Paris Fashion Week 2024: Hermes goes light on leather, Loewe's star-studded minimalism and Dries Van Noten's last show

There was a surprising lack of leather at Hermes, a restrained but celeb-packed Loewe show, and a farewell for fashion great Dries Van Noten at Paris Fashion Week on Saturday. Hermes, known worldwide for its homemade leather bags and accessories, presented a show full of cotton and linen whites and blues for its spring-summer 2025 collection. It was a collection "grazed by a gentle breeze... Clothing casts reflections into the transparency of water," designer Veronique Nichanian said in her press release.

Sandals and a sleeveless bomber-style jacket were among the few signs of leather among the docker hats, trench coats and drawstring trousers. Meanwhile, Loewe, the rising Spanish star in the LVMH conglomerate, put on a minimalist show -- "the radical act of restraint", as Northern Irish creative director JW Anderson put it. On the front row were Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, US actor Jeff Goldblum and singer of the moment Sabrina Carpenter. (Also read: Paris Fashion Week 2024 highlights: From A$AP Rocky's debut collection to Rick Owens' Hollywood-inspired show )

The minimalism still carried the sort of strange and ornate touches that Anderson loves, such as long exotic or golden feathers swooping down from headbands and weird angular collars jutting out from T-shirts. The brand's signature cargo pants came with an Ottoman harem twist. "I don't think they were clothes for me, but I loved it," Almodovar told AFP afterwards. "Coming here is like going to a show, to the cinema, to the opera, to the theatre: each character has to be dressed in a certain way, a lot of emotion is created that way," he added.

‘Too intense’

Meanwhile, fashion fans were awaiting the last-ever show by Dries Van Noten later Saturday as he heads into retirement. Van Noten is not a household name but he is lauded in fashion circles for a 40-year career in which he combined audacity, sophistication and poetry. Few designers retire, healthy and successful, at 66, so news of his departure earlier this year came as a shock.

He told The New York Times it was time to give up the "addiction" of fashion. "Everything's too intense. I can't come down anymore," he told the newspaper. Van Noten is known for exquisite tailoring and subtle avant-garde styling with bursting clashes of colour. "I'm a gardener, so flowers automatically come up everywhere," he once told AFP.

“The starting point for a collection can be very literal or very abstract: a painting, a colour, someone's thoughts, anything at all.” His staff will take over collections starting with the womenswear show in September, with the only condition that they remain in Antwerp, away from the Paris fashion glitz. The Puig Group, which acquired a majority stake in the label in 2018, agreed to Van Noten's request.

"After the men's show, I'm going to have another email address," he told The New York Times. "I'm not going to be @driesvannoten any more. I have to find an Instagram name now, because my Instagram is Dries Van Noten, and that is the brand. It's strange. That I didn't see coming."