Revisiting the showstopping runway sets of men’s fashion week

As the dust settles on Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 – which concluded in Paris last week after previous stops in London, Florence and Milan – we revisit the season’s showstopping runway sets, which spanned the surreal, the transporting, and the serene.

From a ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Prada to the enormous cats that populated the runway at Dior Men – a collaboration with South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – we pick S/S 2025’s best sets and showspaces, which backdropped the month’s defining collections.

Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: the best runway sets

Dior Men’s giant cats, inspired by the work of ceramicist Hylton Nel

The inspiration for Kim Jones’ S/S 2025 collection for Dior Men was the works of South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ While Nel’s naive motifs featured across the collection, a series of his cat sculptures were blown up by Jones to populate the Val-de-Grâce showspace in a celebration of what the British designer described as Nel’s ‘homespun monumentalism’.

Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito

On arrival at Fondazione Prada’s Deposito space – where Prada’s runway shows are held each season – guests were transported to what the house described as a ‘fairytale ravescape’ complete with a white cabin, door ajar, out of which techno music blared. As the show began, models emerged from the structure and down onto the runway wearing a collection that co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described as ‘capturing a spirit of freedom, of youthful optimism and energy’. ‘We wanted to create clothes that have lived a life, that are alive in themselves,’ they elaborated. ‘There is a sense of spontaneity and optimism to these clothes - they reflect instinctive but deliberate choices, freedom.’

Zegna’s field of linen in Milan

This season, Zegna recreated a field of linen in a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Milan just a short drive from the city’s Linate airport. Doubling as the runway set for the house’s S/S 2025 show, each blade of ‘linen’ was created from lightweight strips of metals that moved gently as the models walked. Creative director Alessandro Sartori – whose summer collection used the fabric in a multitude of iterations and weights – said he wanted to evoke the feeling that nature was invading the industrial space. ‘Linen is a wonderful medium,’ said Sartori. ‘Not only [is it] traceable and true to our commitment to sustainability, but it is also as malleable and sensual as the idea of summer dressing we are prompting.’

A celebration of ‘artistic freedom’ and independence at Loewe

Taking place at Paris’ Garde Republicaine, Loewe’s stark white showspace doubled as an art gallery of sorts, seeing works from Paul Thek (a collection of miniature metal mice), Carlo Scarpa (an easel from the 1990s), Peter Hujar (a photograph of a single high-heeled shoe) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (a chair and coat hook, the latter draped with a red boa) populate the runway. Meanwhile, a vintage copy of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation lay open on the floor. Described by the house as ‘an exercise in curatorial subjectivity and narrative association’, each artist was chosen for their ‘fierce adherence to independence and artistic freedom’. ‘I like that these people are singular in terms of their vision,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Gucci’s celebration of design at Milan’s Triennale

This season, Gucci creative director Sabato de Sarno chose the atrium of Milan’s Triennale museum – the city’s temple to design – to host his sophomore menswear show for the Italian house. While the Giovanni Muzio-designed space was unchanged for the show, ’a testament to our deep appreciation for its intrinsic essence’, a series of specially constructed green lacquered stools lined the museum’s corridors. They were dedicated to architect Gae Aulenti, the subject of an exhibition at the institution which runs until January 2025.

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s windswept dandelions

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake’s latest collection was titled ‘Up, Up, and Away’, its breezy, lightweight garments inspired by the wind: ‘the phenomena caused by wind, crafts and designs that react to wind, and forms that embody wind,’ described the Japanese brand. The showspace, constructed in the courtyard of Paris’ Mobilier National reflected the collection’s mood, seeing dandelion-like structures by Vincent de Belleval shudder gently in the breeze.

A silver runway for Dries Van Noten’s runway finale

Dries Van Noten transported guests to St Denis, a suburb on Paris’ northern outskirts, for his final show as creative director of his eponymous brand (earlier this year, the Belgian designer announced he would be stepping away from the label after 38 years). Staged in a vast warehouse transformed for the event – which was attended by well-wishers including designers Pierpaolo Piccioli, Ann Demeulemeester and Stephen Jones – a runway made of silver leaf ran the length of the space. As models from the label’s past and present walked, shards of the foil hovered in the air, reflecting the S/S 2025 collection’s celebration of the fleeting and the ephemeral.

A Louis Vuitton takeover of UNESCO celebrating ‘global unity’

The rooftop of Maison l’Unesco in Paris was temporarily transformed into the show space for Pharrell Williams’ latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection. While the grass-covered runway was checkered to recall the house’s Damier motif – which has become a hallmark of Williams’ collections so far – the show centred around Erik Reitzel’s ‘Symbolic Globe’, which depicts the world as a vast, interlinked spherical grid. It was part of Williams’ plea for global unity with a collection designed to celebrate connection and community. ‘Activating the maison’s mind-expanding travel gene, the collection illustrates the degrees of similarities which bind us across the globe,’ Williams said via the collection’s notes.