Paris fashion week: Dior champions goddess gowns and 1920s glamour

Fashion house takes inspiration from Olympic Games in grandest sense for show in garden of Musée Rodin

Like everyone else in Paris right now, the Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri is thinking about the Olympics. Her latest Dior haute couture show was staged in the garden of the Musée Rodin, a stone’s throw from the grand open space of Esplanade des Invalides, where banks of seating are already being erected in preparation for the archery competitions of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But in haute couture, where no price tag is fewer than five figures, athleisure does not make the cut. So this season’s Dior was Olympian in the grandest sense: classically draped goddess gowns, with asymmetric necklines cut to expose a shoulder and skirts cascading in silken layers.

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Kim Jones opts for ceramic cats and classics at Dior Paris menswear show

The designer homed in on staples for the show, without losing a sense of adventure or playfulness

The Dior menswear designer Kim Jones has gained a reputation as a somewhat prolific collector of art and rare books. His homes are peppered with pieces by Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, and he is the owner of the largest collection of Virgina Woolf books and letters in the world – 21,000 pieces and counting. So it’s not surprising the aesthete enjoys melding the world of art with his other great love, fashion.

For his latest spring/summer 2025 collection that he showed in Paris on Friday afternoon Jones worked with the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel. The octogenarian is best known for his plates, pots, figures and vases featuring whimsical illustrations and satirical text.

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‘Youth is the future’: gen Z should be celebrated, says Prada

The house’s menswear show drew on youthful spirit, while Fendi got ready to mark 100 years with a new crest

They have been been ridiculed as snowflakes and “too woke” by some, but Prada’s co-creative designers think gen Z are a generation to be celebrated.

Speaking backstage after their latest menswear show, which took place on Sunday afternoon at the Prada Foundation in Milan, Miuccia Prada said: “Youth is the future. It is hope. We wanted to do something that would express youthful optimism because the times are so bad.”

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Stop Shein listing on the FTSE, workers’ rights campaigners urge

Groups issue call to next government amid criticism of online fashion retailer’s labour practices and accusations of copying

Workers rights campaigners have called for the UK’s next government to oppose the online fashion business Shein joining the FTSE, arguing that a London listing would be “yet another betrayal to working people everywhere and the planet”.

Alena Ivanova, campaigns lead at Labour Behind the Label, said it had heard the news of senior British politicians courting Shein’s £50bn listing “with dismay” given what she claimed was a lack of transparency about its supply chain and ethical concerns.

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Barcelona police criticised for baton charge at protest over fashion show

Police response to protest over closure of Park Güell for glitzy event was ‘totally out of proportion’, resident says

Catalan police have been criticised for baton-charging people protesting against the closure of Barcelona’s Park Güell for it to host a Louis Vuitton-organised fashion show, as anger grows that the city is being overrun by tourists and glitzy international events to the detriment of local life.

A residents association complained that in the lead-up to the event the whole neighbourhood had been cordoned off. “For days the neighbourhood has been saturated with police and private security companies,” said one resident, Aidà Almirall Serra, adding that armed police had demanded ID cards and searched parents’ bags when they picked up their children from nursery.

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Burberry profits slump by 40% as demand for luxury goods slows

British fashion retailer hit by drop in sales in Asia and Americas, and expects challenging first half of 2025

Burberry’s profits have slumped by 40% in a year amid a wider slowdown in demand for luxury goods that has pushed down sales in Asia and the Americas.

The high-end UK fashion retailer posted a pre-tax profit of £383m for the year up to 30 March in its preliminary results on Wednesday, a 40% drop on the £634m in the previous 12 months. Global sales fell by 8% in the second half of the year.

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Celebrities turn out for Met Gala in high fashion – as it happened

This blog has now closed. You can see a gallery of the highlights here and read our coverage of a nearby protest calling for a Gaza ceasefire here

Co-chair and absolute queen of meta-dressing – see the shoes with tennis ball heels she wore to promote sexy tennis flick, Challengers – Zendaya has arrived. Her stylist Law Roach has had the internet speculating, with a red herring post yesterday on Instagram that read “How did I forget that I have this dress in my archive!… we had the dress the entire time,” followed by a face palm enoji. But the floral Emanuel Ungaro couture gown he posted a picture of was clearly not meant to be. Of course Zendaya went for the drama of this gown by Maison Margiela’s John Galliano, complete with wonky silhouette and plumage.

