Paris Haute Couture Week Fall/Winter 2026–2027 opened on July 6th with nine houses taking the floor across a single packed day, setting the tone for what 30 runway shows across four days will deliver before the week closes on July 9th. The opening day’s lineup moved from surrealism to scientific innovation to Lebanese couture to one of fashion’s most closely watched second chapters, a sequence that covered almost every register haute couture operates in, and did it before sunset.
Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli opened the week at 10 am, holding the position it has occupied for consecutive seasons and earning it again. Daniel Roseberry’s house has become the reliable opener not because of tradition but because it consistently delivers the kind of theatrical opening statement that sets a week in motion, surrealist in its references, precise in its construction, and impossible to ignore on social media within minutes of the final look.
Imane Ayissi
The Cameroonian designer followed at 11 am with a collection that has, across multiple seasons, made a consistent case for African couture heritage as a living design resource rather than a reference point, bringing a visual language that sits distinctly apart from the French couture mainstream and is more interesting for it.
Iris Van Herpen
Iris van Herpen presented her technological experiments at noon, occupying the position on the calendar that her work has earned through a decade of fusing science, craft, and fashion into something that functions as neither purely one nor the other. Her collections have consistently demonstrated that haute couture’s most interesting territory is where material innovation and handcraft converge, and day one of Paris couture week would feel incomplete without her on it.
Georges Hobeika
Georges Hobeika took the 1 pm slot, bringing Lebanese couture to the official calendar as he has done across multiple seasons, a house that has built its international reputation through the kind of refined femininity and exceptional craftsmanship that the Cannes red carpet has amplified significantly in recent years, with Bella Hadid among its most visible wearers. Hobeika’s presence on the opening day schedule is both a commercial and cultural statement about where Lebanese couture stands in the global hierarchy.
What Comes Next
Day one delivered the range and ambition that the week’s opening should. Chanel and Giorgio Armani Privé follow on Tuesday, with Wednesday bringing the two most anticipated debuts of the season, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s first couture collection for Balenciaga at 11:30 am and Duran Lantink’s first collection for Jean Paul Gaultier at 5:30 pm. The week is only getting started.
