Celine — and Céline — dominated a particularly starry Spring 2027 Paris women’s fashion week, where Hollywood once again gave models a run for their money. Plus, belts, skirts, gray hair and the rest of the trends to know. And back in L.A., “Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines” is a must-see, while LACMA and Erewhon make it official.
In Paris, Stars Nearly Outshine the Show
Two of the biggest obsessions at Paris Fashion Week were Céline and Celine.
Michael Rider’s Spring 2027 collection for the French fashion house Celine was a blockbuster (more on that below). And Céline Dion’s blockbuster run of Paris concerts was an unofficial after-hours attraction. Editors, designers and other fashion people squeezed in performances between shows, making Dion concert tees a major street style statement.
Dion herself joined the fashion week circus, briefly. At L’Oréal’s annual runway extravaganza beneath the Eiffel Tower, she made a surprise appearance in a black Schiaparelli gown to sing “I’m Alive,” which was broadcast live on giant screens for the public.
Joining her on the runway were L’Oréal ambassadors Jane Fonda, Viola Davis, Kendall Jenner, Eva Longoria, Cara Delevingne and Andie MacDowell, setting the tone for a particularly star-studded week.
Star Turns
Hollywood stars and their famous offspring gave professional models a run for their money. Apple Martin, the 22-year-old daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, made her runway debut, looking every inch a Chloé girl in a billowing white broderie anglaise dress and towering wooden platform shoes, after fronting the house’s summer campaign.
Natasha Lyonne also took her first runway turn at Vivienne Westwood, while Ciara was the surprise star model at Junya Watanabe, making three trips down the runway in a collection aptly titled “Funky.”
Her most provocative look was chandelier-like, but I loved her in one of Watanabe’s genius takes on the biker jacket.
Famous Offspring
And then there was Miu Miu, where Hollywood stunt casting has become a house signature.
Oscar winner Olivia Colman led the charge in a black leather skirt suit alongside a wonderfully random cast that included Jamie Bell, Emma Corrin, Noah Jupe, Louisa Jacobson (the youngest daughter of Meryl Streep), Katherine Waterston (daughter of actor Sam Waterston) and Ella Bleu Travolta (daughter of John Travolta).
A Family Affair
Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman made the much-anticipated Chanel show a family outing, attending with her 15-year-old daughter, Faith Margaret Kidman Urban. They were twinning in coordinating shades of gray.
There was another Kidman Urban daughter in the fashion-week mix, too: 18-year-old Sunday Rose walked the Valentino show in a stunning black gown, pink gloves and gobs of jewelry.
As usual, the Chanel front row was stacked, with Kidman, Dua Lipa, Pedro Pascal, Ayo Edebiri, Kristen Wiig, Sandra Hüller, Stephen Colbert and Olivia Wilde, among others.
Chanel’s New Man
But perhaps the most intriguing arrival was John Malkovich in a pale peach Chanel shirt, jeans and one of the house’s coveted Maxi Flap bags. After Chanel’s convincing courtship of Pascal, could Malkovich be the next Chanel man? He certainly made the clothes his own.
Directors and Divas
On the director side, Tim Burton made a rare fashion-week appearance at Loewe with his 18-year-old daughter, Nell, both dressed in Burtonesque black and seated next to Bernard Arnault’s daughter, Delphine Arnault, chairman and CEO of Christian Dior Couture.
Jennifer Lopez went big (and animal-friendly) at Stella McCartney, wearing a dramatic faux fur and netted veil.
And at Louis Vuitton, it was so nice, Zendaya wore it twice. She arrived on the arm of longtime stylist Law Roach, wearing jeans with the same ruffly white lace jacket she wore in July to the Paris premiere of “The Odyssey,” joining Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan, Blackpink’s Lisa, Sophie Turner and the eternally chic Catherine Deneuve.
Front Row Pro
If there was a prize for front-row stamina, it would go to Cynthia Erivo. She seemed to be everywhere, ricocheting from shows to the Roger Vivier and Christian Louboutin presentations and dressing for each one along the way.
At Dior, she wore a white shirt and black balloon pants (the week’s trendiest pants silhouette), joining a celebrity lineup including Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rosalía and Jisoo.
At Chloé, she went full bohemian. And at Valentino, she arrived in an au courant bra top carrying James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” after guests were asked to bring a favorite book to be donated to Paris libraries, and sat alongside Colman Domingo and Alexander Skarsgård.
