This is what men’s fashion will look like next spring

by time news

A huge white cube stands in the middle of the magnificent park of the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris’ fifth arrondissement. An unmissable Dior logo is emblazoned on it. Hundreds of people pour into the building set up for the brand’s men’s fashion show, holding their smartphones as they enter. A spectacular backdrop awaits inside: two reconstructed, elegant country houses face each other, separated by green hills covered with real grass and endless massifs of flowers, with the sea as a photo wallpaper in the background. A stage design could hardly be more Instagrammable.

When shortly before the start of the show Naomi Campbell, Justin Timberlake and David Beckham with their son Cruz take a seat in the front row, not even the last guest in the grassy tiers sits still. The Dior show, where the men’s designs for spring next year were shown, was almost reminiscent of the days of the late Karl Lagerfeld. Again and again he had the most elaborate settings built under the dome of the Grand Palais. Other bombastic shows, cocktail events and after-show parties also made Paris Fashion Week look like the Covid crisis never happened.

Nobody seems to be talking about a major fashion revolution that was still being dreamed of during the first lockdown. At the time, some designers, including Dries Van Noten and Marine Serre, wrote an open letter demanding that the rhythm of fashion production and fashion weeks was changing, that it had to slow down. There are too many collections, it said. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, APC designer Jean Touitou also criticized the pressure of the fashion weeks and suggested doing fewer events.

Yannis Vlamos/God Men

A walk through the country house garden: With lots of pastel, Dior Men shows the most tender side of a man.

Two years later there is hardly any sign of a real change – apart from the fact that the shows are now also shown without exception via live stream. Most fashion houses are putting on physical shows again, with the big brands showing at least four collections a year. Dries Van Noten also returned to Paris with a real fashion show for the first time since 2020.

Dries van Noten

Howdy, cowgirl: Dries Van Noten stages dainty tops and cropped trousers with rough cowboy boots.

A deafening bang, as if a bomb had hit the ground, opened his parade on the roof of a garage in the 18th arrondissement. For his spring 2023 collection, the Belgian designer was inspired by the Zazous, a Parisian subculture during the Second World War, which corresponded in aesthetics and attitude to the German swing youth. Here and there the youth simply danced away their bitter worries. A penchant for escapism that many young people today can possibly empathize with.

Kenzo

It’s getting tight: Kenzo had leggings for him, and some of the male models even wore skirts.

In any case, Van Noten interpreted said subculture as stylized, dandy-like looks with numerous elements that oscillate between masculinity and femininity. He wears a tight, nude-colored corsage like a kind of skirt over a white shirt and suit trousers. Van Noten combines spaghetti strap tops with classic pleated trousers or bulky cowboy boots. In any case, details that are read as feminine run like a red thread through the men’s collections.

Paul Smith

A classic rethought: Paul Smith’s men’s suits are now softer and in powder colors.

Nigo, chief designer at Kenzo for two seasons, deliberately presented gender-fluid looks: boys in skirts or leggings, unisex suits and sailor looks for both men and women. The traditional brand Hermès also showed a sense for more femininity in men’s fashion: flowing fabrics, low-cut necklines and delicate shades of lilac. Paul Smith still featured mostly classic suits, but here too the fabrics and silhouettes seemed more fluid and softer than before.

Marton Perlaki/Hermès

Orange is the new black: The new men’s collection from Hermès impresses above all with bright colours.

The late Louis Vuitton menswear creative director, Virgil Abloh, often borrowed from women’s wardrobes for his menswear. This season’s Vuitton show was the first to be conducted entirely without him, as a collective work of his studio. In the midst of a huge backdrop, which was modeled on the bridges and curves of an enlarged children’s railway, and surrounded by huge, inflatable balls, the collection lovingly played with childishly naïve details.

Louis Vuitton

Airplanes in front of him: the new line from Louis Vuitton, on the right is Oskar Helmbold from Berlin.

White paper airplanes landed on a black suit as a sort of 3-D embroidery. Folded “paper” hats were made of high quality leather. The Vuitton man also wears pleated skirts, trains and drapes as a matter of course. Accompanying the show was the Tallahassee-based Florida A&M University marching band and crown-of-thorns rapper Kendrick Lamar, who sat in the front row and chanted prayerfully the late Virgil Abloh: “Virgil forever. Virgil forever”. A grandiose homage that was sentimental and optimistic at the same time.

Jean Touitou had already suspected it two years ago: Despite his criticism of the rhythm of shows, he said that the experience of fashion shows could not be replaced by anything. This Fashion Week also showed that. “We need them to arouse interest and generate desire,” he said at the time. However, his concern that everyone should shift down a gear seems to be a long way off at the moment.

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