By Giulia Piceni. Cover image by Mr Street Peeper IG
I had just graduated from Istituto Marangoni and felt that I needed to experience fashion where it truly comes alive. Paris during Fashion Week was the obvious destination. I imagined an overwhelming spectacle of beauty, a succession of moments that would confirm everything I had learned at university about creativity, expression, and cultural significance. I expected to be inspired. What I found was far more complicated and, in many ways, more revealing. Fashion Week is not only about clothes. It is a theatre of ambition, a stage where the contradictions of the fashion system play themselves out under the flash of a hundred phones. For someone at the beginning of their career, this realisation can be both disorienting and enlightening. You go to learn, to see how the industry moves from the inside, and what you discover is that it is not always elegant, nor entirely coherent. Yet its chaos has a strange kind of beauty.
What I Learned at Paris Fashion Week: Honest Tips from a Fashion Grad
1. Clothes Are the Last Thing People Notice
It seems absurd to say that Fashion Week is not about fashion, but that is often the truth. There is an enormous rush to secure invitations to the shows, yet once inside, the attention is elsewhere. As models glide down the runway, most people are filming themselves, documenting not the collection but their own presence. It is as if the real performance takes place in the audience rather than on the catwalk. At first, I found this discouraging. As a student, I had been taught to see garments as language, as expressions of philosophy and craftsmanship. I wanted to believe that the show was still about the designer’s vision, about the relationship between cut, fabric, and form. Some people still watch with that kind of attention, but they are the minority. The rest are occupied by the economy of visibility. This does not mean that fashion has lost its depth. It has simply evolved into something larger than the garment itself. The show is no longer just a presentation; it is a social event, a performance of belonging. The front row has become an extension of the runway, and the image has replaced the experience. For young creatives, this is a critical lesson. Understanding fashion today means understanding how it circulates, how it is consumed, and how the meaning of a garment changes once it becomes content.
2. Afterparties Beat the Shows
I quickly learned that the most interesting moments do not happen during the shows but afterwards. The afterparties are where the atmosphere relaxes, and people speak more freely. Getting in, however, is its own skill. It is surprisingly easy if you know how to navigate the unspoken rules. Arriving early often helps as bouncers rarely reject the first people in line; they begin to turn people away once the crowd forms. Sometimes, all it takes is a confident attitude and a believable reason for being there. Once inside, the mood shifts completely. The stiffness of the front row disappears, replaced by something looser and more human. Creative directors, stylists, and assistants who seemed distant hours earlier are now talking, laughing, dancing. These moments of proximity can be invaluable. I found myself speaking to people whose names I had only seen in magazines. The conversations were not strategic. They were spontaneous, sometimes chaotic, but real. At one party, I even had the chance to speak with my favourite designer about how her work has helped me become the woman I am today. We discussed how the pressure to stay relevant often overshadows the joy of making. There was no exchange of contact details, no promise of collaboration, just an honest conversation. It reminded me that connection in this industry often begins in small, unplanned ways. Afterparties reveal the human side of fashion. They show that behind the layers of image and ambition, there are people trying to create meaning, to belong, to keep up. For someone just beginning, these moments can be quietly formative. They teach you that being present, curious, and open often matters more than being known.
3. Nobody’s Watching — And That’s Liberating
At first, this realisation felt brutal. Surrounded by editors, models, and influencers, it is easy to feel invisible. Everyone seems to know everyone else, and the instinct is to overcompensate, to perform confidence. But once you understand that nobody is paying close attention, a certain freedom emerges. In that anonymity, you can observe. You begin to notice how people move through the space, how conversations start and end, how attention operates like a currency. It becomes clear that Fashion Week is a constellation of self-interest, yet within it there are genuine sparks of exchange. The challenge is not finding interesting people but finding authenticity. Most encounters remain fleeting. You talk, laugh, share an Instagram handle, and move on. But sometimes, a real connection happens, the kind that feels unscripted and human. Those are the moments to value. They are rare, but they remind you that sincerity still has a place in an industry built on performance. For recent graduates, this lesson is crucial. You do not need to stand out in every room. Sometimes it is enough to be there, to listen, to learn how people work and communicate. The impression you make through presence and curiosity often lasts longer than the one made through pretence.
4. Skip the After-Afterparties
There is always someone suggesting another place to go, another party that promises to be more exclusive, more exciting. I learned quickly that these extensions of the night rarely deliver anything new. They are loud, crowded, and filled with people who have already said everything worth saying. Staying out until dawn may feel glamorous in theory, but it leaves you too tired to experience the next day properly. In Paris, mornings can be just as revealing as nights. The quiet streets after a show, the cafés filled with interns and assistants discussing what went wrong backstage, the energy of people rushing to fittings… all of this offers insight into the real rhythm of the industry. There is a particular discipline in knowing when to leave. The ability to recognise when something has stopped being meaningful is a small but significant strength. The fashion world celebrates excess, but moderation can be its own form of sophistication. It allows you to observe with clarity rather than exhaustion.
5. The Best Lessons Happen in Between
In the end, the most valuable experiences did not come from the shows or the parties, but from everything that happened in between. Walking from one venue to another, standing in line, talking to strangers, drinking too much coffee and not enough water: those moments contained the true spirit of Fashion Week. One afternoon, while waiting for a show I had no ticket for, I met another student who had come from Antwerp. We spent an hour discussing how our generation approaches fashion differently, how we no longer see luxury as the goal but as a medium for expression. That conversation stayed with me far longer than any runway image. It reminded me that the industry’s future is built on dialogue, not distance. Paris Fashion Week, in its contradictions, mirrors the industry itself. It is beautiful and absurd, inspiring and exhausting, exclusive and yet open to anyone bold enough to enter. It operates on paradox, and learning to navigate that paradox is part of becoming a professional. What I discovered is that the most important lessons cannot be taught in a classroom. They happen in observation, in the gaps between events, in the moments when you realise that fashion is not a fixed idea but a living, breathing organism. It survives through its constant reinvention, and to be part of it means to accept its instability.
What Paris Taught Me as a Recent Grad
When I returned from Paris, I was both exhausted and deeply motivated. I understood that entering the fashion system is not about waiting for permission. It is about showing up, paying attention, and being willing to participate even when you are uncertain of your place. For a recent graduate, that might be the most valuable truth of all. The fashion industry can appear closed, but in reality, it is constantly shifting, constantly opening small cracks where new voices can enter. Those cracks appear in conversations, in shared glances, in the simple act of being present. Fashion Week taught me that success is not defined by access but by persistence. It is not about how many shows you attend, but about how you interpret what you see. The ability to find meaning in the chaos, to extract ideas from confusion, is what distinguishes those who study fashion from those who merely consume it. In the end, Paris was not a dream fulfilled but a mirror held up to reality. It showed me how glamour and exhaustion coexist, how ambition and vulnerability often share the same space. Yet it also confirmed why I chose this path in the first place. Fashion, even at its most superficial, still carries the promise of transformation. It invites you to imagine new forms of beauty and to find your own place within that vision. And for someone in their twenties, still figuring things out, there could hardly be a better classroom than that.
