Pharrell Williams takes Louis Vuitton Out in the Rain

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A Review of the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2027 Collection

Pharrell Williams takes Louis Vuitton out in the rain

LE MILE

By the time Pharrell Williams put Timberland boots on Louis Vuitton’s AW24 runway, hip-hop had spent decades demonstrating what a work boot could become. On New York streets, wheat-coloured nubuck and thick rubber soles had acquired the authority of a uniform.

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

Louis Vuitton SS27 lookbook
/ shot by Sarah Blais

For Whatever the Weather, his Spring/Summer 2027 men’s pre-collection, Pharrell brings that history into Vuitton’s outdoor wardrobe. The Monogram leather shoulders on a blue puffer recall the logo-covered outerwear Dapper Dan made for Harlem’s musicians in the 1980s. The monogram became part of hip-hop’s vocabulary of display. Pharrell is designing inside a house whose glamour musicians and their tailors helped rewrite from outside. The house now makes the kinds of clothes its admirers once invented for themselves.

The leather hoodie takes that licence to remake familiar clothes into the Vuitton workshop, where craftspeople reproduce grey sweatshirt jersey down to the feel of the fabric. That labour is extravagant precisely because the desired effect is so ordinary. Pharrell understands how much attention can go into looking as though you have dressed without thinking. The factory-applied mud on denim and shoes extends menswear’s long habit of paying for scuffs and fading to the dirt itself. For Vuitton, whose business has been built around journeys, even the evidence of having travelled becomes a luxury service.

Louis Vuitton SS27 campaign
/ shot by Oliver Hadlee Pearch

Louis Vuitton SS27 stills
/ shot by Eduard Sanchez

Louis Vuitton SS27 stills
/ shot by Eduard Sanchez

Louis Vuitton SS27 campaign
/ shot by Oliver Hadlee Pearch

Louis Vuitton SS27 campaign
/ shot by Oliver Hadlee Pearch

Louis Vuitton SS27 stills
/ shot by Eduard Sanchez

The campaign treats this appetite for dressing up with a welcome lack of solemnity, its businessman caught in a storm belongs to the tradition of physical comedy, and Pharrell gives him the elaborate wardrobe the role deserves. The expense makes the predicament funnier. A house that has spent generations equipping travellers allows its customer to lose his composure.

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all images (c) LV Press, Images courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
/ lookbook images shot by Sarah Blais, campaign images shot by Oliver Hadlee Pearch, still Life images shot by Eduard Sanchez.

Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2027 - Nicolas Ghesquière

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A review of the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2027 by Nicolas Ghesquière

A Hotter Future Calls for a Lighter Louis Vuitton

LE MILE

Thirty-four concept cars occupied the Louvre’s Cour Carrée as models crossed its painted road markings, an elaborate arrangement for giving pedestrians right of way. For Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Nicolas Ghesquière was reconsidering how much of his own architecture a woman needs to wear. He has described himself to Vogue as “a specialist in armour”; this season, the opening white dress hung from the shoulders in uneven, translucent planes, with black lace-up shoes keeping the outfit firmly on the pavement.

Louis Vuitton Womens Spring/Summer 2027 Scenography
/ Ergonomie Collection by Nicolas Ghesquière

Ergonomie was the collection’s title, a word more readily associated with an office chair than a Paris runway. Ghesquière gave it a pressing reason to be here. “The world is getting warm,” he told journalists, explaining how heat had affected his thinking about clothes. James Chinlund’s wedge-shaped vehicles, raised at different heights and decorated with Vuitton’s Damier checks, imagined another technological leap in getting around. The clothes addressed the less glamorous matter of what to wear when the city becomes too hot.

Flat lids allowed luggage to be stacked; canvas lightened a covering previously made from leather. Ease was a practical problem the house set out to solve. Ghesquière returned to it inside the garment, removing internal layers from tailoring and using composite chiffons alongside scarf fabrics in silk and cashmere. The technical effort went into reducing what the customer would have to carry. That is a useful definition of luxury for a house capable of making even a journey look like an undertaking.

Louis Vuitton Womens Spring/Summer 2027 Detail
/ Ergonomie Collection by Nicolas Ghesquière

Louis Vuitton Womens Spring/Summer 2027 Detail
/ Ergonomie Collection by Nicolas Ghesquière

In the checked tailoring, a grey jacket extended into fabric that streamed beside the leg, while a black-and-white ensemble let its fronts fold over matching trousers. The patterns provided an orderly grid which the body kept disturbing. The opening dress had diagonal changes in transparency that complicated its surface without building volume around the wearer. This was the collection’s most persuasive work: construction that became visible through the act of wearing it.

A yellow leather biker jacket over loose black trousers offered a particularly direct invitation to get dressed, with little obligation to adopt the entire Vuitton universe. The dresses scattered with iridescent diamonds asked for more attention. Their angular patches caught the light across a transparent ground, preserving something of Ghesquière’s taste for a faceted shell. He could still produce an extraordinary surface on a dress that hung quite simply from narrow straps.

The final black suit came with a broad sweep of checked fabric gathered in one hand and trailing across the runway, a beautiful complication to give someone crossing a road. The jewelled fringes lowered over the models’ eyes also made a curious accessory for a collection concerned with accommodating the body. Ghesquière had loosened the clothes while retaining a small piece of armour directly in front of the face. Those interventions reveal the limit of the functional argument, and something essential to the collection’s appeal.

