Fashion

To create a fashion collection, you need three key elements: silhouette, colour, material – be it for clothes or accessories. Yet these ingredients are lifeless without the discourse and the incredible stories that transform them into objects of desire. Stories told with sincerity, from Marine Serre's Lynchian ambitions to Lilia Litkovska's resolve to work while the bombs are falling; Fashion Week's top prize goes to Yohji Yamamoto for his flights of fancy.

Togo's International Fashion Festival has chosen a topical theme for its twelfth edition: the fight against cancer. The issue may not appear glamorous, but the alarming rise in cancer rates makes it extremely relevant. Jacques Logoh, the festival's founder, believes that fashion must help raise awareness of the disease, with prevention as its watchword. As such, some 40 designers from 25 countries are showing off their artisanal and fashion expertise at the event. FRANCE 24 went to check it out.

The collective show from the international students of the Institut Français de la Mode kicks off the autumn-winter 2025/26 presentations and asks contemporary questions. How can a disruptive society impact a creative process that is seeped in societal evolutions such as artificial intelligence? Meanwhile, Victor Weinsanto defends trans people, Vincent Pressiat celebrates Pierre Soulages and Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrates Bob Wilson's phantasmagorical vision at Dior.

What do designers Olivier Saillard, Kevin Germanier, Stéphane Rolland, Khol by Hamza Guelmouss and Valentin Nicot as well as Julien Fournié all have in common? They are reinventing the notion of haute couture, often in an artistic, aesthetic way, while being mindful of environmental issues and respectful of their elders. It's a question of playful modernisation; a snapshot of a politically-conscious world. FRANCE 24 takes you to check out the summer 2025 collections.

Designers Jeanne Friot, Walter Van Beirendonck and Louis Gabriel Nouchi have taken a stand to defend gender-neutral fashion, calling for inclusion rather than exclusion. Meanwhile, Japanese labels Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto propose a simple, comfortable wardrobe, underpinned with poetry. All of these designers have opted for extraordinary fabrics to create their latest collections. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look.

In 2025's uncertain climate and amid international crises, luxury industries are questioning their model: how to meet ever more ambitious financial targets? How can creativity inspire people to dream? Solutions are offered up by feminist designer Maria Grazia Chiuri's take on Alice and her wonderland, while irresistible Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf make fun of AI and the sparkling Japanese couturier Yuima Nakazato has an outfit that we'll be able to wear for 10,000 years.

Luxury fashion is big business. To stay relevant, big luxury houses and independent labels alike know to constantly refresh their communication strategies. Celebrity endorsement still holds enormous sway, but the clothes themselves need to tell a story. Today, that story is increasingly one of liberté, égalité and fraternité! For proof, look no further than the latest collections from Louis Vuitton Homme, Jeanne Friot, Imane Ayissi and Yohji Yamamoto.

At more than 80 years old, Yohji Yamamoto still enjoys reassembling fabric like a child. At Issey Miyake, Satoshi Kondo offers a collection inspired by traditional Japanese papermaking. The Franco-Japanese designer Tatiana Quard creates silhouettes with intersecting tubes and lines. This as the Togo International Fashion Festival hosts its second-ever foreign edition. In the 1980s, Paris welcomed a new generation of Japanese designers, propelling Japanese fashion onto the global stage. Is the same thing now happening with Africa?

Fashion's avant garde is at its most creative when it looks to the outside world for inspiration. For next summer's ready-to wear-looks, Victor Weinsanto, responsible for the daring looks we saw at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, pays tribute to drag queens. Vincent Pressiat and Kevin Germanier, an upcycling evangelist who oversaw the closing ceremony costumes, embrace a similar celebratory aesthetic. Plus we meet Swedish designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson, the latest winner of the LVMH prize.

A celebration of the body, dance, art and sport! At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri installs Italian archer-artist Sagg Napoli in a long glass cage. Her collection is an ode to the Amazons, a reference to the designs created by Christian Dior in the 1950s. For his “Impro” collection, designer Alain Paul unleashes the bodies of male and female dancers on the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet. Last but not least, Magda Butrym awakens and reveals Polish fashion in an understated presentation. FRANCE 24 takes you to Paris Fashion Week.

At the Rodin Museum Dior presents its latest collection against a décor comprised of mosaics by the New York-based feminist artist Faith Ringgold. At the Salle Pleyel, Stéphane Rolland celebrates the poetry of Jacques Prévert and Brassaï, while at the Palais de Tokyo Japanese couturier Yuima Nakazato works with Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Couture may officially be considered an applied art, rather than fine art, but it nonetheless has the power to elicit intense emotions.

