Lever Couture Fall 2025 Couture: Personal Baggage

Ukrainian-born, Los Angeles-based Lessja Verlingieri, the designer behind red carpet darling Lever Couture, was a newbie in Paris this season, showing at the Palais de Tokyo off-schedule on Wednesday. With her roster of celebrity clients — she has created custom looks for Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Tems, for instance — showing her innovative take on eveningwear in Paris made sense. “It’s couture,” she summed up.

The collection, titled “Anatomy of Identity,” was intended to explore the notion of the construction of the self and how we build the different, at times conflicting, aspects of our personalities. “It’s about ourselves, our baggage, renewal, how we change, our layers,” Verlingieri explained ahead of the show, which opened with a performance by Ukrainian ballerina Katja Khaniukova of the English National Ballet.

Her legs muddied as if from a long trek, Khaniukova came en pointe down the runway, wearing a cropped, futuristic tutu-like version of one of the nude, honeycomb mesh layered creations that would soon be revealed, before seizing hold of the ropes around what looked to be a giant boulder wrapped in fabric and hauling it down the runway. Baggage indeed.

Then paraded a series of layered mesh creations, airy and ethereal yet structured, and gowns sculpted from strips of fabric, layered and looped to create volume. Pleated widths of material could be seen to resemble bandages, assembled into lightweight dresses and matching coats worn like trains. A gold fringed cape was like the cheerleader shouting out to be strong, while the asymmetry of many of the pieces, whether in ruffled effervescent layers or sculpted ballooning shapes that seemed to float around the body, nodded to the multiple facets of the personality.