PFW SS26 Highlights: Part 2

By the time Paris rolls around, fashion month fatigue usually sets in, yet this season, the city had everyone leaning forward again. With major creative director debuts and house codes being rewritten in real time, there was a sense of fashion finding its balance: between legacy and experiment, restraint and reinvention. 

Across the runways, heritage met experimentation, and craftsmanship became the common language. It wasn’t about excess or spectacle, but about clarity, how to say more with less, how to make fashion feel alive again. Paris didn’t just close the season; it distilled it.

Valentino

At Valentino, the night was alive with fireflies. Alessandro Michele drew from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s letters and the myth of the “disappearing fireflies”, symbols of beauty and defiance flickering against the dark. The result was a collection that glowed, moving between fragility and conviction.

There was a lightness in both idea and execution: fabrics that caught and released light, embroidery that shimmered like moving constellations. The tailoring was softened but precise, giving shape to the idea of endurance through grace. 

Michele’s Valentino continues to champion difference, individuality, and the politics of tenderness, a belief that beauty can still hold power in uncertain times. In his hands, the fireflies haven’t disappeared. They’ve simply found new skin to shimmer against.

Miu Miu

At Miu Miu, work became the ultimate luxury (if you can imagine…). Miuccia Prada turned her gaze to the invisible labour that keeps the world spinning, the care, craft, and quiet endurance of women’s work. The result was a wardrobe that balanced utility and seduction, toughness and tenderness, apron strings and industrial chic.

There were references to Dorothea Lange and Helga Paris, but also to the women behind every photograph, the ones doing the work, not posing for it. Cotton poplin, raw canvas, and leather met lace and silk cloqué; ruffles toughened up, aprons turned heroic. Accessories wrapped the body with purpose rather than decoration, muscular leathers, sturdy shoes, handbags that meant business.

The Palais d’Iéna was transformed into a surreal workspace, lined with Formica tables under fluorescent light. It was domesticity turned conceptual, Miuccia’s reminder that the most radical act of all might simply be showing up and getting on with it.

CHANEL

For his debut at Chanel, Matthieu Blazy didn’t just inherit a house, he entered a conversation. Une Conversation, as he called it, between himself and Gabrielle Chanel: between past and present, discipline and desire. It was less reinvention, more reawakening, the codes remained, but they moved, breathed, and felt lived-in again.

Menswear traditions i.e the Charvet shirt, the tailored trouser, the British-tinged tweed, were reclaimed and undone. Blazy’s Chanel woman was at work and at ease, sensual but self-possessed, her 2.55 bag crushed in hand, her tweed frayed at the edge, her silk suit just this side of undone. The collection’s quiet genius lay in the shift from precision to emotion, a wardrobe that allowed imperfection to feel luxurious.

In his hands, the house found new rhythm: strong, fluid, and refreshingly human. This wasn’t about replacing Chanel’s myth, but reminding us why it still matters.

Loewe

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s debut at Loewe marked a confident reset,  one built on clarity, craft, and control. The designers took the house’s Spanish identity and reframed it through their own lens: sharp, tactile, and instinctively modern.

Shapes were direct and streamlined, polos, bombers, parkas, and mini dresses, each treated with sculptural precision enabling them to hold their own form. Leather, Loewe’s native language, was moulded, shredded, and skived into pieces that redefined what handmade could look like. Our standout look first appeared to be towelling but was in fact sliced leather. The colour palette, lifted from Ellsworth Kelly, was bold but balanced.

There was an ease to the clothes, a quiet conviction that didn’t need to overstate itself. The result was a Loewe that felt fresh yet grounded, rooted in craftsmanship but made for now and clearly in safe hands.