At Paris Fashion Week: strong female energy evident in the shows
Female power was to the fore at the strongest shows during Paris Fashion Week, as they paid attention to what women want: just beautiful clothes that make women feel great.
Fashion is in a moment of flux. On Monday Jonathan Anderson became the latest creative director to announce he was leaving a major brand, in this case Loewe, the Spanish luxury house he has transformed into a fashion and cultural powerhouse during his 11-year tenure.
Nor was mononymic creative director Demna becoming the new creative director of Gucci, in fact, on anybody’s fashion bingo card.
As for some of the best shows at Paris Fashion Week earlier in March, two of them were debuts.
The first was Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, with his sensual take on Ford’s legacy – the fine gentleman himself was seated front row and it seems he mightily approved; the second was Sarah Burton at Givenchy.
The shows that felt particularly relevant this season paid attention to what women wanted. And increasingly? In these times? It’s beautiful clothes that make women feel great.
This ultra-feminine mood fits – or runs complementarily alongside – the shift to “boom boom fashion”, a triumphant return to full throttle, means business and doesn’t give a damn fashion. Fur is back, heels are high and fabrics are lush, decadent and louche.
A certain strength in femininity was at the forefront throughout Paris. It was there in the filmy, lacy pieces inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock at Australian mega brand Zimmermann. As Nicky Zimmermann told The Australian, being “unapologetically feminine” was at the core of the brand’s success.
It was at Chloe, too, where Chemena Kamali’s bohemianish, wafty, lovely pieces have struck such a chord with women since her debut in 2023 – evidence of a lack of these kinds of clothes in the first place.
“The Chloe woman is a real woman,” Kamali said backstage after her show. One such real woman to wear her flouncy, breezy clothes and show the rest of us how to do so is eternal It-girl Sienna Miller.
Miller’s feminine boho style was the reference for practically any woman in the early aughts. That Miller remains a muse for Kamali speaks to this resonance of feminine clothes that let its wearer define her own style, and power source. Also how your style can grow up with you.
Chanel remains in a holding pattern while it awaits the arrival of its new creative director, Matthieu Blazy, later in 2025 but its codes are so recognisable and there was little that could be more feminine, or so very Chanel, than the girlish black bows seen on many of the flouncy blouses and dresses.
But bows, as Demi Moore, 62, and a frequent wearer of them for big events, can attest, are for grown-up women just as much as they are for girls. In fact, it’s a power move to lean into all these versions of femininity.
Take the toughened-up leather looks at Hermes, one of the few brands to defy the global luxury slowdown.
Nadege Vanhee said of her leather dresses and quilted vests and biker jackets in the most beautiful leathers: “It’s really about being assertive. It’s about strength. About being sexy and sophisticated – and just owning it.”
As Vanhee is one of the few female designers designing for women right now, you really felt this intention.
This was something astutely clocked by Burton, too, who made her much anticipated debut at Givenchy during Paris Fashion Week.
The first thing Burton did was bring the brand closer to the supreme elegance of its founder, Hubert Givenchy – the gentleman who put Audrey Hepburn in the ultimate little black dress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And then Burton pushed it.
Her beautiful tailoring, in trouser suits nipped in at the waist and sculptural shoulders and leather jackets (already worn by Cate Blanchett, fresh off the runway, pictured left) looked strong, feminine and modern. She nodded to founder Givenchy without paying too much homage. The brand will be remade on her terms.
A focus for Burton will be on the clothes; she cares about pattern-cutting and proper, well-made clothes that suit her clients. The consequence of this is making her clients feel good.
“My clothes are always about empowering women,” Burton said backstage. It’s hard to think that wouldn’t be possible in one of her great trench coats or trouser suits.
Female power was explored by Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli, too, where the American designer continues to evolve the house’s ready-to-wear collections.
This season Roseberry looked at typical tropes of menswear, such as boxy jackets, and sculpted them to the female form in fabrics such as a textured velvet.
He wanted, he told Vogue Runway, to examine “old Hollywood masculine tropes, but looked at through the female gaze”. In his show notes, too, Roseberry made the very true point that women dress mostly for other women.
He wrote of thinking about the women in his life: “My observations reminded me that the women I know rarely, if ever, dress for men. When they do dress up, it’s for other women, and it’s women’s praise that matters to them.”
Another designer thinking about what women want is Australian designer Christopher Esber, who first showed in Paris in 2024 and is now part of the official runway calendar.
One key thing in that wanting, is desiring special things.
As part of Esber’s cash award for winning the prestigious ANDAM Prize in Paris in 2024, the designer was introduced to several French ateliers with which he worked on knitwear featuring more than 4000 hand-applied tortoiseshell chips.
He also worked with Sydney-based craftspeople on a piece featuring Shibari knotting.
For Esber, working in this way has been exhilarating as he continues to develop the brand into a global one.
“It has been so inspiring to work with several French ateliers introduced through ANDAM for the first time this season,” Esbar says.
“The ability to tap into their wealth of knowledge and French know-how has allowed us to push the boundaries of our creative vision for the season and realise our most ambitious ideas.
“We’ve been embraced with such warmth and enthusiasm, and have no doubt found long-term collaborators here in Paris.”
Femininity, and its twists and possibilities – the potential weaponisation of it – was thread throughout Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu collection too.
Girlishness has always been at the core of the brand; like Hermes, Miu Miu too is experiencing an impressive growth trajectory amid doldrums around them. It speaks to just how relevant girlishness and contrariness is to grown women.
This season Prada wanted to take accoutrements of femininity – bullet bras, skirt suits, silky slips, floral dresses, fur stoles – and reframe them. She did this with things such as hourglass suits that also sat off the shoulder for a little sauciness, embellished socks and brogues for a dash of personality and shearling-trimmed leather bombers worn with slinky trousers.
“We are doing femininity in this difficult moment to lift us up,” Prada told reporters backstage.
The sense that you could take everything thrown at you, and turn it back on your terms – and with some pizzazz – makes for a compelling proposition.
What do we want to save of our femininity, Prada asked; how does it become a strength and not a cliche? The answer may well be – judging by all the ways femininity can be perceived and reimagined – we want to keep an awful lot of it. On our terms.
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