Nowadays, discussion of any brand, especially around fashion month, typically includes rumblings about whether the designer is coming or going. Despite Pierpaolo Piccioli only being at Balenciaga for a little over a year, there’s been talk this season about whether the spring 2027 collection—presented on Thursday during Paris Fashion Week—will be his last for the house. Whether you pay much mind to these rumors or not (which neither the brand nor Kering, its parent company, have addressed) what came down the runway gave us much to dissect.
For starters, the collection is titled “Les Coraux de la Liberté”—the corals of freedom. The motif was reflected in key looks that mimicked the colors and textures you’d see underwater, as well as an abstract sculpture by Aude Franjou wrapped in yellow, red, and pink linen set up on the runway. The opening series was equally—maybe even pointedly—restrained in terms of color: The first looks were entirely white, calling to mind Piccioli’s famed PP Pink and all-black final collection for Valentino. (The models walked out to “Ready or Not” by The Fugees, with Lauryn Hill sitting front row.)
The palette expanded first with bright pops of blue and red against the white, leaning into the casual ease of the separates that make up the majority of the collection, before embracing the color for which Piccioli is known. There were sporty, high-neck jackets and balloon trousers in technical fabrics (evoking the athleisure-adjacent look that made Balenciaga so commercially successful under previous creative director Demna) alongside soft tailoring, rich textural flourishes, and dramatic shapes—all Piccioli signatures.
Spring 2027 is “a personal exploration and investigation,” the collection notes read, “of couture as a working methodology but also an ideology; a mind-set for modern creation that can infiltrate the culture of a fashion house.” By employing techniques first used in the label’s latest haute couture offering, “a trace of humanity can be found in every garment—a quality that defines them as Balenciaga.” An example: stitching “transposed from internal structures of tailoring” that creates volume on cotton T-shirts and leather jackets.
Silhouette is where the Italian designer and house founder Cristóbal Balenciaga are most in conversation. His approach to a sculptural look—with curves and angles that create shapes on the body—evokes some of the most beloved and studied pieces in the brand’s archive. For spring 2027, Piccioli employed it across trapeze trousers worn with belted jacket tops, shirt dresses that close diagonally across the body, drop-shoulder jackets with cocooning split sleeves paired to high-low feathered skirts, peplum hems on leather moto jackets, and T-shirt blouses.
The collection skewed more casual than Piccioli’s inaugural spring offering, with large credit to the styling that emphasized everyday wearability. “A lightness and softness are present throughout, a modern sensibility,” the collection notes stated. “In a focus on how garments move and feel, a priority is inherently afforded to comfort and ease—as if in your own skin.” The intended result, they continue, is a “freedom of gesture, freedom of movement, freedom of choice.”
Whether this was Piccioli’s final bow is to be seen. But celebrities including Sarah Pidgeon, Havana Rose Liu, Shailene Woodley, Isabelle Huppert, and Gemma Chan—friends new and old of Piccioli and Balenciaga—still showed up to support. Among them was my personal favorite: Miranda, the designer’s rescue dog, a front-row fixture at all of his shows, who got some nice pets from seatmate Brooklyn Beckham.
