before he heads to Versace<\/a>) crammed guests onto benches pitched so close to the clothes you could almost smell the calf hair on bottle green and fire engine red coats. Schiaparelli\u2019s creative director Daniel Roseberry put his models up on a raised, glossy black runway platform \u2014 an affectation rarely seen in the 21st century \u2014 and sent his spotlights spinning to a Janet Jackson soundtrack. \u201cI wanted to do a show,\u201d Roseberry said backstage. \u201cI wanted it to be evocative of an era of glamour that was not referencing couture.\u201d\n <\/p>\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/details-2x3-fw26-27-78.jpg\")
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\n The muses of these two shows felt titillatingly out of reach, an arch if mischievous contrast to the many designers droning backstage about wanting to dress real women (and then giving them completely boring clothes). \u201cShe is that bitch who is living that life,\u201d said Roseberry of his Schiaparelli customer. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t want boring. She doesn\u2019t want classic.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Indeed, the 1990s were a time when women could expect more variety and risk from their designers, which may be why so many creative directors are pushing in this direction. Provocative Paris-based brand Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales throw back to the era when cutting a mean skirt suit could be a subversive act, a la Alexander McQueen or John Galliano, by painting models\u2019 faces white and styling them with such gimmicks as a ball gag made of enormous pearls. And Jean Paul Gaultier, showing its second collection designed by Duran Lantink, closed the circle of millennials longing for 1990s approval with Gaultier himself, a beacon of \u201990s fashion, grinning in the front row at looks like a red velvet tubular gown and a pencil skirt tailored with an erection of chic jutting out the front.\n <\/p>\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/the-row-w26-runway-look-39.jpg\")
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\n Against the backdrop of \u201990s theatricality, the most meaningful gesture of the week remains the banning of phones. Both Yohji Yamamoto and The Row have asked attendees for several seasons now to refrain from taking pictures or videos with their phones; Yamamoto\u2019s suggestion to the audience was to \u201clet the moment, the movement and the clothing speak to you \u2013 they are meant to be felt with your senses, not merely digitally recorded.\u201d And The Row\u2019s appeal at first seemed like a pretentious effort to keep the TikTok crowd from gaping at its founders Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen\u2019s it-shoes and fab-drab tailoring. But now the effect is that it protects the purity of the Olsens\u2019 thinking. Rather than looking for the most mass details of each collection, your own precious imagination gets pride of place, such that \u2014 come with me on this journey \u2014 your eyes roam over a woven leather suit trimmed with fur and you see yourself as socialite Deeda Blair on her shopping trips to Paris, or you lock in on a mink coat and matching skirt tufted into corduroy-like bands which sends you daydreaming about wallpapering a hallway in dupioni silk in the minkiest charcoal.\n <\/p>\n
\n But what do all these feel-good throwbacks add up to? Miuccia Prada, who closed the week with her Miu Miu show, had the clearest answer. Aside from bringing back Sevigny \u2014 one of the first faces of Miu Miu when the designer launched the brand in the early 1990s \u2014 Mrs. Prada also sent out an extremely minimalist collection. This was not of the pared back but dressed up vibe that Bessette Kennedy admired, but the truly plain, pragmatic style of the 1990s, when optimism about the future combined with a distaste for \u201880s excess and created a streamlined, techy feel. The designer said she was inspired by the smallness of the human compared to the universe\u2019s vastness. \u201cIt was the idea that a little is enough,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you are not adorned, you are enough.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paris \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 CNN Style is one of the official media partners of Paris Fashion Week. See…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-326066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Junya](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/gettyimages-2265252649.jpg\")
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