion Week’s biggest shows. Water held the reflection of the sky, leaves shifted in the breeze and the clothes registered through movement.

Scenography at Dior Summer 2027
Photo by Adrien Dirand

Guests had already received a clue in the invitation through two wénwán walnuts, objects traditionally rolled in the hand in China until years of handling give their ridged shells a polished patina. Anderson became interested in the knowledge contained in their natural form and in the irregularities that appear within apparent symmetry. Dior’s notes asked how light a garment could become and whether tailoring could be imagined as flou. Those questions shaped the collection directly.

Scenography at Dior Summer 2027
Photo by Adrien Dirand

Scenography at Dior Summer 2027
Photo by Adrien Dirand

The opening looks established the direction of Jonathan Anderson’s Dior with transparent jackets sat over striped shirting, short chiffon skirts lifted as the models walked and wide trousers gave tailoring a relaxed line. Pleated jacquards appeared washed with colour, Chantilly lace was inset into translucent dresses and petals multiplied across jackets until their surfaces trembled with every step. The floral work came into focus once the models moved, with petals lifting from the jackets and changing their outline from one step to the next.

“We are in search of a silhouette,” Anderson said around the show, a line that became visible in the recurring short chiffon skirts and compact jackets. Short skirts appeared beneath compact jackets, sometimes joined by lengths of chiffon falling from an earring or shoulder. Metallic trousers in silver and green cut through the softer passages, and striped shirts brought an everyday familiarity into the collection. A white shawl-collar jacket worn with silver trousers became one of the clearest looks of the show, carrying evening attitude into the daylight of the Tuileries.

Across the collection, houndstooth appeared in sheer chiffon, Murano glass was used for buttons and zippered sandals from John Galliano’s years at Dior returned to the runway, giving Anderson a wide field of references to work through without letting any single period dominate the clothes. Anderson has spent his first year at Dior testing what the house can absorb, and his own description after the show was unusually direct. “This year was about trying to rattle the brand and see what falls out.”

—see the Key Looks

Final at Dior Summer 2027
Photo by Adrien Dirand

Some signatures are already taking shape through cropped proportions, petal work and familiar objects pulled slightly off course. Summer 2027 gave those ideas room to settle into a clearer language and the clothes moved easily outdoors and allowed the workmanship to reveal itself gradually, with the handwork becoming visible through motion.
The show notes ended with a dedication to Mathilde Favier, Dior’s longtime PR director, who died in August. Against the still water and the trees of the Tuileries, that final line gave the collection an unexpectedly personal weight and left the show with a sense of memory held quietly inside it.

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all images (c) Dior

Louis Vuitton´s Monogram Flower - Idylle Blossom Collection Returns in Diamonds

Louis Vuitton Gives Idylle Blossom a Diamond Edge

written SARAH ARENDTS

A flower designed for luggage in 1896 has ended up at the collarbone. More than a century after Georges Vuitton introduced the Monogram Flower, one of Louis Vuitton’s most recognisable signs now appears in white gold and diamonds, scaled down from the surface of the monogram into something worn close to the skin. In the latest Idylle Blossom pieces, the motif sits at the ear, curves around the neck and opens across the finger, carrying the memory of a house emblem into the intimate space of jewelry.

Seen in the campaign image, the new pieces use the face and neckline as scale. The earrings keep the flower compact against the hair, while the necklace follows the collarbone with a low curve that makes the motif readable in one glance. The design depends on a controlled outline: tapered petals, white-gold edges and diamonds placed along the form so the shape stays intact under light. That is where the new Idylle Blossom chapter becomes clearest. Louis Vuitton is working with a motif that has to remain recognisable even when reduced to the size of an earring or pendant.

Louis Vuitton Idylle Blossom High Jewelry
/ courtesy of LOUIS VUITTON

Louis Vuitton Idylle Blossom High Jewelry
/ courtesy of LOUIS VUITTON

Louis Vuitton introduced Idylle Blossom in 2012, giving the Monogram Flower a dedicated jewelry line. The new additions continue that chapter through fine jewelry and high jewelry, both in white gold and diamonds. The fine-jewelry pieces are the most immediate. A pavé-band ring places the flower on the hand with enough weight to be noticed, earrings bring the motif to the face, and a pendant keeps the same shape close to the body. These pieces work best when the design stays compact. The diamonds sharpen the contour, and the flower remains readable without needing scale.