The Met Gala is all about drama and the British actor Gwendoline Christie is certainly bringing it by slowly ascending the steps and giving a different pose at each level. The GOT star is wearing a red velvet gown and sheer tulle cape by John Galliano for Maison Margiela. She closed his spring ’24 couture show in January so it’s a natural fit. Although we do kind of wish she’d opted for that corseted rubber look. This feels a little less adventurous and tonight of all nights is when you can really push the red carpet boundaries. The bouffant is fabulous, wonder how many cans of hairspray it took?

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Dozens of anti-Israel protesters near Met Gala aim to disrupt event

Dramatic conjunction of forces with aim to crash gala separated only by New York police and metal barricades

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters came within a block of disrupting celebrity fashion’s biggest night out – the Met Gala – on Monday evening in a dramatic conjunction of forces that was separated only by New York police and metal barricades.

Some protesters, chanting “Rafah!, Gaza!”, said it was their intention to crash the gala. Others said they didn’t know about it. At times, a roughly equal number of police were guiding the winding protest through New York’s Upper East Side as they were preventing fashion fans from getting a glimpse of their favorite celebrities.

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Designer Nancy Gonzalez sentenced to prison for smuggling crocodile and python handbags

Celebrity fashion designer, who recruited couriers to transport bags from her native Colombia to US on commercial flights, receives 18-month sentence

A leading fashion designer whose accessories were used by celebrities from Britney Spears to the cast of the Sex and the City TV series has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in Miami federal court on charges of smuggling crocodile handbags from her native Colombia.

Nancy Gonzalez was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and later extradited to the US for running a sprawling multiyear conspiracy that involved recruiting couriers to transport her handbags on commercial flights to high-end showrooms and New York fashion events – all in violation of US wildlife laws.

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Does mysterious painting prove blue denim was around 200 years before Levi’s?

Woman Begging With Two Children, by an unknown artist, shows what appears to be a denim skirt in 17th-century Italy

The origin of the world’s most enduringly popular fabric is in ­dispute, as a new exhibition spotlights a claim that firmly links denim with 17th-­century Italy and takes its history back 200 years.

Blue denim, that all-American ­symbol of informality and a life lived on the open range, is already also contentiously attributed to ­southern France, while modern jeans ­mythology still has it that Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, first came up with the idea of making workwear out of this sturdy cotton in San Francisco 150 years ago.

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Dr Martens chief to exit as shares hit record low after profit warning

British bootmaker says it does not expect to increase prices this year as it reports poor US sales

Shares in Dr Martens plummeted to a new low as the UK bootmaker warned on profits and poor performance in the US, and announced the departure of its chief executive.

The brand, known for its yellow-stitched thick-soled boots, warned sales would fall by a single-digit percentage in the year to the end of March 2025, compared with a year earlier. Profit before tax could be just a third of last year’s £159m in a worst-case scenario.

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Fast fashion retailer Shein doubles profits as it awaits IPO approval

Company founded in China and promoted on social media is thought to be considering London listing

Shein, the online fast fashion retailer founded in China, has more than doubled its profits to more than $2bn (£1.6bn) as it awaits approval for a stock market listing in New York or London.

The company, which is growing rapidly around the world by using social media to promote its goods, recorded sales of about $45bn last year, according to a report in the Financial Times based on information from sources close to the company.

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Skins and feathers are as cruel as fur, the fashion industry is told

Copenhagen fashion week is hailed for raising the bar on animal rights. But will the organisers of other fashion weeks follow?

Copenhagen fashion week has just announced that it will ban exotic skins and feathers from its catwalks next year, becoming the biggest industry event yet to do so.

