iconic Runways
FASHION SHOWS THAT MADE HISTORY
009 INTRODUCTION
012 FASHION FOR ALIENS / THOM BROWNE
018 THE RISE OF AFRICAN COUTURE / IAMISIGO
026 THE SEVENTIES ALL OVER AGAIN! / CHLOÉ, CHEMENA KAMALI
034 ALL IS BEAUTY, LUXURY, AND PLEASURE / VERSACE
040 A FASHION SHOW AT HOME / RICK OWENS
048 ECCENTRIC CHIC / RICHARD QUINN
056 VIVIENNE’S GRAND FINALE / VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
064 BLACK MAGIC / NOIR KEI NINOMIYA
072 DIVINE COMEDY / SCHIAPARELLI, DANIEL ROSEBERRY
080 FLAMINGO FLOWERS AND PIXELS / LOEWE, JW ANDERSON
088 VIRGIL’S FINAL ELEGY / OFF-WHITE, VIRGIL ABLOH
096 VENETIAN SPLENDOUR / DOLCE & GABBANA
102 AN UNCONVENTIONAL THINKER / BALENCIAGA, DEMNA GVASALIA
110 FASHION IN CANDY COLOURS / MIU MIU
116 THE NEVER-FADING STAR / VICTORIA BECKHAM
124 THE COLOURS OF PROVENCE / JACQUEMUS
130 A FAREWELL TO KAISER KARL / CHANEL
138 PROTEST ON A CATWALK / VIKTOR & ROLF
146 THE PHOENIX OF HAUTE COUTURE / BALMAIN, OLIVIER ROUSTEING
152 WALKING ON WATER / YVES SAINT LAURENT, ANTHONY VACCARELLO
158 GRACE AND LIGHTNESS / CHRISTIAN DIOR, MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI
164 SURREAL AND CLASSIC / MARC JACOBS
172 CIRCUS COUTURE / MOSCHINO, JEREMY SCOTT
181 FRANKENSTEIN IN FASHION / GUCCI
188 BETWEEN THE LINES / IRIS VAN HERPEN
194 A KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLOURS / KENZO, CAROL LIM & HUMBERTO LEON
202 RESTRAINED MAXIMALISM / MAISON MARGIELA, JOHN GALLIANO
210 FASHION FOR TWINS / LOUIS VUITTON, MARC JACOBS
218 SPRING OF NÜWA / YIQING YIN
226 MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE / ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
232 AGAINST THE GRAIN / MAISON MARGIELA
238 DALÍ IN WONDERLAND / ÁGATHA RUIZ DE LA PRADA
246 THE GREAT WALL OF FENDI / FENDI, KARL LAGERFELD
INTRODUCTION
On the cover: A model walking the runway at Chanel’s Haute Couture Show Spring/Summer 2024 on 23 January 2024. The collection, designed by Virginie Viard, was inspired by ballet and dance, two art forms dear to Coco Chanel. The fashion show was titled “Le Bouton” (The Button), and the runway was illuminated by a large luminous button featuring the brand’s logo.
Auf dem Cover: Ein Model läuft bei der Frühjahr/Sommer 2024 Haute-CoutureSchau von Chanel am 23. Januar 2024. Die von Virginie Viard entworfene Kollektion wurde von Ballett und Tanz inspiriert, zwei Kunstformen, die Coco Chanel sehr am Herzen lagen. Die Modenschau trug den Titel „Le Bouton“ (Der Knopf) und der Laufsteg wurde von einer großen Installation in Form eines Knopfes mit dem Logo der Marke beleuchtet.
Opposite: A model walking at the Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2019 fashion show, Paris, September 2018.
Gegenüber: Bei Christian Diors Frühjahr-/Sommer-Show 2019, Paris, September 2018.
In just a few decades, fashion shows have evolved from high-society afternoon parties in the salons of haute couture houses to spectacular live-streamed events accessible virtually anywhere in the world. Real-life front row seats, however, remain as exclusive as ever. The introduction of fashion weeks, beginning in New York in 1943, followed by Milan in 1958, Paris in 1973, and London in 1984, allowed fashion journalists and experts to view all the major collections showcased in a single fashion capital within a week, increasing the media exposure of fashion shows. This made the task even more challenging for the designers, who not only have to create comprehensive, fresh, distinctive, original collections with a touch of virtuosity twice a year but also have to set up the shows to captivate and enthral a global audience.
