This was clearly the most important season this century, with some 15 designer debuts at major marques. Here, in alphabetical order, is my personal pick for the dozen best shows of the four-week international fashion runway season. Four of my favorites were by debutants; half of them are by female designers.

Alaïa: Azzedine Mulier connects perfectly

Full marks for such simple but brilliant staging. Models marched around two flattened tennis-court-size LED screens showing giant close-ups of female beauty, all reflected off a dropped mirrored ceiling. Designer Pieter Mulier showed sleek cocktails in technical fibers, silk, or ribbed knits with inserted transparent breastplates and diagonal fringes. Hyper-skillful draping with V-shape skirts in layers and folds of cotton and silk jersey, or a black leather perfecto with displaced shoulders that morphed into a grand gown. The power of founder Azzedine’s voluptuous aesthetic combined with Mulier’s precision and punch.

Bottega Veneta: Putting the Bottega back into BV

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Few designers exploited their new atelier as spectacularly as Louise Trotter in her Bottega Veneta debut, putting the Bottega right back into BV with super-lightweight leather looks — trenches, cloaks, and blazers for men; off-the-shoulder dresses and paneled gowns for women. All detailed with intreccio — collars, sleeves, lapels, trim, and woven belts. Cinematic, Edwardian, and the best new tailoring of the season.

Chanel: Enter the new Chanel universe

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Bold, gutsy, ingenious, often beautiful and curiously risqué, the debut collection by Matthieu Blazy was the undoubted hit of the season. Blazy practically reinvented the classic Chanel suit with a new knee-length wrap skirt made with pockets, generally left frayed and finished in filigrees of gold. And instead of just wool bouclé, it came in impossibly airy plaids, windowpane checks, or stiff denim. Disrupting codes: conceptual double-sized camellia brooches, woven pearl necklaces, Coco’s beloved wheat embroidered into organza tops. Plus, Matthieu’s magnificent Solar System set of giant gas-filled, internally illuminated planets brought Chanel back to the glory days of Karl Lagerfeld. Little wonder he got the season’s biggest ovation by far.

Dior: La Nouveau New Look

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No one can ever fault Jonathan Anderson for lacking guts. His debut women’s wear show for Dior turned the brand upside down, knocked a decade off its clientele, repeatedly mined Monsieur Dior’s New Look, and suddenly made Dior very cool again. His show-opening mash-up video, a history of Dior as a unique cultural living monument by documentarist Adam Curtis, was sensational, setting the stage for Anderson’s visual stream-of-consciousness show. Rarely in fashion history has a designer so boldly twisted a house’s codes — in particular Monsieur’s legendary Bar jacket. The result was the most thought-provoking collection of the decade, never mind this season.

Diotima: Carnival clobbers colonialism

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Colonialism and Caribbean culture’s fight back against that evil via the tradition of Carnival was the theme of this intriguing Diotima collection. Active sport meets couture: hooded sleeveless mesh tops and pants finished by a layered skirt in shards of chiffon; or fab crepe lapel-free redingotes, asymmetrically worn on cast with J’Ouvert pre-dawn street festival makeup with daubs of silver mud. Epic, unusual, path-breaking, and New York’s most beautiful surprise.

Giorgio Armani: Talk about an adieu

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Leave it to Giorgio to go out on a high with brilliantly fresh, light, and contemporary tailoring in the final collection he designed. Presented posthumously 24 days after his passing in the neo-classical courtyard of the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan’s greatest museum, which opened its first-ever fashion exhibition — dedicated to Armani, of course — right after the show. Fashion’s greatest tailor cut beautiful pajama suits for men and breezy tunics and boleros for women, inventing new dhoti pants and deconstructing blazers. Made in supremely light silks, dry linens, and printed cottons, in the colors of his island home in sunny Pantelleria — burnt sand, lava, stone, and sea blue. A beautiful swansong by the defining designer of the past half-century.

Givenchy: Welcome to the new seduction

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There is a new, refined sense of seduction in fashion this season. The best dark and diabolical version comes from Givenchy. Tough-chic black leather — bat-wing leotards, wicked little black dresses, or men’s coat dresses cut décolleté. Crisp and clean tailoring: statuesque white double-breasted pantsuits or designer Sarah Burton’s reinvention of Givenchy’s signature Bettina blouse as an officer’s shirt or aristo chemise. In a word, the most coherent wardrobe in Paris.

Khaite: Dark underbelly beauty

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Imperfection as highly wearable artistic fashion. Everything a tad twisted or distorted — from strict leather elongated fisherman jackets to urban double-breasted blazers. Everything cut a tiny bit off-kilter. Including New York’s best set: an all-black pond and broken-up glaciers covered in mist. “The dark underbelly of America has always fascinated me,” confessed designer Catherine Holstein. Independent female chic at its best.

Louis Vuitton: A multi-cultural proposition

Like its inspiration — the apartment of Anne of Austria, the Sun King’s mother — a highly eclectic collection blending kicky fabric tops, tapestry details, carpet-fabric shoes, and 18th-century-style brushed silk gowns. All the way to leggings cut like britches, shirts with aristocratic six-inch collars, lace demoiselle gowns, or scarlet satin bouffant bubble coats. In short, the most experimental and path-breaking collection in Paris.

Prada: Double winner

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In case one had forgotten, Miuccia Prada is still the biggest game in Milan when it comes to fashion direction, élan, and overall chic, as Prada’s latest collection usefully reminded us. A collection starring nearly-there bras that fluttered slightly and were exposed within cut-out tops, dresses, and even aprons. Miuccia and Raf whipped up all manner of dirndls, wraps, bubble, or gathered skirts and dresses, alternating sheer fabrics and crumpled materials like technical taffeta — unquestionably the fabric of the season. Suggesting a racy soirée hostess, then revolutionizing the whole aesthetic 12 days later in her paean to the apron at Miu Miu. In a season obsessed with debutants, Miuccia remarkably emerged as the most influential designer again.

Simone Rocha: Disgruntled debutantes rule

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Disgruntled debutantes in sateen georgette, floral jacquards, and silk organzas cut into crinolines, Venetian tailcoats, or hoop skirts. Refined organza crinolines embroidered with tiny flowers combined rebelliously with silver sequin bras or oversized trapeze dresses plastered with huge fabric flowers. The season’s best example of a designer pushing the envelope on her own codes.

Versace: Pop historicism

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At Versace, Dario Vitale debuted with a love letter to founder Gianni. Held inside the historic Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the clothes harked back to the 1970s and Gianni’s happy days in 1980s Miami, with bright South Beach colors — lime green, pomegranate, or ultraviolet — looser, forgiving tailoring and multiple very short shorts for men recalling the body-beautiful bluster of early Versace. That said, no debutant took more risks than Vitale, whose gutsy volumes, steamy, revealing details, and raw cast of models knocked a decade off the Versace customer.