By the time she turned up at Louis Vuitton on the final day, Erivo had become something of a one-woman Paris fashion show. Give her a guest editorship of Vogue already!
Spring Fashion to Try Now
What will we be wearing come springtime?
Michael Rider’s fabulous Celine show may have provided the clearest picture of where fashion is heading. It’s less about head-to-toe looks than the pleasure of putting clothes together.
In many of the Paris collections, styling was as important as design, and there were ideas to copy immediately — layering necklaces, piling on belts, mixing bright Yves Klein blue, tomato red, golden yellow and other vivid colors, and considering a new shoe.
Rider’s “emotional dressing,” as he called it, translated to effortless-looking tailoring, little black dresses and bohemian accent pieces, cut in interesting proportions and brought to life with hats, hair bows, ribbons, headbands, necklaces, quirky sunglasses and belts, belts and more belts.
Cinch It
Skinny, extra-wide, chain, cords and sometimes several belts at once gave polish and personality to otherwise familiar clothes.
There was a harder commercial reality behind all the runway accessorizing, of course. With prices soaring and the luxury market struggling to regain momentum, Paris was overflowing with little luxuries, including belts, jewelry and, especially, shoes.
Vintage Currency
Ironically, at Chanel, the bag that attracted the most attention wasn’t new at all. Matthieu Blazy sent a model down the runway carrying a circa 1955 vintage quilted 2.55 bag that belonged to Coco Chanel herself, its worn leather and obvious signs of use giving new currency to all those vintage Chanel bags out there that are affordable, at least relatively.
The Statement Skirt
Skirts were another major trend, one that started in Milan at Prada and continued in Paris. At Chanel, Blazy showed something for everyone: 1920s drop-waist silhouettes, knee-length pencil skirts and even extreme minis, alongside new stretch tweeds that continued to modernize the house codes and exquisite details both inside and out.
There was also a continued nod to menswear, with new iterations of the Charvet shirts that caused a sensation last season, as well as Degas tulle and celestial-inspired gowns that reinforced the theme of lightness.
At Valentino, Alessandro Michele brought his signature vintage glam to the trend, showing sarongs, mermaid shapes and fur-trimmed skirts with bustier tops, colorful jackets and even a familiar plaid shirt.
Dries Van Noten’s Julian Klausner offered still more variations, with loads of accessory inspiration that I’m already putting into practice by getting out my brooches and belts. I was also taken with the strong two-toned lipstick.
Meanwhile, at Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada made the skirt feel younger and more casual, pairing it with sneakers. I loved the overall sporty vibe of the collection, including the bra tops, track jackets, lace-front, surf-inspired shorts and jeans with boxers peeking out, all of which should be highly influential.
Wear Your Bra on the Outside
Another unmistakably feminine style carried over from recent seasons was underwear as outerwear, which makes some sense in a warming world.
Bra tops were everywhere, from Miu Miu’s sports bras to Stella McCartney’s bandeaus to Dior’s second-skin bralettes, while lingerie dressing took a more romantic turn at Chanel, with corsetry and exposed underpinnings.
Feet Forward
It was an unusually strong season for shoes, which have for years seemed almost like a runway afterthought.
Blazy sent all 83 Chanel looks out with a different pair of heels, with new variations on the house’s covetable cap-toes as well as styles with haute embellishments. Celine continued to show its influential jazz shoes but added heels and slipper-like flats. Saint Laurent’s gold snake heels were showstoppers, while Loewe and Dior flirted with bows. And Miu Miu debuted a new New Balance collab that proved the sneaker isn’t going anywhere.
A Silver Lining
There was also a different kind of silver lining on the Paris runways. At Chanel, Blazy continued casting models of all ages and hair colors, while 52-year-old Olivia Colman made her runway debut at Miu Miu with her gray hair swept into a ponytail.
Off the runway, Lisa Bonet arrived at Celine with waist-length silver hair. Meanwhile, in New York City for the opening night of the American Ballet Theater, Sarah Jessica Parker stepped out with a new silver-streaked ’do. Taken together, it made gray seem like simply another beauty choice, and it was a welcome counterpoint to fashion’s fixation on youth.
After a month of shows, the big takeaway was a return to decoration, femininity and individuality without requiring women to throw out their wardrobes and start over (or, blessedly, color their grays!). And for a fashion industry urgently trying to convince consumers to engage again, the most persuasive suggestion was to play.
