The Kurator’s Paris Fashion Week SS27 round-up

Paris always has the last word. By the time fashion month reaches the Seine, the noise has begun to recede. After four cities and weeks of collections, there is only so much the eye can hold on to. What remains are the images that refuse to disappear - and the shows that feel like blessings to have experienced.

Because Paris during fashion week is not quite the Paris everyone else knows. Museums fall silent for the afternoon. Courtyards open after dark. Libraries, palaces and rooms normally sealed from view become stages for a few hundred invited guests. For a brief week, the city gives up some of its most extraordinary spaces to fashion. You see Paris differently: not as a backdrop, but as part of the experience itself.

The magic began beneath three gold chandeliers and the lit Eiffel Tower, where Saint Laurent set the tone for a week that would not be easily forgotten. It ended with Louis Vuitton in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre, flying cars suspended overhead. Between those two spectacles lay the season’s argument, and it was a compelling one. On one side stood lightness: clothes that stretch, float and move with the body. On the other stood excess: fashion that refuses to apologise for ornament - and rightly so.

The week also carried personal weight. Matthieu Blazy marked his first year at Chanel by opening and closing with Gabrielle Chanel’s own handbag. Anthony Vaccarello reached 10 years at Saint Laurent amid whispers of a possible farewell, though the house has made no such announcement. And Miuccia Prada, who has spent decades finding beauty in the awkward, the ordinary and the unexpected, looked this season to the humble hoodie.

When fashion month closes, the question is always the same: what did we learn? This time, quite a lot.

Paris did not disappoint.

Jonathan Anderson seated attendees among camphor trees at the Bassin Octogonal in the Tuileries. They were planted for the show, and Dior says they will stay in the gardens afterwards. The starting point was the Chinese practice of rolling wénwán walnuts by hand, an exercise in patience, and the clothes had the same effortless quality. Mesh blazers lay over sheer Oxford blouses, and asymmetric silk miniskirts looked like flowers a day from opening. The archive was edited with a light touch. The 1952 La Cigale dress came back strapless in pink pleated tulle, and houndstooth, a Dior code since 1938, drifted through wispy dusters and cropped jackets. The house notes say lightness brings movement. The clothes proved it.

A year in, Matthieu Blazy has stopped defending Gabrielle Chanel's legacy and started getting to know her. The show at the Grand Palais opened with a sheer ivory knit slip and a feathered corsage, carried with Gabrielle's own 2.55 from the house archives. The same bag returned at the finale beside a black tweed skirt suit. The weeks of conversation will be about what happened in between. "Smocked tweed" is a stretch construction made to move with the body, and it may prove the most useful idea Chanel has had in years. Drop-waist miniskirts in bouclé, wool and knit sat low on the hips, and short tweed jackets were worn open over bare skin. Chanel spent decades guarding its codes. Blazy lets them breathe.

Nicolas Ghesquière closed the week with Ergonomie, and the title was literal. The house describes garments that mould to the wearer, built from double and triple composite chiffons, carré silks and silk-and-cashmere scarf fabrics, with the internal layers of traditional tailoring removed. In the Cour Carrée du Louvre, flying cars wrapped in Damier check hung overhead. After a white opening came open-knit tops, car coats and nylon anoraks, and beaded embroidery fanned out like feathers. The cars were there for the photographs. The clothes were made to walk through a city (and they deserve to).

Miuccia Prada titled the show Here and Now and started from the wardrobe most people already own: hoodies, denim, sneakers, sportswear. Lace-front Wrangler jeans, colourful New Balance sneakers, retro athleticwear and a good many kilts followed. Track pants went under blazers and tiny scarf tops, or beneath geometric-print dresses that echoed the Miu Miu archive. Prada observed that dress has split into extremes, entirely casual or entirely dressed up, with little in between. Her answer was to bring beauty to ordinary clothes without apologising for either.

Alessandro Michele argued the other side with everything he had. Antibiblioteca took over the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and borrowed Nassim Nicholas Taleb's idea of the antilibrary, the shelf of books we own and have not read. Guests were asked to bring a book. The palette set lilac against lemon yellow and forest green against cherry red. A sleek black strapless dress opened the show, then came lace, feathers, leopard print and sequins, with corseted satin tops in saturated colour over contrasting skirts. It ended on a floor-length Valentino red gown with an enormous black bow and a pleated train. Michele treats the wardrobe as a place for possibilities, and Paris needed someone to say so. It's one of those collections that leaves you craving colour, pattern texture and so much more.

Anthony Vaccarello chose gold and did not hedge. The September 29 show faced the Eiffel Tower, with three towering gold chandeliers above a black lacquered runway. It began with a gold lamé safari-style bomber and a front-slit pencil skirt. The golds ran from Byzantine to Art Deco to burnished, in lamé, guipure, jacquard and latex coated in gold leaf. The collection darkened as it went, closing in black to a Charlotte Gainsbourg song. It came ten years after Vaccarello's first Saint Laurent show, which invited talk of a farewell. His departure remains unconfirmed. Whatever follows, he has spent a decade making the Saint Laurent silhouette unmistakable, and this show restated it in a single colour.

 À Fleur de Peau took Jean Harlow as its muse. Liquid gowns skimmed the body, with trailing linings, lace trims and asymmetric hems that suggested polish coming undone. A loose trench was knotted over a cascade of sheer midi skirts, and embroidered roses climbed lingerie-inspired gowns in black lace or pale pink silk. The palette was sage green, powder blue and blush. Saab's gift is glamour worn close to the skin, and he stayed with it.