The Sunday Read: Paris Unpacked
Today marks the launch of a new monthly letter from STILY co-founder Caroline Ball - an ongoing series taking a behind-the-scenes look at the different creative industries that Sorry Thanks I Love You traverses.
In the fashion world, autumn is enorme. It’s the end of Fashion Month – that global travelling circus of designers, journalists, buyers, celebrities and paparazzi – and simultaneously ushers in the arrival of new season collections in stores around the world. While boxes of brand new garments from the SS25 collections are unpacked and eagerly dissected, all eyes are London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks, speculating what these free-wheeling designers might do next. The fashion calendar is obscenely relentless in this way, but add to that the bevy of creative director changes – Glenn Martens to Margiela, Demna to Gucci, Simone Bellotti from Bally to Jil Sander, JW Andersen to Dior - and you have an absolute crackerjack of a month. In the context of a broader global unease, however, this kind of industry turbulence feels not so much surprising as inevitable.
As it has every year since 2016, for me autumn means Paris Fashion Week: seven intense days during which more than two million people, the French government’s estimates, descend on the capital to help generate the $2 billion that fashion contributes annually to the French economy. To be more specific: one week of high-stakes sartorial analysis and patisserie consumption.
When we picture fashion week we picture red carpets, runways in gilded salons, Anna Wintour’s sunglasses, and after-parties at the Ritz… all of which are real, certifiably delightful and crucial to the smooth-running of the fashion machine.
What we don't pictures are the art dealers hurriedly moving out of their galleries for seven days. Or the caterers using broom cupboards for their pop-up kitchens. Because unbeknownst to the rest of world and beyond the high-gloss luxury that our algorithm so eagerly serves us, there’s another kind of creativity at work during Fashion Week - quieter, sometimes weirder, and even more compelling.
Acne Studios AW25 Showroom
As everyone knows, the unofficial capital of Paris Fashion Week is the Marais: the second-smallest arrondissement on the right bank that's usually filled with achingly cool boutiques, galleries, bars, hotels and restaurants. And every fashion week – which is four times a year, by the way - a huge percentage of these businesses are quietly vacated or quickly transformed into instant showrooms so that the hundreds upon hundreds of independent designers who come from all over the world to flaunt their creative chops have somewhere to do it.
And it's not just the little guys who are fighting for this very limited showroom space in this very tiny arrondissement. Independent designers of all every size and scale - from Stella McCartney and Kiko Kostadinov to the freshest Central Saint Martins graduates - are all clamouring for the same spaces because the Marais is exactly where the decision-makers are.
MM6 Maison Margiela AW25 Showroom
Buyers, journalists, talent scouts, stylists and the ever-growing entourage of fashion week tragics come to look, assess, purchase and, crucially, anoint. It all happens in seven days, pretty much all within the same one square kilometre.
Happily for me and the choux-feeding demon that is my jet-lagged appetite, I was among them. So... this time around, what stood out?
Well there were micro-trends a plenty on the streets (socks-and-ballets, belt stacking, sequins-and-knits, profiteroles by the euro), but what I find more interesting are the broader thematic through-lines that emerge across collections. These are the motifs that aren’t spelled out in show notes but seem to surface instinctively and subconsciously. At best they reflect a collective pulse, offer a snapshot of ‘the times’, and suggest how designers are interpreting the current moment - going well beyond the simple act of getting dressed.
Here are a few of them:
Defensive Collars
MM6 Maison Margiela AW25 Show
Collars that extend, jackets that expand and outerwear that transforms and defends were the name of the game at MM6 Maison Margiela, CFCL, and Issey Miyake. With elections around the world dramatically shifting the shape of our world economy, clothes that can be transformed to add an extra layer of protection feel like the ones we will want to be wearing when they land in six months time.
Big Shoulders
Matieres Fecales AW25 Show
At Matieres Fecales (yes, you read that right) Acne Studios… everywhere really, the shoulders were big, unapologetic and powerful. Margiela had created removable shoulder pads - a tool to empower us in our current political climate? – whilst at Comme Des Garçons they were bulbous and awkward. Acne Studios founder Jonny Johansson told his team he continues to be inspired by everyday figures of authority: this season it’s an ‘independent boss-lady’ emerging from the forest.
Skinnier-Leg Jeans
Diesel AW25 Show
Jean silhouettes are getting straighter and slimmer. (Brace yourself, Denim-tok.) Just as baggy, ridiculously oversized jeans were beginning to become a hallmark of the 2020’s, we’re beginning to see a collective tightening of the leg. Diesel’s enormous denim buffet now includes some noughties-style silhouettes, while Acne Studios has even gone so far as to revive one of their skinny leg jeans from their archives. Whether it reflects a longing for a simpler, more prosperous decade, or it’s just the relentless fashion cycle going full circle remains to be seen.
As another pastry-packed autumn draws to a close, what lingers beyond the jetlag are these quiet responses to the current moment. From sharp shoulders to armour-esque outerwear, designers of every scale are reacting to their reality with a reactive, cautious restlessness. In Paris, as everywhere, the glamour is only half the story—the truth lies somewhere in these simmering ideas hidden just out of sight, like the caterers under the stairs.
Many of these ideas will arrive in-store at Sorry Thanks I Love You over the coming months - where the global conversation will take on a very local shape, as we continue to embrace the charm of reverse-season dressing down under.
See you in the store.
**
Read Caroline's coverage of the Comme Des Garçons AW25 show here.