#paris-le-bal-des-debutantes

#paris-le-bal-des-debutantes

Schiaparelli's timeless designs spun glamor out of the avant-garde, showcasing a unique blend of high fashion and artistic expression that continues to inspire.

Participating in London Fashion Week is not a luxury but a necessity for any emerging brand aiming to go global. It's your ticket to the world of international fashion. - Katie England, Creative Director of Topshop and curator of the New Generation program

It's long had a reputation as the city of romance, but now the French capital is supporting a growing number of businesses that will arrange an extravagant marriage proposal in a landmark setting - for a hefty fee, of course. The luxury marriage proposal business is booming in Paris with agencies charging international clients thousands of euros to pop the question in a 'romantic' setting in the City of Love.

Paris didn't invent shopping (even if it sometimes feels that way), but it arguably invented the specialty shop as we understand it today. Long before concept stores, lifestyle retail, or anything resembling "curation" entered the vocabulary, Paris was already organized around doing one thing extremely well -and it still is. From cheesemongers to winemakers and beyond, specialization remains the point.

They let us shoot in places people weren't allowed to normally, like Marie Antoinette's private theater. They were like, 'This is your home.' The Versailles exhibition will screen several scenes from Coppola's film in the very rooms where they were staged, highlighting the deep connection between these storied grounds and her acclaimed creation.

The question of how fashion is archived - what enters the museum; what is deemed worthy of preservation; whose clothes are considered culturally significant enough to outlast the bodies that wore them - has long sat uneasily at the centre of fashion history itself. Institutions have tended to answer it, or ignore it, in much the same way: couture gowns under glass, luxury garments mounted on conservation-grade mannequins in blockbuster exhibitions - an implicit hierarchy of the designed over the worn, the authored over the anonymous.

Olivia Rodrigo showed off a vintage Anna Sui look from the designer's Spring 1994 collection, proving her prowess at selecting archival pieces that still look fresh today. She wore a long-sleeved black babydoll dress with a white lapel collar, matching tuxedo-like cuffs, and buttons leading to a poofy, high-waisted miniskirt.

As a travel writer who refuses to check a bag, I've had to distill my travel wardrobe down to 10 versatile staples that can easily mix and match to create over a dozen outfits. Whether I'm wine-bar hopping in the trendy 11th arrondissement, playing tourist by the Eiffel Tower, or splurging on a fancy dinner in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I need pieces that can be dressed up or down-and crucially, that will keep me warm.

The dress, conversely, is 80 years old, and it isn't his. It's by Pierre Balmain - Tron shows me a René Gruau illustration of the look where, with a platter hat, white fox stole and opera-length gloves, the look is borne back ceaselessly into the past. It's an illustration in a book titled The New French Style, of Balmain outfits with an essay by Alice B Toklas, the partner of Gertrude Stein.

Stylist and writer Orla Dempsey tried on some ties for a week, following a big fashion trend for 2026 and following in the footsteps of some famous faces

The end of the show did not mark the end of the trip. Back at the Le Grand Bellevue the group divided between fireside hot chocolates and the hotel's spa. The hotel's Le Grand Spa is over 3,000 square metres and has eight different types of saunas, several ice showers, foot baths and an outdoor bubble pool (named thus as it's bigger than your standard jacuzzi).

Travelling for art can be incredibly virtuous and culturally rewarding, like collecting souvenirs for your eyes (and from the post card rail in the gift shop). Remembering to research what is on before I book flights is a lesson I learnt all too well after I missed the Metropolitan Museum's fashion exhibition in 2016 by one day. As a fashion obsessed 20 something, I did not take this well and have since improved my itinerary planning and exhibition calendar checking.

In the show, "dirty" extends to anything that breaks fashion's pact with propriety. Here are clothes caked in grime, blotted with makeup, stiffened by salt, pieced from trash, frayed, and faded. The garments span decades, from the 1980s through the mid-2000s, when the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier built their fame on defying convention, to today, when corporatization has made such daring increasingly rare. But forgoing practicality frees certain designers from the demands that the body be polite-and thereby policed.

Play Hard captures the essence of growing up surrounded by the echoes of empty arcades, the chill of coastal winds, and fleeting moments of joy found in skateboarding culture. It reflects on personal memories shaped by resilience, freedom, and creativity in an environment where opportunities were scarce. The collection embraces an aesthetic that values imperfection, emphasising the beauty found in fragility and the strength derived from community.