Kiko Kostadinov Women Fall/Winter 2025 / FW25 at Paris Fashion Week, Who are you between the night and the morning? Who are you wandering the city?

The sensual, rakish spirit of discovering a new city—and a new self—informs Kiko Kostadinov Women FW25 / Fall/Winter 2025 collection. We are looking at the life of Vali Myers (b.1930, d. 2003), a free-spirited Australian dancer who moved among Paris’s most bohemian spaces in the 1950s. Staying up all night, undressing, drinking champagne and galavanting bravely through the city as the sun rises, just a topcoat thrown over a slip. Her states of dress and undress inspire the freedom and playfulness in this collection. We also looked at the black and white photos of women in between composure and liberation in Ed Van Der Elksen’s Love of the Left Bank (1956). All these characters chose Paris as their spiritual center, creating new personas through a collage of style and performance.

Details of Kiko Kostadinov Women FW25 / Fall/Winter 2025, the collection takes shape around traditional women’s underpinnings. Pointed brassieres and stiff ¬crinolines accentuate the bosom and the hips, morphed into softer darts on blouses and sti¬ffer peplums around the waist. The idea mutates into other ways to hold space around the body: thermoset rounded shoulders and stiff¬ened pleats give knitwear a powerful structure. Lingerie continues in slip dresses with abstract paisley appliqués, soft darts in blouses, and ultra-thin knitwear layers that stay close to the skin.

Against the girlish is the boyish. The thrifted layering of Teddy Girls and tomboys brings us new ways to think about suiting, shirting, and outerwear. Traditional menswear shirting in pastel stripes has drawstring waists and ties are wrapped into collars. Custom rope belts and trims add a worldly sense to gray and pinstripe suiting, some with adjustable hems, others with womanly cinched waists. Rope stays appear on arms and waists, and leather belts with pony hair compartments are between a belt and a bag, zippers inside reveal pockets to hold the essentials. Flat shoes with high socks evoke the styling of the 1950s, and new Japanese denim pieces carry the bold, tightly composed silhouettes popular in the era: Rounded batwing jackets and tiny cigarette pants. Each piece is handpainted in Japan with paint splatters, the mark of a good time.

Alpaca blend coats have side vents to accommodate motion. Textures are raw and rebellious, reflective of the frenetic state of our muse’s mind: knitted mohair, moleskin, alpaca. Never staying in one place, one mindset, she is open to change. She wears curved wedge pumps in feathered leather or modular thigh-high boots in a custom navy-and-maroon printed paisley, each rung able to zip o¬ into a knee-high or a flat. New Asics sneakers feature a split toe and sinuous pattern. Her accessories have personalities to match her moods: a doctor’s bag, a glamorous crystal earring, a sprite’s pointed cap, a kerchief with gemstones inset at the neck. We are thinking of women taking up their bodies, being sexual and monumental, strong minded and soft. Finding a path for oneself in the in-between of opposites, the way only a woman can.

All images Kiko Kostadinov Women FW25 / Fall/Winter 2025 by the brand. Credit to: Collection design and direction: Laura and Deanna Fanning / Stylist: Imruh Asha at Art Partner / Casting: Henry Thomas at Bryant Artists / Hair: Olivier Schawalder at Art + Commerce / Make-up: Siddhartha Simone at Streeters / Press: A.I. PR / Music direction: Bill Kouligas