The standout shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026: Saint Laurent to Louis Vuitton

The final stretch of menswear season concludes in Paris this week, as the heavyweight French houses present their S/S 2026 collections across a jam-packed six days. Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton opened proceedings yesterday with equally fantastical spectacles set within two of Paris’ best-loved art institutions. At the Bourse de Commerce, Anthony Vaccarello presented a collection that sought a languid ease through an imagined trip between Paris and Fire Island, backdropped by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s floating pool of porcelain bowls. As the sun set in the evening, a star-studded crowd (including Jay-Z and Beyoncé) gathered at the courtyard of the Centre Pompidou to see Pharrell Williams’ staging of a supersized game of snakes and ladders, where he ground down into his vision of the modern dandy through a collection that skewed Indian craftsmanship with the house’s damier-patterned codes.

But the week is just getting started – and there’s still plenty to come. In tandem with his Palais Royal runway, Rick Owens opens ‘Temple of Love’, a retrospective that charts the incubation of his subversive design philosophy from early days in LA to Paris, where he has been based since 2003. Alongside the Comme des Garçons roster, renegade New York favourite Willy Chavarria will present his second Paris collection later in the week, while London’s own Wales Bonner is making an anticipated return to the schedule after a hiatus. It goes without saying that Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior on Friday will be the most-anticipated event of the week. An assemblage of surreal, characteristically Andersonian clues has only fuelled speculation – what could possibly link a silver frog and footballer Kylian Mbappé? – and all eyes will be set on the house as the Irish designer stamps down a new era for Dior.

Here, in an ongoing round-up, we select the best shows of Paris Fashion Week Men’s, as they happen.

The best of Paris Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2026

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams deals in spectacle. On Tuesday evening, just as the sun set over Paris, he laid out a 2,700 sq m snakes and ladders board in front of the Pompidou Centre to stage his latest menswear collection for Louis Vuitton. There was a floor-shaking soundtrack, performed live by Virginia-based Voices of Fire and l’Ochestre du Pont Neuf, and a roll call of celebrities – including Beyoncé and Jay-Z – which prompted frenzied screams from the crowds that gathered around the piazza’s edges. Even the pigeons dramatically took flight at the show’s start.

This season, India was a loose influence for the collection, which continued to posit Williams’ take on the global dandy – a sleek but eclectic vision of a world traveller, which largely sees the designer riff on menswear archetypes, from the suit to the working uniform. He worked with Studio Mumbai on the show’s set, and nods to the country – which Williams said has ‘always been an inspiration’ – came in paduka-style footwear, woven and tasselled trims, cricket jumpers, and the recreation of a Louis Vuitton luggage set (originally created by Marc Jacobs) for Wes Anderson’s India-set 2007 movie, The Darjeeling Limited. ‘We are a house of travel,’ said Williams, who had undertaken research trips to Mumbai, Jaipur and Delhi with his team prior to creating the collection.

In terms of silhouette, there was a satisfying languidity to the season’s tailoring – which made up the majority of the collection – with fold-front or gently flared trousers capturing a sense of ease which has occasionally felt missing in his past collections. He was also strong when playing with workwear – uniform striped shirting, polo shirts and cargo pants all had real-world appeal – while moments of superlative craft, like a hoodie constructed from tiny hand-sewn panels of mink, was a reminder of the power of the Louis Vuitton atelier, one which Williams is now harnessing to impressive effect. JM

Auralee

Sandwiched between the two high-budget headliners of the day – Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton – Auralee’s effortless S/S 2026 display felt like a breath of cool air. Staged in the serene courtyard of the National Archives Museum in the Marais, Japanese designer Ryota Iwai’s show focused less on a concept than on a particular time of year – one when flashes of warmth surprise us in the day, while the nights can still be bristlingly cold. Noting how unpredictable weather can make outfits feel ‘mismatched’ and ‘undone’ – ‘loosening us up a little’ – the collection that followed was a masterclass in Iwai’s quiet language of chic.

In practice, this sense of seasonal discombobulation played out in classically tailored, hand-sewn outerwear in autumnal tones, thrown over airy shirting, organza silk dresses, and cropped shorts in sunny hues – a nod to swimwear and beachside ease. The brand’s much-loved knitwear appeared in Japanese sunset reds and Yves Klein blues, crafted from luxurious cashmeres and wools. Accessories, meanwhile, exuded the laid-back feeling of holidays – bucket hats, drawstring bonsacs, and sleek flip-flops.

While this collection was inspired by a particular time of year, Iwai founded Auralee in 2015 with a more precise time in mind – dressing in the soft, clarifying light of morning (Auralee translates as ‘the land that lights up’). A celebration of the painstaking craft and quiet beauty that has earned the brand its cult following over these years, yesterday in Paris felt like a luminous, confident toast to a fresh decade ahead. OB

Saint Laurent

Staged in the bright light of the afternoon – a rarity for a Saint Laurent show – Anthony Vaccarello’s S/S 2026 menswear show took place in the rotunda of Bourse de Commerce – Pinault collection, around an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot currently on show at the Paris gallery. Comprising an enormous round pool on which floated hundreds of porcelain bowls, it set the stage for a collection of ‘ease’ and ‘escapism’ that centred on an imagined trip from Paris to Fire Island – ‘where escape becomes elegance, and desire becomes a language’.

Clothing channelled the setting’s daydream-like mood with abbreviated shorts, pyjama sets and colourful layers of silk and nylon meeting wide-shoulder shirts, blazers and ties for a continuance of Vaccarello’s riff on the 1980s working uniform (though here, it was rendered with new lightness). In part, the designer said that the collection was an homage to a generation of queer artists – contemporaries of Yves Saint Laurent – who escaped New York City in the 1970s and found sexual liberation and kinship among Fire Island’s dunes (the locale, off the coast of Long Island, New York, has been known for its queer community since the 1920s).

‘This collection pays tribute to a lost generation, to the artists – [Larry] Stanton, [Patrick] Angus, [Darrel] Ellis – who gave a face to silent desires,’ said Vaccarello, with gestures of concealment and exposure running through the collection. ‘[It is] inspired by a time when desire was style, when beauty served as a shield against emptiness. The collection explores this subtle sensuality, that fragile moment when one dresses as much to reveal oneself as to conceal.’ JM

Stay tuned for live coverage of Paris Fashion Week Men’s here.