Can fashion transform reality, or is it more a question of how the real world influences fashion? Dior's response lies in a deeply feminist collection, inspired by the Swinging Sixties, when Marc Bohan was at the helm of the label. South African brand Maxhosa resurrects ancient Xhosa motifs. Mossi, through his clothes and fashion school in the eastern Paris suburbs, hopes to give disenfranchised young people a dream to aim for. All are searching for the holy grail: fashion that's both beautiful and meaningful.

At the campus of the French Fashion Institute, 27 design students from 13 different countries are gearing up to present their year's work before a highly influential audience. The stakes are high: these students are poised to compete with fellow graduates from the prestigious Central Saint Martins school in London. But there's no denying that France still plays an outsized role on the international stage when it comes to fashion, as evidenced by the likes of designers Weinsanto, Pressiat and Alain Paul. FRANCE 24 went to check out their ready-to-wear shows.

Stella McCartney, Marine Serre and Lilia Litkovska are three designers united in their belief that fashion, a notoriously polluting industry that often encourages excessive consumption, can itself be part of the solution. Through their latest ready-to-wear collections for next autumn and winter they showcase more sustainable modes of production, and advocate for fashion that has both style and heart. FRANCE 24 went to check out their Paris shows.

What exactly goes on in designers' heads? Wim Wenders claims that Yohji Yamamoto has the power to heal people without the need for a therapist's chair. Meanwhile Jeanne Friot delves into her own lesbian love story. Stéphane Rolland invites students from two Paris fashions schools on stage, as his collection questions the relationship between East and West. And Julien Fournié embraces the Hitchcock heroine aesthetic to bring down the patriarchy. 

Haute couture represents the apotheosis of fashion. Thousands of hours of work can go into a single item, destined to be worn just once. Couture offers a window into a multi-billion-euro industry. But it's also a pillar of French soft power, which was perfectly expressed this year at Dior, Imane Ayissi, Sara Chraïbi and Simone Rocha for Jean Paul Gaultier. FRANCE 24 takes you to check out the runway shows.

Stella McCartney, Laurence Airline, Vaillant Studio and Litkovska are four fashion labels founded and run by women. Inspired by a desire to always strive for better, these designers propose solutions to the biggest challenges facing fashion today – everything from overconsumption and textile pollution to convoluted supply chains. All four women know that, at its best, fashion can also be used as a weapon for good. FRANCE 24 went to meet them and check out their latest ready-to-wear shows in Paris.

Japanese stylists have been making their mark on the Paris fashion scene since the 1980s, and continue to prove their mastery of the art of merging form and movement. Yohji Yamamoto, Yusuke Takahashi for CFCL, Maiko Kurogouchi and Satoshi Kondo for Issey Miyake – all these designers have a knack for taking the pulse of the planet, and, in turn, proposing new ways of dressing. We went to meet them in this edition of Fashion.

Togo's International Fashion Festival (FIMO), which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary in Lomé, has organised a catwalk show in Paris to promote African fashion. Jacques Logoh, FIMO's founder, is an outspoken advocate of fashion that's designed and produced on the African continent. A recent UNESCO report says that Africa is on course to be the world's next major fashion hub – on the condition that the industry receives sufficient state support. But that's by no means guaranteed. We take a closer look.

In this edition we meet three up-and-coming fashion designers. Victor Weinsanto studied fashion in Paris before going on to work with Jean-Paul Gaultier. He later went on to found his own exuberant label, this year inviting his drag queen friends to model his latest collection. Meanwhile, Kevin Germanier wants to break with the bad habits of the past: he loves upcycling and breathing new life into old fabric. For Alain Paul, meanwhile, fashion is the work of marrying choreography and clothing to the human body. 

"Ressusciter la rose" (Revive the rose) is an original musical tribute, a marriage of fashion, music and design, to celebrate the centenary of the Villa Noailles. This collection of Cubist-inspired buildings in the south of France was designed in the 1930s by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. It was commissioned by an iconic couple: Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles. The villa quickly became the go-to meeting place for the French avant-garde. So what exactly is the couple's legacy? We take a closer look in this edition of Fashion.

