It’s the custom at fashion magazines and print media of all kinds: When a colleague leaves the publication amicably, their parting gift is a mock-up of the title’s cover featuring their face photoshopped onto Bella or Gigi Hadid’s body, surrounded by fake cover lines written to gently roast and congratulate.
One imagines Anna Wintour will receive an entire September issue (circa 2012) in her honor upon her exit from Vogue after 37 years as editor in chief. News that the day had finally come tore through the Thursday evening crowd at Rick Owens’s spring 2026 men’s show at the Palais de Tokyo after Vogue and several other news outlets published somewhat confusing reports of her plans to hire a new head of editorial content at the magazine.
It’s difficult to compete with male models scaling pirate and paganesque scaffolding erected in the middle of the museum’s fountain, through which they traipsed and occasionally dolphin-dove while wearing Mr. Owens’s hot goth garb and vertiginous Perspex platform heels. But Ms. Wintour managed to distract in absentia. According to Puck, the news that she was potentially retiring inspired Mr. Owens to change his show’s finale music to “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.”
Well, not so fast. She is, but she isn’t.
The staff at Balenciaga borrowed from the commemorative magazine playbook to celebrate the decade-long tenure of Demna, the fashion house’s outgoing creative director, whose final show is July 9 during couture. Then he’s off to Gucci. At the opening reception of the “Balenciaga by Demna” exhibition on Wednesday at the Paris headquarters of the Kering luxury giant, guests found the show’s catalog designed in the bright, gaudy, sensationalist style of a Cosmopolitan or Glamour of yore.
Titled “Balenciaga Archetypes,” the hot pink cover was plastered with cover lines, including “Identity Gets Erased if Everyone Follows Trends,” “2025: I Like a Big Fit but I Also Love a Small Fit” and “I’m a Pins-and-Scissors Kind of Guy,” in the kind of black, white and yellow typeface that used to belong in the supermarket checkout line. Instead of Demna on the cover, the artist Eliza Douglas appeared in the hourglass suit she wore to open his debut runway show for Balenciaga in March 2016.
A mannequin designed to look like a doppelgänger of Ms. Douglas in Look No. 1 from Demna’s oeuvre appeared alongside 100 other designs from 30 collections. The radical high-low of it all was all there: the beige bath towel skirt from spring 2024; the prototype for the incredibly influential Triple S sneaker from winter 2017; the grand bonded red velvet turtleneck ball gown shaped like a minimalist bell from spring 2020.
What’s almost as wild as the Lay’s potato chip bag from spring 2023 — it sold for $1,800, quaint by 2025 prices — is the fact that in a year’s time Balenciaga’s visual language will look completely different. By then, Pierpaolo Piccioli, the incoming creative director, whose first collection will be shown in October, will have established his vision. Demna and Mr. Piccioli were at the exhibition opening and looked happy to be there. The transfer of power seems peaceful.
“It’s very relaxed,” Mr. Piccioli said.
Examples of what a designer can do with a brand in a decade were in multiples at the Paris men’s collections. At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello’s visual handwriting is fast, smooth and crystal-clear cursive. He’s on a strong color kick with spicy ocher, burnt orange, eggplant and pistachio. The simple gesture of a tie tucked into the buttons of a matching shirt cut in breezy silk or a light windbreaker fabric defined the collection’s sexy, casual attitude.
Mr. Vaccarello had Fire Island on his mind. The collection’s tailored short shorts — pleated, cuffed and wide — will play well in the Pines, but the cut was loose and long enough that one could imagine a world of shorter inseams across all masculine sexual orientations.
Gentlemen, tomorrow is leg day at the gym.
Grace Wales Bonner, a former darling of the LVMH creative-director-to-be rumor mill, has just crossed the 10-year threshold of her independent London brand. The small but impactful world she has built is full of tender touches. Her anniversary show was titled “Jewel,” based on the idea of precious things inherited or collected. Music by James William Blades and a live performance by the Dutch harpist Ranie Ribeiro and a poem by the late Nikki Giovanni in the show notes set the tone.
Ms. Wales Bonner is soft and symphonic in her combinations of the traditional and the contemporary. She drew together Savile Row tailoring, Adidas track pants, John Smedley knits, classic Crombie coats with brilliant blue contrast collars and a revival of the Y-3 field shoe. Diamond baobab flower and feather brooches dangled regally from the collar of a jacket or the hip of shorts that were loosely tailored to the length of Saint Laurent’s. In the front row Jerami Grant of the N.B.A. wore striped shorts that grazed just below the knee. Maybe next season he’ll show a little thigh.
“This brand has a come a long way,” remarked more than one showgoer at Amiri. In the decade since he introduced his collection, Mike Amiri has evolved his look from expensive embellished and distressed jeans and T-shirts with gunshot holes (it was often described as “very L.A.,” not in the most complimentary way) to something more substantial, designwise.
It’s still L.A. That’s where Mr. Amiri grew up and is based. For spring, the luxury Ed Hardy-wear core was replaced by a 1970s leisure suit-loving guy who had taken up permanent residence at Château Amiri, a fictional fancy hotel. This character picked up where Hef left off, happily swanking about the grotto in layers of pastel silk foulard pajamas, robes and smoking jackets. In this world, double robing was a flex, the size of spread lapel seemingly the new wealth indicator. The Colombian singer J Balvin took his seat in the front row swimming in a mint green tuxedo with an ivory shawl collar.
In the words of one of the mock cover lines on Demna’s exhibition catalog: “Being a Designer! Really Is a Very Personal Job.”
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