WHAT HAPPENED IN FASHION - The Paris Fashion Week Recap
The shows have been and gone. These are the moments that stayed with us.
Rick Owens and Adidas
After ten years, Rick Owens is back with Adidas for SS27. The collaboration is built around cooling: jackets that inflate into sculptural shapes, built-in fans and an ice vest originally developed for athletes in extreme heat. Owens describes the whole thing as a personal air conditioning system. Bizarre and ambitious, but the more accessible side of the line, technical trackpants and black running shoes with long laces, shows there are also simply exceptionally strong pieces in it.
Ami Paris: the Parisian as the starting point
Alexandre Mattiussi presented SS27 in the former Cartier Foundation and returned to where Ami has always been strongest: the emotional charge of clothing. A cherished T-shirt from your youth, a borrowed suit that was never quite yours. That sentimental logic translated into deconstructed tailoring in fine wool and fluid silk, technical nylon pieces and vintage-washed jerseys. The silhouettes alternate between sharp and loose, structured and soft. Paris as it always was, but through Mattiussi's eye.
Junya Watanabe made everything shine
For SS27, Watanabe took a radically different direction from his recent work. Tracksuits dominated the show, made in collaboration with Kappa and fed by the energy of early hip-hop culture. Gold chains over warm-up jackets, caps covered in brooches and little crowns, safety pins and deconstructed blazers turned into scarves and decorative cages. A designer reinventing himself completely, and convincing.
Willy Chavarria started with a meditation
Chavarria opened his Paris show with a guided meditation and closed with one of the strongest statements of the season. The collection is called Comunión and is about finding joy under pressure. The Latino and Miami influences were everywhere: saturated colours, a relaxed silhouette that sits between street clothing and Sunday elegance, and a cast that reflected the cultural breadth of his world. Airy layers in sorbet shades, tattoos visible above open shirts, mint green leather skate shorts. Political without a manifesto, colourful without noise.
Pharrell Williams built a wave. And delivered his best collection yet
For SS27, Pharrell Williams had an eight-metre wave built, filled with real water from the Paris mains. Models walked through mist on imported sand. But this season the scenography was not the only story. The collection itself was his strongest so far: bomber jackets covered in beads, shibori-dyed denim, sunfaded hoodies with gilded LV laces and outerwear with pre-mended details that referenced worn wetsuits. Surf and skate culture as the starting point, worked out into a wardrobe that convinces outside the spectacle as much as inside it.
