The S/S 2025 exhibits supplied a sometimes transporting array of runway units and present areas, which spanned the romantic, the playful and the surreal, alongside the downright cinematic. Like Anthony Vaccarrello’s opulent, monolithic set for Saint Laurent – an unlimited gilded circle that hovered over a round blue runway – made all of the dramatic by rain pouring via its open-to-the-elements ceiling.
Different manufacturers drafted artists to create installations to backdrop their exhibits: there was Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s ‘messy, sophisticated’ home scene for Zits Studios, or Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work, ‘Bays’, for Daniel Lee’s newest Burberry present in London. In the meantime, maybe probably the most Instagram-friendly second of the month got here at Bottega Veneta, the place Matthieu Blazy created a menagerie of leather-based beanbag animals impressed by a scene from E.T. (learn on for the total story).
Right here, chosen by Wallpaper* style options editor Jack Moss, are probably the most breathtaking runway units style month – a celebration of the structure of style.
The most effective runway units of S/S 2025
Artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted front room for Zits Studios
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Zits Studios)
‘The thought for this assortment began from a twisted home surroundings. I requested myself whether or not traditional home codes might truly be translated into style,’ defined Jonny Johansson of his surreal S/S 2025 Zits Studios assortment, which reimagined residence furnishings – from curtain ties to wax tablecloths – as clothes. Backdropping the present was a ‘sophisticated and messy’ home scene by Philadelphia-based artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase, comprising gentle sculptures of lamps, radios and cats, alongside recycled furnishings from Leboncoin scrawled together with his playful motifs. Evoking a twisted front room, the artist instructed Wallpaper* that the set up was a musing on ‘feelings and the physique, and the way they have an effect on the area round you’. Learn extra.
Bottega Veneta’s menagerie of bean-bag animals
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Bottega Veneta)
‘I used to be within the energy of “wow”,’ mentioned Matthieu Blazy of his newest assortment for Bottega Veneta, which was impressed by a way of childhood marvel, ‘the enjoyment of wanting, discovering and dressing’. It was a temper mirrored within the present area, a menagerie of leather-based beanbag chairs for company to sit down on – a reference, the designer mentioned, to the scene in E.T. when the titular extraterrestrial hides amid a pile of soppy toys in Elliott’s closet. Spanning killer whales, bunnies and foxes, the beanbag design was impressed by Zanotta’s ‘Sacco’ simple chair, with Blazy working with the Italian design firm on the distinctive mission. Learn extra.
Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work for Burberry
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Burberry)
At London’s Nationwide Theatre, Daniel Lee regarded in direction of artist Gary Hume – finest identified for being part of the YBA motion, and at the moment displaying at Sprüth Magers in London – to create the runway set for his newest Burberry assortment, impressed by the artist’s 1990 work ‘Bays’. Initially staged as a part of the infamous East Nation Yard Present, the work includes a collection of lorry tarpaulins, hung like curtains and slashed to recall doorways and home windows. Over three many years on, they have been reimagined in medical inexperienced, lining the foyer of the brutalist theatre, which was partly chosen for the way in which it remembers the unique concrete industrial area of the 1990 present. ‘I hadn’t touched the items in a very long time, and so when Daniel requested me if I might take part in his present, I mentioned sure,’ Hume instructed Wallpaper*. ‘There was an actual bond of being two inventive individuals.’ Learn extra.
Balenciaga’s dining-table runway, impressed by Demna’s childhood
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Balenciaga)
Demna mentioned that this season started with reminiscences of holding style exhibits on his grandmother’s kitchen desk in Georgia as a toddler. ‘My early reminiscences of style begin with me drawing seems to be on cardboard, chopping them away and making “style exhibits” on my grandmother’s kitchen desk,’ he wrote in a letter to company. ‘Thirty-five years later, this present reconnects me to the start of my imaginative and prescient. It’s a tribute to style which has a viewpoint.’ For the runway set, this scene was blown as much as surreal proportions, with an unlimited polished eating desk – round which VIP company sat – serving because the present’s runway.
Loewe’s ‘radically diminished’ runway set, that includes a Tracey Emin sculpture
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Loewe)
Jonathan Anderson described his newest Loewe present as an act of ‘radical discount’, an try to copy the ‘eye going into focus’ as your eyes modify to a darkened room. The present area, constructed in a field within the grounds of Paris’ Château de Vincennes, was equally spare: an enormous white area with a round runway that ran round a 2007 sculpture of a steel chook on a slender, totem-like plinth by British artist Tracey Emin. Anderson mentioned he favored the thought of the seems to be circulating across the sculpture ‘like a sundial’. ‘Caught in a second of pause, [Emin] encourages us to think about the chook’s imminent flight, and finally its freedom,’ mentioned the designer by way of the gathering notes.
