2023 in fashion

Gucci opened Milan menswear with a studio-led collection while the house sat between Alessandro Michele and Sabato De Sarno, turning the absence of a named creative director into one of the week’s clearest subtexts.

Mugler returned to a live Paris runway after several seasons of film-led presentations, turning its reappearance on the physical calendar into a more assertive public return.

Haider Ackermann’s guest couture turn at Jean Paul Gaultier confirmed that the house’s rotating-designer model still had range, delivering a collection with a recognisable authorial voice rather than a procedural guest slot.

Gucci began 2023’s most closely watched reset by appointing Sabato De Sarno from Valentino to succeed Alessandro Michele. The change established the terms of one of the year’s central house narratives before a single look had appeared.

Copenhagen Fashion Week’s AW23 schedule was the first official edition fully governed by its minimum sustainability requirements. The point was institutional as much as aesthetic: a framework had started to act like a gatekeeper.

Paco Rabanne died in February at the age of 88, marking the loss of a designer whose metallic constructions and space-age imagination helped define one of postwar fashion’s more radical lines.

Hilary Alexander died in London in February at the age of 77. Her absence was felt not only as a personal loss but as the passing of a distinct journalistic voice within fashion media.

Lacoste began its next phase in February by appointing Pelagia Kolotouros from Adidas after Louise Trotter’s departure, turning the house’s transition into a defined leadership handover.

Louis Vuitton placed its menswear line in Pharrell Williams’s hands in February, filling the role left vacant after Virgil Abloh. The appointment was instantly one of the year’s defining personnel moves, if only because of the scale of the platform involved.

Burberry’s change of direction became visible on the runway when Daniel Lee presented his first collection at London Fashion Week. That move from appointment to public proposition made the debut a clear year-page inclusion.

Daniel Lee’s first Burberry show at London Fashion Week turned a major appointment into a visible house direction, giving the brand’s reset its first full runway expression.

Carven re-entered the conversation by naming Louise Trotter as creative director after a period of internal restructuring. Her arrival turned a dormant question mark into an actual proposition, which is rather more useful from an editorial standpoint.

Jeremy Scott’s Fall 2023 runway would stand as his final Moschino collection. Seen in retrospect, the show became the closing gesture of a long, highly identifiable tenure rather than just another seasonal outing.

Gucci’s Fall 2023 womenswear show was delivered by the studio while the house remained between Alessandro Michele and Sabato De Sarno, turning the vacancy into a visible part of the season rather than a backstage condition.

Harris Reed’s first Nina Ricci collection in Paris made the house’s change of authorship immediately visible, bringing a new tone as well as a new name.

Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s first Ann Demeulemeester collection arrived in Paris in early March, with the debut later standing as the opening gesture of a notably brief tenure.

Balenciaga’s March runway arrived under the shadow of the 2022 advertising scandal, with coverage openly framing it as a reset. Few 2023 shows carried such a clear corrective function, which made this more than a routine seasonal presentation.

Bruno Sialelli’s Fall 2023 show became his final Lanvin collection, giving the season’s runway a clearer after-the-fact status as the closing collection of his chapter at the house.

Moschino and Jeremy Scott ended a decade-long tenure in March, closing one of the more recognisable house-designer pairings of the period. The departure also set off a chain of vacancy, interim presentation and eventual succession that ran through the rest of the year.

Dior staged its Fall 2023 show at Mumbai’s Gateway of India under Maria Grazia Chiuri. The collection’s significance lay partly in geography: a major house placed a headline runway moment well outside the usual European circuit.

Charles de Vilmorin’s contract at Rochas ended on 31 March, closing a notably short tenure. In a year full of creative churn, brevity itself became part of the story.

Dunhill turned to Simon Holloway in April, bringing in a designer from James Purdey & Sons after Mark Weston’s exit. It was a clean, consequential menswear succession, and it replaced uncertainty with a more legible creative direction.

Mary Quant died in April at the age of 93, returning attention to a body of work that helped define the youthful, graphic and liberated mood of 1960s fashion.

Lanvin confirmed Bruno Sialelli’s departure in April as part of a broader creative reorganisation. Paired with his final collection the previous month, the announcement turned a quiet runway ending into a formal change of era.

Tom Ford marked his exit from the label with a final Fall 2023 collection release after the sale of the business. Founder farewells are rarely minor, and this one closed the first chapter of the brand in unmistakable terms.

Tom Ford appointed Peter Hawkings in the wake of its restructuring, replacing the founder with a long-associated insider. Few 2023 appointments made the issue of continuity versus change look quite so plain.

Louis Vuitton staged its Women’s Pre-Fall 2023 show on Seoul’s Jamsugyo Bridge, giving the season one of its clearest destination moments. The setting mattered because it turned a pre-fall collection into a full-scale calendar statement.

Helmut Lang named Peter Do as artistic director in May, explicitly tying the appointment to a renewed push onto the runway. That made the row more than personnel admin: it announced a reactivation strategy in a single move.

Bally and Rhuigi Villaseñor parted ways in May, ending a relatively short chapter at the house. The departure also set up the Simone Bellotti appointment and debut that followed, making it part of a larger 2023 transition arc.

Gucci staged its Cruise 2024 show at Gyeongbokgung Palace while still operating in the gap before Sabato De Sarno’s debut. The spectacle was substantial, but so was the subtext: another major Gucci statement arrived without a named creative lead onstage.

Lagos Space Programme won the International Woolmark Prize on 15 May, giving 2023 a sharply defined emerging-designer milestone. The award made Adeju Thompson the first African designer to win the prize and pushed the Lagos label onto a much wider international stage at a moment when independent brands were still fighting for room, capital and visibility.

