Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson showed floating flower-shaped dresses and heels decorated with water lilies for his first autumn/winter womenswear collection at the Parisian fashion house.
Luxury conglomerate LVMH is trying to breathe new life into the brand and revive sales.
Staged above an octagonal pond in Paris' Tuileries gardens on a sunny spring day on Tuesday, the collection continued Anderson's nature theme with ostrich feather trims on coats and the hem of one dress evoking a bunch of arum lilies.
Jeans covered in silver sequins were paired with intricately ruffled shirts and jackets.
"This marks Jonathan Anderson’s fifth show for the house and his second for women’s ready-to-wear, and, for me, it is his strongest collection to date," said Simon Longland, director of fashion buying at Harrods.
Alongside Louis Vuitton, Dior is a key pillar of LVMH's fashion and leather goods business, and Bernstein analyst Luca Solca estimates the brand's sales declined 6-8% last year.
Anderson, who previously led LVMH-owned Loewe for 11 years, has already made his mark on Dior, releasing a new take on Dior's classic cotton canvas tote bags featuring stylised book titles, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and French classics Madame Bovary, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Bonjour Tristesse.
Top fashion brands presenting their new collections at Paris Fashion Week must balance luxury consumers' demand for innovative, high-end designs with the need to win back stretched middle-class shoppers as the sector faces its worst slowdown in years, following steep price hikes.
Contrasting collection
Saint Laurent presented a contrasting collection of oversized suits and delicate lace dresses for its winter collection.
The show opened with a string of power suits in black with large lapels and shoulder pads - evoking the tuxedo for women which French designer Yves Saint Laurent created in 1966 in a break with tradition.
See-through lace dresses and skirts in earthy tones of red, orange and brown were paired with huge fur coats or balanced with chunky jewellery.
Saint Laurent, owned by struggling luxury group Kering, has suffered three years of declining revenue as a post-pandemic boom in spending on expensive handbags and clothes evaporated.
Creative director Anthony Vaccarello, leading the brand since 2016, is credited with growing Saint Laurent's revenue and reach.
Saint Laurent's sales were €2.6 billion ($NZ 5.1 billion) last year, down from a peak of €3.3 billion in 2022.
New generation at Armani
Silvana Armani, the niece of the late designer, unveiled a collection of soft yet elegant looks for the Giorgio Armani brand, in her first line conceived solely under her direction.
Presented on the final day of Milan Fashion Week, the collection, titled "New Horizons", offered a fresh perspective on the Armani aesthetic, the press notes said.
The second part of the show shifted to eveningwear, showing lightweight velvet dresses and tunics worn over trousers, dominated by burgundy and midnight blue tones with references to the East.
"A woman dressing women, thinking about practicality but also elegance", Silvana Armani told reporters on the sidelines of the show last week.
Silvana, who worked alongside Giorgio Armani for decades before his death in September last year, had already made her debut as creative lead for Armani Privé at the January couture shows in Paris.
In his will Armani instructed his heirs, including Silvana, to gradually sell or seek a market listing for the company.
Models closed the show to a cover performed for the first time by Italian singer Mina, in a tribute to Giorgio Armani.