The high-jewelry pieces bring in another Vuitton code through the LV Monogram Star cut diamond. This is where the collection becomes more specific. The necklace follows the line of the neck with a central flower motif, while the star cut adds a second geometry to the piece. In the earrings and ring, the same relationship appears through pavé petals, round-cut diamonds and the sharper light of the star cut. The open Toi & Moi ring gives the idea its clearest form, placing the slender Monogram Flower opposite the LV Monogram Star cut diamond across the finger.

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy of LOUIS VUITTON

These new Idylle Blossom pieces arrive at a moment when luxury houses are asking their historic codes to work harder across image and body. Louis Vuitton has an advantage with the Monogram Flower because the sign was built for repetition from the beginning. In jewelry, that repetition is compressed. The motif has to survive at the scale of an earring, a pendant or the open curve of a ring, where there is little room for excess.

That compression gives the new pieces their focus. The earrings, pendant and Toi & Moi ring are strongest when the flower is held close, with the diamonds tracing the emblem instead of overwhelming it. The collection closes on a simple shift in scale: a symbol once made for the surface of travel is now carried on the skin, sharpened through white gold, diamond setting and the discipline of a recognisable line.

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all images
/ courtesy of LOUIS VUITTON Press

Dior Haute Couture - Entering Lynda Benglis’s World of Form

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition

Jonathan Anderson Brings Lynda Benglis Into Dior Couture

written LE MILE

Inside the exhibition space for Grammar of Forms, Dior’s couture is placed among trees, glass vitrines, dark wood structures and a reflective floor that turns the room into something almost liquid. The same venue that hosted Jonathan Anderson’s couture show for the house now holds the collection in suspension. Dresses stand upright on slim plinths, some enclosed in tall glass cases, others left open to the surrounding greenery.

A metallic pleated form catches the light beside a black handbag, a white gown appears in a wooden frame, its folds held with the precision of a study object. In another corner, a bronze-toned dress rises from the body with sharp, crumpled volume, closer to sculpture than eveningwear. The exhibition follows Anderson’s second haute couture collection for Dior and gives each look the space to be studied up close. A fold can be read as structure, a pleat becomes a held gesture, and surfaces catch the light differently when the garment no longer passes in a few seconds. Here, the stillness makes the engineering visible.

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
with Lynda Benglis

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1941, Lynda Benglis became one of the defining American artists of her generation after emerging in 1960s New York. Her work moved through poured latex floor pieces, polyurethane foam, wax, metal, gold leaf and glitter. She has always treated material as something active.

It spills, bends, hardens, folds and carries the trace of the body that shaped it. Her sculptures have often been described as frozen gestures, a phrase that returns throughout the Dior project because it gives language to what Anderson is also exploring through couture.

Anderson follows Benglis’s fascination with matter at the point where it begins to shift under pressure. Fabric is pressed into pleated volume and pulled into knotted density, while certain surfaces start to resemble paper or metal. Embroidery carries the glittered intensity of Benglis’s work into the surface of the clothes. What appears spontaneous has been calculated through couture engineering, with the Dior ateliers giving each fold the support it needs to hold its shape around the body. The strongest looks carry that exact tension. The fabric seems caught in the act of becoming an object, while the body remains its point of return.

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

The connection to Dior’s own history sits in the construction. In 1947, Christian Dior’s New Look relied on an internal structure of boning and padding, allowing fabric to create a silhouette that stood away from the body. Over the following decade, the house developed lines such as Zig-Zag, Tulip, A and H, each one treating shape as something deliberate and engineered. Anderson enters that history through Benglis, using her sculptural instinct to test how far Dior’s couture construction can be pushed in fabric.

By the time the viewer leaves Grammar of Forms, the exhibition has made its clearest point about Anderson’s first movements at Dior. The house is being approached through construction and the patient intelligence of the atelier, with Benglis opening a way to think about matter before it settles into form. Her presence keeps the collection away from simple archive exercise or art-world quotation. What remains is the sense of a beginning, carefully held, with Anderson using couture to test how much force a dress can carry before it returns to the body.

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

Inside Dior’s Grammar of Forms Exhibition
/ courtesy DIOR

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all images
/ courtesy of DIOR Press

KML SS27 - The Limitless Poetry of a Saudi House

A Review of KML Spring/Summer 2027 Collection

The Limitless Poetry of KML

written MALCOLM THOMAS

“Would you like to take off your shoes?” is not high on the list of requests asked of guests at a fashion show, but it was just one of many ways that Ahmed and Razan Hassan, creative directors of KML, proudly distinguish themselves as the first Saudi ready-to-wear brand to present on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar. Formerly LVMH Prize semi-finalists and Emerging Talent Award recipients at the Arab Fashion Awards, the Hassan’s melding of menswear and culture is a welcome alternative to the Western European monotony that often floods our social feeds.

