Runway Shows to Watch While You Float Through Time and Space in Self-Quarantine

It’s quarantine season—newfound, unusual, and aggressively un-chic. Your friends are on their fourth re-watch of Friends (as if Ross and Rachel will somehow work it out this time) while you sit there, floating through time and space with nothing but your phone, laptop, and a dangerously high screen-time report to keep you company.

And because you’re different, you’ve already moved past the “baking banana bread” phase and the “online yoga in a messy living room” phase. Now, you’re ready for culture. Not Devil Wears Prada culture—you’ve seen that one so many times you can now quote Stanley Tucci’s lines in your sleep. We’re talking actual fashion: the kind that makes you feel like you’ve been front row since birth, even though the closest you’ve gotten is a live stream buffering on your cracked iPad.

Here’s your runway show lineup—fashion history’s cinematic equivalents of comfort food—served to you so you can pretend you’re at Paris Couture Week while actually wearing pajama bottoms and eating cereal for dinner.

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Chanel Autumn/Winter 2015 Couture

Karl Lagerfeld turned the Grand Palais into a full-blown casino, proving that fashion week can be equal parts haute couture and high-stakes poker night. Kristen Stewart, Julianne Moore, and Lara Stone “played” at blackjack tables while models floated by in intricately embroidered suits that could probably pay off your rent for the next 25 years. Perfect for when you want escapism with a side of quiet existential dread about your bank account.

Valentino Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2008

This is the last collection designed by the man himself—Valentino Garavani—before he hung up his measuring tape. Think sweeping gowns, unapologetic glamour, and the kind of unapologetic use of chiffon that says, “Yes, I live in a villa and have an army of butlers.” Watch this when you want to feel nostalgic for an era you weren’t even alive for, but insist on mourning anyway.

Hussein Chalayan Fall 2000 "Runway Show"

A masterclass in fashion as performance art. This is the show where dresses morphed on the runway, because buttons and zippers are too mainstream. Models transformed furniture into clothing, proving that with enough avant-garde spirit, your dining room table could also double as a cocktail dress. Best watched late at night, when you’re feeling just unhinged enough to start eyeing your IKEA sofa as a potential fashion statement.

Christian Dior Fall 1999 Haute Couture

The late, great John Galliano at his most theatrical, in an era before Instagram, where drama lived purely on the runway. This collection is all fantasy—exaggerated silhouettes, unapologetic excess, and the kind of grandeur that makes you wonder if the internet ruined fashion. Ideal for those moments in quarantine when you want to convince yourself you’re above fast fashion, even though you’ve still got that Zara package on the way.

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So next time someone asks what you did all day, you can casually say, “Oh, just revisited some archival couture” instead of admitting you actually just lay in bed, slightly horizontal, watching YouTube videos in 480p.