All the hottest looks from Paris Fashion Week Spring 2023

Powerhouses Saint Laurent and Dior are among some 107 brands showcasing spring-summer 2023 collections at Paris Fashion Week. Here are some highlights so far.

French fashion house Yves Saint Laurent took to an open-air runway facing the glowing Eiffel Tower to showcase designer Anthony Vaccarello’s summer collection of sleek eveningwear. Guests, including Kpop star Rose of Blackpink, trickled into the venue under brooding clouds as night began to fall, stopping for selfies in front of a huge, flowing water fountain, while crowds lined up on the esplanade overlooking the venue.

Guests including Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rosamund Pike and Emma Raducanu looked curiously at a decaying palace recreated inside an annex of the Tuileries Gardens. Vines crept through Renaissance doors, over fading wooden cornices and down weathered columns to evoke the mystery of bygone times. The brand explained: Based loosely on the Dior headquarters on Avenue Montaigne, the set was also inspired by Catherine of Medicis, the Renaissance queen who moved to the Tuileries in the 16th century. She had the famed gardens and a palace built on the site that has since been razed. Catherine also brought heels, corsets and Italian Burano lace to the French court — picked up by Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri in this thoughtful show of 84 looks, heavy on black and white.

A flash of American funk graced Paris for Monday’s installment of fashion week — a day reserved for up-and-comers. Vaquera, who came to prominence five years ago in New York with a U.S. flag gown with massive train, moved this season across the pond and was a highlight. Designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee mixed their edgy styles with looks that moved in a more commercial direction for spring-summer. Distressed denim, the punk exuberance and corsetry of Vivienne Westwood’s heyday and lashings of Americana references — like a loose sheeny biker jacket — defined the often-saleable 31-look display. The U.S. flag made its runway return, here as a sheer shawl that led down to a fabulous ballooning parachute skirt.

The Belgian fashion master was back on form for spring with a typically unpindownable collection held together only, it seemed, by the aesthetic of its looseness. All-black ensembles -- an oversized menswear tuxedo worn on a bare chest, or an Asian crossover coat -- suddenly blossomed within the 64-look-collection into bright sequins, pastels, ruffles and florals. There were artistic plays aplenty: One lace-like black top had ribbing evoking bones, all the while looking somewhat Elizabethan. The female models were chosen for their boyish looks, alongside myriad menswear twists on the womenswear wardrobe.

Balmain took us to a fantasy world and sent the models down the runway in some supremely futuristic garments which can only be the work of a maverick.

With inputs from AP and Reuters.