Wednesday, September 30, was one of the most crowded days of the Paris week, with The Row, Dries Van Noten, Stella McCartney, Acne Studios and Haider Ackermann's Tom Ford all on the schedule, as reported by Outlook Luxe. Two shows mattered most for where Paris is going: the first of the season's two debuts, at Courrèges, and Antonin Tron's second collection for Balmain.
Courrèges: the house, with the belts undone
Drew Henry studied at Central Saint Martins and worked at Céline under Phoebe Philo, at JW Anderson, at Philo's own label and at Burberry as senior design director under Daniel Lee, before taking over Courrèges in March, as reported by Charles Manning in Daily Front Row. He succeeds Nicolas Di Felice.
Henry described the collection as "breaking out of the white box", as reported by Alexander Fury in AnOther. The white box is the house's reputation: severe, graphic, Space Age. Henry kept the codes and loosened them. Suits in bold colours had frayed edges and were worn with thick leather belts left hanging open. Square-toed boots came battered, sleeves ripped, hems raw. Mod denim jackets had upturned collars, vinyl mini-dresses were worn by male models, and a deconstructed vinyl jacket became a messenger bag. Cream and navy were broken by vivid orange, acid green and fluorescents, as reported by Outlook Luxe.
"I didn't want this to be a singular person. It has to be human," Henry told AnOther.
The colour is the clearest break. Manning noted that Di Felice's Courrèges often lacked it, and it gives the house something it has not had in years: warmth. The weaker moments were the ones that tried hardest. Manning found some layered navy dresses "slovenly" and the A-line minis on male models "forced". A debut that errs on the side of ease is the right mistake to make at a house that had become a little too pleased with its own rigour. His verdict: "Henry is ready for his spotlight." We agree, with the reservation that the next collection has to show the looseness is a language and not just a mood.
Balmain: less princess, more rock star
Antonin Tron showed his second Balmain collection the same day. He found a set of 1954 photographs of the house's cabine, models in the atelier on rue François 1er, and combined them with a less obvious source: Michel Foucault's trip to California in the 1970s, and his LSD experience in Death Valley, as reported by Fury in AnOther. "It sounds pretentious," Tron said, calling the reference "a space for experimentation".
The clothes were Balmain's sexier side, pulled close to the body: crocodile-textured ruched leather, sequin-embroidered ocelot lace, satin microskirts cut like girdles with garters hanging from them, cocktail dresses with the bra left visible, bugle beading re-embroidered with sequins. He kept the strong pilot-jacket shoulder from his debut and engineered it into undulating lines. Bleached, bone-like tones carried most of the collection, with jewel tones and acid brights cutting through.
Last season, Tron's job was to prove that Balmain could exist after Olivier Rousteing's fourteen years. This season he had to prove he had an idea beyond the archive. The Foucault reference is that idea, and it gives a house famous for polish something it rarely allows itself: dirt. Whether Balmain's customer wants her glamour "left out in the sun", as Vanity Teen put it, is the commercial question that a second season cannot yet answer.
What the day settled
Two houses, two different problems. Courrèges had a strong identity that had stopped moving, and Henry got it moving. Balmain had a new designer still being measured against his predecessor, and Tron is no longer being measured that way. The second debut of the week, Kai Nesselrath at Carven, is today.
Henry's background and the review assessments per Daily Front Row (Charles Manning, October 1, 2026). Henry's and Tron's quotes and collection details per AnOther and AnOther (Alexander Fury, October 1, 2026). Day schedule and Courrèges palette per Outlook Luxe (Sonali Mukherjee, October 1, 2026). Further Balmain coverage from Vanity Teen.
