Biker jackets, black leather and a hint of danger. Autumn turns darker, sharper and a little rebellious.
Versace dressed the supermodels in leather harnesses and bondage-inspired couture, one of the boldest and most debated collections of the 1990s.
Video: Videofashion on YouTube
Photographed by Steven Meisel · Sophie Dahl
Sophie Dahl, wearing only jewellery and stilettos on black velvet, drew hundreds of complaints in the UK and was banned by the advertising watchdog, making it one of the most talked-about perfume ads.
Peter Lindbergh · Vogue (US)
Eight supermodels, from Cindy Crawford to Naomi Campbell, in biker jackets on the streets of New York: leather as the uniform of a generation.
Snow-bright tweeds, ivory knits and cold, clean light: the season at its most luminous. Think frost on bouclé and fur-trimmed boots on a glacier.
Lagerfeld had a real iceberg shipped from Sweden into the Grand Palais, and models in shaggy faux fur and snow boots walked around it as it slowly melted.
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Photographed by Annie Leibovitz · Karen Elson, James Jagger
For Fall/Winter 2016-17 Leibovitz staged a surreal, Nordic-flavoured fairy tale in which snow and cold frame every image.
Irving Penn · Vogue (US), 1 April 1950
Penn's first monochrome cover, and the magazine's first non-colour cover since 1932: proof that a palette pared down to white and black can be the most striking of all.
Candlelight, satin and the rustle of a ball skirt: party season calls for couture-sized gestures. This week is all about dressing for the grandest night of the year.
Staged at the Palace of Versailles in July 2007 to mark the house's 60th anniversary, the show was a parade of extravagant gowns that paid homage to art and fashion history.
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Photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin · Daria Strokous, Melissa Stasiuk, Xiao Wen Ju
The first 'Secret Garden' film and campaign sent three models running through the halls and gardens of Versailles to Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence'.
Cecil Beaton · Vogue (US)
A group of models in Charles James ball gowns, arranged like a painting; the image became the emblem of the Met's 2014 Charles James exhibition.
Winter nights belong to spectacle: sequins, sculpted shoulders and a little circus magic. Fashion as a full-scale show, from ringside to finale.
Mugler celebrated twenty years of his house at the Cirque d'Hiver with an epic show of hundreds of looks, a cast of supermodels and a surprise performance by James Brown.
Video: Videofashion on YouTube
Photographed by Steven Meisel · Madonna
Madonna's first Versace campaign, for Spring/Summer 1995, turned the pop star into a mostly black-and-white vision of old-school glamour.
Richard Avedon · Harper's Bazaar (US), September 1955
Shot at the very circus where Mugler would later stage his anniversary show, Dovima in a Dior gown between circus elephants became one of the most famous fashion photographs ever taken.
First names only: Linda, Naomi, Cindy, Christy. A tribute to the decade when models became stars and the runway turned into pop culture.
The finale saw Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington walk arm in arm, lip-syncing to George Michael's 'Freedom! '90', the defining image of the supermodel era.
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Photographed by Richard Avedon · Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, Aya Thorgren, Shalom Harlow
The Spring/Summer 1993 campaign caught the supermodels in Avedon's restless, jerky movement, one of the high points of a partnership that ran from 1980 to 1998.
Peter Lindbergh · British Vogue, January 1990
Photographed together for the first time on the streets of New York, the five models on this cover set off the supermodel phenomenon.
The garden comes indoors: petals, full skirts and colour in bloom. Spring dressing at its most romantic, with couture as the greenhouse.
For his first Dior show, Raf Simons covered the walls of a Paris mansion with fresh flowers, a staging later immortalised in the documentary 'Dior and I'.
Video: Canale Moda Since 1982 on YouTube
Photographed by Glen Luchford · Dakota Johnson, Hari Nef, Petra Collins
The campaign for Gucci Bloom, Alessandro Michele's first fragrance for the house, set three very different faces in a dreamy, flower-filled world.
Melvin Sokolsky · Harper's Bazaar (US)
Shot in Paris for the spring collections, Simone D'Aillencourt floats above the Seine in a Plexiglas bubble: a fairy-tale image of spring couture.
A white canvas, a splash of paint and a dash of performance. This week, fashion meets the art studio and the machine.
In the finale Shalom Harlow turned slowly on a platform while two industrial robots spray-painted her white dress, a moment inspired by Rebecca Horn's installation 'High Moon'.
Video: McQueen on YouTube
Photographed by CGI by Tetsuya Nomura (Square Enix) · Lightning, the virtual heroine of Final Fantasy XIII
For the Spring/Summer 2016 'Series 4' campaign, Nicolas Ghesquière cast a video-game character as the face of the house, blurring the line between fashion and digital art.
Cecil Beaton · Vogue (US), 1 March 1951
Beaton posed ball gowns against Pollock's drip paintings at the Betty Parsons Gallery, a famous and much-debated meeting of couture and abstract art.
Nipped waists, rounded shoulders and skirts that swing: the silhouette that rebuilt Paris after the war, seen through two generations of Dior.
Galliano's first couture collection for Dior, shown in January 1997, revisited the house codes with Belle Époque romance and theatrical flair.
Video: Videofashion on YouTube
Photographed by Peter Lindbergh · Marion Cotillard
Lindbergh followed Cotillard, the face of the Lady Dior bag since 2008, along the banks of the Seine for a breezy portrait of the Parisienne.
