The subject of conversation this Paris Fashion Week Men’s rarely strayed from the oppressive temperatures as a Europe-wide heatwave engulfed the city (with the mercury tipping 40 degrees, it was the epicentre of the weather phenomenon). Shows were moved from the heat of the day to early morning; venues came with paramedics on standby; and the endless flickering of fans provided the backdrop to almost every show. Marking the closing act of a sweltering fashion month, it left questions of how sustainable a fashion week is in the heat of mid-June, should this become the new normal.

And yet, the show went on. Across a six-day schedule, there were shows from fashion’s biggest houses – notably Saint Laurent, Dior, Celine and Louis Vuitton (the latter gauged the mood by making its show set a beach with an enormous ‘tidal wave’ at the end of the runway) – as well as those that define the cultural zeitgeist, like Rick Owens (his looks came with pre-installed air conditioning), Dries Van Noten (Julian Klausner’s ethereal lightness looked particularly attuned to the heat), and Willy Chavarria (the American designer talked finding joy in times of ‘chaos and darkness’). Elsewhere, Nick Wakeman hosted her debut runway show for Studio Nicholson, 16 years after its founding, and Kiko Kostadinov marked 10 years of his own eponymous label.

As the week concludes, Wallpaper* looks back over Paris Fashion Week Men’s to pick our highlights – from Jonathan Anderson’s ‘sampled and remixed’ collection for Dior (inspired by the music of Fred Again, who also soundtracked the show), to Michael Rider’s brilliant first menswear show for Celine, which closed out proceedings on Sunday.

Saint Laurent

Anthony Vaccarello has made the Tadao Ando-designed rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection gallery the location for his Saint Laurent runway shows for a number of seasons – a suitably monumental setting for the vision he has honed at the house over the past decade, one of cinematic sensuality and the uncompromising repetition of a single silhouette in a given collection. This season, the space was transformed by Fujiko Nakaya’s Cloud #07156, currently on display in the institution. The installation, one of a series of ‘fog’ sculptures by the Japanese artist, sees water vapour emitted from the floor, before being manipulated by a series of high-pressure pumps and nozzles for a 16-minute display (the technology was originally developed in 1969 alongside engineer Thomas Mee). ‘Fujiko Nakaya does not depict fog; she sculpts it,’ says art critic Anne‑Marie Duguet in the installation’s accompanying catalogue.

It set the scene for a collection in which Vaccarello explored the idea of ‘restraint as seduction’, the lingering fog around the models a symbolic gesture of the kind of undefinable desire that certain figures can provoke. ‘Nobody is trying to seduce you,’ he said of this season’s protagonist. ‘What makes them seductive is that they do not need to.’ Touchstones for this figure were ‘Marguerite Duras, whose writing found meaning in what remained unsaid; Tina Chow, whose legendary style embraced reduction rather than excess; and the fictional Mr Ripley, whose outward composure concealed a far more complicated interior life,’ as he explained via the accompanying notes.

It led to a collection defined by lightness and simplicity: there were featherweight ribbed knits that traced the contours of the body, shrunken waistcoats worn with nothing beneath, and the reemergence of the windbreaker, here in breezy hues of yellow and orange (Vaccarello said he imagined it as a collection which could be easily packed into a suitcase for travel). Tailoring this season remained broad across the shoulder, though had an easy, oversized line, while nods to the opulence of Yves Saint Laurent came in jewellery-like buttons and trench coats rendered in molten gold. Though the use of the luxurious hue was less about excess, Vaccarrello argued; rather, it was used to venerate the garment itself, ‘transforming the utilitarian trench into something extraordinary’. Jack Moss

Auralee

Auralee’s Ryota Iwai dealt with the expectation-versus-reality of the summer season in his S/S 2027 collection for his Japan-based label – the total vacation switch-off we fantasise about while on home soil, and then the slightly uncanny version of ourselves that actually shows up, still plugged in but perhaps a little more susceptible to chance.

Played out in three chapters: ‘The anticipation of departure, the sense of freedom that travel awakens, and the return to everyday life – subtly changed, soaking in the afterglow of the trip,’ looks became more relaxed as things progressed. What started as summery – but still smart – tailoring in office-appropriate blues and greys gave way into softer beach cover-up styles, brighter hues, and the addition of cute trinkets. India Birgitta Jarvis

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell Williams drew an unlikely yet astute comparison between surfers and dandies for Louis Vuitton’s S/S 2027 collection, noting their mutual reverence for performance, craft and travel. Where the dandy peacocks in a more urban context, the surfer commands the beach and rides the waves, but both are drawn by impulse and a certain non-conformity. In fact, ‘dude’, that enduring hippie slang which calls to mind tousled beach-waves and shark-tooth necklaces, used to mean dandy, once upon a time.

