1. Chintz is the print of the season.
Kate Lanphear, women’s style director: Florals are a spring perennial and we saw chintzy versions across the board
Patrick Li, creative director: They appeared on the carpet at Jil Sander and in the form of brocades at Comme des Garçons. We also saw some interiors with chintzy curtains or wall coverings, like the show space at Carven which turned out to be Madame Carven’s original apartment.
K.L.: There was a craze for fanciful imported chintz textiles in European courts in the 18th century, and then they re-emerged in a big way during the 1980s as an interior design fabric. The delicate floral patterns remind me of a tablecloth your grandmother might have. This season’s versions were bolder, though they were shown in tea-stained colors. They felt at home on the runways of overtly feminine houses, like Chloé, in very diaphanous shapes. It’s a little Laura Ashley, of course, but sculptural shapes kept them from feeling too dusty. They appeared on hoop-hemmed dresses at Loewe and in the opening look at Prada: a floral satin slip dress with stiffly wired edges that made it look caught in motion.
2. Your favorite childhood toy is now high fashion.
Nick Haramis, editor at large: We went to lots of shows each day. Often the venues are crowded and the guests are inevitably frustrated. But when we walked into Bottega Veneta, we saw that everyone had been assigned a beanbag chair in the shape of an animal that was specifically chosen for them. It was so fun and joyful.
K.L.: Jacob Elordi got the bunny.
P.L.: I got a fox with a big, bushy tail.
K.L.: At Coach, one model carried an oversize bear-shaped coin purse as a bag. It was big, soft and cushiony and looked like the beanbags at Bottega Veneta. The models carried crow-shaped bags at Grace Ling.
Angela Koh, market editor: They looked like the teddy bears and dinosaurs we had growing up. Simone Rocha had a swan bag. It was pearly but playful. We also saw the Japanese fashion writer Yu Masui carrying a teddy bear-shaped bag all around London Fashion Week. It put such a smile on my face to see him sitting at a show with it on his lap.
3. A lesser-known 1920s dress style is back.
K.L.: The robe de style is a type of dress that was popularized in the 1920s and was a signature of the Parisian designer Jeanne Lanvin. It has a dropped waist and a very full skirt, reminiscent of 18th-century pannier dresses. We saw them at Marni, Loewe and Erdem. It’s a very poignant silhouette to emerge now. It was a silhouette designed to accommodate women’s bodies.
Jameson Montgomery, fashion assistant: I think it also has to do with this being the 2020s. At Erdem, one of the inspirations was the Radclyffe Hall novel “The Well of Loneliness.” One of the first robe de style dresses is a Lanvin one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection from fall 1926, and the novel was published in 1928. So I think we’re looking back 100 years.
K.L.: But then Jonathan Anderson at Loewe did them with oversize boat shoes and sneakers.
A.K.: And some of the younger designers like Yuhan Wang and Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena of Chopova Lowena added youthfulness to them by making them short or styling them with knee-high socks and flats.
4. Fringe is still a showstopper.
A.K.: Fringe is one of those trends that every three or four seasons comes back and seems to be all over the runway.
P.L.: It’s a way to activate the runway. Just like you always notice sparkling, shiny fabrics, you always see fringe.
A.K.: It’s very social-media-friendly.
J.M.: The unconventional materials made it feel new this time around. The team at Area called their cotton fringe Jersey Spaghetti. Jane Wade used shredded paper.
K.L.: Over the past couple of seasons there’s been a lot of experimentation with manipulating fabric by shredding and fraying it. It’s a way of embellishing something without adding other materials, especially plastic sequins.
5. One-legged pants can be unexpectedly dressy.
K.L.: It’s not every day that a designer proposes pants with only one leg. So to see them in three shows — Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta and Courrèges — was surprising.
N.H.: And interestingly, they felt kind of formal for something so asymmetrical.
A.K.: It’s a more common silhouette in the dance world. I had a one-legged unitard for one of my dance competitions. It helps accentuate the silhouette of your body in a beautiful way when you’re moving.
K.L.: In fashion generally, asymmetry is in the air.
N.H.: There’s an undoneness. I wonder if it’s partly the Miu Miu effect; the Miu Miu woman has always been half-done and halfway out the door. And there’s something haphazard about a one-legged pant.
6. We’re in the age of extreme belting.
K.L.: There were a lot of garments made entirely of belts, which instantly suggests constriction and restriction and seems a little punishing. At Dior, one white jacket covered in belts drew comparison to a straitjacket.
J.M.: It seemed like a reference to Martin Margiela — he did a similar jacket for fall 2007. There also seems to be a renewed interest in upcycling whole things instead of just fabric scraps; the Swedish label Hodokova’s show was the most overt example.
7. You can go outside with wet hair.
P.L.: At Jil Sander, the hair was slicked down with gel or oil, and some models had curved bangs that called to mind pencil waves or finger waves.
K.L.: The finger waves felt like another callback to the ’20s. But we saw lots of updated versions, too.
N.H.: It rained in Paris for much of the week. In a way, everyone was on trend.
8. Thin eyebrows are very dramatic.
P.L.: At Marni, the models had extremely skinny, drawn-on eyebrows that basically covered the forehead.
N.H.: It felt very Marlene Dietrich, very Divine.
K.L.: And very Joan Crawford.
J.M.: At Barshai, which was a really small but impressive, off-schedule presentation, Andrew Dahling did the makeup, and he’s been working a lot with Chappell Roan, who has been citing Divine as an inspiration — it’s circular.
K.L.: The influence of drag is becoming increasingly clear each season.
J.M.: And practically every show this fashion month had drag queens attending.
Gage Daughdrill, fashion assistant: Or walking in them, like at Peter Do.
9. Piles of stuff are everywhere.
N.H.: Several show venues were dominated by huge mounds of stuff.
K.L.: At Vetements, there was a big pile of clothes that served as the step-and-repeat. At Undercover, there was a mountain of chairs: the Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata’s installation “Avalanche.”
P.L.: Issey Miyake had rolls and rolls and rolls of washi paper, some of which showed up in the actual collection. The runway was also covered in wide sheets of paper. It was very beautiful.
N.H.: And at Diesel, the set included a floor and towering columns made from off-cut denim. The brand does a lot of work with discarded fabric and upcycling. I have to imagine these were statements about consumption, excess and waste.
10. Everyone’s talking about succession.
K.L.: All month, showgoers have been playing a guessing game about the appointment of creative directors akin to fashion fantasy football. Everyone seems most interested in speculating about who will fill the coveted spot at Chanel. We’ve already seen a few openings filled, and we’ll see the debuts next season of Sarah Burton at Givenchy, Peter Copping at Lanvin, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford [and Michael Rider at Celine]. The debut that everyone was most excited to see this season was Alessandro Michele’s at Valentino.
N.H.: The fun thing about gossip is that everyone has contradictory information, and yet everyone is equally emphatic about the certainty of the news they’re delivering.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
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