Unapologetic Grandure
Elie Saab‘s Fall 2025 couture fashion show review
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
Elie Saab christened this season La Nouvelle Cour (“The New Court”), and from the first look you feel the upward pull of a Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ceiling: pastel clouds, gilded scrollwork, and a sense that the floor might drop away at any moment. Phones rose like crystal candelabra as every guest strained to capture the sweep of a procession that sped from the Hall of Mirrors to a Belle-Époque ballroom and, finally, a 1950s Hollywood red-carpet dream. Saab isn’t chasing shock; he’s staging a many-era masque where Rococo flirtation, Victorian surface work and silver-screen poise co-habit the same breath.
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Rococo Time-Warp & Sovereign Sparkle
A sovereign colour story anchors the fantasy. Blush biscuit and icy blue—boudoir hues lifted from a Fragonard fête galante—spar with imperial black and antique bullion gold, echoing the gilded stuccos of 19-century state rooms. Fabrics are as opulent as the settings they conjure: moiré silk ripples like watered marble, brocade lamé gleams like salon upholstery, velvet pile drinks in light, and lurexed lace glitters under a net of beads and three-dimensional Sèvres-porcelain florals. Where cloth isn’t already radiant, Saab overwrites it with paillettes or pearl-stitched vines, turning every surface into a moving fresco.
Chokers, ribbon ties and teardrop “courtesan” pearls punctuate décolletés; wrist corsages and pocket blossoms nod to the nosegays ladies-in-waiting once carried at court. The effect is less historical reenactment than time-travel collage: Rococo silhouettes + Victorian embroidery + Belle-Époque plumage + Hollywood drape, all filtered through Saab’s Lebanese eye for maximal sparkle.
Fifty-plus looks swept by with ballroom haste, yet the room stayed laser-locked: screens aloft, necks craned, the hush punctured only by the click-click of eager cameras. Audience engagement became part of the choreography, confirming that these gowns demand—and receive—full attention. Saab promised “a sumptuous playground for the modern queen,” and delivered via ebony-velvet corsets that cinched before releasing brocade waterfalls, bead-built leopard spots prowling over blush tulle, and a mint-moire sheath sliced to reveal a decisive flash of thigh.
Still, one extra heartbeat between looks might have let us savour pearl-latticed bows and cape linings quilted like sucre à la crème. Kinetic shimmer is Saab’s secret sauce; letting it linger could have transformed admiration into awe.
THE DIRECTION
THE WRAP UP
La Nouvelle Cour doesn’t rewrite couture; it perfects it. Historic codes feel reborn rather than reheated, pastel sweetness is kept honest by midnight drama, and silhouettes are calibrated for women who want fantasy and fluency. Saab’s house trades not in disruption but in assurance: proof that satisfaction, rendered at this altitude, is rarer—and more thrilling—than surprise.
Elie Saab doesn’t surprise; he satisfies—and satisfaction, at this level, is a rarer thrill than shock.
Saab closed with a bride in moonlit florals and a pearl-toned overskirt—a soft bow to history, a confident nod to the future, and a reminder that when narrative and handwork lock this tightly, couture’s new court will always have subjects willing to kneel.
