Top 10 Shows of the Season

PARIS — Autumn/Winter 2025 was a season of high and lows, with some of the highest highs coming from the smaller labels or smaller shows. Fashion’s merging with entertainment has come, at times, at a cost to the collections — just look at Alessandro Michele’s third outing for Valentino, a show concept that attracted plenty of eyeballs but came with little in the way of new fashion content.

Small productions, like Duran Lantink or Dilara Fındıkoğlu, were some of the most impactful shows of the season. (Even LVMH megabrand Louis Vuitton went smaller). Notions of body architecture, poise, and the way the body and clothes dialogue created challenging new perspectives, opening up playful possibilities on how a dress should be worn, as seen at Lantink, but also at Marc Jacobs.

With designer debuts at revered houses — Givenchy, Tom Ford — and new outings from esteemed talents like Bally’s Simone Bellotti (now decamped to Jil Sander), Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu and Burberry’s Daniel Lee, the topic of brand identity was front and center, in a gamut of expressions running from full-blown makeover to a reconsideration of one’s own history — just look at Jun Takahashi remaking his own past at Undercover. The value of a clear identity — with the right degree of elasticity but not too much — was actually the key topic of the season, especially important at present as brands aim to cut through the clutter amid a sharp downturn in luxury spending.

— Angelo Flaccavento