By Gabriela Afanador
Saturday 3, October 2026
Elie Saab showed À Fleur de Peau on October 3 in Paris, and the setting alone told you most of what the collection wanted to say before anyone had seen a single dress. The house built an actual greenhouse for the show, with heather, baby’s breath, potted greenery, and wild field flowers lining both sides of the runway, the ground underneath paved in warm terracotta tile instead of the usual polished runway floor. The light in the room kept changing too, starting soft and pale like early morning for the first daywear looks, then slowly warming into something golden by the time the final embroidered gowns came out at the end, almost like watching an actual day pass from sunrise into evening.
The hair carried a lot of that same romantic feeling. Styled in soft, loose waves that nodded to old Hollywood, parted casually rather than pinned into anything stiff or too perfect, it moved freely with the models as they walked. Not every look got the exact same hairstyle either, some were slicked back, others had a sharp, defined side part, and a few came down the runway in a full, bouncy blowout, so there was real variety even while everything still felt connected to that same soft, undone mood. The makeup followed a similar logic, dewy, barely there skin with tiny pressed flowers and little faux dewdrops stuck right at the temple and cheekbone, a small detail that echoed the floral embroidery running through so much of the clothing itself. Even the way the models walked added to this feeling. Instead of the usual brisk, composed runway stride, they moved slowly and let things happen naturally, catching a strap as it slipped or letting a shawl fall loose rather than fixing it right away, which made the whole thing feel less like a performance and more like watching someone actually get dressed and move through her day.
Photo via eliesaab.com
The Collection
The whole collection takes its name from a French phrase, à fleur de peau, which describes a feeling of being raw and hypersensitive, something felt right at the surface of the skin rather than held at any kind of distance. Saab didn’t treat that phrase as just a pretty title either, he actually built the clothes around it, letting the idea guide real construction decisions rather than keeping it as a loose, vague mood board reference. Pieces that would normally stay private and hidden, like negligees, corsets, bias cut slips, and bralettes, got pulled directly into daylight here and worn as real daytime and evening clothes instead of something kept underneath. That’s really the whole thesis of the collection in one sentence, the idea that intimacy and public dressing don’t need to stay separate from each other, that a woman can wear something close enough to her own skin that it reads almost like lingerie and still walk out the door in it with complete confidence.
The designer also leaned heavily on Jean Harlow, the 1930s Hollywood star famous for wearing liquid, bias cut silk gowns with nothing structured underneath them at all, a kind of relaxed, uncorseted sensuality that felt completely different from the stiffer, more formal silhouettes that came before her. Harlow represented a real break from the boxier, more covered up shapes of the decade before she came along, and Saab specifically chose her over any of the more rigid, boned silhouettes associated with classic 1950s French couture, since that fluid, almost careless looking elegance fit so much better with what this collection was actually trying to say. That same loose, slightly undone quality runs through this whole collection, a strap slipping off the shoulder, a hem cut unevenly, nothing pinned into place too perfectly. Even in the most elaborately constructed pieces, there’s always some small detail left looking unfinished on purpose, a knotted ribbon instead of a clasp, an asymmetric hem instead of something perfectly even, a sense that the woman wearing it got dressed quickly and naturally rather than being carefully arranged into her clothes by someone else.
Saab also went back into his own archive from the early 2000s for this one, specifically the sheer, floral embroidered gown Halle Berry wore to the Oscars back in 2002, a dress that helped define an entire era of red carpet style that a lot of younger people are only now rediscovering through old photos and trend cycles online. That gown was a genuinely defining moment for the house, one of those rare red carpet looks that actually shifted what people expected from eveningwear afterward, sheer and corseted in a way that felt daring at the time but has since become something close to a template that other designers have borrowed from repeatedly over the years. Rather than letting that whole look get credited to the internet’s current obsession with Y2K style, or watching other brands get praised for reviving a silhouette he originated, Saab used this collection to remind everyone that the sheerness, the corsetry, and the botanical embroidery all came out of his own atelier first, decades before anyone else picked it back up. There’s something almost personal about that decision too, choosing to look backward at his own career rather than outward at whatever else is trending right now, trusting that the original version of an idea still has more to say than its more recent copies.
The Clothes
Photo via eliesaab.com
Grace Elizabeth opened the show in a strapless corseted gown done in sheer, floral embroidered lace, with pink and green flowers climbing up the bodice and down the skirt, and thin straps left loose enough to slip naturally off the shoulder instead of sitting pinned in place. The lace gathers more densely around the chest and thins out as it moves toward the hem, so the embroidery really does trace the shape of the body rather than just repeating flat across the fabric, and that loose, falling strap was a simple but effective way to open the whole show on the idea of clothes that feel a little undone rather than perfectly fastened. Jasmin Wijnaldum came out next in look two, and this one pushed the same idea somewhere a bit more structured, an off the shoulder corset in that same pink and green floral lace, cinched tight through the waist, releasing into a golden, open knit midi skirt finished with a scalloped lace hem. The corset itself is doing real work here, shaping the waist without any of the stiff boning you’d normally expect from a corset, while the knit skirt underneath stays completely sheer the whole way down, so you get both the structure and the transparency the whole collection keeps coming back to.
