Four Overlooked Debut Collections Worth Noting

Clothes You Want To Wear

Debut collections for an established house present a dilemma for the designer hired to keep a brand going as the founding designer steps down or to fill a vacancy for a brand desperate for a reboot. All at once they must put their stamp on the house while preserving its codes and maintaining or reviving sales. It’s a tall order to accomplish in one season. It’s also an often unfair popularity contest. Darlings of the press are given much more leeway than the press-shy professionals who have been quietly doing their work without a lot of fanfare.

With so many big changes recently you need a spreadsheet to keep up with it all. There were a lot of eyes on the debuts at Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, Givenchy, and to some extent, Dries Van Noten. But enthusiasm or interest seemed to wane towards the end of fashion month. Also, new shake-ups on the horizon like Loewe's mysterious presentation in lieu of their usually hotly anticipated show, signaled a change which has now been confirmed with Jonathan Anderson stepping down as creative director after 11 years. Will he go to Christian Dior which has been rumored for several seasons to be cutting Maria Grazia Chiuri loose? My guess is yes, both are LVMH-owned. I can imagine Bernard Arnault moving his designers strategically around like chess pieces. There’s also a coveted vacancy at Balenciaga.

All the speculation on changes inside the big houses, owned by the all-powerful conglomerates, dominates the press coverage, leaving little oxygen for smaller players who are, nonetheless, established heritage houses deserving of attention. In response to this, here are my picks of four Fall ‘25 debuts worthy of our attention.