McQueen meets difficult moment with fatalistic glamour at Paris show

Seán McGirr inspired by modern identity and ‘London girls’ in one of strongest collections to date, as brand cuts jobs and struggles for momentum

Beneath the Paris fashion week hoopla – Chappell Roan resplendent in the front row, champagne flowing backstage – there were dark undercurrents at Alexander McQueen’s Paris fashion week show. The brand has seen a 60% decline in turnover over the past three years. Workforce cuts were made in the London headquarters last year, and a third of the brand’s 180 employees in Italy are thought to be at risk of losing their jobs. Fifteen years after the death of Lee McQueen, the brand is struggling to maintain momentum.

The founder is a hallowed name in the fashion industry, and one of the few modern designers to whose character and story the wider public feel a connection. But the generation who wore McQueen’s original bumsters have aged out of shock-value fashion, and the name has less power over younger consumers.

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Balenciaga channels ‘light through darkness’ of Euphoria in Paris show

Collaboration with HBO hit is gen Z mashup of glossy blacks and harsh neons, while Celine gives preppy added ‘bite’

The anxiety-spiked, drug-fuelled, hyperstylised technicolour online messiness of generation Z was not on anyone’s bingo card for Balenciaga’s Paris fashion week show. Cristóbal Balenciaga dressed Ingrid Bergman and Jackie Kennedy; its current designer, Pierpaolo Piccioli, is revered as one fashion’s great romantics, the master of colour and poetry on the modern red carpet.

The Balenciaga show was a collaboration with Euphoria, HBO’s divisive teen drama. In a dark, cavernous venue on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the lights were low, the music (Rosalía, Labrinth) was loud. On flickering video screens, harlequinade images of nocturnal cityscapes segued into preview images from the long-awaited third series of Euphoria, which returns in April. A sweater was printed with a screen still of new cast member Danielle Deadwyler, smoking a cigarette in a low-cut blood-red top.

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‘The antithesis of what Gen Z grew up with’: Love Story inspires fervor for Carolyn Bessette’s style

Influencers are doing their best to recreate Bessette’s deeply individualized style, which ironically was a refusal to follow along with what was popular

While US pop culture has a long-held fascination with the Kennedys, much of the recent fervor around FX’s newest hit show, Love Story, has been aimed at the style of Carolyn Bessette, who worked as a publicist at Calvin Klein before marrying into America’s most storied political family.

Open up TikTok and you’ll see influencers doing their best to recreate her looks and makeup routines. Brands are invoking Bessette to promote their products; hair care brand Schwarzkopf posted about a highlighting technique the brand called “foiled cashmere, inspired by Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy”.

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Resurgent Victoria Beckham channels trouser suits and party dresses at Paris show

There was strictly no mention of estranged son Brooklyn, missing from front row

The Beckham empire is a tangled web of family and fortune. After her Paris fashion week show on Friday evening, Victoria Beckham talked backstage about Tamara de Lempicka, the Polish art deco portrait painter from whose palette she took the glowing colours and sinuous lines of this season’s coral and jade party dresses. Strictly no mention of the other story of the night – the absence of her estranged eldest son, Brooklyn, from a front row packed with the rest of the Beckham clan.

The designer’s husband, David Beckham, brought her a fortifying glass of red wine as she spoke to reporters. “I relate to Tamara de Lempicka as a strong woman, and to how she conducted herself. She stuck to what she believed in.”

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Non-sun sunglasses: sport-fashion fusion accessory goes mainstream

Transparent specs often associated with hygienist appointments have conquered catwalks and high streets

Despite some people in the UK experiencing 40 consecutive days of rain this year, sales of sunglasses have not been dampened.

Instead, the dark skies have ushered in a new era of eyewear: the non-sun sunglasses.

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