"Woman is an active subject of the historical process and cannot be confined to being the object of desire of patriarchy." That was the strident slogan written in letters on the wall of Dior's recent show, where creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri leant into the historically fraught image of the witch. The feminist fight was also at the heart of the offering from Valériane Venance's young label Indépendantes de Cœur, where a cage motif was central. The model within is entirely naked, but simultaneously protected.

For their summer 2024 menswear collections, not one but two French designers have sought inspiration in literature. Louis-Gabriel Nouchi turned to Christopher Isherwood's "A Single Man", while Jeanne Friot dived into "The Little Mermaid", both books that explore the complexities and the often-repressed desires of the queer community. We also meet Mark Bryan, a robotics engineer who loves subverting the sartorial status quo by wearing skirts and heels in his daily life.

For his next film, "Finalement" ("Finally"), French director Claude Lelouch places his characters at the heart of a fashion show. The collection in question belongs to Parisian couturier Stéphane Rolland, who reveals his haute couture 2023/2024 winter offering on the grand staircase of the Paris Opera. The event pays homage to opera icon Maria Callas, and recreates the star's “grande nuit de l'Opéra” that took place there in 1958. Lelouch's actors, who perform in the midst of a live, real-world fashion show, only have one chance to get it right.

July 2023 saw the third edition of a fashion competition in Paris called Africa Fashion Up. It aims to give a platform to young, up-and-coming African talent. Five designers from across the continent presented their collections at the Musée du Quai Branly, as they celebrated local craftsmanship with a global appeal. The winner, Aristide Loua, is an Ivorian who lived in France before returning to his home country, where he spent two years reacclimatising before embracing fashion. FRANCE 24 went to meet him and the other designers.

Haute Couture is part of French soft power: creating thousands of jobs and huge profits, a world away from a dramatic news cycle. This season's Paris Fashion Week was no exception. Dior's show saw Maria Grazia Chiuri reinventing the pleats of ancient Greece, while Iris van Herpen experimented with new shapes to allow movement. In their new collections, the two fashion houses are creating an ode to lightness – perhaps an antidote to our turbulent times?

It was the fashion event of the season, if not the decade! Fashion journalists, buyers, celebrities and influencers from around the world descended on the French capital to see Paris's oldest bridge, le Pont Neuf, decked out in resplendent gold. The occasion was Pharrell Williams's first ever collection as head of menswear at Louis Vuitton. Another big celebrity draw elsewhere in Paris was the indefatigable Yohji Yamamoto, who's just a few months away from his 80th birthday. FRANCE 24 got a glimpse of the action.

This year's Tunis Fashion Week took place at the Museum of Carthage, a recent recipient of some hefty funding from the European Union. The setting for the 14th edition was chosen by event founder Anis Montacer. He's launching his own label, Outa, with a collection made from recycled plastic waste. Also worthy of mention are Portuguese designer Joana Maltez, young Tunisian designer Haroun Ghanmi and Mouna Ben Braham, who reinvents traditional Tunisian wedding attire. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look.

An enormous part of a museum's success depends on its curators. At Paris's Palais Galliera fashion museum, curator Alexandre Samson has declared 1997 a year unparalleled in its influence on global fashion. It was the year Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the costumes for Luc Besson's film "The Fifth Element", Comme des Garçons and Martin Margiela revealed iconic collections and Tom Ford embraced the porno-chic aesthetic at Gucci. We check out a celebration of 1990s audacity at the exhibition "1997 Fashion Big Bang".

The first edition of the IWP in 1954 crowned none other than Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. Fast forward to today, when designers from around the world compete for a prize fund of 200,000 Australian dollars and a prestigious mentoring program. The collections must be made from 100% wool and respect the principles of sustainable fashion. The Grand Prix this year was awarded to Nigerian designer Adeju Thomson, who was inspired by the idea of "decolonising design". 

Modest fashion is a way of dressing that respects specific clothing requirements for reasons of faith and also personal preference. The market for modest fashion is huge – and it's only getting bigger, with both designers and influencers keen to get in on the action. FRANCE 24 went to check out the second edition of Paris Modest Fashion Week. 

What are the hidden resources today's fashion designers can draw on? Research and exploration, which spark creativity. Young Ukrainian designer Ivan Frolov digs deep into our propensity to seek the source of our desires. Dutch designer Iris van Herpen immerses herself in the depths of the ocean. Back on dry land, Japan's Yuima Nakazato explores Nairobi's mountain of garbage. Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf take an intellectual approach to research with an ironic take on glamour, while France's Alexandre Vauthier explores the practical needs of his clients.