Chanel’s blown-up birdcage, marking the home’s Grand Palais return
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Chanel)
Chanel’s S/S 2025 present marked a triumphant return to the Grand Palais, the longtime website of the home’s runway displays after the Beaux-Arts constructing was renovated to host the fencing competitors throughout the Paris Olympics. Below the big glass roof, the home erected an enormous birdcage, full with the home’s double-C motif interwoven into its design. On the finish of the present – which drew on chook motifs, from feather trims to feather prints – the actress-singer Riley Keough was lifted upwards on a swing contained in the cage, singing a model of Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ as fashions took their finale circuit. It was a nod in direction of one in all Chanel’s most memorable adverts: the 1991 Coco L’Esprit de Chanel marketing campaign starring home muse Vanessa Paradis as a feathered chook in a cage (although this time, the big fluffy white cat was lacking).
Louis Vuitton’s raised runway, constructed from a whole lot of the home’s signature trunks
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton)
There was a touch of nostalgia to the runway set for Nicolas Ghesquière’s newest present for Louis Vuitton, which was staged on a raised runway and lit by a ‘Louis Vuitton Paris’ neon signal, recalling the amped-up style exhibits of the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. The runway itself was crafted from what seemed to be a whole lot of Louis Vuitton’s signature trunks – spanning an array of eras and types – all stacked up and hammered collectively, rising from the ground of the Louvre venue because the present started.
Archer-artist Sagg Napoli creates a fantastical present set for Dior
(Picture credit score: Images by Adrien Dirand, courtesy of Dior)
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s newest present started with the multidisciplinary Italian artist-archer Sofia Ginevra Giannì (aka Sagg Napoli) marching down the runway, bow in hand, earlier than getting into a Perspex hall and firing photographs on course. Carrying on the custom of Chiuri collaborating with ladies artists, she had additionally designed the runway set. It noticed the area within the gardens of Paris’ Musée Rodin remodeled with an set up evocative of wrought-iron gates adorned with looping texts from the artist, who attracts on the tradition of southern Italy in her work. In the meantime, an unlimited Large Brother-style eye served as Sagg Napoli’s goal – mild work for the artist, who additionally has competed in nationwide Italian archery competitions.
Alessandro Michele’s romantic, dust-sheet lined set for his Valentino debut
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Valentino)
Trend month’s most-anticipated second happened in a judo stadium on Paris’ outer reaches, solely remodeled for the event by Italian design maverick Alessandro Michele, who was making his debut for Valentino after a two-year hiatus (he left his function as inventive director of Gucci in 2022). Evoking what Michele deemed a ‘Pavillon des Follies’ (which was additionally the title of the gathering), the sometimes theatrical area noticed the designer assemble a jumble of chairs, furnishings and lampshades which have been all lined in mud sheets, whereas the runway itself was comprised of shattered mirror, casting shards of sunshine on the fashions’ faces. It supplied an apt backdrop for Michele’s romantic exploration of magnificence. ‘Once I say magnificence, I’m clearly not referring to its universalistic, dogmatic and normative mythologisation,’ he wrote in an introduction to the gathering. ‘I quite allude to that distinctive functionality to deeply really feel and join with one thing.’
Saint Laurent’s rain-soaked present area, which paid ode to Yves Saint Laurent’s Marrakech
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Saint Laurent)
It was a return to Saint Laurent’s Rue de Bellechasse headquarters on Paris’ Left Financial institution for Anthony Vaccarello’s newest womenswear present for the home, a location that he had not proven at since his debut eight years in the past. The monolithic set, created by Bureau Betak, comprised an unlimited gilded circle – open to the weather – beneath which fashions walked on a slick blue runway, evocative of the blue used within the Saint Laurent gardens in Marrakech. It was made all of the extra strking by the truth that the rain was pouring, a remaining cinematic flourish to the already dramatic mise-en-scène.
Gucci’s setting solar at Milan’s Triennale Milano design museum
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Gucci)
Milan’s temple to design, the Triennale Milano museum, supplied the setting for Sabato De Sarno’s newest Gucci present, following a menswear presentation within the historic area earlier this 12 months. This time, the designer created an unlimited curving runway that looped across the museum’s floor flooring, the place varied ‘rooms’ have been designed to evoke a sundown, transferring from yellow to orange to Ancora purple, the deep oxblood hue that has turn into central to De Sarno’s tenure. The thought behind the exuberant assortment was to seize a second in time, simply because the solar is rising or setting: ‘a second to grab and dwell to the fullest’.
Fendi’s futuristic runway set, which got here with a remaining shock
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fendi)
It was solely becoming that what will probably be Fendi’s first assortment of its centenary 12 months (the model turns 100 in 2025), was celebrated in theatrical fashion. Within the centre of the huge, sound-stage-like area on the outskirts of Milan was an unlimited, futuristic white field, into which fashions streamed after taking their loop across the square-shaped runway. It was to offer a second of shock: because the present ended, the field opened up, revealing a tableau of fashions inside. Of their flapper-inspired attire and nostalgic, crystal-adorned seems to be, it was a conflict of previous and current: ‘I wished one thing romantic, one thing with a debt to the Nineteen Twenties from the 2020s,’ mentioned Kim Jones, creative director of Fendi’s womenswear and couture.
For extra on the most recent style weeks, see our studies from the Paris, Milan, London and New York S/S 2025 exhibits.
Supply: Wallpaper
