Fashion Designers' Last Shows and Farewell Collections

Hubert de Givenchy's final couture show, Paris, July 11, 1995 His Fall 1995 haute couture collection was the last he designed for the house that carried his name, and it ended with the models turning to applaud him as he took his bow. It is the reason to remember it: a couturier of the old school, famous for timeless elegance, closing on quiet gratitude rather than spectacle. It also marks a hinge in fashion history. John Galliano succeeded him, which made this goodbye the starting gun for the era of star designers taking over storied names.

Yves Saint Laurent's retrospective farewell, Centre Pompidou, Paris, January 22, 2002 The most complete career summary on this list. Instead of a new season, the show walked through forty years of his work on the most famous models of the moment, while a crowd in the square outside watched on a giant screen. It ended where his legacy lives: a closing run of tuxedos, his signature piece, with Saint Laurent taking his bow beside Catherine Deneuve and Laetitia Casta. If you watch only one farewell show, this is the one that explains why the rest of the list matters.

Tom Ford's last Gucci womenswear show, Milan, February 2004 Ford turned his exit into a glossy mini-retrospective, recreating the high points of roughly a decade at Gucci with fresh polish. For anyone who only knows Gucci as a logo, this is the clearest snapshot of how he rebuilt it into the sexiest name in fashion. It is also a reminder that tenure endings can come in pairs: his final Yves Saint Laurent ready-to-wear show followed in Paris weeks later, closing both jobs in a single season.

Valentino's last haute couture show, Paris, January 23, 2008 A planned goodbye staged with total control. The spring collection of 74 pieces, all satin bows, lace and crystal, stayed true to the feminine elegance that had defined his 45-year career. Then came the finale everyone remembers: the models returned together in his lipstick-red dress, the color that carries his name. Few designers have had a signature clear enough to close a career with one shade, and this is the show that proves Valentino had one.

Martin Margiela's 20th-anniversary show, fall 2008 The quietest exit here, and fittingly so for a designer who made a point of never attending his own shows. The show asked what was left after twenty years, forty shows and hundreds of garments, and answered with a greatest-hits retrospective of the house's ideas. Accounts date it to late September or October 2008. He retired from fashion the following year without fanfare. Watched now, it reads as a designer saying goodbye in the only way that suited him: through the clothes, never in person.

Christian Lacroix's last couture show, Paris, July 2009 The goodbye nobody planned. With his house in receivership, Lacroix put on a stripped-back couture show made possible because people gave their time for nothing, the models among them. The audience answered with a standing ovation and banners reading "Christian Lacroix Forever." It belongs here as the counterweight to the grand retrospectives: a collection shown under financial collapse, and the end of the couture house that had made his name. For anyone who loved his exuberant color and pouf skirts, it is the most bittersweet entry on the list.

Alexander McQueen's Plato's Atlantis, Paris, October 6, 2009 Nobody in the room knew it would be his last show, which makes it the most haunting farewell on this list. The Spring 2010 collection became the first fashion show streamed live on the internet, through SHOWstudio, and Lady Gaga used it to premiere "Bad Romance." McQueen died in February 2010, and the collection he left unfinished was completed by Sarah Burton. That makes Plato's Atlantis the last complete statement of his vision: technically daring, unsettling and years ahead of how fashion would be watched.

John Galliano's last Dior collection, shown without him, Paris, March 4, 2011 The most abrupt ending here. Dior dismissed Galliano days before the show over anti-Semitic remarks, and the house went ahead with his Fall 2011 ready-to-wear collection under a tent in the Rodin Museum gardens after an apology from chief executive Sidney Toledano. There was no designer's bow. Instead the seamstresses, tailors and embroiderers who made the clothes walked out together to a standing ovation. It closed a tenure of around 14 years and stands as a hard lesson that a farewell is not always chosen.

Raf Simons's last Jil Sander show, Fall 2012, Milan, February 25, 2012 His exit had been announced only the week before, and the audience knew it. Simons answered with his most romantic collection for the house: coats the color of face powder worn open like robes, with florist Mark Colle's flowers framing designs about femininity and fragility. Editors, stylists and photographers rose for a standing ovation, a rare sight at the end of a runway show, and he took a modest bow before retreating backstage. Seven years after arriving at Jil Sander as a menswear designer new to womenswear, he left on the collection that made his move to Dior feel inevitable.

Marc Jacobs's last Louis Vuitton show, Spring 2014, the Louvre, Paris, October 2, 2013 Jacobs turned his last show into a greatest-hits set, filling the space with pieces of earlier Vuitton runways in inky black: a dark fountain, a carousel of surreal horses, a twin escalator and a hotel elevator. It felt like a designer walking through his own memories of the house. LVMH announced shortly afterward that he was stepping down as creative director, closing an influential 16-year run. Jacobs partly dedicated the show to Anna Wintour, and her standing ovation capped the tenure.

Alber Elbaz's last Lanvin show, Spring 2016, Paris, October 2015 Nobody watching knew it was the end. Elbaz built the collection around the ritual of a night at the theater, with sequined jackets, short cocktail dresses and his undone suiting, and it read as a designer at ease after 14 years at the house. Weeks later, on October 28, 2015, Lanvin announced it had parted ways with him, and reports said he learned of his firing from a letter telling him not to come into the office. That makes this show one of the starkest abrupt endings here, the last word from a designer who had made Lanvin's soft, romantic glamour his own.

Karl Lagerfeld's final Chanel collection, Grand Palais, Paris, March 5, 2019 Lagerfeld died in February 2019 and did not want a public funeral, so this Fall 2019 show became the fashion world's goodbye. The Grand Palais was turned into a snowy mountain village with an Alpine chalet, the kind of all-in set he had made a Chanel habit. His friends and peers held a minute of silence, and many guests wept. It also served as a handover: his longtime studio head, Virginie Viard, was named to succeed him. Of all the posthumous farewells here, this is the one that felt most like a memorial.

