fashion sketches

Paris Fashion Week 2025: What Happened, Why It Matters, and How to Turn the Afterglow into Growth

October 14, 2025

Paris closed the season with a burst of new leadership, high-impact staging, and a reassuring signal that luxury appetite is stabilizing. What follows is a clean, marketer-friendly readout you can hand to your CMO or use to brief your team. It blends the on-runway story with practical moves you can execute across ecommerce, content, and retail without drifting into fanboy territory.

Throughout, you’ll find verified source links written out in-line so you can click straight through.

The quick picture

A reset at the biggest houses. Chanel, Dior, and Balenciaga used Paris to debut or re-debut creative leadership and reframe their house codes. Reuters summed up Chanel’s pivot under Matthieu Blazy as a design reset built on breezy silhouettes and a celestial set at the Grand Palais: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/matthieu-blazy-kicks-off-chanel-design-reset-with-breezy-silhouettes-2025-10-06/.

The Guardian’s review captured the same spectacle-first energy and the space motif that became the show’s mnemonic: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/oct/07/chanel-matthieu-blazy-debut-show-space-themed-paris-fashion-week.

Balenciaga turned a page. Kering’s official appointment note confirms Pierpaolo Piccioli took the creative reins with his debut slated for Paris in October: https://www.kering.com/en/news/pierpaolo-piccioli-appointed-creative-director-of-balenciaga/.

WWD’s show-week reaction piece reads the collection as “reverence and renewal,” a tone that typically plays well in softer macro cycles: https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/pierpaolo-piccioli-balenciaga-debut-industry-experts-react-1238280552/.

Reuters also logged the appointment for the record: https://www.reuters.com/business/kering-appoints-pierpaolo-piccioli-new-creative-director-balenciaga-2025-05-19/.

Dior’s womenswear debuted under Jonathan Anderson. Reuters’ runway note highlights a looser Bar jacket and a wearable-meets-couture balance that buyers will translate into product copy and outfitting: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/jonathan-anderson-debuts-dior-womenswear-paris-runway-2025-10-01/.

Staging stayed cinematic. Saint Laurent set up opposite the Eiffel Tower. Louis Vuitton closed in full force. Reuters’ photo stream is a helpful single-link roundup to show a board or a client what “the Paris look” meant this season: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/style-highlights-paris-fashion-week-2025-10-03/.

Macro sentiment warmed. LVMH’s Q3 2025 report showed a return to growth with sales up 1 percent, led by improving China trends. See Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/lvmhs-third-quarter-sales-beat-forecasts-group-returns-growth-2025-10-14/ and Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-14/lvmh-sales-return-to-growth-with-fashion-unit-proving-resilient. Treat that as a mood stabilizer for luxury and adjacent categories.

What actually trended on the runway

Ease and movement. Loosened silhouettes, longer button-ups, evening T-shirts, soft volume in skirts, and airy tailoring cut through brand by brand. Harper’s Bazaar’s Paris trend wrap is your practical glossary: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-week/a69000477/spring-2026-paris-fashion-week-trends/.

Uniforms, transparency, and Rococo flourishes. Vogue’s Spring 2026 trend report synthesizes the month across cities, calling out “uniform dressing” with a twist, sensual transparency, and confectionary silhouettes: https://www.vogue.com/article/the-spring-2026-trend-report-a-season-of-uniform-dressing-rococo-flourishes-and-much-more.

Straps, buckles, and soft tech. Vogue Scandinavia’s SS26 read adds the functional-meets-feminine notes marketers can translate into copy and styling: https://www.voguescandinavia.com/articles/paris-fashion-week-ss26-trends.

Beauty stayed expressive but natural-leaning. Five big moves dominated: otherworldly glam, pink accents, just-buffed nails, undone updos, and glossy finishes. Vogue’s beauty wrap is the fast reference: https://www.vogue.com/article/beauty-trends-that-swept-paris-fashion-week-ss26.

A reality check on representation. Size diversity barely budged. The Times summarized Vogue’s count showing 97 percent of models this season were UK sizes 4–8, with under 3 percent mid or plus: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vogue-report-unhealthy-skinny-models-fashion-week-jj3qwhf9w.