Huguette Caland Inspires at The Hammer
One of the most incredible exhibitions I have seen in L.A. recently is “Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines” at the Hammer Museum, a sensual, amusing and ultimately inspiring portrait of a woman becoming herself.
Across 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and textiles, the retrospective traces Caland’s journey from Beirut, where she grew up in the shadow of her father, Lebanon’s first president after independence, Bechara El Khoury, to Venice, Calif., where she became a fixture of the artistic neighborhood.
In 1970, at 39, she left her husband and three teenage children in Beirut and moved alone to Paris, determined to step outside the roles of daughter, wife and mother and discover who she was as an artist and a woman.
You can see that liberation unfolding on the walls. Her figurative work gives way to increasingly abstract, playful explorations of flesh and desire, with suggestive curves and lines that can resemble lips, breasts, buttocks and bodies intertwined. There is eroticism and humor in the works, along with a growing sense of freedom as Caland explored her sexuality and developed a visual language in which the body was celebrated.
Among the exhibition highlights are the extraordinary dresses from the 1970s, which bring her ideas onto the body. When Caland dedicated herself to becoming an artist, she abandoned the Western-style clothing expected of a woman of her social class in Beirut in favor of loose-fitting abayas and kaftans that gave her the freedom to move. Following instructions from a tailor in Beirut, she created simple garments with generous space to allow her to animate her drawings. Works such as “Foule (Crowd)” and “Miroir (Mirror),” both from 1974, recall the same bodily shapes in her paintings. And Caland wore them herself, effectively turning her own body into an artwork.
While she wasn’t approaching the kaftan as a designer, fashion came calling. In 1978, Caland walked into Pierre Cardin’s Paris boutique wearing one of her designs. Cardin told her he loved what she was wearing. “So do I,” she replied. He commissioned her to design prototypes for a collection of abayas, kaftans and housewares inspired by Islamic art, which she named “Nour,” Arabic for “light.” It was a smart commercial move at a time when clients from the Gulf states had become increasingly important to a struggling Paris couture industry. But ultimately, fashion wasn’t for Caland.
She eventually made Venice, Calif., her home, becoming part of the artistic community even as widespread recognition remained elusive. Her inclusion in the Hammer’s “Made in L.A.” biennial in 2016 helped change that, introducing her work to a new generation that has since embraced it.
Also inspiring are her later, tapestry-like works. They look almost woven from a distance but are actually made with fabric dye, acrylic paint and markers on canvas, layering lines, dots, faces and figures into dense relief. Her affinity for textiles had deep roots. Caland grew up in Lebanon surrounded by carpets and embroidery, and in 1969 co-founded Inaash, an organization that created paying work for Palestinian refugee women through traditional tatreez embroidery. She even incorporated embroidered patches made through Inaash into one of her dresses. Decades later, the stitch-like marks and intricate patterns resurfaced in an entirely new way.
They read like maps of a life accumulated across decades and continents, and like testaments to how joyfully and completely she created a singular identity for herself.
So L.A. It Hurts
LACMA and Erewhon are making it official, turning the wellness hotspot’s pop-up café in the plaza beneath the new David Geffen Galleries into a permanent fixture and further cementing both as landmarks of contemporary L.A.
The partnership comes as LACMA continues its own cool transformation, while Erewhon has evolved from a local organic grocer into a cultural phenomenon, famous for celebrity smoothie collaborations and stores that have become tourist destinations themselves. Erewhon at LACMA is the company’s first concept café, bringing art, food and wellness together. (And judging from the lines outside the tiny space on weekends, I’d argue an expansion is in order.)
To mark the occasion, there is, naturally, a smoothie. Inspired by Alexander Calder’s colorful “Three Quintains (Hello Girls)” fountain in front of the café, the LACMA Smoothie blends pineapple, mango, strawberry and mandarin with lion’s mane. There’s also a limited-edition sweatshirt, tote and hat featuring hand-painted details inspired by the Calder, with a portion of proceeds supporting LACMA’s education and exhibition programs.
“We could not be prouder to see our partnership with LACMA evolve from a pop-up into a permanent home,” said Erewhon CEO Tony Antoci. “As our first-ever concept café, this marks an important milestone for Erewhon and the beginning of a new chapter in how we bring the Erewhon experience to the communities we serve.”
“This truly feels like a celebration of Los Angeles, bringing Erewhon and LACMA together to nourish and inspire the community,” added Erewhon president Josephine Antoci. “It’s a place for all to gather and make memories for years to come.”
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