Feathers, flowers and dramatic pleating: what Paris couture week showed

Couture week in Paris is the only place where clothes are still made with no thought for the print run. Each piece exists as a single example and is made by hand. This season the designers sent out sculptural silhouettes, shimmering dresses and embroidery so dense it is easier counted in hours than in metres. Three themes ran through the whole week: dramatic pleating, feather trims and motifs taken straight from nature.

Chanel under Matthieu Blazy is the focus of the season. The house is showing couture under new authorship for the first time in decades, and the attention on every look here is absolute.

Working with volume is what couture exists for: a fold that holds its shape without a frame demands a different fabric, a different technique and a different number of hands.

Elie Saab remains true to himself: evening dresses in which the point is light. Embroidered surfaces here work not as decoration but as a way of governing how the fabric catches and returns shine in movement.

This is the case where a photograph does not convey everything: half the effect only opens up in the model’s stride down the runway.

Manish Malhotra brought his autumn/winter 2026-27 haute couture collection to Paris — the Indian school of embroidery in couture format.

This is exactly the segment — hand embroidery and work with textiles — that has become one of the main points of interest for the whole industry. And on the runway that is more visible than in any report.