Skål to Copenhagen fashion week for raising the bar for other events,” says the vice-president of corporate projects at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), Yvonne Taylor. “Now all eyes are on other fashion week organisers, who must follow suit.”

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Vintage fans in London gear up to recreate 60s mood at festival of mod

Tailor-made suits, live music and – of course – a scooter run are expected at this weekend’s celebration

Hundreds of vintage fanatics, dressed in tailor-made suits and berets, are expected to descend on London this weekend for a three-day event celebrating mod subculture.

Modstock, launched 30 years ago by a British vintage fanatic, Rob Bailey, and his organisation New Untouchables, returns for its fourth edition.

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Alan Titchmarsh’s jeans blurred by North Korean TV censors

Footage of green-fingered BBC presenter obscured from waist down to hide ‘symbol of US imperialism’

His calm demeanour and wholesome vocation have apparently endeared him to one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world. But there is something about Alan Titchmarsh that North Korea’s censors can’t quite forgive – his jeans.

The green-fingered broadcaster and author of raunchy novels has been a fixture on state television since 2022, albeit with the addition of a blurred effect from the waist down.

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Cara Delevingne’s Los Angeles home reportedly destroyed by a fire

The model and actor wrote on Instagram ‘My heart is broken’ after house in Studio City apparently collapsed after a fire broke out

A Los Angeles home that appears to belong to the model and actor Cara Delevingne was destroyed in a fire Friday.

One firefighter was taken to a hospital in fair condition with unspecified injuries, and a housesitter who was inside at the time was treated for minor injuries, a Los Angeles fire department spokesperson, Nicholas Prange, said.

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Nicolas Ghesquière marks Louis Vuitton with powerhouse show in Paris

In a vast futuristic greenhouse at the Louvre, 4,000 guests were shown why the brand is the biggest of them all

Ten years to the day after his first show for Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière celebrated a remarkable anniversary in the same Paris landmark where he made his debut. In the ruthless spit-em-out churn of fashion, and in the eye of that storm as the designer of the biggest brand of all, Ghesquière’s is quite the run.

A vast futuristic greenhouse lit from within with 13 vast globe-shaped chandeliers – Louis Vuitton, travel, get it? – filled an entire quadrangle of the Louvre, rising almost to the mansard roof of the museum.

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Chanel brings Hollywood and seaside chic to Paris fashion week

Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt star in a remake of a French classic as designer Virginie Viard turns the catwalk into a coastal boardwalk

The lights dimmed, and the Chanel show opened with Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt on the catwalk. Cruz smouldered in a chic black polo neck and discreet diamonds, Pitt twinkly eyed in an open-necked white shirt. They gazed into each other’s eyes, flirted a little, and then – how could either of them resist? – embarked on a clandestine affair.

Well, almost. Cruz was, in fact, sitting demurely in the front row in a leather skirt suit, and Pitt was not in attendance. The rendezvous was on a short film, made for the show and screened above the catwalk, a remake of a seminal scene in Claude Lelouch’s Un Homme et Une Femme, a classic Gallic romance about a widow and widower falling in love that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival in 1966. Lelouch, now 86, was also a guest of honour at Chanel’s show.

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Iris Apfel, renowned New York designer and style icon, dies aged 102

Fashion personality who found fame in her 80s went from copywriter at Women’s Wear Daily to design authority whose projects included the White House

Iris Apfel, the interior designer and fashion tastemaker who found fame as an octogenarian, has died aged 102.

Apfel’s agent, Lori Sale, confirmed her death on Friday, and said “working alongside her was the honour of a lifetime”.

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Shein ‘considering London rather than New York IPO amid US scrutiny’

Fast-fashion company believes it unlikely that SEC will approve US flotation, according to report

The fast-fashion company Shein is reportedly considering a stock market flotation in London rather than New York because of potential problems with a listing in the US, its preferred location.

Shein, which was founded in China but is now based in Singapore, is in the early stages of exploring an initial public offering in London because it believes it is unlikely that the US Securities and Exchange Commission would approve its initial public offering (IPO), Bloomberg reported.

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