Jean Paul Gaultier's final couture show, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, January 22, 2020 The happiest goodbye on the list, staged as a 50-year anniversary party for a packed theater. Boy George opened it with a tribute to Amy Winehouse, and the model Issa Lish emerged from a box carried in by dancers, setting a theatrical tone that never let up. The clothes mixed about 50 new looks with reworked pieces from the archive, so it doubles as a tour of his corsets and sailor stripes. He insisted the couture would go on in other forms, summing it up as "It's the end but it's not the end."

Virgil Abloh's final Louis Vuitton collection, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, January 20, 2022 Abloh died in November 2021 after a two-year battle with cancer, and Louis Vuitton went ahead with the Fall 2022 menswear collection he had designed, turning the show into a tribute. Its color-rich looks pulled together the themes he had worked on at the house since 2018. It belongs here as the posthumous farewell of the house's first African American creative director, a designer whose run ended with no chance to plan a goodbye. Watch it for the last complete statement of his Louis Vuitton in his own hand, presented by the team he left behind.

Alessandro Michele's last Gucci show, "Twinsburg," Milan, September 2022 The Spring 2023 show sent 68 pairs of identical twins down the runway in matching looks, a clever riff on doubles and identity that nobody read as a goodbye. Two months later Kering announced that his almost eight years as creative director were over. That makes it one of the clearest abrupt endings here: a designer still at full creative strength, closing a run that had made Gucci maximalist and romantic again, without a farewell he got to plan.

Sarah Burton's last Alexander McQueen show, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, September 30, 2023 Burton announced her departure two weeks before this Spring 2024 show, ending 26 years at the house, the last stretch of them as its creative director after taking over from its founder. Her notes cited female anatomy, Queen Elizabeth I, the blood-red rose and the artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. Its quiet power is in the cutting: tailoring sliced open like skin along the ribs, shoulders and bust. Naomi Campbell closed the show in silver, and the models took their final turn to David Bowie's "Heroes." It pairs naturally with Plato's Atlantis, the founder's final show, elsewhere on this list.

Dries Van Noten's final show, La Courneuve, near Paris, June 22, 2024 A designer leaving his own label on his own terms, more than three decades after his runway debut in 1991. The Spring 2025 menswear collection was titled "no beginning, no end," and he deliberately avoided a greatest-hits retrospective. The setting did the emotional work. Models walked a long runway covered in silver foil and confetti that drifted around their feet, and after his final bow to a standing ovation a curtain dropped to reveal a huge disco ball. Choose it to see how a planned goodbye can feel like a celebration rather than a eulogy.

Maria Grazia Chiuri's last Dior show, Cruise 2026, Rome, May 27, 2025 The first woman designer to lead Dior closed her nine-year tenure in the city she calls her own, in the gardens of the 18th-century Villa Albani Torlonia. The collection combined ready-to-wear with haute couture and took Roman patron Mimì Pecci-Blunt and her costume balls as its muse. Her departure was confirmed only after the show, which makes it a farewell the audience recognized in hindsight. For readers who followed her Dior, it is the clearest place to see where that near-decade of work ended up.

Demna's final Balenciaga couture show, Avenue George V, Paris, July 9, 2025 The surprise here was restraint. After nearly a decade of provocation at Balenciaga, which he joined in 2015, Demna closed with a couture collection rooted in craft, shown in the house's own salons on Avenue George V with both men's and women's looks. Kim Kardashian was among the cast, and his bow came with subtlety rather than spectacle. Seen next to his louder seasons, it reads as a designer proving he could have done classic couture all along, just before moving on to Gucci.

Giorgio Armani's final collection, Brera Art Gallery, Milan, September 28, 2025 Planned as the 50th-anniversary show of his signature line, it became a tribute after Armani died on September 4, just weeks before Milan Fashion Week. This was the last Giorgio Armani collection signed by the designer himself, shown in the gallery's courtyard. The mood was solemn rather than showy, true to a designer who built a half-century on understatement, and the show closed with one model walking alone in a glittering blue evening gown. For a single show that captures what Armani meant to modern dressing, there is no better place to start.

Véronique Nichanian's last Hermès menswear show, Palais Brongniart, Paris, January 2026 One of the longest tenures in modern fashion, close to four decades, ended with a standing ovation when she walked out to close the show. Fittingly for a designer who never chased trends, the farewell stayed with what she did best: silk turtlenecks over leather trousers in navy, black and taupe. It earns its place as the rare goodbye from a menswear designer whose name was less famous than her clothes. She handed over to Grace Wales Bonner, who became the first Black woman to lead a major fashion house.

Pieter Mulier's last Alaïa show, Paris, March 4, 2026 A five-year tenure closed with a collection he described as a vocabulary of the last five years, which makes it the neatest summary of how he revived Azzedine Alaïa's house. It was shown at the former Fondation Cartier building in Paris. What sets it apart is the dedication. Mulier wrote that the collection was not about him but about the Alaïa team, which he called a family. Watch it as a hinge moment, too: he left to become creative director of Versace from July 1, 2026.

Anthony Vaccarello's last Saint Laurent show, Spring 2027, Paris, September 29, 2026 A farewell that only became official after the fact. Vaccarello, who took over from Hedi Slimane in 2016, staged his final collection under three enormous chandeliers in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, reworking Yves Saint Laurent's hallmarks in gleaming shades of gold. It was hailed as one of his best. Ten days later, on October 9, 2026, the house confirmed that he was stepping down after ten years. That gap is the point: the audience applauded a high-water mark before anyone had called it a goodbye.