Paris Fashion Week looks to next gen with Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, Mame Kurogouchi, Germanier

Paris Fashion Week wasn’t all about Dior on Tuesday. The second day of womenswear runway shows for Spring/Summer 2025 shone the spotlight on the collections by an array of emerging labels. In recent seasons, these events have become a fixture for the media and buyers. Among Tuesday’s can’t-miss shows were those featuring the creative looks by Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, the delicate collection by Japanese stylist Mame Kurogouchi, and the exuberant creations of Swiss designer Kevin Germanier.
 

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt chose the Terminus Nord for her show, just opposite the Gare du Nord rail station in Paris. The legendary Art Deco brasserie, dating back to the 1920s, was reserved exclusively for the show’s guests, serving egg salad and pâté en croûte, ideal fare as it was almost lunchtime.
 
Adam-Leenaerdt couldn’t have chosen a better venue to celebrate her everyday fashion, seasoned with a pinch of humour. The Belgian designer’s last collection featured variations on the skirt theme, and this time she worked on t-shirts. Yet the collection was anything but sporty-casual. The models who stepped decisively into the brasserie, clad in elegant dresses and suits, their arms and hands sheathed in long, fine gloves, sported a femme fatale, almost mysterious attitude.

Nothing is ever commonplace at Marie Adam-Leenaerdt. As she explained in the introductory note placed on the tables like a menu, her idea was to work on the t-shirt to “de-construct and re-imagine its familiar codes.” Adam-Leenaerdt has transformed this wardrobe staple in many guises, for example into a chic white blouse worn over a mid-length straight-line skirt, with the hint of a pleat. Elsewhere, she adapted a calf-length cotton t-shirt dress by enlarging the sleeves, and tying a strip of the same fabric at the thighs, to create a draped volume.

Other t-shirts morphed into an oversize, rigid suit of armour. Or were worn over skintight micro skirts in lace or stretch fabric. Riffing on the same theme, Adam-Leenaerdt transformed t-shirts into a blazer or an hourglass-shaped collar-less coat in vibrant yellow or red, and even into lurex corset tops. The same treatment was reserved to sweatshirts. Among others, one was transformed into a soft trench-coat in grey fleece.

Adam-Leenaerdt graduated in 2020 from the Ecole de La Cambre, and worked for six months at Balenciaga before returning to Brussels to set up her own label in 2022. Her collections are now available at some 15 multibrand retailers worldwide, including Stijl in Brussels, Net-a-porter, Ssense, Matches Fashion and Bergdorf Goodman.

Mame Kurogouchi chose to unveil its new collection in a restaurant too, inviting its guests once again to Ogata, the Parisian temple of Japanese cuisine. For next summer, designer Maiko Kurogouchi has concentrated on shapes, redesigning the silhouette by introducing unexpected curves, as though fashioned with brushstrokes.

Her starting point were typical Japanese objects, like a teapot or a lantern. She then went looking for similar shapes in daily life, taking pictures of various objects with a Polaroid. She chose a glass, a pebble, a pot, a pregnant woman’s belly, and other objects. She then coloured them in black to visualise their contours and shapes, which she transposed into the collection’s garments.

For example, a tank top’s asymmetric neckline was skewed into an unusual oval shape. A crescent-shaped slit on a shoulder was created by a diagonally cut blouse layered over another. Short satin dresses decorated with micro-embroidery were cropped at the front. A sweatshirt’s hood only left the face’s oval visible.

Kurogouchi did away with straight lines, and opted instead for snaking, curving lines to define the hems of jackets, skirts, dresses and shirts. Here and there, she tucked in the garments to break up lines that were too square, for example in some long tunics. Her extended silhouettes and delicately poised outfits oozed sophisticated elegance. The shoes, mostly Japanese-style sandals and flip-flops with leather sockettes, were especially original.

After sobriety, time for excess. At Germanier, it was the Rio Carnival and Christmas all at once! The label, renowned for its focus on sustainability (it only uses recycled materials for its garments) brought a sparkling energy and a cheerful festive atmosphere to the runway, with a cascade of colourful, glittering garlands, presenting fairy-tale, often grandiose looks.

The label’s founder, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier, has been asked by Galeries Lafayette to create the Parisian department store’s Christmas window displays this season. Germanier loves to rummage in vintage stores and to utilise fabric offcuts and unsold inventory to create his looks, but has now discovered a new supply source: obsolete window displays, especially those of luxury boutiques, which would otherwise be thrown out the window. “It opened a whole new perspective for me. I discovered reams of ribbons and glittering tasselled curtains that were destined for the scrap heap. We’re actually right in the middle of a big bin here,” he quipped backstage presenting his collection. A large part of the outfits were made using shining, colourful plastic strips and tassels, used chiefly for Christmas tinsel and decorations.

A treasure trove for Germanier, who drew his inspiration for the collection from astrology, the zodiac and the planets. He used golden tinsel to create a luminous sunlit dress, and silvery strips to make outfits inspired by Mercury and the Moon. He also utilised the curly ribbon of gift packages and the busts of window-display manikins, split in half and turned into corsets, on which he attached masses of thin colourful strips cascading down to the floor.

Other models were made from fishnet jumpsuits, covered in scale-like iridescent sequins, or in other hues according to a carefully thought-out colour scheme. These fishnet dresses have been crocheted by inmates in the jails of Rio and Sao Paulo, in collaboration with Brazilian designer-artisan Gustavo Silvestre, who has been working with Germanier since the label was founded. A Brazilian mood was evident throughout the collection, for example in the dress made of multi-coloured Havaianas flip-flops.