There Are 15 Designer Debuts This Season. The Big Reshuffle Is Here to Help You Make Sense of Them All

It s September 10th

and we re just hours away

from the start of the Spring 2026 shows.

To be technical about it,

we ve been reviewing collections since Monday.

This is anything but an ordinary season.

A month from now, we ll have witnessed,

not one, not two, but 15 runway debuts.

Who are these designers?

How will they reshape fashion, and why should you care?

My name s Nicole Phelps.

I m the global director of Vogue Runway,

and this is the big reshuffle.

[gentle music]

Straight into our big story, I m joined by my colleague,

Jose Criales-Unzueta.

Welcome Jose. Hi. Hello.

We re here to break down

what s coming in the season ahead.

The first thing we re gonna do is discuss the key players.

Matthieu Blazy has gone from Bottega Veneta to Chanel.

Jonathan Anderson is now at Dior,

and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez

have replaced him at Loewe.

They left the label they founded Proenza Schouler to do so,

and diotima s, Rachel Scott,

has just been named as their replacement.

Demna walked away from Balenciaga and is now at Gucci,

following a short stint by Sabato de Sarno there.

Peirpaolo Piccioli is now at Balenciaga.

A year ago, he was replaced at Valentino

by Alessandro Michele.

Simone Bellotti did four great seasons at Bally

and is now at Jil Sander.

And Glenn Martens of Y/Project and Diesel

is the new guy at Maison Margiela.

Phew!

And it s not all of them yet.

No, there s more.

The really big question is

why is all of this happening at once?

I mean, Nicole, the grass is always greener.

That s really what it is,

but there are also two really important economic factors.

In 2024, there was a huge luxury slowdown,

which means that luxury fashion

really start to reassess its place

in everyone s lives, right?

So sort of try to understand

how to get people to shop luxury again.

And then on the other side,

there is sort of this sense of corporate ambition.

Executives start to rethink what fashion can do,

or what they can sell,

and then that s where we get designers start moving around.

But what is really interesting is that

it is almost from the same gene pool.

You see them go from conglomerate to conglomerate,

from big brand to big brand.

We re asking very successful,

very important creatives to have lightning strike twice.

It is a really hard thing to do.

Sometimes it happens.

I always like to bring up Phoebe Philo

who made magic at Chloe, went to Celine,

and came back two years ago, with Phoebe Philo.

And so she is a three times a charm-

Right. But it s a pretty rare-

That also depends not just on them,

it depends on the culture,

it depends on the zeitgeist, right?

Like when Alessandro Michele

changed the way we dressed at Gucci,

he sort of like ignited this way of gender fluid fashion

with like pussy bow blouses for men and all of this, right?

But we were ready for that back in 2016.

At this point,

we ve been having that conversation for 10 years.

So how do you do that again, is to me, what s interesting.

So we can t forget the big announcement that happened.

Your friend, Rachel Scott,

who founded Diotima several years ago,

has landed the Proenza Schouler job.

She has.

Rachel is this Jamaican designer,

and she has really conquered

a very specific subset of New York,

people who love fashion, buy fashion,

wear fashion every day.

But the reason why I think that is a fascinating person

to install at Proenza is that, in so many ways,

Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough,

when they started Proenza Schouler,

did a similar thing, right?

They, all of a sudden, were dressing, kind of,

New York s it fashionistas,

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Lauren Santo Domingo.

I m also fascinated to see what Proenza looks like

when it s designed by a woman,

considering so many women love Proenza.

Yeah, and I have to say

that Rachel s a very nice addition to this story

because we were working on 15 debuts, all of them being men,

but for one, Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta,

and Rachel Scott makes two. Makes two.

And she s just an exciting talent,

but she also breaks a mold,

and we need a little more of that.

[bright music]

These shows are all happening

this women s ready-to-wear season.

But actually, we ve already seen some debuts

from big brands, like Celine, Christian Dior,

and Maison Margiela, during Men s Wear and Couture.

Joining us now is Beka Gvishiani,

the founder of Style Not Com, who attended these shows.

Hi Beka. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

You saw Jonathan Anderson do men s wear at Christian Dior.

Michael Rider do Celine, and Glenn Martens of Y/Project,

and Diesel fame do Maison Margiela.

So what was it like to be there?

Before I say anything about the collection

is that I wanna note

that I m known as Jonathan Anderson s fanboy.

I honestly, I swear, I went to the show location

one hour before, one hour before,

and I was sitting in front of cafe, across the street,

just to be sure that I m on time

and I m one of the first to go inside the building,

and to see the location, and to see the venue,

because I had no idea what he would prepare.

He s the one who can create, and mix the concepts,

and make a blend that no one else does for me.

That s my opinion.

When you go to the concept on even of the first look,

seeing that bar jacket made for men,

paired with the cargo shorts, that have a same pleat,

that has Jonathan s most favorite Dior dress.

When you see this concept mixed so perfectly,

I mean I fall in love with this even more.

Then Celine, if I was Mike Rider,

I would do the same collection.

Honestly, every single piece, we were joking,

saying like this is something that

if Hadi and Phoebe had a child,

and that was it in the best possible way.

And Glenn, to decode the collection,

we saw Martin, we saw John, we saw Glenn,

and we saw even leftovers of something like Matthieu Blasi.

I mean, we saw the masks.

He was kind of touching all the development

of the Margiela past few years.

Could you call a winner from those three debuts you saw?

Who do you think did the best?

Oh my God, these are different collections,

so everyone won its own segment.

I think winners, we can talk end of October

when there is a actual battle of women s wear.

Who else are you looking forward to seeing

in September and October?