Opened with a short black-and-white film directed by Anas Sufyan and co-produced with Mohammed Sehaim, the film introduces viewers to regional Saudi dances performed by Bilal Allaf against the backdrop of thoughtfully arranged music by Firas Shurbaji. The set, a cosy, white-clothed venue with matching monochrome catwalk and benches, was the perfect stage for a show that was anchored in stillness and fluidity.  

The first look was a diaphanous cape, with open sides, exposing the naked breast and body of the model. The tone for a twenty-six-look collection that quietly prioritised its wearer over its wears. Most in sheer, ethereal silks, and sheers in an uncomplicated colour palette of whites, blacks and greys. Soft editorial details like the twist of a skirt or trouser in light wool and the opening of a back on a dress shirt juxtaposed more conscious style choices like unexpected trains, off-the-shoulder blouses, and lantern tassel sleeves.

To call the collection simply beautiful seems limiting. Limitlessly poetic seems to fit just right.

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all images (c)
KML Spring/Summer 2027 / KML Press

Post Archive Faction SS27 - Pain, Beauty and Survival

A Review of Post Archive Faction Spring/Summer 2027 Menswear Collection

The Pain and Beauty of Post Archive Faction

written MALCOLM THOMAS

Post Archive Faction, abbreviated as PAF, doesn’t provide elaborate show notes or backstories to reference, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot to say. The high-concept Korean brand, founded in Seoul in 2018 by Dongjoon Lim, is steeped in nineties minimalism and technical prowess. Having shown at Pitti Uomo and done collaborations with Off-White and Nike, the young brand that bases its storytelling around chapters that read like poems added a few more to its hypothetical novel this season.

Centred around karateka who were practising in the background, the collection featured sheer whites, blacks and soft pastel pinks and blues. Translucent trenchcoats and see-through shoes provided a kind of brutal fluidity that paired nicely against a medley of Radiohead and Korean rock that felt like a mix of youthful angst meets American Psycho. Design details were abundant with zip shoulder blousons, dancing ribbons, multi-layered button-ups and spears.

PAF was not just creating a collection but conceptualising a caricature, a grungy teenager on the precipice of the dot-com boom, a madman no longer waiting to be seen, a ruthless banker whose tailoring is as severe as his patience, a fighter readying for battle. The tropes were cleverly clear.

These were a delicious display of clothes to be excited about. A balance between pain, beauty and survival. Even if just a reflection of surviving Paris in a most thick and violent heat.  

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all images (c)
Post Archive Faction Spring/Summer 2027 / Post Archive Faction Press

adidas Originals Stan Smith - Pop-Up at Paris Fashion Week SS27

A review of the adidas Originals Stan Smith pop-up in Paris

adidas Brings the Art of Performance to Paris Fashion Week

written MALCOLM THOMAS

Set in a Paris estate in the Marais, adidas Originals  launched a two-day residency inviting friends and collaborators to celebrate and interpret Stan Smith’s enduring legacy as a conduit of creative self-expression and a blank canvas for possibility. Positioning the famous sneaker, not just as a recognisable symbol of quality but as a uniform for those who remain in constant dialogue with their craft. 

The adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris / a Platform for Art and Performance
James Blake performing during PFW SS27

The multi-level residency began at the entryway with a tactile display of home goods and furnishings curated by Mathilde Vallantin Dulac, branded in green for guests to take home. In the highest room in the residence, Yung Lean was left to his own devices as he spraypainted it. Cyprien Gaillard’s conceptual film Untitled played in another, where the natural movement of thick white smoke escaping a railroad tunnel was the focus. Thibault Grevet presented an excerpt of his upcoming monograph, Far, and set up a studio where he shot candid portraits of the participating artists. Mark Gonzalez’s love of skateboarding was his contribution to the space where he performed in an indoor skatepark. One of the more popular rooms in the space was a white-clothed sitting room lounge by Guillermo Santomà, where guests like Willy Chavarria found respite from the heat and community in each other.

Music was provided with live performances by Ibeyi, minimal instruments and a grand piano. Soul artist Debbie created a sound sanctuary with a twelve-person gospel choir, and James Blake took to the keyboard along with a small band of musicians, singing songs that drew quite the crowd.

