If we’ve come to learn anything over the past few fashion seasons, it’s that despite every cliché, there’s no singular set of style guidelines for each fashion capital. Need proof? See Copenhagen Fashion Week, where showgoers traded in cute, Scandi-core style for darker, layered-up looks; Milan, which served an endless supply of glossy, glittery Y2K ensembles; or New Yorker, where showgoers pounded the pavement in looks that signalled a 2010s post-indie sleaze resurgence.
This time around, as designers stripped back the fashion gimmicks, sending streams of well-crafted and constructed garments down the runways for SS24, the Paris fashion crowd leaned away from stereotypical French “less is more” dressing and instead, threw a big apocalyptic-dress party across the streets of Paris.
As captured by Dazed’s street style photographer Yu Fujiwara, guests were spotted wearing long black leather capes wrapped around shirts and ties, mini dresses with high-sculpted shoulders and shredded tights. Elsewhere, sleek, shining red tops were matched with too-long trousers, black maxi dresses were layered with skin-tight latex balaclavas, and puffed-up, wing-like jackets paired with jumpers falling into long alien tendrils – think Berghain queue meets space age aliens.
Topping off the looks, hair came knotted-up into long-hanging braids, slicked back with bright-coloured highlights, or gathered into punky, pointed spikes. Meanwhile, make-up came in the form of chrome or black paint streaked across the face in words or dots, nails overflowed with metallic bubbles, sunglasses came oversized and bug-eyed, metallic chain belts were looped around waists and chests, and bras were eschewed for criss-crossing, reflective nipple tape.
Elsewhere, more laid-back looks came through via Miu Miu-esque matching short-shorts and jumpers, an all-denim moment from Louis Vuitton creative director-slash-musician Pharrell, and torn-up graphic tees paying homage to American Psycho, the late Vivienne Westwood, and the phrase “No dick sucking in the library!!!” [obvs]. Click through the gallery above to the best of the rest.