Star turns

A series of high-profile creative directors made their debuts this season, putting the future of fashion in the spotlight

- HANNAH TINDLE

For the S/S26 season, the spotlight fell on 15 creative directors. After many months of abrupt departures, sudden arrivals and judicious role-swapping at Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, Celine, Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Carven - plus new placements at Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier, Mugler, Maison Margiela, Loewe, Jil Sander, Area and Proenza Schouler - those in question unveiled debut collections to an audience that had eagerly coined this unprecedented shift as 'fashion's great reset'. But every new beginning comes from another beginning's end, as the saying goes. And across these debuts, it was the past that would define the future.

However, it was neither sycophantic nostalgia nor a simple rehashing of familiar codes that swept the runways. As the show notes written for Jonathan Anderson's inaugural ready-to-wear womenswear collection at Dior stated: 'Daring to enter the house of Dior requires an empathy with its history, a willingness to decode its language, and the resoluteness to put all of it in a box. Not to erase it, but to store it, looking ahead, coming back to bits, traces or entire silhouettes from time to time, like revisiting memories.' Anderson, who bid farewell to Loewe in March after II years at its helm - a period in which he transformed the languishing Spanish brand into a zeitgeist-defining institution - chose Paris' Jardin des Tuileries as the location for his highly anticipated reveal. Conceived by longtime Anderson collaborators, director Luca Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi, the white cube-like set featured a pyramid at its centre, on which a video by Adam Curtis was projected. The British documentarian had applied his signature collaging technique to archival recordings of every creative director who had preceded Anderson.