Paris Men’s Fashion Week: Predictability, Reassurance and Some Fireworks

Paris is known for its complexity and multicultural character, especially within the fashion industry. Every fashion week, a lot of things, shows, and events are going on almost simultaneously. This time, things got a bit more silent than normal. The old influential squad was back again in the front row, joining forces with celebrities and socialites, but it didn’t feel the same as usual, because fashion was absent in general. There is no doubt that this Paris men’s fashion week was divided between multiple ideas and pillars of this industry. A battle was going on between the past and the future, desire and sales, clothing and real vision, impressing the crowd, and creating a meaningful fashion moment. During moments of crisis, society is always divided into different groups with separate ideals and visions. This fashion week was kind of a simulation for my eyes of what’s going on out there. Many designers choose to play it safe, designing clothes for men as we stereotypically know them from modern history, while others showcased what creativity means in times of need. At this point, I’m wondering: What's the importance of fashion, and how is contemporary masculinity being formed?

Louis Vuitton opened Paris Fashion Week with its extravagant cowboys. Pharrell Williams envisioned the contemporary Native American man in all his glory - bathed in gold and dressed in crocodile skin, to be exact. It sounds a bit barbaric, right? It’s how it felt, too. Lace shirts were embroidered with lasso-throwing cowboys and denim jackets with yellow desert flowers. Chaps in leather or denim were embroidered in saddlery patterns or fringed, and a sea of LV logos covered the runway entirely. Serving wealth in the American West (yeah, I know it sounds like a movie), it’s definitely not going to win any Oscars this years, although I have a feeling that it will be quite popular with the masses.

Rick Owens, on the other side, decided this time to pay his respects to his motherland, America, by following a more relaxed but unsafe pathway. The princes of darkness, as many people like to call him, took us inside his Parisian palace, which calls home, for a ride to Porterville, the city in which he was born and raised. With this powerful but not quite original move, the designer epitomized contemporary dressing, drawing a line between high fashion and the masses. Within his most personal and safe space, his home, Rich Owens told loudly a story of alternative beauty, sensuality and intimacy by giving a roof to a collective of people to create and express themselves. Like Straytukay, who did the inflated rubber boots; Leo Prothman who made the Kiss boots and Matisse Di Maggio who focused on the rubber pieces. A new community was born as a genuine gesture of serf-reinvention.

There is no secret that a plague of classicism hinted hard Milan Fashion Week this season, but as it seems, it also infected Paris. Designers took one of the staples of manhood as a way of reassurance during these troubled for the market times. When I’m saying designers, I mean all, even the most progressive ones. Like Junya Watanabe, who played with tailoring in such a majestic way, creating coats made out of jackets and skirts - The perfect synthesis. The new uniform was also envisioned by Sacai. Chitose Abe’s modern functionality is embodied in ethereal dresses with extremely large pockets, teddy bombers and gloriously rounded sleeves. Apparently, there is a new type of hybridism rising In Paris, one that puts everything together in one piece. A coat can also be a skirt, or a pair of trousers, or even a cardigan, while a suit can be a jumpsuit.

Exactly how Jonathan Anderson imagined the contemporary man for his Loewe collection - in one solid piece. Almost like God, Mr Anderson molded the modern man in a glorious way. During a very dark and monochromatic fashion week, the designer gave us an explosion of color. A green leather jacket with a large pussybow popped on the runway as an opening look, and quickly a rainbow flooded the stage, which was decorated with Richard Hawkins’s artworks. The collection bared the creative director’s twisted essence of fashion. Having clown sneaker sock-boots or pieces that were attached to another, the show gave another meaning to what multilayered stands for in fashion, putting the bar on new heights.

On the contrary, brands like Auralee, Wales Bonner, Louis Gabriel Nouchi and Lemaire laid low by giving us a series of reimagined basics. At the same time, the tie was waving the flag of preppiness once again. The Issey Miyake team took advantage of the moment and turned simplicity into moving art. With the help of artist Ronan Bouroullec they proved that clothes are a canvas of personality. One of the most surprising moments of the week was Dries Van Noten who focused on simplicity, turning it into fashion quite successfully. Having in mind the unexpected, Van Noten proved once again how beautifully he can play with colour while adding a touch of sensuality to masculinity, which seems to be flowing over every gender.

Besides all these wonderful pieces that we saw on the runway, what really makes the difference in fashion? What’s the antidote to predictability? The answer to these questions came on the last day of Paris Fashion Week, during the GMBH show. Before their presentation started, designers Serhat Işık and Benjamin Huseby chose to step up against the fashion system and make a political statement with a powerful plea for peace in the Middle East and beyond. “As the far right, and actual Nazis and fascists, are once again gaining power across Europe and many other parts of the world, Antisemitism and Islamophobia are rising too,” Huseby read, signaling an alert for awareness and unity across the globe. The collection itself was politically charged too, making it the strongest of the week, baring messages for society directly at its core. The Keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headdress, was reworked flawlessly into boxy jackets that had the colors of the Palestinian flag, delivering beauty while reminding us that empathy and respect for life are what makes us humans.

Article by @sotiriskaberis

Images courtesy of Red Eye Team

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