Photo via eliesaab.com
From there the show moved into its daywear section, done in sand, camel, and milk chocolate tones, pairing more relaxed tailoring against those same sheer, lingerie inspired pieces. A pink lace top showed up early in this stretch, worn against softer daytime separates, before one particularly good look came down the runway pairing a chocolate nappa leather jacket with a completely sheer, flowing skirt underneath. The leather gives real weight and structure up top, while the skirt moves totally freely underneath it, catching air with every step, and that contrast, something protective and heavy worn over something so bare and light, is really the whole collection summed up in one outfit. That look set the stage for what came next, moving from warm browns into a softer, dusty blue, before the whole palette opened up into fuller lace and silk gowns.
Photo via eliesaab.com
One of the best moments in this middle stretch of the show is a pale aquamarine gown, cut short and uneven at the front with a long train trailing behind it, the fabric painted with a floral print that seems to move down the body rather than sitting fixed in one spot. Watching it in motion, that dress really comes alive, the uneven hem and the train lifting and swaying with every step so the print itself almost looks like it’s shifting and traveling across the fabric as she walks, which is exactly the kind of effect you’d want from a dress built this light and unstructured. A little further along, a dusty mauve gown appeared with a fitted lace bodice, scalloped at the bust and pulled in tight through the waist, releasing into a soft, flowing silk skirt that moved with that same kind of ease as the aquamarine dress before it. The lace here has real texture to it too, raised floral shapes rather than anything flat, and the color fades from the bodice into a lighter, almost nude tone by the hem, which gives the skirt a gradient effect that catches the light differently depending on how the fabric happens to fold.
Photo via eliesaab.com
A textured knit dress came next, offering a nice break from all the lace and silk surrounding it, before the show moved into greens and then circled back into more lace, this time with small touches of leopard print and polka dots layered underneath sheer overlays. A long cream trench coat appeared loosely belted over a floral lace camisole and a soft, draped silk skirt in the same tone, the coat left open rather than buttoned so the delicate slip dress underneath stayed fully visible. Not long after, a cream bralette and matching tiered skirt showed up, built from frayed, scalloped lace laid out in horizontal bands, sheer enough that the legs were fully visible underneath, with small bows tying at the waist on both the top and the skirt, a genuinely pretty daytime pairing that still carried that same lingerie inspired feeling all the way through.
The collection then moved into capri length trousers paired with a polka dot jacket in black and pink, before landing on a proper little black dress moment inside a stretch of corsetry pieces. The corsets throughout this part of the show are built from soft net supports and light boning rather than anything rigid, so even the most structured looking pieces still moved easily on the body as the models walked. One black gown in particular stood out here too, built from sheer, beaded Chantilly lace with a deep V neckline, the lace dense with floral shapes and finished with fine crystal beading that caught the light with every movement, worn with ribbon tied heels that matched the ballet slipper style footwear running through the whole collection.
Photo via eliesaab.com
Later in the show, a nude, fully beaded column gown came out, the beading arranged in a diagonal, almost rippling pattern down the whole body, sheer enough underneath the runway lights that it read as genuinely see through while still catching light constantly as she walked. Getting that much beading onto such a sheer base without the dress looking heavy takes real precision, since too much weight in the beadwork would have pulled the whole thing out of shape. From there the show moved back into black lace before settling into its final stretch of full length gowns, closing out on the same soft, botanical, see through quality it opened with, flowers and vines worked right over illusion tulle instead of anything opaque, so the ending felt like a continuation of the beginning rather than something completely separate.
The Close
This is a collection that really earns the romance it’s going for. The construction underneath all that softness is clearly well thought out, corsets built without any stiff boning, lace cut so it actually moves instead of holding one fixed shape, skirts built specifically to catch air and trail behind rather than just hang there. Watching pieces like that aquamarine gown or the beaded nude column dress move makes it obvious how much this whole collection depends on the fabric and the cut working together, since a dress this sheer and loose only looks elegant instead of simply undone when the construction underneath it is actually this precise.
What stays with me most is how connected the whole thing feels even while moving through so many different textures and colors across sixty-four looks, sand into pastel into black lace into those final translucent, botanical gowns. Every single section still comes back to that same idea, clothes worn close to the skin instead of held away from it. Even the hair and the little pressed flowers on the models’ skin tie back into that same idea just as much as the corsetry does, and that kind of consistency across the staging, the beauty, and the actual construction is what makes this collection feel like it really holds together as one complete idea. It’s soft without ever feeling weak, and feminine in a way that still carries real technical weight underneath it.