What’s Happening: Paris Fashion Week abounds with the usual mix of TikTok-ready presentations, celebrity antics, and future trends. The big takeaway this season is the shift away from formless designs and once again embracing distinct silhouettes.

The Download: Plunging temperatures and a transit strike can’t curb the pageantry on the runways in Paris, where high-octane spectacles are stealing the show. Celebrity antics were on full display—Kylie Jenner showed up to Schiaparelli donning a severed lion head, and Doja Cat one-upped her with Avatar-esque devil-red body paint blanketed in 30,000 Swarovski crystals.

But all eyes were on KidSuper, the Brooklyn up-and-comer tapped by Louis Vuitton as this season’s guest designer. In the Cour Carrée du Louvre, Spanish superstar Rosalía rocked the roof while models showed off technicolor hoodies and suits splashed with pithy slogans described fittingly by the French maison as “boyish and surreal” to mixed reviews.

It was grandiose but cacophonous—and as Angelo Flaccavento writes for Business of Fashion, a distraction from the real forces at play. From Loewe and Rick Owens to Saint Laurent, luxury brands are revisiting defined silhouettes and sculpted lines rendered in blacks and neutrals. It’s a welcome antidote to the oversize, formless shapes that have long reigned in fashion but may be waning.

Saint Laurent returned to the French capital to kick off menswear shows with a chic outing at the Bourse de Commerce. Underneath the trade exchange-turned-museum’s newly restored rotunda, creative director Anthony Vaccarello’s meditations on today’s ideal Saint Laurent man came into full view. (Hint: there is none.) Cocooning overcoats and billowing trousers in his signature black took cues from womenswear, skewing androgynous while offering focus, elegance, and a dash of social commentary. Rick Owens also delivered here, deftly mixing capes and Victorian silhouettes with skin-showing sleaze.

Expectations were similarly bucked at Bode, the cult New York menswear brand helmed by Emily Adams Bode Aujla, who took a three-year hiatus from showing in Paris after Covid-19 sent her home sick. She returns with newfound clarity about her label’s evolution by debuting womenswear that upholds her signature reverence for archival garments and near-extinct craft techniques. The pieces recall a year Bode Aujla’s mother spent in a house on Cape Cod working for a nonagenarian who wore fanciful gowns to dinner every night, so expect evening wear ranging from ‘40s-inspired velvet dresses to embellished tuxedos.

Loewe entered the fold with one of creative director Jonathan Anderson’s most memorable collections yet, melding art-inspired motifs with metallic coats and accouterments reflective of his unwavering attention to craft. Two giant LED screens beaming with custom paintings by Angeleno portraitist Julien Nguyen took pride of place in the light-filled white cube setting, yet didn’t distract from the shimmering velvet trenches, suede dusters, and pewter jackets built for Loewe by a maker of computer plates. “Menswear can be such an exciting platform to trial things by pushing the envelope in different materialities,” Anderson says.

Speaking of, Schiaparelli kicked off Couture Week with a fruitful study into the house’s surrealist legacy, quashing any suspicions that creative director Daniel Roseberry was experiencing “designer’s block” as described in the show notes. Inspired by the beasts of Dante’s Inferno, taxidermy-like jungle cats and wolves made of foam and fiber were affixed to billowing coats and dresses. (It sparked backlash, though PETA didn’t seem to mind.) They joined corset-like tops adorned with oversize shoulder pads and extra-long sleeves.

In Their Own Words: “Fashion has never felt more exciting,” Anderson continued. “The landscape is changing, and as a designer, you have to look at the culture and respond to it. Hopefully, we’re entering a period where it’s about feeling uncomfortable because it might lead to a moment of enjoying the clothing and not the brand. It’s good to be willing to reinvent yourself.”

Surface Says: Despite all the attention-grabbing hoopla, Kid Cudi was this season’s real winner.

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Bibliophiles who’ve dropped by Taschen’s outpost in Brussels may recall the joyful wall panels and luminaires inside. They’re made by Jorge Pardo, the Cuban-American artist whose foray into the intersection of design, painting, sculpture, and everyday objects has resulted in an enchanting oeuvre that stands out for its originality. “I’m interested in asking: Where is art supposed to stop?” Pardo told Surface in a 2019 conversation about L’Arlatan, a colorful French hotel replete with 500 of his own paintings and sculptures. “It’s almost impossible to control where that motion starts and stops.”

That’s precisely what compelled the German publisher to collaborate with Pardo on reissuing a limited-edition series of his fixtures, fittingly titled Brussels, that riff on the lamps found in its store there. Each piece is made from laser-cut, hand-painted PETG plastic discs carefully stacked to allow light to spread in different directions, creating a colorful sculpture when switched off and coming alive when light shines through. Whether a freestanding fixture or suspended pendant light, each reveals new dimensions to how Pardo dissolves the boundaries between art and design.

Pairing medical-grade treatments with meditative aesthetics, Alexis Lauren Collective elevates the beauty scene.

Location: Coral Gables, Miami.

Designer: G. Alvarez Studio.

On Offer: Dreamed up by a trauma surgeon and former real estate agent with an eye for aesthetics, Alexis Lauren Collective seamlessly marries the joint expertise of husband-and-wife duo Dr. Michael and Alexis Renda. The studio offers personalized treatments that blend cult-favorite products by Biologique Recherche, Skinbetter Science, and iS Clinical, with innovative medical-grade practices such as Oxylight Ionix, LED, and microcurrent therapy. In addition to the menu of topical skincare treatments, the Collective also offers cosmetic injectables, fill and firm treatments, microneedling, and chemical peels.

When: Until June 4

Where: Madison Square Park, New York

What: Topics of justice have long gripped Shahzia Sikander, the Pakistani-American visual artist perhaps best known for subverting Central and South Asian miniature painting traditions. For her commission at Madison Square Park, she delves into representation in monuments with two new large-scale female figures—one at the park, brought to life through Snap AR technology, and another on the rooftop of a nearby courthouse, where it joins plinths inhabited by statues of nine historic male legislators. The installation asks who is historically represented—and who wields power in the justice system both symbolically and actually.

Silicon Valley tech workers have been enjoying gratuitous perks for nearly two decades, a trend arguably set off within the Googleplex in the early 2000s. While corporate employees at drab office parks and stolid skyscrapers across the country picked at desk lunches in dreary cubicles, the online search juggernaut’s lucky staffers were busy having their lives catered. Laundry service, exercise classes, foreign language tutors, and personal concierges for dinner reservations were available without having to leave work.

Times change, of course, and today working in tech is losing its sheen. No company has ushered in Silicon Valley’s chaos era quite like Twitter, which was acquired by Elon Musk for $44 billion in the fall. Faced with the grim finances of a company that hasn’t netted a profit since 2019, the world’s then-richest man axed two-thirds of the company’s 7,500-person workforce and required “extremely hardcore” dedication from those who remained. The extent of Twitter’s controversial transition reached somewhat of an apex last week when the company staged an auction of hundreds of “surplus corporate office assets.”

Il Bisonte is a high-quality Florentine brand that has been crafting bags and accessories in leather and fabric for the past five decades in Tuscany. These products express a style immune to market-driven conventions and fleeting seasonal trends. The brand can be found on four continents and in the most important global cities (Tokyo, Florence, Rome, Milan, Paris, New York, Sydney, Taipei, and Seoul), and is distributed in more than 30 countries.

Surface Says: With their impeccable craftsmanship and hyper-local artisan supply chain, Il Bisonte’s stylish wares are instant heirlooms.

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