Paris SS27: Five Collections That We Enjoyed The Most
Paris Fashion Week SS27 ran from September 28 to October 6, bringing the Spring/Summer 2027 season to a close.
By the time Paris started, we had already seen enough comebacks and forced “new directions” to last us a while. The collections that stood out weren’t necessarily the biggest or most commercial. They were the ones with something specific to say.
Matières Fécales made representation inseparable from the clothes. Rick Owens pushed his world even further. Vivienne Westwood kept its anarchic attitude intact. Jean Paul Gaultier turned the body into a design problem. And Comme des Garçons went straight back into the kind of strange territory only Rei Kawakubo can really occupy.
Here are five collections we actually cared about.
Matières Fécales took over Place de la République with The Ninety Nine Percent, following last season’s The 1%.
The concept was pretty direct. If the previous collection looked at the ultra-wealthy elite that luxury fashion often caters to, this one flipped the idea around. All 99 models were people of colour, turning representation into part of the show's actual structure rather than just a casting choice.
The clothes moved between oversized white tailoring, draped silhouettes, military references, distressed leather, khaki knitwear and punk-inspired pieces. Later, the collection became much more elaborate, with structured gowns, heavy draping, embroidery and more intricate construction.
There was a lot of contrast throughout. Rough surfaces appeared next to precise tailoring. Heavy leather was placed against sheer fabrics. Oversized outerwear gave way to fitted pieces, long skirts and more dramatic evening looks.
The collection also brought in materials and references from outside the usual Western fashion system, including sari textiles from Varanasi and handwoven cotton from Burkina Faso.
Matières Fécales has never been interested in making fashion particularly comfortable or easy to digest. Here, the clothes and the show itself were making the same argument.
It was confrontational, but there was an actual idea behind it.
Rick Owens
Rick Owens doesn't need to reinvent himself every season.
For SS27, he took the elements that define his work — extreme proportions, elongated silhouettes and clothes that alter the appearance of the body — and pushed them in a slightly different direction.
The show was staged at the Palais de Tokyo, with a long runway stretching across the pool and fountains running alongside it. The setting was dramatic, but the clothes were still the main event.
Owens described the collection through images of angels and good witches. Long ceremonial robes were made from upcycled industrial webbing, while a parachute-silk trapeze gown brought a much lighter feeling to the collection.
There were also sulfur-dyed denim tunics and flared trousers, cropped micro-jackets, oversized waxed leather jackets and Perspex wedge sandals.
Then things became much stranger.
Tulle and elastic constructions appeared in cement grey and chemical yellow, almost like delicate versions of the rubber, leather and foam exoskeletons from his men's collection earlier in the year.
The proportions were still extreme, but there was more softness here than usual.
That's what made the collection interesting. Owens didn't abandon the visual language he's spent years building. He just allowed more lightness into it.
Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood was an obvious choice for this list.
Andreas Kronthaler continued using the house's familiar codes — corsetry, exaggerated tailoring, historical references, prints and deliberate clashes — but the collection felt particularly unruly.
Leopard bloomers were paired with skewed vests. Gingham appeared across oversized pannier skirts and frilled satin blouses. Tulle corsetry was layered around the body, while vivid bazin cotton was used for oversized nightshirts. There were also devil-horn details, platform shoes, fringe and deliberately provocative accessories.
The collection was messy in the best possible way.
Pieces didn't always look like they were designed to sit comfortably together, and that friction was part of the point. Westwood has never been about making everything clean, polished or easy to understand.
There was also a more personal side to the collection. Kronthaler described it as the first since Vivienne Westwood's death in which he felt he had properly found his way into continuing her idea of using fashion to communicate a message. The show also renewed the house's collaboration with suicide-prevention charity Body & Soul.
The result was recognisably Westwood without feeling like a museum piece.
It still had some bite.
Duran Lantink's Jean Paul Gaultier is becoming harder to ignore.
For SS27, Lantink continued figuring out how to work with one of fashion's most recognisable archives without simply reproducing it.
The collection started with more conventional Gaultier territory: sharp white tailoring, a red-and-white checked shirt and skirt, kilts, oversized bombers and jersey dresses. Then the proportions started getting strange.
The classic bullet bra was reworked into pointed, horn-like shapes. Lace camisoles developed tubular structures at the front. Trenches had exaggerated collars, while other garments were physically pushed away from the body rather than simply sitting on it.
The show itself took place in a hall of mirrors, which made sense considering how much of the collection was about changing the way the body is seen.
There was humour throughout, but the clothes weren't just jokes. Lantink was clearly trying to establish a new visual language for the house while keeping the things that made Gaultier recognisable in the first place.
At the end, models walked out wearing pieces covered in bells, referencing a decorated glove Lantink found in the Gaultier archives from 1989.
It's a pretty good summary of what he's doing at JPG.
Take something from the archive, distort it, make it louder, and see what happens.
Comme des Garçons
Rei Kawakubo doesn't really do straightforward.
For SS27, the collection came with one sentence: “When royal life and real life become one.”
Whatever Kawakubo intended by it, the clothes immediately made the idea difficult to ignore. Almost every look was topped with some kind of crown, while the silhouettes became increasingly abstract and oversized.
Padded cotton and wired crowns sat above huge sculptural shapes. A spherical denim skirt looked almost like a giant pumpkin, while other garments were built from exploded gingham, ticking stripes, brocade and polka dots.
Then came the stranger details: fake hair, feathers, upholstery-like forms and enormous structures that seemed to swallow the body.
Later, the collection became darker. Red ruching and strips of red tape appeared across the clothes, followed by an exoskeleton-like construction and imagery that suggested exposed organs.
There was obviously room for political readings around monarchy and power, but the collection didn't need a single explanation to work.
The clothes were already doing enough.
That's the thing with Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo can start with something as familiar as a crown, a denim skirt or a checked fabric and completely remove it from its original context.
The result doesn't always need to be beautiful.
It just needs to make you look twice.
Matières Fécales made representation part of the collection itself. Rick Owens pushed his existing language into lighter and stranger territory. Vivienne Westwood kept its punk and anarchic vocabulary alive. Jean Paul Gaultier continued reshaping the body through clothing. Comme des Garçons turned fashion into something closer to sculpture and social commentary.
Five very different collections, but all of them had a clear point of view.
And after a month of brands trying to explain what fashion is supposed to become next, that was enough.
SS27 is officially over.
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