Paris Fashion Week: From Haider Ackermann To Sarah Burton, What Makes A Designer Debut Great?

At Paris Fashion Week, new designers brought new energy to Tom Ford, Dries Van Noten and Givenchy. Washington Post’s Rachel Tashjian reports from the French capital.

Fashion is in the midst of its most tumultuous period of the century. This year, Dior, Chanel, Gucci and about a dozen other brands will have new designers. And of course, there are those non-stop rumors that there is more change to come. (An important truth to remember: Almost no one actually knows anything.) When too many fashion houses are churning out the same products with different logos, it can be hard to parse the meaning of all this - but, of course, creative designers will endeavour to reinvent, to say something.

In Paris this week, those designers were Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford; Julian Klausner, the righthand to Dries Van Noten who now leads the label following Van Noten’s retirement last year; and Sarah Burton, the longtime McQueen designer who is now at Givenchy.

People tend to obsess over “house codes” and whether a new designer understands and updates them dutifully. But following the rules is what got fashion into these creative doldrums - aren’t these the times to try something else completely?

Slinky strapless tuxedo gowns. Majestic leather coats. Dresses that were slinky but unsleazy. Lean, undone suiting. Men’s suits that were fluid, sublimely cut but not oversize.

Is this the way celebrities will dress in the coming months? Is this how men will readorn themselves, wearing suits cut to look confident but not arrogant? Will women begin to reconsider the meaning of sex appeal? Will a new sensuality pervade our evenings, our mornings?

These are the kinds of questions sparked by Ackermann’s debut show for Tom Ford, the American brand started two decades ago by the man for whom hedonism has the nuance of a Buddhist text.

On Wednesday evening, Ackermann showed his 56 looks in a tiny room with silvery walls and louche seating, his models doing an unusual round of double or triple laps on the runway.

Ackermann is one of fashion’s great living poets, and his disappearance from its mainstream - he left Berluti after only three seasons, then his own label shuttered mid-pandemic, though he popped up to design a magnificent couture collection for Jean Paul Gaultier - has been a pain point for an industry that makes less and less room for creativity.

In a season when people are slinging dubious rumours like drunken arrows from a junkyard quiver, this debut was one reliable, rational piece of good news to cling to. I kept thinking that what felt marvelous in the room might look flat online (and indeed, tiny shows often cultivate irrational rhapsody among the invited few, usually by design), because the pieces were so refined from the classic Fordian orgasmica. But Ackermann’s debut was, to this critic’s mind, a charming, sensual success.

Most of all, the red carpet needs a palate cleanser - a designer and brand that can sweep in and make things more poised, more beautiful and just less wackadoo. Hollywood, after all, is one of our primary texts for our shared idea of glamour. Here’s your man.

“He [Tom Ford] is nightlife, I am the morning after; this is where our dance begins,” wrote Ackermann in his show notes. That’s just the sort of intimate poetry this oppressive machine of an industry needs. Ackermann’s little flirtation with Tom the man and brand, softly punctuated with his own non-vulgar point of view, was just lovely.

Klausner’s Dries debut was exactly as it should be: a comfort that this treasured fashion institution will remain intact.

Dries Van Noten is one of fashion’s few reliable commercial success stories, where the clothes you see on the runway are the ones you can actually buy, and at prices that, while high, are not genuinely absurd. (The designer, in business for nearly 40 years, started making handbags and makeup, usually cash cows for brands, only a few years ago.)

What customers needed was a reminder that Dries would still be Dries, and with Klausner’s beautiful print mixing, pretty paillettes and bohemian coats, everyone can rest easy. Women who crave intelligent and respectful clothes will still find them here.

On Friday morning, in the sun-filled Givenchy atelier on Avenue George V, Sarah Burton presented her first collection to just 350 people. (Small shows are a theme this season; likely a reaction to the mass feeling luxury fashion has taken on, and maybe some wise purse string tightening.)

Givenchy has had a wobbly few years, veering between designers and ideas. But its history is so rich: everyone remembers Audrey Hepburn flirting about in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in her little black dresses, fabulous heels and alligator pumps. That set a standard for glamour that still looks sharp and modern today.

It was to that history that Burton, who spent decades as the late Lee McQueen’s right hand before taking charge after his death in 2010, pulled from.

And it was Burton’s departure from McQueen in late 2023 that set off an industry-wide conversation about the lack of women creative leads at major fashion houses.

Burton’s clothes were simply beautiful: You can’t wait to see more of these gowns, embroidered skirts and pretty coats on the red carpet. Yes, fashion’s entanglement with entertainment can be sinister - but if this is the way of the world, designers should take their place as protectors of beauty seriously.

But this isn’t just fantasy. Backstage, Burton said she’d updated her womanly McQueen silhouette to make the sleeves more bulbous while maintaining that attentive, ever-flattering hourglass.

Her pantsuits, with a curved waist and hip, and a pair of carrot leg trousers, is one of the loveliest and most intelligent looking women’s tailoring I’ve seen since Phoebe Philo’s oversize Celine looks from over a decade ago.

“My clothes are always about empowering women,” Burton said after the show. If only we had more designers who could speak that plainly and truthfully.

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