Debutantes, farewells, and the quiet revolution of embroidery: The Fall/Winter 2025-2026 collections promise a Parisian winter steeped in storytelling with echoes stretching from Riyadh to Los Angeles.
Debutantes, farewells, and the quiet revolution of embroidery: The Fall/Winter 2025-2026 collections promise a Parisian winter steeped in storytelling with echoes stretching from Riyadh to Los Angeles.
November 4, 2025
Debutantes, farewells, and the quiet revolution of embroidery: The Fall/Winter 2025-2026 collections promise a Parisian winter steeped in storytelling with echoes stretching from Riyadh to Los Angeles.
The haute couture calendar is rarely just about clothes. It’s a barometer of change, a stage for creative rebirth, and this season more than ever a testament to fashion’s enduring ability to spin magic from mere thread. As Paris prepares for Fall/Winter 2025–2026 couture week, anticipation crackles in the air. There are debuts (Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela), absences (Dior, Valentino), and swan songs (Demna’s final Balenciaga collection). But beyond the headlines, something quieter yet more profound is unfolding: a return to craftsmanship so meticulous, it borders on alchemy.
This season’s calendar resembles a chessboard of strategic moves. At Maison Margiela, Glenn Martens, still juggling Diesel and his Y/Project legacy will unveil his first couture collection on July 9. Known for deconstructing norms, Martens’ debut is poised to challenge the house’s archival mystique with his irreverent vocabulary.
Meanwhile, Balenciaga bids adieu to Demna on the same day, as he presents his fifth and final couture collection before departing for Gucci. Expect a retrospective infused with the Georgian designer’s brutalist romance—perhaps even a whisper of Cristóbal’s ghost in the seams.
The conspicuous void is Dior. Jonathan Anderson, fresh off his men’s debut, won’t present couture until January 2026. Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Resort 2026 offering—sprinkled with couture-esque gestures—will have to tide us over. Similarly, Valentino (now under Alessandro Michele) and Jean Paul Gaultier (with newly appointed Duran Lantink) are sitting out, opting to recalibrate.
Yet in the silence, opportunities arise. Celine—not officially a couture house—will stage a “couture-adjacent” show on July 6 under Michael Rider, its new creative director. Like Peter Copping at Lanvin last January, Rider’s off-calendar gambit feels shrewd, a way to command attention before the circus begins.
Amid the musical chairs of creative directors, the true heartbeat of this season lies in the ateliers, where embroidery has shed its supporting role to become the protagonist. No longer decorative, it is narrative.
At Ashi Studio, the Saudi-born designer stitches memory into silhouette. Porcelain shards and antique fabrics are woven into coatdresses so intricate they seem excavated from a forgotten aristocrat’s trunk.
Robert Abi Nader, Beirut’s couturier laureate, treats embroidery as a study in contrasts—rattan entwined with metallic threads, silk knotted with whispers of light.
Elie Saab conjures a Versailles of the mind, where beadwork nests like jewels in a crown and florals bloom across translucent tulles as if breathing.
Rahul Mishra, in Paris, elevates thread to metaphysics. His lotus motifs—thousands of hand-sewn variations—shift like living organisms beneath the light.
ArdAzAei translates marine biology into beadwork, turning sea urchins’ symmetry into wearable architecture.
And if Paris is the center, the Middle East has become couture’s extended stage. In Dubai, couture finds new life on private runways; in Riyadh, at the Red Sea Film Festival, gowns rival Cannes in splendor. Here, clients commission bespoke pieces away from the cameras—quiet collectors of wearable art, patrons whose orders keep ateliers thriving long after the Paris lights dim.
If the Middle East sustains couture privately, America projects it publicly. The Oscars, the Met Gala, the Grammys—these are couture’s unofficial extensions. A Schiaparelli bustier or Iris Van Herpen’s biomechanical gown can reach more eyes on one Los Angeles red carpet than in a Paris salon.
New York, too, offers its runway of discretion. On the Upper East Side, couture finds its clientele among collectors who treat gowns like canvases, commissioning pieces with the same fervor as one acquires a Basquiat. In Beverly Hills, stylists act as conduits, bridging Paris ateliers to Hollywood’s elite.
Couture may be made in Paris, but it is seen through the eyes of stylists. Rachel Zoe, once crowned by Time magazine as one of the most successful stylists before launching her brand, transformed how Hollywood wore fashion. Today, Cedric Haddad in Beirut or Carla DiBello in Dubai orchestrate red carpet moments for Gulf royals and global stars alike. These five-star stylists are the new arbiters of visibility—deciding which atelier takes the spotlight in Riyadh, Los Angeles, or Cannes.
Their influence underlines a truth: couture today is not only about ateliers and clients, but also about mediators who translate craft into cultural impact.
Couture has always been a paradox: exorbitant yet intimate, fleeting yet eternal. This season, that tension feels heightened. With fewer megabrands dominating the schedule, the spotlight shifts to artisans—the true custodians of fashion’s soul.
The absence of Dior and Valentino isn’t just a gap; it’s an invitation to look closer. To marvel at Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli surrealism (July 8), or Iris Van Herpen’s biomechanical poetry (July 10). To ponder why Chanel’s studio collection—its last before Mathieu Blazy’s reign—might hint at a return to les années Lagerfeld.
But most of all, it is a reminder that couture exists in a dialogue between Paris and the wider world. Between a petite main in Rue Cambon and a red carpet in Los Angeles. Between embroidery artisans in Beirut and private patrons in Jeddah. Between the hands that sew and the eyes that behold.
As the lights dim on July 11, one truth will linger: couture isn’t merely seen—it’s felt. Whether through Demna’s parting provocation, Martens’ audacious debut, or the silent brilliance of a single embroidered thread, this season proves that fashion’s oldest tradition is also its most radical.
