Hermès, the last Veronique Nichanian fashion show goes on stage

"It's not a retrospective, but a collection like any other, in which some of the silhouettes I've always favoured, my games with colour, and Hermès' unique knowledge of how to handle material return," says Veronique Nichanian just before the Hermes fashion show. It is her official and conscious farewell after a thirty-seven-year honourable career, and Nichanian is the star of the day, with good reason. She is admired for her ability to quit while still at the peak of her powers, for her considered choice not to remain tied to her chair, for her desire to do something else while she still can. The event is loaded with meaning, but it is not triumphal or pompously celebratory, and ends with a messy standing ovation that is the perfect seal. On the catwalk, the Nichanian-thought is expressed with clarity and verve: dresses with snappy silhouettes, wrap-around blousons and parkas, and then fine leathers everywhere, really treated as if they were fabric: there is a midnight blue crocodile dinner jacket, even, and a pinstripe shearling suit that looks like cashmere sweatshirt. All this, in a very urban palette of greys, blues and blacks, mixed with subtle irreverence, which is also a good way to describe the Hermès man, never plastered, always easygoing and seductive. This brings to a close a chapter in the long history of the maison, which will be followed by a break season with the collection designed by the team and in exactly one year's time the highly anticipated debut of Grace Wales-Bonner.

Having left Milan to try his luck where the fashion game gets really tough, Luca Magliano makes his debut in Paris with a very tight, very painful, very Magliano summa of his classicism subverted by small gestures, of his very touching idea of provincial elegance, brought to life by specimens of various humanity with stories written on their faces, bodies and gestures. Averse to comfortable situations, Magliano gets back into the game not out of pride or hunger for greatness, but with the awareness that where one is not perfectly at ease, one rediscovers one's strengths, one's character. It is a mature and touching debut, so deeply Italian in soul and personality as to appear challenging in the ville lumière.

The Sacai formula is well established, but Chitose Abe has the rare ability to reiterate his idea of the hybrid in ways that are never repetitive or stale. This season he works around the theme of destruction followed by construction, and on a fluid fusion of masculine and feminine, of jacket and tie and skirt, with the addition of vibrant prints, rustic knits and boxing references. The result is one of the best Sacai collections of recent times.

After the Bulgarian science fiction of the past, Kiko Kostadinov finds clarity and makes real clothes - pure, graphic, liquid - not film costumes. Louis-Gabriel Nouchi works on the body and exhibited sexuality, imagining clothes that cover to invite undressing. It is a highly personal code, his, authentic and capable of rallying a community. What needs refinement is the translation of the chosen theme into clothes - this time, Alien - because it is still too rigid or scholastic. At Kolor, Taro Horiuchi works on the brand's codes - an abstract fusion of soft tailoring and sporty functionality - but goes in unexpected directions. The nautical theme, this season, is a harbinger of exciting changes: everything becomes rough, tactile, rich in detail, but real and scratched instead of lambasted.

At Jacquemus, finally, it's time for 1980s hedonism: party at the Picasso Museum with Paloma photographed by Helmut Newton and Pablo's carnival figures in mind. It's all fun, flamboyant, graphic and sculptural, but the women's couture looks a little homemade, while the men's part of the collection is more convincing.