Today’s fashion shows are more like rock star concerts than a parade of models between two rows of chairs. Fashion houses do not hesitate to enlist star architects for their decor, as seen in the collaboration between Miu Miu, Prada and AMO/OMA, the studio founded and directed by Rem Koolhaas. From the music to the guest list, and from the choreography to the lighting effects, everything is meticulously planned with the ultimate precision typical of the luxury and creative industries. Some fashion shows have budgets that run into hundreds of thousands of euros or dollars, and sometimes even millions, which shows what is at stake for the fashion houses.
This book pays tribute primarily to the designers, fashion houses, models, and all those who, through their hard work, contribute to the magic of fashion. It tells the amazing stories of fashion shows that have become milestones in the industry over the last two decades and have defined contemporary fashion. It also celebrates the genius of fashion designers who never fail to astonish us, season after season.
Chloé’s
Ready-to-Wear Collection
by Chemena Kamali
Autumn/Winter 2024-2025
29 February 2024
THE SEVENTIES ALL OVER AGAIN!
If it weren't for the sea of smartphones and tablets in the audience, one could have easily believed they were transported back to the glorious 1970s at the Chloé Autumn/Winter 20242025 fashion show held on 29 February 2024 – the leap day adding to the magical atmosphere. For her first collection as Chloé’s creative director, German designer Chemena Kamali resolutely drew her inspiration from the heyday of the brand founded by Gaby Aghion in 1952 as the first luxury readyto-wear house. Kamali’s debut show truly captured and reinvented the bohemian chic, carefree and sexy femininity that made Karl Lagerfeld’s designs for the brand so famous in the 1970s, with a signature mix of silk and lace, sophisticated prints and extreme attention to detail. Mini-skirts and floaty dresses are paired with high-top leather boots, while bell-bottoms and clogs are glorified. Kamali subtly injects a touch of modernity, such as Western-style leather trousers with puffed legs and mini capes that highlight the clothes worn underneath. The designer explained that her creative work for Chloé was aimed at “expressing the most honest form of femininity”, stressing the fact that “Chloé is not transformative – wearing Chloé is about feeling like yourself.” The show was also a personal, vibrant tribute to Karl Lagerfeld, whose designs triggered Kamali’s early desire to work in fashion: “If you grew up as a German girl wanting to study fashion, Karl Lagerfeld was the ultimate icon,” she stated. A Kaiserin is born.
Balenciaga’s
Haute Couture Collection
by Demna Gvasalia
Autumn/Winter 2021-2022
7 July 2021
AN UNCONVENTIONAL THINKER
Few announcements have caused as much of a stir in the fashion industry as the one made by the Kering Group, the owner of Balenciaga, on 20 January 2020. After 52 years away from haute couture, the prestigious label founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga in 1917 revealed it would be launching a high fashion collection at the upcoming Paris Fashion Week. The news seemed even more surreal as the Covid pandemic swept the world, and the creative director assigned to revive Balenciaga in the world of haute couture was a truly unconventional thinker.
Georgia-born Demna Gvasalia, who was in his early thirties at the time, had already made a name for himself with the brand he founded in 2014, Vêtements. After studying at the highly selective Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, and gaining experience at Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton, Demna would customize clothes purchased from thrift shops to suit his taste. Drawing inspiration from streetwear and pop culture, he aimed to defy traditional fashion norms. This approach resulted in iconic designs like the infamous DHL T-shirts, ankle boots with cigarette-lighter heels, and Western outfits with American footballer-inspired shoulders, among others.
On the day of the show, the audience’s expectations and the stakes for both the designer and the fashion label were at their peak. True to the brand’s tradition, the presentation took place at Balenciaga’s salons at 10 Avenue George V. Just as the house’s founder did, Demna decided to “show in silence to focus the audience on the line, cut, and presence of his clothes,”
COUTURE IS ABOVE TRENDS. IT’S AN EXPRESSION OF BEAUTY ON THE HIGHEST AESTHETIC AND QUALITATIVE LEVELS.
DEMNA GVASALIA
as Sarah Mower of Vogue explained. The show was described by a Fashionista journalist as “every bit a love letter to the house’s founding father, packed with bold architectural shapes and exaggerated proportions and sticking to the couture presentation format by opening the show with all-black looks.” Gvasalia’s touch was evident in pieces like “a vibrant orange swing-back jacket and skirt” and “a hybrid of a parka and ball gown in a vivid cerulean hue.”
