FSW Briefing: Reflections on Fashion Month and Selected Paris Fashion Week Spring 2025 Highlights
FSW ponders the purpose of Fashion Week and provides a quick recap on our favorite final PFW moments.
There has been a lot of chatter over the past few days on the purpose of fashion weeks, the decline in fashion criticism, and the role of fashion and luxury in a time of global turbulence. Capping off Spring/Summer 2025 Fashion Month, Paris Fashion Week provided more questions than answers to these kinds of questions with most major publications concluding that fashion is “in a state of transition,” as Vogue Business put it.
It does not help that luxury fashion itself is in a state of confusion with the game of musical chairs happening at the creative helms of major brands. The list of artistic director changeovers at luxury brands just this past week is dizzying: Hedi Slimane left Celine with his replacement, Michael Rider, being announced the same day; Alberto Caliri has replaced Filippo Grazioli at Missoni; speculation over who is taking over at Chanel is growing; and now Miss Tweed is reporting that Jonathan Anderson may take the reins at Dior.
Outside of the palpable anticipation over Alessandro Michele’s official debut in Paris on Sunday for Valentino, there was a general sense of skepticism and even malaise surrounding Fashion Month this time around, particularly among the average social media fashion lovers who usually seem effervescent with praise about the main collections. We noticed a lot of discussions questioning the entire pageantry of Fashion Month given the growing war in the Middle East and a lot of opinions exchanged about the “death” of fashion criticism and the feeling that the major fashion publications are now essentially branded content.
This brings us to fundamental questions on the purpose of fashion, beauty, and aesthetics in times of human crisis. Is fashion’s role as a form of art to bring the light in times of darkness and to inspire and drive a better, more connected human world for humans? How does it do this since fashion and luxury are big business in addition to being a powerful form of creative expression?
One reason we keep saying that the runway is fashion’s most powerful form of content is due to the evolution of Fashion Month into a brand marketing parade. Most mainstream fashion media and social media coverage of fashion shows feels like it is about the celebrities and influencers in the front row and the creative director at the helm and only secondarily about the actual clothes themselves.
The reality is that we now mostly experience fashion and luxury through content, including the full spectrum of everything we at FSW consider content—from algorithmic social media content, fashion media, and brand marketing to IRL runway shows and even brand retail stores. To consumers, fashion and luxury brands have so many different faces and so many disconnected ways of telling stories, communicating ideas, and selling products. TikTok trends drive fashion and luxury merchandising and marketing decision-making in a very real way, which feels slightly surreal for luxury brands that are supposed to be above this sort of reactionary approach. So, the communal sense of dystopia with fashion and luxury is understandable.
A lot needs to change within fashion and luxury. It is hard to know where to start. From our point of view, fashion and luxury brands need to pull up their socks and provide consumers with more meaningful, value-driven experiences, products, and content. Storytelling matters and these days this requires holistic content strategy paired with brand-tailored content operations. But of equal importance are efficient product design, supply-chain management, and global standards for corporate sustainability that collectively do not abuse workers, destroy the global ecosystem, and mislead consumers.
Yes, Fashion Month involved a lot of safe, sellable collections. But that’s not a bad thing for brands or consumers. And plenty of designers were there to inspire and provoke discussion. Say what you will about Sabato de Sarno’s creative approach and Gucci’s current troubles or Alessandro Michele coming into Valentino and being more Michele and less “Valentino” but they all got us talking about the art and purpose of fashion and not the famous people in the front row.
Fashion and luxury need to adopt a content-first mindset. We want more storytelling, more thought-provoking design, more humanistic, vision-centric experiences, and less waste, both product-wise and content-wise, across the fashion ecosystem.
Paris Fashion Week Takeaways
In the spirit of authenticity, we thought it would be fitting to ask our intern, Elsa, to write up her assessment of her favorite shows from the final days of Paris Fashion Week:
The Spring 2025 Ready-To-Wear collections were full of emotion, expressed through mesh fabrics, resin, sharp edges, funky ruffles, and bubble shorts.
Starting strong with Hermès, Nadège Vanhée took the sheer trend and made it luxury. By taking sheer pants and layering leather jackets, mesh tops, and strategically placed pockets, she took an everyday outfit in New York onto the runway. The monotone neutral colors gave the feeling that you are taking a stroll through a very fancy safari, but the sharp edges and layered fabrics gave it an outlandish look.
Comme des Garçons, on the other hand, was filled with wild curves and big statements. While it might not necessarily have looked like a typical ready-to-wear collection, it certainly would catch the eye of anyone who walked past it. The models were dressed in garments that were a reflection of Rei Kawakubo’s emotions and thoughts. While it was supposed to be a reflection of the freedom and creativity in her head, the collection looked rigid and inflexible despite many of the designs having been created with puffy materials.
Almost a direct opposite of Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen’s collection had edges sharp enough to cut through Kawakubo’s emotions. This was only Sean McGirr’s second runway showing for McQueen, but he blew expectations out of the park compared to his first show. He drew inspiration from Lee Alexander McQueen’s sketches and second runway show. His use of feathers, sharp edges on suits, and blinding sparkles gave an ethereal feeling to his designs.
Taking a step away from the quiet authority of McQueen’s collection, Valentino’s Alessandro Michele wowed viewers with his well-missed maximalism. His designs gave us the feeling of a vintage doll with an extra edge to it. The layering of ruffles and bright colored fabrics gave the viewer a feeling of a child and her mother’s old dolls, but in a nostalgic way. Michele used bright colors such as green, purple, and yellow to invoke feelings of excitement and innocence to viewers.
Going with the theme of bright colors and intricate patterns, Miù Miù released a collection on par with Tik Tok’s microtrend final boss (i.e. a trend that is on its last legs). The bubble shorts of our beloved influencers also made a debut on the runway at Paris Fashion Week. Always blowing us away with their chicness, Miù Miù did not stray from delivering a memorable collection.