Róisín Pierce presented her Fall Winter 2025 collection, Nothing Pure Can Stay, at Paris Fashion Week, embracing the impermanence of beauty while striving to preserve moments before they fade. Drawing inspiration from literature, nature, and craft traditions, Pierce creates garments that reflect both fragility and resilience. This season, ephemeral motifs, snowflakes, petals, and fleeting memories, appear throughout the collection, reinforcing a delicate balance between loss and preservation.
The collection unfolds in shades of white and deep blue, evoking crisp winter landscapes and the quiet poetry of impermanence. Powdered silk velvet, Japanese cotton lace, and French bespoke embroidery shape intricate textures, with structured smocking, needlework, and crochet pushing textiles beyond their traditional boundaries. Hand-manipulated details, from floating snowberries to spiraling pintucks, create a dreamlike softness while maintaining a sense of strength.
Pierce continues her exploration of craftsmanship by transforming traditional techniques into contemporary expressions. Smocked silk fragments add sculptural depth, while precise pintucks ripple across panels of Irish crochet. Airy tulle and cotton lace form weightless bubbles atop sheer dresses, and silken tulle cascades over structured trousers. The pieces do not simply reference craft, they become living embodiments of the intricate processes behind their creation.
The collection also incorporates elements of decay and renewal. Just as Wilson Bentley documented the unique structures of snowflakes before they melted, Pierce captures moments of beauty through garments designed to outlast their inspiration. Every stitch and fold echoes the tension between the fleeting and the lasting, inviting the wearer to become part of this delicate exchange.
For Fall Winter 2025, Pierce collaborates with two masters of their craft, bringing new dimensions to her vision. Legendary milliner Stephen Jones contributes a collection of elaborate headpieces inspired by Pierce’s emphasis on dreamlike softness. Snowberry halos, coronets adorned with layered bows, and ribbon-tied caps transform the collection’s ethereal qualities into sculptural accessories. These hats will be available exclusively at select Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons stores.
In partnership with French leather house Polène, Pierce also extends her design language into leather accessories. Crafted in Ubrique, Spain, the limited-edition bags reflect her precise aesthetic, with structured box and sphere silhouettes adorned with cascading bows and delicate buttons. This expansion into leatherwork introduces a new material dimension to Pierce’s world while maintaining her commitment to intricate handcraft. The collection will be available on April 8, 2025, at Polène’s Champs-Élysées store and online.
Music serves as another layer of the collection’s exploration of transience. Simon Parris curates a soundtrack that intertwines instrumental and vocal compositions with spoken-word excerpts. Pierce’s own voice recites lines from Nabokov and Plath, merging with fragments of Irish traditional music sung by her mother, Angie. The composition mirrors the collection’s themes, weaving together moments of harmony and discord, memory and passing time. Environmental sounds, from shifting weather to the intimacy of domestic spaces, create an auditory landscape that parallels the collection’s visual and tactile contrasts. Each element, fabric, sound, and silhouette, contributes to a multi-sensory experience that deepens the collection’s message of fleeting beauty.
As much as Nothing Pure Can Stay acknowledges the impermanence of beauty, it also serves as an act of preservation. Each garment becomes an heirloom, carrying the imprint of its maker and the hands that shape it. Through precise craftsmanship and a reverence for materials, Pierce ensures that while moments fade, the artistry remains. Presented on March 7, 2025, at the Embassy of Ireland in Paris, this collection extends beyond clothing, it offers a meditation on time, fragility, and the power of creation. Pierce does not simply design garments; she constructs a world where beauty lingers just long enough to be remembered.