Richard Avedon · Harper's Bazaar (US), October 1947
On his first Paris assignment, Avedon caught Renée Breton spinning on the Place de la Concorde, her Dior skirt flaring around her: the New Look in motion.
A tuxedo cut for a woman, worn with nothing but attitude. Spring evenings in Paris call for sharp black tailoring.
On 22 January 2002 at the Centre Pompidou, Saint Laurent closed his forty-year career with a retrospective show of his greatest designs, from the safari jacket to Le Smoking.
Video: Fashion Channel on YouTube
Photographed by Jeanloup Sieff · Yves Saint Laurent
The designer posed nude himself to launch his first men's fragrance; the provocative image was turned down by several French publications.
Helmut Newton · Vogue Paris, September 1975
A woman in a Saint Laurent tuxedo, hair slicked back, smoking in a lamplit Marais street: the image that made Le Smoking a legend.
Striped beach cabins, white sunglasses and the glitter of the Mediterranean. Summer on the coast, from Monte-Carlo to Capri.
Shown in May 2022 at the Monte-Carlo Beach hotel, the collection mixed seaside chic with a nod to motor racing and the Riviera's jet-set life.
Video: CHANEL on YouTube
Photographed by Mario Testino · David Gandy, Marija Vujović
Shot off Capri near the Faraglioni rocks, the Light Blue campaign, with Gandy in white swimwear, became the image of the Mediterranean summer.
George Hoyningen-Huene · Vogue
Two bathers on a diving board seem to face an endless sea, yet the picture was made on the roof of Vogue's studio in Paris: the Riviera as pure illusion.
Sun on the skin, linen in the wind and fields that smell of lavender. The easy, barefoot side of summer.
For the label's tenth anniversary, in June 2019, a bright pink runway was laid through a Provençal lavender field.
Video: JACQUEMUS on YouTube
Photographed by Mario Sorrenti · Kate Moss
Shot on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands by her then boyfriend, these raw black-and-white holiday images changed the look of fragrance advertising.
Corinne Day · The Face, July 1990
A make-up-free Kate Moss laughing on the beach at Camber Sands: the story that launched her career and a new, natural kind of fashion image.
Desert light, modernist houses and long shadows by the pool. A West Coast summer of sunglasses and denim.
Ghesquière showed this Cruise collection in May 2015 at Bob and Dolores Hope's John Lautner-designed house above Palm Springs.
Video: FF Channel on YouTube
Photographed by Ellen von Unwerth · Claudia Schiffer
The sultry black-and-white Guess jeans campaign made stars of both the 19-year-old Claudia Schiffer and the photographer.
Herb Ritts · Rolling Stone (shoot for the May 1989 'Hot Issue')
Five models wrapped together, shot in Los Angeles at the end of a long day; the full group image surfaced later and became an icon of the era.
Waves, wet sand and gowns that float like seaweed. A summer spent half on the beach and half under water.
Lagerfeld built a beach with real sand and lapping waves under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, a memory of his childhood summers.
Video: CHANEL on YouTube
Photographed by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott · Gisele Bündchen, Mariacarla Boscono, Chris Moore, Simone Nobili
Riccardo Tisci described his Spring/Summer 2012 campaign, with black surfboards under stormy skies, as a love story between a surfer and a mermaid.
Toni Frissell · Harper's Bazaar (US), December 1947
A model in a long gown drifts under water in a Florida spring, an image later reused on the cover of Bill Evans and Jim Hall's album 'Undercurrent'.
Jewel-toned velvet, satin shirts and a touch of Seventies swagger. Autumn evenings are made for decadent textures.
Velvet hip-huggers, jewel-coloured satin shirts and glossy loafers: the collection that revived Gucci and made Tom Ford a star.
Video: Canale Moda Since 1982 on YouTube
Photographed by Mario Testino · Amber Valletta
Styled by Carine Roitfeld, Testino's Fall/Winter 1995 images defined the sexy, glossy Gucci of the Tom Ford years.
Norman Parkinson · Vogue (US), October 1949
Four models in velvet hats gossip on the roof of the Condé Nast building, Manhattan's skyline behind them: velvet with wit and city chic.
Tweed jackets, kilts and tartan worn with a punk wink. British heritage, cut sharp for the new season.
A celebration of tartan and British tailoring, remembered for Naomi Campbell's laughing fall from towering platform shoes on the runway.
Video: Canale Moda Since 1982 on YouTube
Photographed by Mario Testino · Emma Watson
For Autumn/Winter 2009-10 Testino photographed Emma Watson in the Burberry trench around Westminster, a very English picture of heritage dressing.
William Klein · Vogue
Klein sent two models striding across a Roman street among passers-by, bringing the energy of street photography to tailored fashion.
Lace, corsets and the melancholy of misty moors. As the nights draw in, fashion turns romantic and slightly haunted.
A homage to McQueen's Scottish roots in tartan and lace, closed by a ghostly hologram of Kate Moss floating inside a glass pyramid.
Video: McQueen on YouTube
Photographed by Steven Klein · Kate Moss
For Spring/Summer 2014 Klein filmed Kate Moss alone in a dark East London house, an eerie tribute to the thriller 'Peeping Tom'.
Horst P. Horst · Vogue
Taken in Paris on the eve of the Second World War, the back of a model in a laced corset became one of the most celebrated fashion photographs ever made.