Haute Couture AW24: Your guide to fashion’s wildest, most lavish shows

A cost of living crisis might be raging across the globe, with us mere mortals barely able to leave the house without haemorrhaging a wedge of cash, but for the clients who sit front row at the Haute Couture shows in Paris, they simply do not know her. Decked out in their fave designer’s highest and most fabulous creations, these mega fans take in each show – some with a cute little dog perched on their lap, occasionally dressed to match their owner – making a mental list of all the lavish pieces they’ll be adding to their vault next season.

And who can blame them! Living that good life is the reason that annoying AF ‘song’ about finding a guy in finance has gone viral this summer (though don’t think for a minute your lower rung, gilet-wearing bro is going to get you anywhere near a couture atelier – you’re probably going to need a CEO for that). For the rest of us, couture is a fashion fantasy, a world in which the designers we revere get to truly run wild and free without having to worry about whether a look is commercially viable or not, a place to inspire and excite, where artisans who’ve spent their life creating things we could only imagine in our dreams get the chance to really shine. They’re the reason many of us are interested in fashion, and clicked on this article, in the first place.

With that in mind, we’re bringing you the best of the AW24 season’s Haute Couture shows – from Schiaparelli, to Chanel, to Nicolas De Felice’s anticipated Jean Paul Gaultier guest spot. Keep checking back for new additions, and follow all the action as it happens here.

After a few seasons of veering in a conceptual direction that almost – but not quite – tipped into gimmick (see: SS24’s motherboard robot baby), Daniel Roseberry was back to his subtle best for AW24. Dragging the fashion crowd out of the sun and down into the black belly of a bougie Paris hotel, the Texan designer’s latest collection was all about rebirth: namely, he had the idea of a phoenix rising from the ashes at the forefront of his mind. At first, this was really literal: the first look out of the gate and in front of waiting eyes belonging to Doja Cat, Kylie Jenner, and Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford, came an inky black cocktail gown finished with a set of carved chrome bird wings. Wrapped around the model as if to protect her, each feather was intricately detailed and textured, demonstrating the highest craftsmanship that underpins the Schiaparelli atelier. 

The inspiration for the offering came via house founder Elsa Schiaparelli’s innate ability to reinvent herself and her shape-shifting approach to dressing. More specifically, Roseberry was inspired by a gown she wore in 1932: a painted gown overlaid by a rich feathered stole, as part of a tribute to Dying Swan prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was a bit of a doppelgänger of the designer. Beyond the more literal imagination of the triumphant phoenix came slinky wiggle dresses embellished with hundreds of thousands of tiny crystal beads, boned velvet bustiers with egg-shaped cut-outs, and diaphanous second-skin naked gowns that swept the floor as the model walked. It was restrained and understated, and all the more fabulous for it.

Across Paris, massive seating spaces and temporary stadiums are being erected, bridges have been closed, and the already pretty awful traffic has just about come to a complete standstill as the city gears up for the arrival of the 2024 Olympic Games in July. Rather than being pissed off about their now even longer commute to the office, however, designers across fashion are choosing to embrace the spirit of sport, with countless collections dotted with references to football, athletics, tennis, and loads, loads more. 

Among them was Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, whose AW24 Haute Couture collection paid tribute to athletes through history – from the very first games in Athens, right up to the present day. This meant an offering full of references to Ancient Greece, with draped column dresses and sweeping tunics that made the models look like classical statues come to life featuring heavily. While the historic influences were plentiful, the offering was dragged into the now through sleek racer-style bodysuits and gorgeous all-in-ones studded with dripping crystals as if they’d just emerged from the pool – in fact, it was one of Chiuri’s most contemporary, cool, and covetable collections to come out of couture in a while, and one we’re surely going to be seeing on a lot of red carpets come the new season.

Less than three weeks ago, Chanel announced that its artistic director Virginie Viard would be ending her 30 year commitment to the storied French house. While we suspect Viard’s DNA will doubtless be embedded in this couture offering, according to show notes, the AW24 collection was officially presented by the Fashion Creation Studio only. To chime in this new era, the house departed its usual Grand Palais setting and instead showed at the Palais Garnier, a historic building home to the Paris National Opera.

Though the change of location (and the collection itself) was likely finalised before Viard’s exit, the shift was symbolic of change at the house. The design team were clearly inspired by their new environs too, opening the show with Vittoria Ceretti in a mammoth opera coat with an embellished bodice below and a great ruff around her neck. From here, models paced the mosaic floor in house tweed skirt sets, lamé-effect gowns and black satin hair bows. Floor sweeping capes like the one seen on Ceretti re-entered the chat, this time in blushed salmon and creamy white, while ruffs reappeared on tutus and skirts. A final look – the customary Chanel bride – was also equally ruff-ed, her pouffy, 80s gown reimagining Princess Diana, but on a night out at the opera.

“Couture begins with the silhouette in muslin,” wrote Thom Browne at the beginning of this season’s show notes. “While collections are historically shown in a complete state, the couturier and client ultimately return to the source text – the toile. The Thom Browne 2024 couture collection celebrates these initial transcriptions.” For those uninitiated, a toile is a prototype couture garment made from muslin, a practice run before chopping into some expensive fabric. So, roughly translated, this season’s show was all about showing the work-in-progress as the final garment – though Browne’s version of unfinished is slightly different to yours and mine. 

Despite being constructed from various weights of muslin, the Browne’s offering was fine-tuned and complex. Multi-layered coats appeared first, each one sprouting more sheets of fabric than the last, while Browne worked the inexpensive fabric in such a way that it floated from gowns like satin or silk. As well as deconstruction, the other big idea in this collection was the Olympics (we were in Paris after all) and this was telegraphed through the couture-grade badminton racquets, a sinewy and anatomical bodice, plus three final embellished jackets in bronze silver and gold. As Browne wrote in his notes, “couture is the Olympics of fashion,” and this collection was going for gold.