Paris haute couture expecting quiet season, even as jewelry booms

Paris is expecting one of the quietest haute couture seasons in memory — devoid of shows by Dior, Gaultier or Valentino and of any major debut, albeit as the parallel high jewelry season continues to expand rapidly.

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In the wake of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s departure from Dior and her successor Jonathan Anderson’s decision to concentrate on menswear with his acclaimed open show in June, the house is skipping the season. Valentino is also taking a break, robbing the calendar of another one of its favorites.

Furthermore, Jean Paul Gaultier — following the appointment of Duran Lantink as the founder’s ultimate successor in April — has brought to a halt its much-admired strategy of staging a couture collection designed by a visiting guest talent.

Balenciaga will stage the final collection by its departing creative director Demna, who leaves to take over as designer of Gucci, another brand within the troubled Kering luxury empire.

Informed couture fans will certainly profit from next week in Paris to see “Balenciaga by Demna,” a résumé exhibition curated by Demna of 101 selected hits from his decade at the house from 2015–2025 — staged at Kering’s headquarters inside the historic Laennec landmark on rue de Sèvres on the Left Bank. A highly impressive display of design codes, volumes, silhouettes and attitudes that have defined the Georgia-born designer’s unique oeuvre.

“Balenciaga by Demna” includes a catalog, designed like a glossy fashion magazine, and the complete collection of all his Balenciaga cool conceptual show invites. It is on view from June 26 through July 9 and is open to the public. His invitation to Balenciaga this season is a spool of golden wire thread, and his final Paris fête will be in Maxim’s. Maurice Chevalier would have approved.

Two ready-to-wear houses have jumped on the bandwagon to stage shows on Sunday, July 6: Patou in the evening and Celine at 2 p.m. In effect, the debut of Michael Rider at Celine may well turn out to be the biggest show of the week — though he has a very hard act to follow, seeing as his predecessor Hedi Slimane tripled annual sales to over €2 billion in his seven-year tenure.

The season also boasts shows by critically acclaimed couturiers, from avant-gardists like Iris Van Herpen and Viktor & Rolf to classicists such as Elie Saab and Giambattista Valli, and fresh talent like Julie de Libran, Ashi Studio and Yuima Nakazato.

The couture season, which runs from Monday, July 7 to Thursday, July 10, features a respectable 24 houses on the official calendar, including double shows by Armani Privé and Chanel. The latter will be the final show designed by an in-house studio. The house’s new designer, Matthieu Blazy, stages his first show in October.

Though in a sense, Chanel has already kicked off the season with a dazzling display of haute joaillerie inside its Place Vendôme boutique and showroom on Friday afternoon. It turned out to be a brilliant display, containing the final collection of the house’s elegantly skilled jewelry designer Patrice Leguéreau, who died last November. A meeting of three key elements in Coco Chanel’s DNA — stars, wings and her favorite symbol, the lion — it marked a brilliant creative adieu by Leguéreau. The presentation featured multiple highlights, such as the “Wings of Chanel” diamond necklace, centered around a 19.55-carat sapphire and priced at €11 million.

More than a decade ago, the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, French fashion’s governing body, designated the final day of couture to high-end jewelry — when star brands of the caliber of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Boucheron would stage private viewings and exclusive dinners. Subsequently, couture has been invaded by international jewelry brands and the jewelry divisions of top fashion labels, fighting for attention when thousands of VIP clients, hundreds of editors and scores of influence peddlers are in Paris.

The array is impressive — from Damiani, the Italian luxury jeweler that celebrated its centenary last year, to Serendipity, from the talented Chinese jeweler Christine Chen, which will be shown in Musée Guimet, Paris’ key museum of Asian art. Or one can go to Sotheby’s Paris HQ where Greek creator Niko Koulis will present 30 exceptional pieces and 10 event-specific creations in a debut selling exhibition.

The more commercially inclined will attend David Yurman’s couture breakfast at his rue Saint-Honoré showroom. Others will seek out the debut of yet another jeweler: Sahag Arslanian. The third generation of a family of diamond experts with over 70 years of legacy rooted in Antwerp, Arslanian will officially launch his own first high jewelry collection.

Part of a week where the best-heeled women in the world converge on Paris to acquire the most elegant and expensive creations the City of Light can offer.