Author: Tim Blanks

Right now, fashion is being radically reconfigured by an upheaval in creative directorships, but I most definitely have not been in a position where I got to sit down at the same time with one of the industry’s éminences grises and the person who replaced him. That was made possible simply because everything about Dries Van Noten has always radiated intelligence, humanity and common sense (and beauty and idiosyncrasy and more glory than we have ever had a right to expect from fashion, but that’s a whole other thing). Dries without Dries might have struck ardent fans as an impossibility.…

Valentino, Miu Miu, Hermès, Junya Watanabe and Maison Margiela ran the gamut of emotional extremes, writes Tim Blanks.

DO YOU DARE TO ENTER THE HOUSE OF DIOR? blared the titles on the short that filmmaker Adam Curtis collaged from a thousand telling titbits as an introduction to Jonathan Anderson’s first collection of womenswear for Dior. It skimmed the history of the house with an audacious blend of beauty and horror, depicting women enchanted by fashion and, at the same time, trapped by it. Dior Spring/Summer 2026 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) Dior Spring/Summer 2026 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) The film was deliberately sensational. As much as it acknowledged the designers who have contributed to Dior’s illustrious history, it also suggested a schism with the past…

PARIS — DO YOU DARE TO ENTER THE HOUSE OF DIOR? blared the titles on the short that filmmaker Adam Curtis collaged from a thousand telling titbits as an introduction to Jonathan Anderson’s first collection of womenswear for Dior. It skimmed the history of the house with an audacious blend of beauty and horror, depicting women enchanted by fashion and, at the same time, trapped by it. Dior Spring/Summer 2026 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) Dior Spring/Summer 2026 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) The film was deliberately sensational. As much as it acknowledged the designers who have contributed to Dior’s illustrious history, it also suggested a schism with…

PARIS — Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2026 show played out to a soundtrack of Cate Blanchett seductively intoning David Byrne’s lyrics for “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads, because when Nicolas Ghesquiere asks a multiple award-winning actress to speak on his behalf, she says yes. That’s some kind of influence. As is the option of presenting said show in the recently overhauled apartments in the Louvre that were once the summer domicile of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, Louis XIII’s wife and mother of the Sun King. Despite scenographer Marie-Anne Derville’s earnest efforts to anchor the presentation in…

Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2026 show played out to a soundtrack of Cate Blanchett seductively intoning David Byrne’s lyrics for “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads, because when Nicolas Ghesquiere asks a multiple award-winning actress to speak on his behalf, she says yes. That’s some kind of influence. As is the option of presenting said show in the recently overhauled apartments in the Louvre that were once the summer domicile of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, Louis XIII’s wife and mother of the Sun King. Despite scenographer Marie-Anne Derville’s earnest efforts to anchor the presentation in a contemporary…

PARIS — The grandiosity of the formula Anthony Vaccarello has developed for Saint Laurent was in full effect on Monday night. The scale of the presentation spanned everything from the set that spelled out YSL in thousands of white hydrangeas (visible only from above, via passing drones or UAPs) to the linebacker shoulders of the black leather jackets and nylon trench coats sported by Vaccarello’s Amazonian models. As usual, Vaccarello took no prisoners in his spare but extravagant (yes, the paradox is deliberate) vision. As he said before the show, he’s not about making clothes that everyone can wear. He…

The grandiosity of the formula Anthony Vaccarello has developed for Saint Laurent was in full effect on Monday night. The scale of the presentation spanned everything from the set that spelled out YSL in thousands of white hydrangeas (visible only from above, via passing drones or UAPs) to the linebacker shoulders of the black leather jackets and nylon trench coats sported by Vaccarello’s Amazonian models. As usual, Vaccarello took no prisoners in his spare but extravagant (yes, the paradox is deliberate) vision. As he said before the show, he’s not about making clothes that everyone can wear. He told three stories: black leather, nylon,…

MILAN — When Simone Bellotti started work at Jil Sander, he found himself confronted by an existential challenge. He worried about adding something to a brand which has always been about taking something away. He didn’t have this problem during his previous situation at Bally, where, in barely two years, he made his name with his strikingly idiosyncratic world-building. But it was easier there. When fashion thought of Bally, it thought of shoes. Jil Sander, on the other hand, comes weighted with preconceptions and clearly defined codes. “People have their own vision about this brand,” Bellotti said in a preview…

MILAN — When Simone Bellotti started work at Jil Sander, he found himself confronted by an existential challenge. He worried about adding something to a brand which has always been about taking something away. He didn’t have this problem during his previous situation at Bally, where, in barely two years, he made his name with his strikingly idiosyncratic world-building. But it was easier there. When fashion thought of Bally, it thought of shoes. Jil Sander, on the other hand, comes weighted with preconceptions and clearly defined codes. “People have their own vision about this brand,” Bellotti said in a preview…