Channel stands as number one for me,

but it s also the last one.

So the anticipation,

and we will have, until the last moment, we have to wait.

Then obviously, comes Demna at Gucci.

He was saying that he had also this vision of glamour.

He would probably one day would implement in some brand,

and I think he has a perfect chance doing at Gucci.

Then comes Pierre Paolo, who is going, in a way,

in a traditional couture house, maybe Balenciaga,

which is Balenciaga.

But the way that Demna has created the visual concept of it

that is so different from what Pierre Paolo has been doing

during past 20 years of his career,

that is very exciting just to imagine

how Pierre Paolo s pieces and his design

is gonna fit even in the stores of Balenciaga

that was designed for the Demna aesthetic and the vision.

So at the end of the season, I can say more

who did it in their own way better, in my opinion.

I ll see you at Ralph Lauren. Thank you, Beka.

Yes, thank you so much, Nicole.

See you soon. Ciao.

[bright music]

Now I m joined by Laia Garcia-Furtado, my colleague.

Laia, I know you have lots of opinions

about the way these designers

are gonna impact how we dress.

Maybe nobody more than Michael Rider at Celine,

which we really liked.

Yeah, the Celine debut by Michael Rider

was definitely one of the most exciting,

mostly because he opened the show with skinny jeans,

which we do not love.

But I think if there s anyone in the world

that can make fashion sort of reconsider

their stance on skinny jeans, it s probably Michael Rider.

We are both wearing very wide cut jeans and pants today.

But also his super preppy silhouette.

A lot of preppy details in his collection

and primary colors,

which Jonathan Anderson at Dior also had.

He also did a skinny jean.

So I don t know,

the skinny jeans might actually be coming back.

Well, Michael Rider is an American guy

and he was just at Polo Ralph Lauren.

So the preppy element makes sense.

It checks out, it checks out.

Why do you think Jonathan is feeling preppy at Dior?

[sighs] I don t know.

I thought it was really interesting that,

before the show started,

he posted these inspiration images on Instagram,

and it was a portrait of Basquiat

and a portrait of Lee Radziwill,

photographed by Andy Warhol.

So it was a very American, New York, you know, seventies,

which does not read preppy,

but I think because he s trying to modernize

Dior and couture and it s also elevated,

the opposite of that seems to be American prep.

It could be that it s just a good moment

for Americans in Paris,

Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler

are now at Loewe.

Beka was on the show.

He said that Matthieu Blazy s Chanel debut

is what he is looking forward to most,

and I think that s a universal feeling.

What do you think he s gonna do there?

Do you think he s gonna tackle the little tweed suit?

Like, I think the thing that we love about Matthieu

is that he has a really irreverent approach to fashion.

Like, when he did his first collection at Bottega Veneta,

the first look was a tank up and a pair of jeans,

and we were watching at home being like,

okay, tank up and a pair of jeans.

That means it s a clean slate,

except they were actually made of leather.

So I love that he made his first statement

with a trickster spirit.

And it s also what Karl Lagerfeld used to do.

I think, you know, the Chanel supermarket,

and making a suit out of denim.

Karl always saw that he had to sort of

break and do unexpected things,

and I think Matthieu is gonna bring that same spirit,

and I think he s definitely going to take on the tweed suit,

and the flat, and the quilted bag,

and just make us want all of them, immediately.

What about Demna at Gucci?

The thing that he has on his side

is the fact that he has a bit of a pallet cleanser,

because there were three seasons

that Sabato De Sarno worked on,

but I have a feeling that he s gonna go a little bit softer,

maybe not such a severe silhouette.

Dakota Johnson just stepped out on the red carpet

a few weeks ago, wearing a silver, strapless A-line dress.

And I mean, if you look at a Demna s past collections,

he loves the silver moment.

He loves something that feels textural and at odds,

you know, unnatural in a way.

So when I saw that dress, I was like, Ooh.

[bright music]

All right, it s speed round time, hot takes.

Jose is back with us. Jose. What s up?

What s your prediction?

My prediction, slash hot take

is that the debuts that we re expecting to be the best

will be the ones we like the least.

Really, the underdogs are gonna surprise us

and please us the most.

I love an underdog story. What about you, Laia?

I think that tracks.

My hot take is fashion is gonna split into two,

quiet luxury donezo,

and now we re going to see luxury, luxury.

And then on the other hand, it s going to be a split

where people are going to be prioritizing

like things that are made by hand,

and like a kind of hippie, like late nineties,

early two thousands layering of sarong over pants,

like Julian Klausner did, Dries Van Noten.

That s my hot take for the next season ahead.

Which side? What camp are you gonna fall in?

I m definitely going to be in the hippie camp,

pants and a scarf every day,

which I ve already been doing.

[Jose] Which you ve been doing, yeah.

So yeah. Jose?

Well if I could, [laughs]

I would be on the really luxury side.

[everyone laughs]

But since I don t have that budget,

I ll be wearing the sarong suit.

[Laia] We do love a strong shoulder.

I do love a sharp shoulder. What about you, Nicole?

I don t quite have a hot take as a concern.

It s a long season

and I think that the guys at the end of the schedule

will have the hardest job.

Right, unless it s amazing.

It s really hard to please- Which is very well may be.

I mean, Matthieu is closing and it s gonna be amazing.

Chanel video is the last one.

Yeah. Can t wait.

Can t wait. Thank you both.

Thank you. Well, friends,

as you ve just heard, in between now and October 6th,

there will be 15 debuts.

That is a lot to unpack.

We ll be doing exactly that, all day, every day,

and well into the night.

If you don t have the Vogue Runway app,

please download it now and follow along.

Thank you. [bright music]