The show charmed Anna Wintour and Kanye West, both longtime enthusiastic supporters of the designer, who were sitting in the front row, as well as Ella Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, who was making her modelling debut on this occasion.
Moschino’s Resort Collection by
Jeremy Scott
Spring/Summer 2019
8 June 2018
I SEE MY ROLE IN FASHION AS BRINGING THE FUN.
JEREMY SCOTT
CIRCUS COUTURE
While the similarities between fashion shows and carnival parades are obvious, few people had previously recognised the close affinity between the circus and fashion shows until Moschino’s creative director, Jeremy Scott, highlighted it at a spectacular event he held in his hometown, Los Angeles, on 8 June 2018. Scott, who is renowned for his whimsical approach to fashion and acute theatrical instinct, invited the L.A. fashion world and celebrities, including Gwen Stefani with her three sons, to view his Spring/Summer 2019 collection in a circus-like big-top tent at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. The show, nicknamed “Cirque du Scott”, clearly centred around the theme, common to both the circus and fashion, of spectacular performance.
Guests were welcomed by cotton candy vendors, caged plush tigers, a juggling stilt-walker, and plate-spinning clowns as the models paraded around the edge of the circus ring. As journalist Dhani Mau of Fashionista reported, “In signature Scott fashion, every look was an exaggerated feast for the eyes. For starters, we saw an off-the-shoulder Bermuda short romper layered over striped tights, a sequined zebra-stripe suit, a dress with one sleeve that extended into a glove, joker-inspired suiting, lampshade skirts and some truly over-the-top eveningwear. Accessories included clown shoes, tiny hats and enormous bows. With wild eye makeup and colourful wigs, they effectively looked like clowns.” Scott, dressed in a top hat, acted as the show’s ringmaster, and admitted that his dream had been “to be shot out of the cannon at the end of the show, but it takes eight months of training, and I didn’t have that luxury.”
Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada’s Ready-to-Wear Collection, Autumn/Winter 2009-2010
3 March 2009
DALÍ IN WONDERLAND
ALL OF MY PRODUCTS CARRY IN THEIR ESSENCE THE OPTIMISTIC MESSAGE OF MY MULTICOLOURED UNIVERSE. I HAVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED MY COLOURS AND ICONS AS A VEHICLE OF JOY. ITS OBJECTIVE IS SIMPLE, BUT PROFOUND. YOU HAVE TO ENJOY LIFE AND HAVE FUN WITH FASHION.
ÁGATHA RUIZ DE LA PRADA VOGUE, 2020
Eye-popping, colourful, eccentric, and cheerful designs in bright, primary colours that seem to have escaped Joan Miró’s works have been Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada’s trademark since 1981. True to her bold style, which she describes as “naughty and optimistic”, the Madrid-based couturiere launched a truly fairy-tale collection fuelled by her relentless imagination and inspired by Salvador Dalí’s world of the surreal and absurd: a pink dress had an upside down umbrella for a skirt, another gown displayed Dalí’s iconic moustaches in purple, while a model walked the catwalk with her torso in a mock bird cage. Ruiz de la Prada herself wore a red dress adorned with a fried egg–shaped cut-out, and a model had a satin headband in the form of a French baguette. A one-shouldered evening gown had a piano keyboard all along its left side. When the model wearing it then extended her right arm, it took the shape of a grand piano.
The collection also included a dress decorated with drawers whose handles formed hearts, and a skirt in the shape of a shiny crescent moon. Hearts, flowers, the moon, and stars are recurrent motifs in her creations, which, despite their easily recognisable, common identity, have continued to surprise fashionistas for decades. Ruiz de la Prada has opted for fashion that goes against the flow, that plays with the “rules” and is unashamedly accessible, from clothing to interior design. Welcome to Ágatha’s Wonderland!
Iconic Runways
Pierre & Agata Toromanoff
Text and preface by Pierre Toromanoff
Editorial Coordination by Johannes Abdullahi, Nadine Weinhold
Translation into German by Gisela Witt, booklab GmbH, München
Copyediting (English) by Lee Ripley
Design and layout by Agata Toromanoff
Cover Design by Marcus Taeschner
Production by Nele Jansen, Alwine Krebber
Color Separation by Robert Kuhlendahl
Printed in the Czech Republic by Finidr
Published by gestalten, Berlin 2026
ISBN 978-3-96171-759-0
1st printing, 2026
The edition with a German cover is available under ISBN 978-3-96171-760-6.
© teNeues, an Imprint of
Die Gestalten Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 2026
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