Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2021: The Best Looks

While some of the fashion world's most notable houses may have been absent from this season's Paris fashion week lineup, (Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Celine, McQueen...), the City of Light still shone bright as ever with some highly anticipated debut collections as well as some unexpected highlights. For fall, both Miuccia Prada (for her Miu Miu line) and Thom Browne took to the slopes, showing their winter gear as it's meant to be seen. Browne enlisted the help of Olympian Lindsey Vonn to create a downhill Oz-inspired dreamlike film chock-full of powerful puffer silhouettes perfected during his tenure at Moncler Gamme Bleu. Mrs. Prada also showed her version of a puffer jacket, which looked just as at home on the mountain top as it will on every cool girl in your Instagram feed come fall. Not to be outdone, Rick Owens offered his take on what puffers look like for his fans, and the long and short of it is: They're fabulous.

However, not everyone was inspired by a wintery wonderland. For her debut collection for Chloé, designer Gabriela Hearst showed her parade of Parisienne cool girls marching to their own bohemian beat, while Virginie Viard took a more intimate approach to the behemoth that is Chanel by showing her fall collection inside the iconic Castel nightclub in Saint-Germain, with nod's to après-skiwear and, most excitingly, Lagerfeld's iconic Fall 94 faux-fur collection for the maison. Finally, one of the most interesting ideas of the season came from Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga for his collection Anrealage. Designing for these "upside-down" times, Morinaga imagined his clothes as if they were devoid of gravity. Toggles, zippers, patterns, and buttons tumbled to the top of his garments as if they were turned on their heads, creating one of the most eye-catching duffle coats this editor has ever seen.