At Paris Fashion Week, designers pushed boundaries, reinventing garments through bold deconstruction. Reversible coats, upside-down dresses, and repurposed silhouettes redefined the concept of elegance for Fall-Winter 2025-2026.
Paris has always been the birthplace of fashion revolutions, and this season was no exception. Clothes no longer have a right side or a wrong side—they twist, transform, and break free from convention.
Inside the ateliers, designers rewrote the rules of traditional tailoring with radical creativity. Zomer, the young Dutch label, unveiled a collection where coats and jackets are worn inside out, reshaped into dresses or skirts. "Like children dressing themselves for the first time, unaware of rules," explain designers Danial Aitouganov and Imruh Asha.
At Givenchy, newly appointed creative director Sarah Burton made a bold statement with blazer-dresses worn in reverse, slit at the front to create a striking, sculptural neckline—Parisian elegance through the lens of modern reinvention.
Reversibility became another key theme. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt introduced garments that transform in an instant. Initially worn the right way, they were flipped mid-runway, revealing an entirely new silhouette. At Yohji Yamamoto, coats became part of a theatrical exchange: models swapped their black outerwear for vibrant purple linings, a silent conversation in fabric.
But designers went further. AlainPaul challenged convention by repurposing garments—a coat turned into a skirt, a sweater draped over a single arm, trousers pulled up to the thigh in defiance of tradition. Meanwhile, New York label Vaquera stunned the crowd with an XXL bra reimagined as a dress, its strap trailing dramatically to the floor.
And then, there was Hodakova, the true textile alchemist. She transformed tailored trousers into coats, balaclavas, and sculptural gowns, proving that upcycling can be as poetic as it is radical.
Even Chanel embraced the movement by reinterpreting jewelry—handbags designed as oversized pearl necklaces, worn as shoulder pieces or elegant rings. Coperni, never one to shy away from the avant-garde, turned a sleeping bag into a sleek, strapless gown.
Paris made one thing clear: fashion is an evolving language, forever shifting between function and illusion. This season, it chose to challenge expectations, blurring the lines between the everyday and the extraordinary.
With AFP
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