/ FASHION n CULTURE Askew *
Set design for fashion shows
AUG 8 2025
Fashion shows are never just about clothes. They are staged worlds. Entire environments built with the same care and intention as the garments themselves.
The space of a fashion show frames how the audience views the collection, guiding the movement of models, setting the rhythm of the runway, and establishing the atmosphere that transforms clothing into narrative. A fashion show set can provide pointers regarding the designer’s intention or maybe divert from it in a way that adds another layer of meaning to the clothes. Along with the show soundtrack, it turns the show into a multi-sensory experience.
But fashion shows today often move beyond that. They are now immersive, site-specific happenings, often responding to the architecture, history, and atmosphere of the space they inhabit. Each fashion show (or fashion presentation) set can turn a collection of clothing into a happening.
Prada’s repeated transformation of the Deposito space at the Fondazione Prada, for example, places each season’s menswear and womenswear collections into a new world. Sometimes that is a two-story metal scaffolding with art-deco-print blue carpet (FW25), an office space with a running stream under it (FW24), a ceiling that moves up and down (FW23), or one that clear slime drips from (SS24). The space no longer just frames the clothes, bur rather it converses with them.
Historically, shows were intimate affairs. In the early 20th century, couture houses hosted their collections in private salons (like the one where Balenciaga is still showing their couture collections in), where models walked slowly through the rooms, close enough for clients to inspect every garment. The setting was quiet, private, almost domestic. The show functioned as a sales tool. It was not until the middle of the century that presentations began expanding beyond the salon and into public, performance-oriented formats.
By the 1970s and 80s, designers like Thierry Mugler and Gianni Versace were staging spectacles, where lighting, choreography, and soundtrack became inseparable from the clothes themselves. The set of the show was amplifying fashion’s status as entertainment.
Arguably, some of the most well-known fashion show sets are the ones at Chanel under Karl Lagerfeld’s direction. The Grand Palais was transformed into entire worlds — supermarkets, airports, beaches — where every detail became part of the collection’s story. Chanel’s SS16 airport set— complete with check-in counters and departure boards— immersed the audience completely in a fictional world of travel and desire.
Spanish artist Santiago Sierra carved a runway through mounds of mud for Balenciaga's SS23 show, while the SS22 show was set in an artificial snow blizzard, testing boundaries between fashion and environment.
More recently, Coperni has turned monumental venues like Disneyland (SS25), or massive LAN parties (FW25) into runways.
At the other end of the spectrum, brands like Jil Sander and The Row —known for their more minimal, or “pure” approach towards clothing— reduce decoration to almost nothing, crafting pared-back spaces where the clothes themselves take center stage.
This shift mirrors the discourse of contemporary art, where site-specific installations challenge the notion of neutral exhibition spaces. A fashion show set, like an installation, situates garments within a broader context. There’s the materiality of the walls, floor, and ceiling, the quality of light, the rhythm of movement, the scale of the space. Clothes interact with space, and space shapes perception. A pristine white space versus a raw, adaptive environment, reorients the audience’s experience, adding layers of narrative and meaning.
Set design also negotiates intimacy and spectacle. Narrow corridors force proximity. Mirrors multiply presence.
These choices account for both physical and digital spectators. In the age of livestreams, every element of a set functions as both a happening and an image. The lifespan of the set is not limited to the duration of the show, but it becomes an image that is shared over and over again.
Site-specific fashion sets, then, are far from decorative. They become conceptual tools, by translating the designer’s intentions, amplifying or subverting them, and situating garments in an experiential context. They guide interpretation, shape mood, and direct the viewer’s gaze.
Set design is a negotiation between clothes and space, fantasy and reality, intimacy and spectacle. Where clothes live is never neutral. The space is always a co-author, a collaborator, and a frame for the narrative the garments tell.