Paris Haute Couture Week SS26: The Essential Preview
This January's Paris Haute Couture Week arrives charged with anticipation. All eyes will be on Chanel and Dior, where the first couture shows from Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson are set to redefine what modern couture can be.
Blazy and Anderson bring heavyweight reputations, yet their aesthetics could hardly be more distinct. At Chanel, Blazy steps in after Virginie Viard, signalling a clear shift. His work at Bottega Veneta revealed a designer attuned to luxury's quiet power: textured leathers, precise tailoring, and details meant to be discovered. His first Métiers d'Art outing in New York 2026 demonstrated a talent for narrative-inflected craft, earning praise for its tactile imagination and a subtle modernisation of Chanel's codes. The question now is whether that same blend of intimacy, craft, and narrative energy will translate into his first couture collection, where every detail must honour the atelier's exacting standards.
Phan Huy’s FW25 couture collection
At Dior, Anderson's remit is broader: he now oversees womenswear, menswear, and couture, a rare consolidation of creative authority. At Loewe, he transformed a quiet Spanish house into a global creative benchmark, layering historical reference with playful experimentation. His first Dior womenswear collection in 2025 was widely acclaimed for its intellectual rigor and lively execution, though some critics noted the absence of a defining, singular silhouette. That layered reception—part celebration, part invitation to refine—sets the stage for his first couture chapter, where balancing Dior's storied codes with his own conceptual lens will be closely watched.
Armani Privé faces an entirely different challenge. This will be the house's first couture collection without Giorgio Armani, who passed in late 2025. Armani's signature elegance—soft tailoring, understated glamour, a quietly commanding presence on the red carpet—has long defined the house. This season will show how his close collaborators preserve that language and the late couture master’s vision.
Valentino returns to the official calendar after Alessandro Michele's theatrical Vertigineux couture debut last January. That collection leaned into romance and historical allusion, a testament to Michele's flair for narrative and spectacle. With the atelier's resources at his disposal, he can explore these extremes at the highest level. This season will reveal whether he is consolidating a vision or continuing to experiment.
The calendar also welcomes new voices. Vietnamese couturier Phan Huy, the youngest designer ever invited to the official haute couture roster and the first Vietnamese house to present on this stage, showed his first collection hors calendar just six months ago. In that debut, he translated Vietnamese cultural symbols into sculptural gowns—from conical hats to woven textures—using heirloom handcrafts and architectural draping that demonstrated both technical command and cultural fluency. It was a collection that immediately marked him as a couturier to watch. Greek designer Celia Kritharioti is also a new name on the official calendar, though she has already presented in Paris.
Then there are the absences. Maison Margiela, Jean Paul Gaultier, Givenchy, and Iris van Herpen all showed last season but will not present this January, reflecting creative transitions or strategic recalibrations within the couture sector.
Heritage houses are passing creative batons, younger designers are entering the conversation, which all make for a less predictable week—and a more interesting one.
Full calendar of the week: here!
