Paris Fashion Week – Best of Man

After Milan, it's Paris's turn to celebrate the fall/winter 2022 men's collections. pre-Covid, the capital shows its desire to reconnect with the world before the pandemic. A ballet of celebrities, street style photographers in the streets and physical parades for the big houses (17 out of the 76 brands listed on the official calendar), that's Paris.

Studies' breath of fresh air

It's one of the men's brands that feels the spirit of the times, which succeeds in translating the aspirations of an era and current questions about the wardrobe. Led by the trio formed by Aurélien Arbet, Jérémie Egry and José Lamali, the French house is celebrating its tenth anniversary this season. And continues its game of volumes and materials, its exploration of the comfort of functional clothing while infusing it with a couture approach. Nothing insignificant about the figure of the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat inspiring this season. This signature, which has been refined for a decade, the three founders are now also developing for the historic Aigle brand. A good game, as they say.

The fluidity of genres at AMI

Whether on the podium or in the room, there were many friends of Alexandre Mattiussi to mark the launch of this ambitious fall/winter 2022 collection. The theme: Parisian life with as an invitation, an Orange card and metro gates serving as entrance doors. In the Palais Brongniart, Carla Bruni and Catherine Deneuve, actor Pierre Niney and singer Eddy de Pretto posed. On the catwalk, the actresses Isabelle Adjani and Laetitia Casta, the influencer Emily Ratajkowski and the actor Ben Attal showed off a wardrobe tastefully merging codes, wittily degenerating leopard, banker's stripes or devoured velvet. Without any exuberance, with a certain sense of the era and the wearable. Alexandre Mattiussi does not create in his ivory tower, but by watching others live, and it shows.

Louis Vuitton's moving tribute

Last November, the untimely death of Virgil Abloh from cancer shocked the fashion world, which then paid tribute to his unparalleled creativity, interpretation of the spirit of the times, a way of breaking codes, with the modern look of the man who oversaw the men's collections of Louis Vuitton and its Off White brand. After a first tribute show in Miami two days after his death, the French leather goods maker has just presented at the Carreau du Temple “Louis Dreamhouse”, the eighth and final opus of the designer who died at only 41 years old. In a sky blue decor with dreamlike poetry served by music by the brilliant Tyler The Creator played by an orchestra, patchwork-style urban capes, cross-stitch embroidery-style patterned silhouettes, satin suits, beanie caps donkey, a ruffled tulle skirt worn with bombers… A whole stylistic vocabulary whose richness shows the extent of Virgil Abloh's influences, but above all all that he still had to explore. Replacing it won't be easy.

READ ALSOHow Virgil Abloh became the icon of a generation

The seductive pragmatism of Courrèges

Since his arrival in 2020, Nicolas de Felice has been refining his vision of the historic house, of which he took charge of the artistic direction, season after season. Rather than multiplying proposals to test their commercial potential, the designer affirms and reaffirms the bases of his stylistic vocabulary. He managed to draw on the fundamentals of André Courrèges which he refined to bring them into modernity. The famous vinyl jacket, the brand's current bestseller, is a perfect example. For fall/winter 2022, it has resumed its minimalist forms, such as turtlenecks, skirts, discreetly branded caps, available in a monochrome palette (black, white, bottle green, etc.) and in feminine or masculine versions. An ultra-desirable urbanity whose repositioning of more accessible prices should end up seducing the new generation.

Dior's creative dialogue

After laying the foundations of his stylistic proposal for the house of Dior, Kim Jones is starting a dialogue this season with the founder of the house, whose men's collections he has directed since 2018. guests took their places in front of a reconstruction of the Alexandre-III bridge, its sculptures, its lampposts with a one-day panorama rising over Paris. On the soundtrack, the voice of Christian Dior evokes the principles of architecture, the meaning of fabrics and their “obedience to weightlessness”. Kim Jones has precisely played with the proportions to draw the volumes of these masculine silhouettes. At the bottom, fluidity with cashmere joggers and sandals in collaboration with Birkenstock; at the top, cane-style quilted coats, a reinterpretation of the mythical Bar jacket, embroidered floral motifs, all in tones ranging from gray to sky blue like an echo of the colors of dawn.

The creativity of Loewe

Last fall, the Spanish brand's women's fashion show surprised, disconcerted and enchanted an audience still on the comfort wear infusion. The brilliant artistic director Jonathan Anderson, with an aesthetic as cerebral as it is pragmatic, had begun a reflection on volumes with poetic protuberances and unexpected cutouts, sprinkled with a humor that is often lacking in fashion. For this men's fall collection, he turned around the same issues while keeping his tongue-in-cheek British spirit, imagining human body prints, heart-shaped cutouts revealing a nipple, luminous details and message belts ( Smile with the navel as a dot on the i). It's smart, beautiful and desirable. The trifecta, as the expression goes.

The energy of Hermes

In her favorite place to parade, the Mobilier national, the artistic director Véronique Nichanian continues her exploration of the Hermès men's wardrobe without ever tiring. For each season in particular, the long-awaited color palette, the selection of which is as meticulous as the choice of color names. Anthracite, desert, black or even ecru are awakened for next winter by a pop orange, lettuce green and metallic ankle boots that bring spirit to the silhouette. Curly lambskin parkas, twill coats, glazed calfskin suits promise to become more beautiful with use. This patina, which Hermes masters like no other, precisely echoes the tapestries projected on large screens hung on the walls. Throughout the show, director Cyril Teste, a friend of the house, gradually blurs the patterns to transform them into abstract canvases of which only the colors remain visible for the finale. A nice picture.

READ ALSOThe metamorphoses of Hermes

Kenzo's expected return

Since the departure of the creative duo from Opening Ceremony, the brand had disappeared from the radar, relying on its bestsellers, such as the motif of the tiger with phenomenal success. In the bosom of the LVMH group, Kenzo had finally appointed in 2021 an artistic director in the person of Nigo. Little known to the general public, this jack-of-all-trades Japanese designer, notably behind the streetwear brand A Bathing Ape, is a pop culture icon. Moreover, his friends Pharrell Williams and Kanye West had made the trip. They shouldn't have regretted it. Installed along the Vivienne gallery, a nice wink since it was here that Kenzo Takada organized his first fashion show in 1970, the guests were able to discover this first mixed collection. Japanese denim in a total look, the house's emblematic floral pattern revived by this fresh eye and a new urban look that perfectly manages to merge historical fundamentals with a new purpose. A very promising start.