The Top 10 Women’s Shows of 2022 Following the pandemic, the sky is the limit with regards to runway shows.

From essentially the most glamorous resort destinations and exquisite couture moments from Valentino to a culture-shaping, Instagram-viral Coperni show featuring Bella Hadid dressed by spraying Fabrican Spray-on fabric, WWD’s top 10 runway shows of 2022 display the megawatt experience that has emerged from the standard industry-attending runway format.

WWD staff’s criteria show that it’s not only concerning the dazzling clothes, but in addition locations, showmanship, originality, clarity of purpose and vision, relevance, emotional impact and immersive experiences that expand far beyond showtime through social media’s wide reach, driven not only by the brands themselves but through influencer and celebrity partnerships.

From Bottega Veneta’s standout spring 2023 collection featuring Kate Moss clad in a leather plaid shirt and jeans to Rick Owens’ parvis of the Palais de Tokyo-set seductive spring spectacular, these runway shows ticked all of the boxes with a definite standpoint.

Here, WWD’s top 10 women’s shows of 2022.

1. Bottega Veneta Spring 2023

“Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore collection was pure dynamite — a highlight of Milan Fashion Week,” reported WWD’s Miles Socha.

“Watching Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore show for Bottega Veneta, propped on a colourful chair by Italian design master Gaetano Pesce, was edge-of-your-seat exhilarating, considered one of the highlights of a Milan Fashion Week short on fashion fireworks. And it wasn’t because Kate Moss was back on the runway but because the garments were pure dynamite: considered, luxurious, sophisticated and slyly inventive, at all times offering greater than what the attention first perceived.”

2. Gucci Spring 2023

Alessandro Michele’s spring runway collection for Gucci — his latest, and last for the storied house as creative director — was reported by WWD’s Booth Moore as a “poignant statement about solidarity in a deeply divided time.”

“It was a beautiful, and deeply introspective, moment for Michele,” Moore said of the show’s 68 pairs of model look-alikes — all of them actual real-life twins — that got here together from opposite sides on the runway, joining hands for a final walk.

3. Louis Vuitton Cruise 2023

Nicholas Ghesquière was once more drawn to California to debut his Louis Vuitton resort collection within the plaza of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.

“Nature does placed on show,” WWD’s Moore wrote. “Which is one reason why Nicolas Ghesquière was drawn to California once more to present his resort collection for the French fashion house. That and the dramatic Brutalist architecture of the research institute founded by vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk and designed by architect Louis Kahn. The mirror-image blocky concrete buildings with a trickling “River of Life” running through the middle plaza, and out to the ocean beyond, made for a wonderfully scenic backdrop, which is admittedly what resort shows are all about: the photo op.

“Ghesquière’s runway gestures were equally grand. The gathering was inspired by the California landscape, desert nomads and surf rats, along with his signature sci-fi cinematic touches right at home against the stark sunset vista.”

4. Loewe Spring 2023

“Jonathan Anderson settled on either shrunken or supersized silhouettes, and each were sensational,” Socha said of Anderson’s spring collection for Loewe.

“After a gripping Loewe men’s show in June that exalted nature and technology in tender and disquieting ways, here was one other spectacle that made you concentrate on each — and dazzled you with fashion fireworks.”

5. Valentino Spring 2022 Couture

“Pierpaolo Piccioli’s latest high fashion collection for Valentino, an haute experiment in dressing women with quite a lot of body frames, is certain to awaken interest amongst design students, diversity proponents — and anyone with greater than a passing curiosity about why we discover some bodies more beautiful than others,” Socha wrote.

“The Italian designer decided to interrupt the couture tradition of fitting collections on a single-fit model and embrace a broader spectrum of humanity by way of age and body shape. He relished the challenge of making couture outfits that might best dignify and exalt the great thing about each individual, achieving the aim of couture in the primary place.”

6. Dior Cruise 2023

“On a day when religious processions snaked across Seville to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi, Maria Grazia Chiuri staged her own spectacle within the Andalusian city, taking up the vast Plaza de España with a fashion and flamenco show for Dior’s annual cruise collection,” reported WWD’s Joelle Diderich.

“Chiuri delivered considered one of her most achieved collections to this point, rife with desirable clothes and exceptional craftsmanship,” she added.

7. Rick Owens Spring 2023

“The designer seduced with a fountain, fog, gorgeous colours and frothy silhouetted,” Socha described of Rick Owens’ spring show.

“I’m saying there are different aesthetic options,” Owens explained backstage amid eco-tulle skirts so vast they stood on their very own. “It’s a protest against conventional judgment. And that is what I even have dedicated my life to.”

“And what a ravishing fashion protest it was,” Socha added.

8. Jil Sander Spring 2023

“Lucie and Luke Meier served up considered one of the highlights of the week with an enthralling collection that combined pragmatism and Hollywood glitz,” WWD’s Sandra Salibian wrote of Jil Sander’s coed spring collection.

“This was a display of fashion force, which exhibited the charm of the Meiers’ codes. Precision, a way of ease and proportion, research into fabrics, crafty details and a singular color sensibility inform their approach.”

9. Chanel Cruise 2023

“Virginie Viard, creative director of the French luxury brand since [Karl] Lagerfeld’s death in 2019, set about writing the following chapter of the story together with her cruise collection, which was equal parts homage to Princess Caroline [of Monaco], and tongue-in-cheek wink to the popular culture aura of the land that spawned a thousand Lagerfeld photo shoots,” wrote Diderich of Viard’s Chanel cruise show, which was set in Monaco and boasted a celebrity-filled audience (with the likes of Kristen Stewart, Tilda Swinton, G-Dragon, Sofia Coppola and Vanessa Paradis).

10. Coperni Spring 2023

“Technology and fashion have at all times been uneasy bedfellows, but when anyone could make science sexy, then it’s Coperni designers, who partnered with Manel Torres, the inventor of the Spray-on fabric, for the performance,” Diderich reported of the Coperni designer and married couple Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer’s show-closing performance featuring an almost naked Bella Hadid in “the world’s first live-action spray-on dress.”

“Beyond the ‘wow’ factor of watching Hadid walk down the runway in her fast dress, the show raised every kind of fascinating questions on how technology will change the way in which we clothe ourselves not only within the virtual world, but IRL,” Diderich added.