Paris Fashion Week 2024, wrapped: Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and Stella McCartney highlights from the final stretch – plus a surprise ‘secret’ menswear show from Saint Laurent

McCartney delighted guests with an early show on a sunny Monday morning. The breezy and upbeat presentation, dedicated to Mother Earth, was also a more serious call to action. “It’s About F***ing Time”, a manifesto read by actresses Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren, introduced the collection. McCartney is a pioneer when it comes to sustainable practices and responsible luxury. The materials she used in the range, such as apple-based leather, stayed true to her mission.

She always designs with herself and other women in mind, and for winter 2024 she offered a line-up of her signatures, including exaggerated fuzzy coats, statement knitwear made with looped ropes in alpaca yarn, soft tailoring inspired by her Savile Row training, and flowy dresses with crystal embellishments.

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Sacai’s Chitose Abe is another designer who caters to women and their daily lives. While novelty-hungry fashion insiders may feel that her collections have been a bit repetitive in recent seasons, her hybrid garments (Is it a peacoat or a down jacket? A pleated blouse or a jumper?) keep her loyal customers coming back for more.

Although she always sticks to her true-and-tested formula, she often plays with volumes and proportions to add an extra element of surprise to her pieces. This season, she approached clothing as armour, thinking of the “emotional protection that clothes can afford”, especially in these difficult times.

Here, in chronological order, are three highlights from the final day of Paris Fashion Week – plus a surprise show from Saint Laurent.

Chanel

It was in Deauville where she first started offering the loose silhouettes, menswear-inflected garments, and fishermen-inspired Breton shirts that freed women from the constricting corsets of the Belle Époque.

The brand’s creative director Virginie Viard penned a “love letter to Deauville” for autumn/winter 2024.

While you would think that choosing a seaside resort as inspiration for an autumn/winter collection would be strange, it actually worked. Unsurprisingly, cropped fishermen’s pants were a key element of the silhouette. One of the best looks was a white belted jumper paired with matching cropped trousers and platform boots. Among the other key pieces were knit dresses featuring seascapes and seagulls inspired by Deauville, and a series of superb sheepskin jackets, especially one that was a cool riff on the signature Chanel jacket.

Every look was accessorized to the hilt as only Chanel can do. Maison Michel, the milliner behind all Chanel hats, must have been very busy in the lead-up to the show as most of the outfits came with hats – from berets to newsboy caps and wide-brimmed sun hats, some of them pinned with brooches .

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During the show, giant screens played recreations of the seashore of Deauville, but the video that had everyone in the audience gasping with surprise was a short starring Brad Pitt and Chanel ambassador Penélope Cruz. It was a tribute to the film A Man and a Woman (1966) by French director Claude Lelouch, which was set in Deauville.

Miu Miu

Mrs Prada, however, is not one to fall prey to viral memes and caters to social media. The autumn/winter 2024 collection was a hit with all that. It was Mrs Prada’s take on banal and ordinary clothes – clothes that, although unlikely to go viral, can make even more of a powerful statement.

While there were a few nodes here and there to what we’ve come to expect from Miu Miu, this time around the designer had other things in mind. Most of the outfits have a utilitarian, almost butch vibe, and could easily be worn by guys or even older men. (Like last season, there were male models in the show, a sign of the success of the recently relaunched menswear line.)

A number of outfits looked like workwear uniforms (nurses came to mind, both male and female) while shoes ranged from mannish loafers, men’s slippers and beat-up boots.

In the notes, Mrs Prada referred to the collection as “individual moments” and “a vocabulary of clothing, from childhood to adulthood”.

The shrunken proportions of a few outfits and the haphazard way in which some looks were put together – is that a pajama under a pea coat? – were meant to reflect childhood, while ladylike touches such as gloves, handbags and little black dresses were symbols of adulthood.

This show felt like a rejection of the girlie tropes often associated with Miu Miu and was yet another masterstroke from the Italian designer, who always confounds expectations. Remarkable too was the diverse casting, which included a range of women of different ages and backgrounds such as actresses Kristin Scott Thomas and Angela Molina.

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière has a lot to celebrate this year. The autumn/winter 2024 collection marks its 10th anniversary at the maison, a remarkable achievement in an industry where artistic director roles tend to be short-lived.

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Just like with his debut 10 years ago, the autumn/winter 2024 show was held in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum, but it was a much bigger affair attended by a whopping 4,000 guests, many of them Louis Vuitton staffers invited to commemorate the milestone .

Ghesquière left a heartfelt note on each seat, thanking his team and those who have supported his journey at Louis Vuitton over the last 10 years. It was a simple gesture that showed his softer side.

The set, conceived by the artist Philippe Parreno in collaboration with film production designer James Chinlund and featuring ball-shaped lighting fixtures that looked right out of a sci-fi film, was a reflection of Ghesquière’s affinity for science fiction – and so was the music , which is always a highlight of his shows.

The show had a gentle start, with white looks and shimmery dresses set against a soundtrack of what sounded like primordial cries, but the music quickly picked up the pace with drum-and-bass music followed by techno beats.

While you could easily see this collection as Ghesquière’s greatest hits – those of us lucky enough to have been at pretty much all of his shows will recognize bits and pieces from some of his pivotal moments at Louis Vuitton and even from his days at Balenciaga – it was very of the moment.

It also showed the staying power of Ghesquière’s creations. Sporty windbreakers, flowy dresses paired with fur mittens, broad-shouldered neoprene jackets, hooped skirts and A-line dresses with printed trunks – a nod to Louis Vuitton’s heritage – were all reminders of the incredible creative output of the designer over the last decade .

Even when looking back, however, Ghesquière does it with an eye to the future. “Every tomorrow is a new day,” the show notes say, alluding not only to all that lies ahead at Louis Vuitton – a prefall show in Shanghai in April and a cruise show in Barcelona in May, for starters – but also to his future at a house that allows him to dare and express his remarkable creative vision.

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Saint Laurent (again)

The most talked-about show during the women’s autumn/winter 2024 season, even before it happened, was actually a men’s show.

Early in the week, rumors started swirling around that Saint Laurent would host a “secret” show at the very end of Paris Fashion Week.

Think loose silhouettes, broad shoulders and wide lapels. The show was also an homage to house founder Yves Saint Laurent and his coterie of male friends who were at the heart of Paris nightlife in the 70s and 80s.

Models were styled to look like the late Yves – sunglasses, slicked-back hair, et al. Some of them wore silk blouses and headcarves reminiscent of those from the late Yves’ women’s collections in the 80s.

With its edited line-up and singular focus, the show was the perfect palate cleanser to end a month of great and not-so-great shows, juicy gossip and lots and lots of celebrities – all the things that make fashion month exhausting, exhilarating and such a wild ride.