Louis Vuitton Womens Spring/Summer 2027 Scenography
/ Ergonomie Collection by Nicolas Ghesquière

Vuitton is selling the pleasure of an exceptional appearance alongside any improvement in comfort. Its quieter clothes face a different test. A nearly plain white dress is available at every level of the market; here, its cut and material have to make the distinction convincing. The fit will need to do as much persuading as the image. Elaborate engineering carries little force if its benefits remain an explanation in the show notes. The opening look made the strongest case because its construction was already legible. The angled panels shifted across the torso, leaving the dress loose enough for the wearer to determine its outline. Ghesquière has spent years making the future look extraordinary; here, he made a case for making it bearable.

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all images (c) Louis Vuitton Press

Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 - Inside Alessandro Michele’s Antibiblioteca

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A review of the Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring/Summer 2027 Opens the Unread Wardrobe

LE MILE

Long reading tables ran beneath green lamps, surrounded by shelves in the vast 19th-century room. The Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève gave Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2027 show a setting already dense with its own rituals, which Alessandro Michele quickly disturbed with strobe lights and Troye Sivan’s “Party” playing on loop. Guests arrived carrying books of their own, which were collected at the entrance for donation after the show.

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele at Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

He called the collection Antibiblioteca, taking its name from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s account of Umberto Eco’s personal library of some 30,000 books. Taleb was fascinated by the unread volumes and the knowledge they still contained. Michele transferred that idea to fashion, imagining clothes as carriers of lives still available to us. His notes also refer to the Japanese practice of tsundoku, the accumulation of unread books, and to Giorgio Agamben’s writing on potentiality. Across 80 looks, the runway became Michele’s own catalogue of possibilities. The opening established a silhouette around jewel-toned satin bustiers worn with knee-length skirts in crinkled crepon and floral silk dévoré. Leather entered the sequence with a harder surface, and feathered hems changed the line around the leg as the models walked. The exposed torso brought a directness to the collection. An ’80s-shaped jacket set with jewel buttons appeared over lace biker shorts, and a hot-pink strapless gown revealed a circular ruffle at the back as it turned, finished with an enormous black bow.

Double-breasted jackets were deliberately fastened off-centre, gathering fabric around the waist, while silk boxers rose high above trouser waistbands. Baseball caps printed with “Villain Teen” cut through the tailoring with the kind of peculiar humour that has followed Michele throughout his career. Jewellery became part of the silhouette, with long strands of pearls and oversized crystal pieces covering shirts or bare skin.

Valentino Spring Summer 2027
/ Antibiblioteca by Alessandro Michele

Satin columns allowed their construction to hold attention, while ruffles and rhinestones appeared elsewhere with greater theatricality. A black velvet dress plunging to the navel was covered at the neckline with gold and pearls, giving the body a strong frame without burying the dress itself. Here Michele’s instinct for decoration found a convincing scale within Valentino, a house whose founder understood glamour as something immediately visible across a room.This was Michele’s fourth ready-to-wear collection since taking over Valentino in 2024. The 80-look length occasionally blurred its focus, though the bustier silhouettes and evening dresses gave the collection a strong centre. Michele filled the library with possible lives and gave his appetite for abundance a reason to remain open-ended. The unread wardrobe, in his hands, still has plenty left on its shelves.

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all images (c) Valentino Press

White Resort 2026 - The New Luxury Travel Economy

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A Review of White Resort 2026

Where Resortwear Meets the New Luxury Travel Economy

written KLAAS HAMMER

Milan was in the grip of soaring summer temperatures, yet the city's fashion crowd arrived at WHITE Resort – On the Beach powered by WHITE with unmistakable energy and curiosity. From 18 to 20 June 2026, BASE Milano became the setting for a new dialogue between fashion, travel and hospitality, where visitors explored curated resort-wear collections, discovered fresh lifestyle concepts and joined insightful conversations on the evolving luxury hospitality landscape.

Marking its debut, the new format introduced a dedicated platform for resort fashion, bringing together around 100 carefully selected brands alongside an international audience of buyers, industry insiders and hospitality leaders. Representatives from Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, Printemps, Galeries Lafayette and Wolf & Badger were among those attending, underlining the growing importance of the resortwear category as luxury travel continues to shape contemporary fashion consumption.

More than a traditional trade fair, WHITE Resort positions itself at the intersection of fashion and destination culture, reflecting a shift towards lifestyle-driven retail and new commercial ecosystems. Through newly announced partnerships with TRUE and Allumeuse, the platform aims to strengthen international connections between fashion brands and some of the world's most prestigious hotels and resorts, opening new avenues for visibility, collaboration and global expansion.

Following a promising first edition, On the Beach powered by WHITE will return from 24 to 27 September 2026 during WHITE Milano, occupying a dedicated space at the Nhow Hotel in Milan's Tortona district. As resortwear continues to evolve from a seasonal niche into a strategic business segment, WHITE's newest concept offers an inspiring glimpse into the future of fashion, one where luxury, travel and lifestyle seamlessly converge.

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all images (c)
White Milano Press

KML SS27 - The Limitless Poetry of a Saudi House

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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

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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