Supermodels returned to the catwalk (Gisele, Karen Elson, Stella Tennant, and Frankie Rayder, to name a few). Heidi Slimane made black tights cool again. And in the eyes of man, Nicolas Ghesquière won Paris Fashion Week with his debut collection for Louis Vuitton.

Paris Fashion Week, the grand finale of fashion month, put an official stamp on the trends that had been blossoming in New York, London, and Milan in the weeks prior. The big story of the season was architecture, something that designers like Alexander Wang played with at Balenciaga (and his namesake collection as well), as did Acne and Kenzo in Paris. In particular, we saw the focus on shape and volume come into play with outerwear (another big centerpiece of the F/W 2014 season).  

Outwear largely came in the form of blanket coats, robe coats, and menswear-inspired coats (like at Dior, where Raf showed them in a almost every shade of rainbow Skittles). The pastel theme from past seasons also had a big presence in the outerwear department, in baby blue, mint green and pink, predominantly. Plenty of designers, however, opted to adorn their jackets and coats with astrakhan, crests, shearling, neon (Givenchy and Vionnet, to name a few), and of course, patchworks of different types of fur.  

At Louis Vuitton, the most anticipated show on the calendar, Ghesquière opened with a 60s-inspired (a theme that was big in Milan and at Saint Laurent), A-line coat, which set the tone for the rest of things to come. Thigh-skimming dresses and skirts popped up throughout the collection, in varying luxe skins and suedes. It was, as the note from Ghesquière on every seat said, “A new day. A big day…Words cannot express exactly how I am feeling at this moment…Above all, immense joy." The audience couldn’t have agreed more.