The Fashion Week Report

Fashion Week is more than spectacle—it’s where ideas, craftsmanship, and culture converge to shape the future of style. At Currant, we look at Fashion Week to understand not only what designers are showing, but what they’re saying: about identity, time, technology, and change. The Fashion Week Report offers sharp, considered coverage of each season and city—from Paris to Milan, New York to London—written for women of style and substance who want to see beyond the runway.

On this page:
Paris Fashion Week 2025 - Womenswear SS2026

Paris Fashion Week 2025:
Womenswear SS2026

Highlighting:
Hermès SS26
Balenciaga SS26

Hermès SS26:
The Art of Restraint in Motion

In a season where most fashion houses seem desperate to hold our gaze, Hermès quietly reminds us that power can also lie in stillness. The Spring/Summer 2026 show didn’t chase spectacle; it lingered. It breathed. It offered us time to notice the small things — the way leather bends to light, the way silk holds shape before it moves.

What struck me first was the quiet tension of it all. There was an elegance that didn’t try too hard — clothes that spoke softly but carried immense authority. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski understands that at Hermès, restraint isn’t about minimalism; it’s about precision. Every line, every stitch, felt like a decision made with intent.

Leather brassière tops, racer-back dresses, quilted silks — the collection felt grounded in movement. There’s always something sensual about Hermès when it’s done right: not overtly, but in the way fabric follows the body’s rhythm, not the other way around. And that’s what this show captured — a confidence that doesn’t perform, it just exists.

The palette was quiet — sand, khaki, clay, the red of sun-warmed earth. These aren’t colors that demand attention, but they draw you in nonetheless. They have weight, patience, permanence. They remind you that depth doesn’t need saturation, and that beauty often lives in the restraint to stop before you’ve said too much.

Even the staging was restrained, though beautifully so — an environment of sand and broken shells, evoking the meeting point between nature and craft. It wasn’t a backdrop; it was part of the narrative. Hermès doesn’t separate product from poetry. They are one and the same.

Some critics will say it played too safe — that the muted tones and controlled silhouettes lacked surprise. Maybe. But I think the surprise is precisely in that refusal to entertain. In a culture obsessed with immediacy, Hermès remains one of the few houses still designing for longevity.

In the end, the show felt less like a presentation and more like a meditation — on form, on discipline, on what it means to dress with awareness. These are clothes not made to provoke, but to endure. They don’t shout. They stay.

And perhaps that’s Hermès’ greatest strength: in a world constantly running forward, it still knows the value of standing perfectly still.

Creative Direction
Designed by Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, the Hermès Spring/Summer 2026 collection continued her exploration of sensual restraint — a vision rooted in movement, form, and material honesty.

Color Palette
A study in understatement: shades of sand, khaki, clay, ivory, and muted red. The palette echoed the show’s staging — natural, sun-warmed, quietly powerful.

Materials & Craftsmanship
Signature leathers, quilted silks, and airy cottons were cut to emphasize flow and functionality. Brassière tops, structured skirts, and racer-back dresses reinterpreted Hermès’ equestrian codes through a modern lens.

Notes

Set Design
Minimalist yet evocative — a landscape of sand and broken shells designed to reflect the brand’s ongoing dialogue between earth, luxury, and control.

Tone & Mood
Poised, deliberate, and deeply human. Rather than spectacle, Hermès offered introspection: an invitation to observe rather than consume.

Why It Matters
In a season of excess, Hermès proves that quietness can still command attention. It’s a reminder that restraint — when done with intention — is not the absence of emotion, but the highest form of it.

Published on: 6 October 2025
Visuals: courtesy of Hermès
Issue: Fall 2025

Details

Balenciaga SS26:
A Return to Origin

There’s a certain quiet that follows noise — the kind that feels like recalibration, like someone turned the volume down after years of distortion. That’s what Pierpaolo Piccioli’s debut at Balenciaga felt like. After a decade defined by exaggeration, irony, and spectacle, his first collection arrived with a kind of steadiness we didn’t know we were missing.

The show didn’t need to shout. It simply began — coats that curved like architecture, silhouettes that spoke in half-whispers. There were traces of Cristóbal everywhere: the cocoon shapes, the rounded shoulders, the purity of line that once made him the “architect of couture.” But Piccioli’s approach wasn’t nostalgic. It felt more like an act of remembering — not just what Balenciaga was, but why it mattered.

The palette stayed neutral — stone, ink, soft cream — which only made the craftsmanship more visible. You could see how each seam was built, how the structure carried emotion instead of embellishment. The drama wasn’t gone; it had just been internalized.

In recent years, Balenciaga became the symbol of fashion’s self-awareness — irony turned into identity, excess as commentary. And maybe that was necessary; maybe that chaos was the only way the brand could survive in a hyper-digital world. But Piccioli’s debut seems to ask a different question: what if we’ve gone far enough? What if the next step isn’t forward, but inward?

This collection doesn’t erase Balenciaga’s edge — it reframes it. The sharpness is still there, only quieter, distilled. You can feel the confidence of someone who doesn’t need to provoke to be heard. And maybe that’s what the house needs right now — not another reinvention, but a return to its own language.

Because there’s something radical about restraint. Something deeply modern about a designer who looks at a century-old archive and finds relevance in its bones. In a world still addicted to spectacle, Piccioli’s Balenciaga feels almost subversive — not because it shocks, but because it doesn’t try to.

Perhaps that’s the lesson here: that evolution doesn’t always mean disruption. Sometimes, it means coming home — and finding that what you left behind was never really lost, just waiting to be seen again.

The Setting
Piccioli chose a restrained stage — minimalist, almost monastic — allowing focus to rest entirely on the clothes. The lighting softened every edge, echoing Cristóbal Balenciaga’s atelier photographs, where precision was always paired with silence.

The Silhouettes
A study in architecture and ease. The signature cocoon coats, sack dresses, and sculptural jackets were rendered in weightless fabrics, balancing formality with fluidity. Shoulders curved rather than squared; lines wrapped instead of cut. It was less about commanding space, more about inhabiting it.

The Palette
Neutrals dominated — ivory, graphite, and pale sand — punctuated by an occasional deep burgundy or navy. These weren’t fashion colors, but structural tones; each shade existed to highlight the silhouette and the workmanship.