Fashion weeks have become content-driven spectacles. A critical analysis of their role, relevance and future in today’s fashion industry....
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Author: Carolina
2
Feb
When news broke that Pieter Mulier would step down as Creative Director of Alaïa after five years at the helm, it landed with the curious weight that only rare fashion transitions carry, not a seismic shock but a moment that seems to crystallize broader anxieties, evolutions and the very nature of creative stewardship in luxury fashion today.
For the Paris-based maison, founded by the late Azzedine Alaïa, couturier, sculptor of flesh and cloth, and one of fashion’s most singular voices,the appointment of a successor was always going to be a fraught act of succession. In 2021, when Alaïa’s parent company, Richemont, entrusted the house’s reins to Mulier, it was a statement: this brand, known for its idiosyncratic physiques and fiercely independent spirit, was...
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1
Feb
When Richemont and the Damiani Group announced that Baume & Mercier would move from the Swiss luxury conglomerate to the family-run Italian jeweller, the news arrived in a whispered way. No superlatives. No financial figures. Just a change of ownership that, on closer inspection, says a great deal about where luxury is, and is not, heading.
For Richemont, the decision marks another moment of portfolio recalibration. Baume & Mercier, with its nearly 200-year history and accessible positioning in the luxury watch segment, has long occupied an ambiguous space within the group: respected but not strategic; heritage-rich but commercially constrained in a market increasingly dominated by high complications, scarcity and price escalation. In an industry where scale and singularity are both demanded,...
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1
Feb
At Paris Haute Couture Week this year, something unusual happened at the Théâtre du Lido on the Champs‑Élysées, not simply atypical but, to some observers, almost sacrilegious. Alexis Mabille, a seasoned couturier and permanent member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, presented his Spring‑Summer 2026 “haute couture” collection in a fully digital format: no physical clothes, no live ...
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Haute couture and ready-to-wear are often spoken about in the same breath but they operate in fundamentally different emotional, cultural and creative registers. Ready-to-wear is a system. Couture is a language.
Ready-to-wear exists to circulate. It responds to markets, seasons, retail logic, production rhythms and consumption. It must be reproducible, scalable and legible across borders and demographics. Even at its most elevated, it is designed for multiplication, ideas translated into product, silhouettes into stock, vision into volume. Its power lies in distribution, in visibility, in cultural penetration.
Couture, by contrast, is not built for circulation. It is built for concentration.
It is not about trends but about permanence. Not about speed but about time. Not about audience size but about precision of...
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