An archival exhibition was also open to guests to explore the decades of impact the Stan Smith continues to have on culture.  

Loli Bahia
/at adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris

Mark Gonzales
/at adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris

Lil Simz
/at adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris

Ibeyi
/at adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris

Myles Lewis
/at adidas Stan Smith Residency in Paris

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all images (c) adidas Originals Press

Taakk Spring/Summer 2027 - Love Letter to Irving Penn and Flowers ​

A Review of Taakk Spring/Summer 2027 Menswear Collection

TAAKK’s Love Letter to Irving Penn and Flowers

written MALCOLM THOMAS

Taakk may have found its stride. Set to a playlist that could double as an action thriller soundtrack, models walked down the catwalk in chocolate and bordeaux nylon disco trenches, slouchy leather and velvet hobos, leisure suiting in sunset orange, and pinstripe embroidered sets.

After receiving a standing ovation for its fall/winter collection, Taakk’s spring/summer offering titled “Ability of Discovery” marks a moment of continued creative acceleration for the Tokyo-based brand. A brand whose purpose is intertwined with the innovative textile techniques that have become part of its ethos.

Beyond the tactile, this season, Takuya Morikawa dug deeper, exploring his own identity in an unlikely marriage of inspiration. The iconoclastic fashion photography of Irving Penn and the delicate beauty of the flower. “What continues to inspire me about Irving Penn is not simply what he photographed, but how he looked at things —the ability to transform something familiar into something entirely new,” said Morikawa.

Not new to Morikawa, however, who season after season has transformed material compositions and fabric structures into singularly gradient surfaces or developed intricate precision cutwork techniques that layer embroidery, creating three-dimensional detailing one might find snaking around backs and sleeves. These, after all, are markers of a Taakk garment.

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all images (c)
Taakk Spring/Summer 2027 / TAAKK Press

Christian Louboutin Men’s SS 2027 - Jaden Smith Expands the Christian Louboutin Universe

A Review of Jaden Smith’s Christian Louboutin Spring/Summer 2027 Menswear Collection

Jaden Smith Expands the Christian Louboutin Universe with his Spring/Summer 2027 Menswear Collection

written MALCOLM THOMAS

As if plucked from the ruins of Pompeii, outside the Palais Brogniart on a white-hot day in Paris, two red foot sculptures stood parallel against the stone steps behind them. A banner was draped in the distance. Outside the entrance of what resembled a Rosetta Stone, a manifesto was written. “You are now entering the ruins of an ancient kingdom. Past these doors, you leave this world and enter the realm of Christian Louboutin Men’s”.

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

Indeed, Jaden Smith’s sophomore presentation was a cultural smörgåsbord bathed in red light. History’s biggest hits propped shoes and accessories in carved out corners and atop formations. Models navigated a crop circle with a Stonehenge-imitation structure in the background—interacting with guests and each other in passing.

Luka Sabbat at Jaden Smith´s Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027 Afterparty

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

Brice and Regis Abby at Jaden Smith´s Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027 Afterparty
/ photo Sofia Malamute

​Some pieces from the Christian Louboutin Avant-Première collection made a return, such as the Multipocket Vest and TCT Harness. Smith also expanded on Louboutin’s leather goods offerings with the Nostalgic style family, which includes the Hobo and the Backpack. Some pieces took a turn for the fantastical with The Corteo and the Louis from Louboutin’s Child Like Wonder offerings, inspired by Smith’s childhood paper cut-outs. Yet, the most conceptual symbols that the Jaden Smith x Christian Louboutin era is upon us, were Stone Mason’s Feet made from a single piece of leather and cut into square-shaped toes, and the Claw Slide, an animal claw editorialised as a wearable piece of contemporary sculpture.

Of course, there were a variety of everyday pieces too, a patent-leather gradient evening shoe and a classic weekender being among them. Closing out his collection with an A-list afterparty that included a very fashionable Smith family outing, Jaden Smith is clearly aimed at cementing himself as king in a Christian Louboutin “kingdom” of his own design.

The Spring/Summer 2027 Men’s collection will launch in stores on October 28th, 2026.

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

Asake at Jaden Smith´s Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027 Afterparty
/ photo Sofia Malamute

Christian Louboutin Men Spring Summer 2027
/ by Jaden Smith

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all images (c) Christian Louboutin Press