Gold at the Trocadéro, red on the ticker

Tuesday night at the Trocadéro, Anthony Vaccarello marked ten years at Saint Laurent with a spring/summer 2027 show that read, to almost everyone in the garden, like a farewell he has not confirmed. Forty-nine of the looks were gold — leaf on latex, embroidered dresses, brocade skirts, varnished trench coats — under chandeliers modeled on the old Hôtel Inter-Continental couture room, with the Eiffel Tower lit behind the runway. The front row mixed the decade’s muses (Kate Moss, Zoë Kravitz, Hailey Bieber, Catherine Deneuve, Betty Catroux) with newer names. Charlotte Gainsbourg closed in a tuxedo, singing a song built on the name Yves Saint Laurent. Vaccarello took his bow, hugged her, and handed a key to his young son in the audience. Neither the house nor Kering has announced a departure or a successor. The show still behaved like one.

The same day, a few blocks and a world away in tone, Jonathan Anderson showed his second women’s collection for Dior, a year after his debut at the LVMH house: metallic trousers, structured jackets, sheer tops, feathered skirts. Business of Fashion’s Paris notes framed the week as houses coping with change in very different ways — Saint Laurent, Dior, and Maison Margiela on day two; Tom Ford, The Row, and Dries Van Noten on day three, where the clothes did more talking than the concepts. Stella McCartney used Wednesday’s slot for an ocean-themed collection of floaty fabrics, bubble hems, and wave motifs, aimed at overfishing and climate. L’Oréal Paris had already opened the celebrity side of the week on Monday, with Celine Dion closing its runway.

Off the schedule, the business story was less gilded. Shein, listed in Hong Kong on September 1 at roughly a $26 billion valuation, reported its first results as a public company and watched the stock fall as much as 14 percent to a record low, cutting market value toward $17 billion. Adjusted quarterly profit dropped 67 percent to $228 million; the margin compressed to 2.1 percent from 6.2 percent a year earlier. Jefferies estimated the quarter landed more than 10 percent below the low end implied by the prospectus. Freight and jet-fuel costs tied to conflict in the Middle East hit a business that still flies cheap clothes to customers. European sales fell after Shein raised prices and cut ads ahead of the EU’s €3 fee on low-value parcels, in force since July 1. CEO Yangtian Xu said the priority is more inventory in Europe and a push into higher-priced clothes. Bloomberg also flagged a 53 percent drop in first-half operating income. The listing was already a fraction of the roughly $100 billion private peak in 2022.

That is the week in miniature. At the top, Kering and LVMH houses are still spending on night shows and succession theater while luxury demand stays selective — resilient at Hermès and Prada, thinner among aspirational buyers. At the volume end, the company that built a public story on speed and price is discovering that air freight, parcel fees, and a thinner margin do not photograph as well as gold latex. Paris continues through the first days of October; Melbourne Fashion Week follows October 19–25 under the theme “Wear the Moment.”