Ludovic de Saint Sernin left Ann Demeulemeester after a single collection, bringing one of the year’s briefest house tenures to an abrupt close.

Bally responded to Rhuigi Villaseñor’s exit by installing Simone Bellotti, newly arrived from Gucci, as design director. It was a discreet appointment on paper, but one that anchored the brand’s transition and prepared the ground for what followed.

Ann Demeulemeester appointed Stefano Gallici in June following Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s abrupt exit. That alone made it a notable row: the house moved quickly from instability to a new named lead.

Moschino’s interim men’s and resort collection arrived during the vacancy after Jeremy Scott’s departure, turning the house’s in-between state into something the calendar itself could register.

Pharrell Williams’s first Louis Vuitton menswear show, staged on the Pont Neuf, brought the house’s new menswear chapter into view through one of the year’s most conspicuously staged debuts.

Louis-Gabriel Nouchi’s ANDAM Grand Prix win gave 2023 another strong institutional marker for emerging design. The award did not need overstatement to matter; it already signalled a meaningful shift in visibility and support.

Thom Browne joined the Paris haute couture calendar in July, turning a long-established American fashion practice towards couture’s most formal institutional stage.

Ashi Studio’s arrival on the official Paris Haute Couture Week calendar marked a meaningful step from recognised presence to formal inclusion. Calendar entries can be bureaucratic things, but this one signalled a shift in status.

Chloé confirmed in July that Gabriela Hearst would leave after presenting the Spring 2024 collection. The announcement put a firm line under her tenure while allowing the farewell runway to carry a more explicit sense of ending.

Setchu won the 2023 LVMH Prize, placing Satoshi Kuwata’s label firmly on the year’s map of emerging names. It was the sort of prize result that does not merely decorate a résumé but changes the scale of attention.

Julien Dossena took his turn in Jean Paul Gaultier’s guest-couture sequence with the Fall 2023 collection, adding another distinct chapter to a model the house had by then made into its own tradition.

Jane Birkin died in Paris on 16 July at the age of 76, marking one of 2023’s clearest losses in fashion and culture. Her influence long exceeded the famous bag that borrowed her name, extending instead through decades of personal style, image-making and a distinctly effortless model of Anglo-French chic.

Kering’s purchase of a 30% stake in Valentino gave 2023 a major corporate marker, shifting the ownership architecture behind the house in plain view.

Fiorucci appointed Francesca Murri as artistic director in August as part of its internal restructuring. The significance lay in the fact of named leadership: a label in reset now had a defined creative point of view again.

Tremaine Emory’s exit from Supreme did not read like a quiet contract expiry. Public references to systemic racism and disputes over a shelved project gave the departure a sharper charge than the usual end-of-tenure notice.

Peter Do’s first Helmut Lang runway collection opened New York Fashion Week, turning one of the year’s most watched appointments into an actual proposition in clothes.

Marc Bohan died on 6 September at 97, marking the loss of Dior’s longest-serving creative director and one of the key custodians of the house’s postwar history.

Alexander McQueen formalised the end of its collaboration with Sarah Burton after more than two decades, closing a long and emotionally resonant chapter in the house’s history.

Vogue World: London opened London Fashion Week on 14 September as a performance-led spectacle rather than a conventional show, giving the calendar an opening built around live performance, celebrity casting and British cultural staging.

Peter Hawkings presented his first Tom Ford runway collection in Milan, giving the house’s post-founder succession its first full public expression.

Moschino marked its 40th anniversary with a collection assembled by four different stylists while the creative director role remained vacant. It was an unusual workaround, and one that made the house’s in-between state impossible to ignore.

Sabato De Sarno’s ‘Ancora’ show was the moment Gucci’s long-awaited reset stopped being hypothetical. After months of vacancy and studio-led collections, the house finally had its new author on the runway.

Walter Chiapponi’s final Tod’s collection brought his Tod’s chapter to a close, making it one of Milan Fashion Week’s quieter but more legible farewells.

Simone Bellotti’s first Bally collection moved the story from appointment news to actual clothes, giving Bally’s new chapter its first clear expression.

Lanvin presented its Spring 2024 collection through the studio during the post-Sialelli interim period. The show mattered because it made the vacancy visible in practice, not just in corporate wording.

Gabriela Hearst’s Spring 2024 show became her final collection for Chloé. Once the July departure announcement was on record, the runway read less as an ordinary seasonal presentation and more as a closing statement.

Sarah Burton’s final Alexander McQueen collection landed in Paris after her departure had already been announced, with the show arriving not as a routine seasonal outing but as the closing runway of her tenure.

Alexander McQueen named Seán McGirr only days after Sarah Burton’s final show, keeping the house’s succession story moving at pace. In a year crowded with reshuffles, that quick handover made the post-Burton chapter feel immediate and concrete.

Shanghai Fashion Week’s SS24 season marked a robust return for the Chinese fashion calendar after the pandemic-era disruptions. That broader calendar recovery was itself part of 2023’s story, not merely background scenery.

Chloé moved from Gabriela Hearst’s exit to Chemena Kamali’s appointment within October, making the succession one of the year’s more immediate house resets.

Moschino appointed Davide Renne from Gucci in October to succeed Jeremy Scott. After months of vacancy and interim solutions, the house finally had a fixed creative lead again.

Blumarine and Nicola Brognano parted ways in October after four years, bringing his chapter at the house to a close and leaving its next direction unresolved.

Tod’s appointed Matteo Tamburini from Bottega Veneta at the start of December, closing the gap left by Walter Chiapponi and giving the house a clear succession before year-end.

Rochas ended the year by appointing Alessandro Vigilante from Gucci to succeed Charles de Vilmorin. After a stop-start stretch, the move closed 2023 on a note of definition rather than drift.