The models descended the stone staircase of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris into a heatwave that had gripped the city all week, their silhouettes sharp against the glare. Gigi Hadid closed the Balenciaga show in a hood sculpted entirely from rooster feathers, a piece that enveloped her head and shoulders like a dark halo, its lightness belying the hours of handwork. The outdoor setting, chosen by the house’s new creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, was a deliberate departure from the frigid, enclosed spaces of his predecessor. As the sun beat down, the collection’s saturated colours and engineered volumes—some built on 3D scans of the models’ own bodies—offered a manifesto of construction over spectacle, a return to what Cristóbal Balenciaga once called the “architecture” of dress.

Inside the salons, the week unfolded as a series of distinct propositions. At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy sent out a fairy-tale collection where heels sprouted butterflies and eggs, and a model carried a book of fables once owned by Coco Chanel. Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry titled his show “The Call of the Void” and dressed Bad Bunny in butter-yellow suiting for his first couture appearance. Jonathan Anderson, at Dior, nodded to the American sculptor Lynda Benglis with accordion-pleated forms, while news broke that he had designed the bridal looks for Taylor Swift’s wedding. Iris van Herpen inserted charged plasma into glass tubes on gowns that glowed like laboratory experiments. Each house staked a claim, but the conversations in the front rows often turned elsewhere.

A Mexican singer, Danna, occupied a seat next to Cardi B at Robert Wun’s show, the only celebrity from her country to receive an invitation. She wore a chocolate-brown satin gown by the Hong Kong designer, its structured bodice and wide asymmetrical hat a deliberate echo of his theatrical language. “Since the first time I fell in love with Robert’s designs, I dreamed of wearing one of these pieces,” she wrote afterwards, a sentiment that resonated across Latin American media as a marker of soft power. In another front row, the Indian heiress Isha Ambani carried a Hermès Birkin Sac Bijou—a white-gold bag paved with thousands of diamonds, valued at roughly two million dollars—to the Rahul Mishra presentation, a reminder that for some attendees, the accessory is the statement.

The week also registered a shift in the geography of couture. Manish Malhotra became the fourth Indian designer on the official calendar, presenting a collection titled “Maa” that was an intensely personal tribute to his mother, who died three months earlier. The opening look featured sculptural figures of a boy and his mother at different life stages. “India is so culturally rich in terms of texture and textile, architecture, jewels, embroidery,” he said, calling the country’s presence on this stage “long overdue.” His debut, alongside those of Rahul Mishra, Gaurav Gupta, and Vaishali S, reflects a federation actively diversifying its roster. Meanwhile, Hermès announced it would enter haute couture for the first time in January 2027, a move that extends its artisanal logic from saddlery and leather goods into made-to-measure clothing, under the direction of Nadège Vanhée.

As the last guests departed the Balenciaga show, the feather hood Hadid wore remained a lingering image—a fusion of millinery and garment that blurred categories. It was a piece that, like the week itself, suggested couture is less a fixed tradition than a set of techniques being renegotiated by designers from Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Paris alike, under a sun that refused to relent.