France’s Toulouse Fashion Week offers a distinctive take on fashion

It’s not uncommon to see fashion weeks crop up in cities beyond Milan or Paris. Yet few are as established or as distinctive as Toulouse Fashion Week (TFW). Organised by the Institut des arts et de la mode association, since 2019, it has brought together several hundred visitors and around a dozen designers from across the globe in emblematic venues throughout the Pink City, celebrating fashion and live performance.

The 2025 edition will take place on November 28 and 29 under the theme “Heritage”, a nod to the stylistic diversity of countries around the world. Staged at the much-anticipated Interférence – Balma venue, Toulouse Fashion Week appears to have reached a new milestone, according to its president, Fabrice Sauriat. “It’s a culmination,” he explains. “I hadn’t realised, but people couldn’t believe it!” The venue offers 1,000 square metres and a 45-metre U-shaped catwalk, together with a discount on the hire. The hall, which can accommodate between 400 and 600 people, is expected to be a sell-out: “Last year, we welcomed 500 people each evening. This year, we should reach 600,” said Fabrice Sauriat.

To stage the event, the Institut des arts et de la mode relies on the work of 300 volunteers, from models, photographers, and make-up artists to hairdressers and communications specialists. Toulouse Fashion Week also enjoys support from international fashion weeks (Poland, Berlin, French Guiana, Brazil, and Central Africa). This communications-focused backing has prompted designers from every continent to reach out to TFW. “Designers now contact us,” notes Fabrice Sauriat. “But they take part for pleasure, not for financial gain.” The president estimates that around 20% of the designers scheduled to take part do so not to sell, but to present an artistic expression of their work.

This is where the event’s distinctiveness truly shows. The fashion shows are sometimes accompanied by dance, music, and décor, immersing audiences in each designer’s universe. The result is a live spectacle and a different approach to fashion from that of the catwalks in the capitals, “where only the heads move”, in the words of Fabrice Sauriat. Drawn by this multidisciplinary dimension, TFW’s audience is diverse. The curious can become buyers for an evening, after applauding an outfit they like, with prices kept accessible.

In fact, it is the audience that almost entirely funds the artistic gathering, paying for tickets priced between ten and fifty euros. Designers, for their part, pay a modest fee (from one hundred euros), as many are enthusiasts obliged to hold down a job alongside. The aim of Toulouse Fashion Week is to showcase creatives who “don’t have the means to make a name for themselves”, and to offer them a degree of visibility. “Three quarters of the designers will sell their collections within a month,” says the association’s president.

What began as a dance and fashion gala for brands Fabos and Swarovski in 2016 became Toulouse Fashion Week in 2019. One hundred and fifty people reserved seats for its first edition, organised at the Cépière racecourse with the support of Toulouse City Hall. Titled “Nuit d’Orient”, it brought together designers from Toulouse, Montpellier, and Perpignan, as well as from Morocco, Uganda, Algeria, and Tunisia, for a night of fashion and artistic performances. Edition after edition, the association and its event have grown. Today, Fabrice Sauriat compares TFW to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, where models and the audience interact in a cabaret atmosphere.

Among the creative figures at Toulouse Fashion Week is Tonye Aka, patron of this 2025 edition and a master artisan. A TFW participant since 2020, the designer is behind the Tonye’s Fashion brand and Tonye’s Fashion Academy, a fashion training centre based in Toulouse. The event has also shone a light on Charlotte Bardou and her upcycled bag label Bi Ethic, as well as Jenia Gala and her eponymous brand, which has set up two sewing workshops in Toulouse.

In just a few years, Toulouse Fashion Week has built a local reputation that is now expanding. It has even attracted the attention of Serge Carreira, director of emerging brands at the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. But the Institut des arts et de la mode now wants to look beyond TFW, and is working on new projects combining international fashion and the performing arts, some of which could launch as early as 2026.