A small crystal, placed just beneath her left eye, caught the light as the rapper Cardi B took her front-row seat at Rahul Mishra’s show. She was swathed in an ivory-white katoor gown from the Indian designer’s ‘Devi’ collection, its transparent bodice encrusted with pearls, crystals and hand embroidery so sculptural it seemed carved from stone. A long braid with a centre parting, a crystal ornament on her forehead and diamond earrings completed a look that, within hours of her posting it on Instagram with the caption ‘I only accept princess treatment’, was being shared worldwide under captions like ‘walking art’ and ‘princess goddess’.

The week had opened earlier that day with Schiaparelli, where creative director Daniel Roseberry sent out a collection titled ‘The Abyss’ that married traditional tailoring with unexpected silicone elements. The British actress Emma Corrin arrived in a feathered ensemble that covered her neck to the ears with a high plumed collar and featured a horn-like detail at the chest, while the Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny wore a custom butter-yellow double-breasted suit, its black and gold braided tie and keyhole-shaped buttons nodding to the house’s surrealist codes. On the runway, three Brazilian models—Luiza Perote, Thalita Ferreira and Erika Barletta—embodied a new generation of talent from Latin America that is increasingly dominating international castings.

Behind the front rows, the haute couture market remains a world of extreme exclusivity. According to data cited in the Italian press, the sector is projected to surpass $13 billion in 2026, yet only an estimated 4,000 clients globally can truly afford its made-to-measure creations. The calendar for the coming days promised further spectacle: Dior under Jonathan Anderson, who had just designed Taylor Swift’s wedding dress; the debut of Pierpaolo Piccioli at Balenciaga; and high jewellery presentations from Chanel, Boucheron and Hermès. But the first day belonged to a dialogue between heritage and radical experimentation.

Nowhere was that dialogue more vivid than in Mishra’s ‘Devi’ collection, which drew on two millennia of Indian temple sculpture. Working with some 2,000 artisans, the designer transformed zardozi, dabka and beadwork into garments of extreme lightness that, on the runway, created the illusion of models with multiple faces—a visual echo of the many-armed deities carved into the ancient caves of Ajanta. Beside Cardi B sat Isha Ambani, daughter of India’s wealthiest family, wearing a metallic grey strapless gown and carrying a miniature Hermès Sac Bijou Birkin in white gold set with 3,025 diamonds, a piece previously carried by her mother. Lebanese fashion observers, writing in the Arab press, noted that the day’s strongest collections proved that ‘creativity now precedes decoration’ and that true haute couture is measured by a designer’s ability to give each collection an unmistakable identity.

As the first day drew to a close, the image of a crystal tear beneath a rapper’s eye and the ghostly silhouette of a feathered collar lingered, twin emblems of a week where fashion reached for the sacred and the strange. In a nearby venue, Iris Van Herpen had sent a garment through a particle accelerator before letting natural electrical discharges complete its detailing—a reminder that the quest for the sublime in couture now extends from the temple to the laboratory.