Paris, Day 7: Big Bags, Weightless Leather, Soft Power

Michael Rider's second Celine show blew accessories to extreme proportions: belt buckles the size of skirts, gold hoops grazing shoulders, hats drooped low over the eyes, and XXL bags hugged over one arm like a statement in itself. Backstage, Rider joked about his scale instinct — a large bag with a small logo, a small coat with an enormous collar — and the message landed: proportion is the new logo.

Hermes ran the same spectrum logic in a quieter register, with bags at either end of the size scale — oversize and roomy, or slim and structured — and Givenchy piled on crescent moon bags in radiant yellow and deep blue with silver-plated interiors. After seasons of micro-bags, the directive is unambiguous: buy the biggest bag, the roundest shade, the most boot.

Nadege Vanhee built Hermes SS27 around a single word: air. Sheer open knits revealed briefs and bandeaus beneath; fine-gauge knits were stitched with thin vertical strips of leather; crinkled silk faille was engineered to feel feathery. Laser-cutting, aeration and splicing turned leather — the house's heaviest code — into a summer material.

The cooling system is modular: dresses with zippers bisecting the legs convert from midi to mini, trousers zip from full-legged to slim, and a parka deconstructs at the waist with snaps. It is luxury's pragmatic answer to heatwave summers — perforation, mesh and zips instead of weight.

The palette ripened like a Californian sunset, from creamy whites and icy blues through camel and terra-cotta into bright yellow and red. This is the season's most wearable avant-garde: nothing to decode, everything to feel.

Sarah Burton answered a chaotic season with what the press called a thinking woman's tool kit: precision cutting, streamlined proportion, precise simplicity. Power-shoulder coats for the boardroom; a pinstriped blazer with its sleeves removed and pinned over the chest like a form of protection; suit jackets with sliced sides and tilted front panels.

The counterpoint to bodycon: ELLE framed the collection as a female-gaze rebellion — sensual colorblocked dresses with cutout bralettes, leather dresses with peel-away necklines, fluted skirts slit up the side worn over crisp white shirts. Tailoring here is not armor; it is an instrument.

Details sealed it: dual-reading hair — short and slicked from the front, revealing a long nape braid behind — and the house's Shark boot given a front zipper and worn completely unzipped. Strength, worn loosely.

John Galliano's first Zara collection, Re{form} Vol.1, went on sale October 1: 35 looks and 100-plus pieces built by cutting apart Zara archive garments and rebuilding them with couture techniques — trompe-l'oeil layering, bias cuts, and named methods like The Flix and The Shi/ft. Prices run from $29.99 to $999.99: a whisper of his Dior maximalism at high-street prices.

The cast of signatures: polka-dotted tulle, lace, faux fur and jewel tones; a sheer layering coat called The Flix; the Tri-Chic bag — inspired by bin liners, worn three ways including as a backpack; opera gloves, knee-high socks, naval boots; millinery with Stephen Jones turning caps into lace bonnets. Steven Meisel shot the campaign.

It is staged as fashion-week counter-programming: an appointment-only installation in a Marais townhouse through Oct 6, with process films and sketches. Galliano's first project since leaving Margiela, arriving weeks after the Met canceled his 2027 retrospective — and it may be the most consequential thing to happen in Paris this week.