Theatre, cinema, ballet, musical theatre… From Jeanne Friot to Willy Chavarria, fashion houses compete with performances to elevate their runway presentations and tell stories that go beyond clothing.
A fashion show is boring, theater is much better. Karl Lagerfeld was arguably one of the first to understand the value of turning his fashion into a spectacle, as when, in 2014, he transformed the Grand Palais into a Chanel supermarket. The buzz was there, and the show remains a reference for the fashion world. Nine years later, the Catalan singer Rosalia lit up the Louis Vuitton show. This winter, at Paris Fashion Week Men’s (FW 2026/2027), several emerging designers have in turn integrated dance, theater, and cinema to make their show a spectacle that leaves a mark… and whose images circulate widely on social media.
So We Dance
Jeanne Friot is a regular at buzz-making presentations. Last year, during Paris Fashion Week Men’s Spring/Summer 2026, the Parisian moved us with a cast that was 100% trans and non-binary, embodying the message “Trans Lives Matter” printed on a T‑shirt, later worn by Angèle at the Glastonbury festival. For this Autumn/Winter 2026-27 season, the lesbian designer invited us to the Théâtre du Rond-Point for a dance performance. In charge: Maud Le Pladec, no less than the choreographer of the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics, who came with the troupe of the Ballet of Lorraine, which the Breton woman directs. On the decks: DJ Chloé. Entitled “Awake”, the performance invites a waking of consciences in the current political context. On stage, the dancers mix with the models and with showbiz personalities: the French queen Mami Watta, Daphné Bürki and DJ Claude Emmanuelle. The show ends with a signature Friot manifest gesture: a lesbian kiss, whose cleverly filmed image immediately travels around the world.
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Pillows That Wake You Up
With graffiti, the Scottish designer Charles Jeffrey Loverboy has claimed the new fashion hotspot in the Marais: Dover Street Market, opened in 2024. Here, all the spectacle lies in attitude. The models wear extravagant wigs, makeup in every color, and layers of torn clothing, in the brand’s punk aesthetic. There is no room for a quiet walk: the models, including our stubborn Reinvention 2025 Raya Martigny, stride in zig-zags, drop to all fours, and shake their heads furiously. The musical backdrop, provided by the Dutch trio Baby Berserk, blends punk and garage rock. The whole thing is far from putting us to sleep, but the models pull out pillows for… a good old pillow fight, which quickly fills the space with feathers. A collision of music, fashion, and rage, in the image of the Scottish punk.
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Broadway on the Catwalk
Willy Chavarria, for his part, invites us to attend a musical comedy, worthy of a Latin American telenovela. Like a real theatre piece, the show unfolds in three acts: the first opened with a song by the Italian star Mahmood, our Eurovision repeat favorite, along with Puerto Rican Lunay and the Latin American music icon Mon Laferte, who present the daily wear of the collection. The second part, devoted to sport, features the designer’s new collaboration with Adidas, whose pieces are worn by the new boy band in vogue in Latin America, Santos Bravos, during their performance. The story ends with eveningwear, with more elegant dresses and suits, to the voice of Colombian rapper Feid and the Latin Mafia’s Latin rock. Here, the performance becomes central to the brand’s narrative, turning Chavarria’s clothes into real stage costumes.
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Engine, Camera, Action!
At KidSuper, it feels like Inception. As you enter the Pavillon Cambon for the brand’s show, you’re immediately confronted with a mysterious white cube placed in the middle of the room, which raises a question: where will the models walk? It is the press release, printed on a popcorn box, that points us in the direction: the experience will be cinematic. The presentation opens with a piercing gaze projected in close-up onto the white box: that of actor Vincent Cassel, no less. Grotesquely appearing in a Parisian café, his character leaves the place to wander the streets of the capital. The film ends with the actor, alone and lost in a completely white space. It is then that the mysterious box opens, revealing the same set as in the short film, from which a model dressed as the character emerges, still trying to understand what is happening to him. A gunshot rings out, he collapses, and two orderlies come to fetch him with a stretcher as a recorded voice warns us: “What you are about to see is not real. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the human spectacle.” A good summary of this Paris Fashion Week.
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