In Lomé, the capital of Togo, Jacques Logoh has good reason to be cheerful. The young designer and founder of the Togo International Fashion Festival has made it his mission to ensure the event embodies the values of diversity. Alex and Kim are androgynous models. They're walking for – among others – Fauvette Nacto, in a show that's a celebration of marriage in all its forms. It's a theme that a number of designers have been inspired by this year. FRANCE 24 went to take a closer look.

All fashion designers have one thing in common: whatever the challenges, however much the odds appear stacked against them, they find a way to keep working. Yohji Yamamoto, having recently lost two close family members, uses his anger as the force behind a period of contemplation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian designers Svitlana Bevza and Lilia Litkovska ensure they find ways to express themselves through clothes, despite living in a country at war. 

Before he arrived on the scene, fashion photography was stuck in a rut, endlessly repeating the stale poses of the 1950s. But US photographer Arthur Elgort turned all that on its head in the early 1970s when he started his long collaboration with Vogue. Today, at 82 years old and despite suffering a stroke, he's still working. We caught up with him in central Paris, where the Azzedine Alaia Foundation is dedicating an exhibition to him. The two fashion giants worked closely over the course of decades and were close friends. 

France's Victor Weinsanto, Vincent Pressiat and Alice Vaillant encapsulate a new generation of boundless energy and talent; of fashion designers determined to disrupt the sartorial status quo. Not only do they embrace the latest couture innovations, they're also firmly plugged into the zeitgeist – a desire to create fashion that's more responsible, more daring and more free. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look.

The latest ready-to-wear collections in Paris are proof that fashion is art in its own right: mere adornment making way for extraordinary craftsmanship, show after show. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrates the 1950s, specifically the feminism encapsulated by Catherine Dior, Edith Piaf and Juliette Greco. Stella McCartney, meanwhile, offers an equestrian treat, employing everything from mushroom fibres to recycled food waste in her quest for fashion that's not only beautiful, but responsible. FRANCE 24 takes you to the catwalks.

For the tenth edition of FIMO, Togo's international fashion festival, founder Jacques Logoh wanted to raise awareness of environmental issues by paying homage to a group of women on the frontlines of that fight: the street sweepers of the capital Lomé. Designers, meanwhile, were keen to show off their recycling prowess. Label Riche ou Rien used metal sponges, while Victoria Grace reinvented Indian saris and Desmo Design highlighted the threat posed by toxic plastics. To top it all off, a series of eye-opening masterclasses rounded out the festival. FRANCE 24 went to check it out.

Should lingerie be considered fashion? In the world of haute couture, at least in the hands of designer Julien Fournié, the answer is a resounding "yes", as underwear becomes the main event. Lingerie is no longer about seduction alone: looking sexy is key, but so too is comfort and confidence. And increasingly, the same goes for menswear – lace boxer shorts, anyone?

The House of Dior turns over vast sums of money for luxury giant LVMH, but high-end fashion can never be just about the cash: it's also about world-leading artistry. In her spring-summer 2023 collection, Dior's artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri pays homage to the elegant modernity of the Black Parisian jazz stars of the 1920s, in particular Joséphine Baker. Meanwhile, fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard celebrates the humble wardrobe of his late mother by transforming it with haute couture techniques.

These days, almost all fashion collections presented in Paris have a name, such as "Enfants Terribles" for the Japanese label Kidill, which resurrects 1990s skate culture. For Yohji Yamamoto, it's "Don't Do That". At Walter Van Beirendonck, the collection is called "We Need New Eyes To See The Future", while Rick Owens has chosen "Luxor Men's" and Jeanne Friot "Red Warriors". These collections are by turns politically engaged, unisex and avant-garde, but all will make you want to revamp your wardrobe. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look.

It's time to vogue! At the "Habibi, revolutions of love" exhibition at the Arab World Institute in Paris, a huge party celebrating LGBT culture across the Arab world brought joy to the French capital. What better way to pay homage to tolerance and love in the Arab world than an evening celebrating the revolutionary vogue dance (the origins of voguing can be found in the 1980s by the Black and Latinx queer communities) from NYC?  Are we really free to love wherever we are in the world? Too often, the answer is "no". It is frequently even more difficult when you live in an Arab or Muslim country. FRANCE 24 went along to celebrate, but we also found out that the issue is as political as ever.