Vogue Business’ SS26 report corroborates the picture with similar percentages across 9,038 looks: https://www.voguebusiness.com/story/fashion/the-vogue-business-spring-summer-2026-size-inclusivity-report.

Highlights you can reference in a deck

Chanel’s “emotion at scale.” A galactic set, lived-in house codes, and feathered skirts reframed the brand after a leadership gap. Good for a slide on memory architecture and brand confidence: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/matthieu-blazy-kicks-off-chanel-design-reset-with-breezy-silhouettes-2025-10-06/ and https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/oct/07/chanel-matthieu-blazy-debut-show-space-themed-paris-fashion-week.

Balenciaga’s course correction. The appointment narrative and debut tone will ripple into product calendars and collaborations: https://www.kering.com/en/news/pierpaolo-piccioli-appointed-creative-director-of-balenciaga/ and https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/pierpaolo-piccioli-balenciaga-debut-industry-experts-react-1238280552/.

Dior’s code remix under Anderson. A looser Bar jacket and wearable couture language give retailers obvious outfit architecture: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/jonathan-anderson-debuts-dior-womenswear-paris-runway-2025-10-01/.

The Paris mood in a link. Use Reuters’ highlight gallery to align your creative team on silhouette, length, and styling cues: https://www.reuters.com/pictures/style-highlights-paris-fashion-week-2025-10-03/.

What businesses should do next

1) Treat creative transitions like product launches

When a legacy brand introduces a new lead designer, the show behaves like a category-wide notification. Use the same structure when you refresh your own brand story.

Do this

Why it works

2) Re-write merchandising for “soft structure”

The language of SS26 is relaxed dexterity.

Do this

3) Scale spectacle without overspending

A single motif repeated consistently beats a one-day stunt.

Do this

Related Hawke reads

4) Close the size inclusion gap with proof, not posture

The data will circulate on social. Get ahead of it.

Do this

5) Turn sustainability into shopper-visible services

Momentum lives in materials and maintenance.

Do this

6) Program for the seven-to-ten-day “afterglow window”

Intent spikes right after Paris. Meet it with search, content, and conversion plumbing.

Do this

  • Prebuild “inspired by” keyword clusters and Shopping campaigns that mirror the runway lexicon.

  • Brief creators on two hooks: ease of wear and unexpected pairing. Ask for full-body movement and accessory close-ups.

  • Stand up a short-run Styling Hotline via SMS or site chat to translate runway cues into everyday outfits.

Related Hawke playbooks

7) Use corporate news as air cover for your seasonal bet

Executives respond to signals.

Do this

Talking points for founders, retailers, and brand teams

A tighter operating checklist you can run this week

  1. Update your keyword map with runway-to-search phrases. Pull terms from Bazaar and Vogue so PDPs and Shopping feeds speak the same language shoppers are seeing in recaps:
    https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-week/a69000477/spring-2026-paris-fashion-week-trends/ and https://www.vogue.com/article/the-spring-2026-trend-report-a-season-of-uniform-dressing-rococo-flourishes-and-much-more.

  2. Refresh lookbook art direction to prioritize motion. Build a content day that generates short loops, portrait turns, and fabric close-ups.

  3. Build “Runway to Real Life” landing pages. Organize by outcome, not category. Keep copy to two sentences per outfit set.

  4. Write creator briefs with specific shot lists and hook lines that map to this season’s tone. Ask for one ease hook and one surprise pairing hook per video.

  5. Ship an inclusion pilot in your next drop. Cast across your full size range, measure by image cohort, and publish the results. Ground your rationale in this season’s runway data:
    The Times summary of Vogue’s count: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vogue-report-unhealthy-skinny-models-fashion-week-jj3qwhf9w
    Vogue Business SS26 report: https://www.voguebusiness.com/story/fashion/the-vogue-business-spring-summer-2026-size-inclusivity-report.

  6. Pick one shopper-visible sustainability claim by next quarter. A traceable fiber badge or a repair-and-revive loyalty benefit is more credible than a broad pledge.

  7. Brief your finance lead using the luxury sentiment shift as context for campaign lift.

If you want to take this further with Hawke

Reources

Key references include: