ELLE Debrief — Couture Week, Day 3: At Valentino, we look at clothes like a little mouse

At Valentino, we look at the clothes out the window

No classic front row. Here, guests take their seats behind the scenes, on a small (comfortable) stool positioned around a closed circular space. And observe the high fashion collection designed by Alessandro Michele through a small skylight — a device inspired by the Kaiserpanorama, the ancestor of immersive visual experiences. It's changing the fashion game! We bend over, we contort a little, we wait. Here, it is not the spectator who chooses what to watch: the point of view is imposed on him. And for those who were watching the live, the show was as much about the clothes as it was about the guests' leaning heads

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Deva Cassel shows at Elie Saab

The Lebanese couturier, a key figure in Paris fashion week, has chosen the daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel to embody a golden princess dress with a vertiginous neckline. Appearing among the first figures of the fashion show for the first time, Deva Cassel returned during the final, this time at the top of the bill. A strategic place, and a highlight for the young model, which marks a symbolic step in her fashion ascent.

Zuhair Murad's sculpting dress

When you go to Zuhair Murad, you know what to expect, and you're never disappointed. Precious and opulent embroidery, sharp bustiers, finely cut sheaths: everything is designed to enhance curves. A fashion designer who loves, above all, to make women look their best, Zuhair Murad excels in this art. The proof, once again, with this dress with slightly exaggerated proportions, just enough to amplify the hips and rebalance the hourglass silhouette. A real enhancer of curves, tailored and confident, without muscle strengthening or going through surgery!

At Viktor & Rolf, the white dress is transformed into a multi-colored kite

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We experienced a moment of conceptual sewing. It was designed as a performance that always pushes the boundaries of the genre. The Dutch duo started with a little white dress, the symbol of a blank page, on which everything remains to be written.

On the stage, black dresses appear: at each pass, the designers remove their only colored element from these dark figures — a strawberry collar, XXL honeycomb sleeves, a frilly cape, metal bars placed in strategic places — to graft them onto the little white dress.

As the black dresses empty, deflate, and almost wilt, the white dress is transformed. It is enriched, charged, and evolves like a chrysalis becoming a multicolored butterfly. We are literally witnessing a live metamorphosis. Until the culmination of the parade, where the final silhouette metamorphoses into a real kite, suspended and levitating above the stage.

Couture through Robert Wun's eye (and head) Spotlight Robert Wun's

Spring-Summer 2026 Haute Couture collection unfolded in three stages on the stage of the Théâtre du Lido this Wednesday night. First, the dream: white and black, sculptural and dreamlike silhouettes, white and black, sculptural and dreamlike, which translate the pure imagination of the creator, before any constraint. A form of innocence, almost utopian.

Then comes the confrontation with reality: the sewing is more opulent, more spectacular, decorated with pearls, jewelry galore, velvet, and necklines. It then complies with the expectations of the outside world, to what the public expects, precisely, from sewing.

Finally, behind the scenes. Masked, armed figures appear — not to attack, but to protect themselves. A strong image, which evokes the creator who is often relegated to the shadows, forced to resist. And sewing, here, as a real act of creative resistance.

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