Disparate Identities and Infinite Possibilities at Paris Fashion Week
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In the courtyard off the Rue des Capucines, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen welcomed guests to the Row's spring 2025 showing with their usual hospitality, this time in the form of lemon madeleines and coffee cups bearing the address of their brand-new Parisian store. Not that the duo needed any publicity—the jewel-box boutique has had a line around the block since opening this past Monday. The notoriously private designers eschewed the usual trappings of the PR machine, forgoing any show notes or to bow at the end. Their strictly enforced no-photo policy gave showgoers an opportunity to really appreciate the clothes, which made a beautiful display of restraint and strength.
Often, the first look at the Row offers a clue to the intention behind the collection. This season, it was model Julia Nobis, who walked out in crisp white cotton carpenter pants, a nubby, oversized grey cashmere tee, a matching long-sleeved tee underneath, and black flip-flops, soundtracked to Sinetone’s "Fractals." A similar look in a black-and-khaki colorway on model Selena Forrest shortly followed, setting the tone: This season was all about ease.
The color palette came in the Row's usual neutral spectrum (black, creams, grays). A strapless cocktail dress had exposed underpinnings on its side and back. Where the designers stayed true to their preference for simpler silhouettes, they played with subtle accents, notably around the neck: v-necks on capelet tops, asymmetric necks, boat necks, embellished necklines on a black sheath dresses.
This was not ‘quiet luxury,’ the indiscriminate catch-all term that the designers find themselves in the center of. Instead, the collection shown on Wednesday was a snapshot of something a lot more personal—clothing for the wearer, rather than the wider world, to enjoy and appreciate.
Dries Van Noten announced his retirement in March 2024, but not before leaving a rich archive as a playbook for whoever follows him. For this latest season, his Antwerp-based design atelier took the reins while the search for a new creative director is underway. (Though his influence still looms—the man himself was in the front row to support.) To a remix of Solange’s "Binz," models beamed down the runway wearing what is always the DNA of Dries: olive greens, hot fuschia pink, burnt oranges in brocade patterns and crinkled silk.
Slip dresses and camisoles had a romantic touch, “assessing, admiring and reinterpreting the designer’s language with fluency and light,” as the show notes explained. Pants ran long and sat slouchily alongside jackets that read for evening—but just could have easily accompanied a woman for a day spent on the go. The collection was a joyous excuse to add ceremony to every day, just like Dries has always taught us.
Rounding out the day was Rabanne, shown in the Palais de Tokyo in the late afternoon. Julien Dossena has done a good job so far of continuing the house’s legacy of forward-thinking, and the show was no exception. It almost played out in two themes. The first was a more casual compendium of pinstriped anoraks, blazer on jackets on top of jackets, leather trenches on top of hoodies on top of shirts on top of pink and baby-blue tees (phew), while the second gave us a contemporary version of the chainmail dresses that made Paco Rabanne a hit back in the '60s (think cut-outs at the belly and bust) and with it, a family of derivative styles.
A gold-leaf mini dress left small speckles floating onto the runway as it swept by, paired with an 18-karat gold bag the brand is dubbing “the world’s most expensive handbag,” a nod to the brand’s iconic “most expensive dress” worn by Fran?oise Hardy in 1968. In a way, Dossena mirrored the feeling of the day—the desire to have agency in your choices, in what you wear, how you wear it, and what you communicate, and the knowledge that that agency can move us forward.
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