The two archetypes converged within Williams’ artfully staged show – a beach scene with real sand, boardwalk and an eight-metre-tall wave set within the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. Classic city pieces, including two-piece suits and collared shirts, were given the surf treatment with tailored jackets constructed in neoprene and what the brand described as ‘hand-spun’ textures. Blue was the prevailing colour, from flashes of ultramarine to dusty-shaded denim which appeared time-worn and sun-bleached. This was not just a tribute – Louis Vuitton has pledged its support to reef conservation projects and enlisted the help of competitors at the Tahiti Pro, taking place this August, to monitor progress. IBJ

Dior

This season, Jonathan Anderson drafted the British producer and musician Fred Again to soundtrack his S/S 2027 show, held at Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, a decorative arts museum in the 8th arrondissement. Fred Again, who produced songs for artists including Skepta and Charli XCX, rose to prominence with his three-volume Actual Life mixtapes, an aural diary of the years 2020-2022 which comprised voice notes from friends, spoken word and samples, alongside his own music. Anderson said that Fred Again’s creative process had inspired his approach to this season, which he described as ‘sampling and remixing to carve out new meaning for what’s known’.

As such, Anderson presented a collection which traversed eras – frock coats and 19th-century embroidered met tattered denim, baggy polo shirts and leather pants – while transforming familiar garments as one might remix a record. This included the tuxedo, this season’s protagonist, which shape-shifted across the collection, reimagined in a draped, organza-like fabric printed to look like tailoring wool, elongated into a robe-like coat, or transformed into a windbreaker-style jacket with a toggle fastening at its hem. Elsewhere, moments of eccentricity and play that have defined Anderson’s approach at both Dior and Loewe before it continued to come to the fore, from shimmering metallic jeans and zig-zag tote bags to corsage brooches and skewiff bow ties. ‘Fashion has to be enjoyable,’ he said. ‘It has to be fun.’ JM

Rick Owens

As Europeans across the board reckon with heatwave-proofing their homes, debating the merits of windows closed versus windows open and so on, Rick Owens was typically one step ahead. The S/S 2027 collection not only incorporated Adidas’ ClimaCool technology, but was supplemented with in-built fans and ice elements, creating a ‘personal air conditioning system’.

This technology means that Owens may have just cracked the technique for wearing all-black through the warmer months – and, to prove it, the 72-look collection was almost entirely black with the occasional contrasting buff-tone. In addition to the signature Rick Owens sharply elongated silhouette, S/S 2027 offered more sporty options, including track pants (with Adidas stripe) and puffer coats – ones which literally puffed, thanks to the air circulating within. IBJ

IM Men

‘In Praise of Bamboo Shadows’, as IM Men’s S/S 2027 was called, celebrated every conceivable association of the plant. Its usefulness and versatility as a material was expressed through fabric made from a blend of bamboo fibres and organic cotton, on which graphic designer Rikako Nagashima had printed shadowy patterns. Its deliciousness as an ingredient came through in supple leather bags, inspired by chimaki, a Japanese dish of steamed bamboo leaves filled with glutinous rice.

Most important of all were the aesthetic and cultural associations. The patterns cast by bamboo forests, light dappled in beams, was translated in a Japanese dyeing technique called ironaki, and the repeated straight lines created by the plant found their echo in hand-pleated pieces. Papery textured outerwear ‘[drew] inspiration from the jūnihitoe (the twelve-layered kimono) worn by Princess Kaguya in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, one of the oldest Japanese folktales,’ and denim in graduated colour evoked traditional ink wash paintings. IBJ

Dries Van Noten

Julian Klausner’s latest collection for Dries Van Noten came with a warning prior to the show: guests could expect to be subjected to extreme temperatures in the Tennis Club de Paris showspace due to the heatwave which continued into Thursday evening. So much so, on arrival, two paramedics stood on standby, ice lollies were distributed to guests, and fans were left on the seats which stretched the length of the monumental space. Luckily, this is a house with an enormous amount of goodwill, one which has extended from the eponymous Van Noten – the designer exited his brand in 2024 – to Klausner, who has astutely evolved the Belgian house’s codes with a series of lauded men’s and womenswear collections.

His S/S 2027 menswear outing was equally beguiling, a masterclass in lightness and beauty that more than distracted from the venue’s heat (in fact, the collection’s diaphanous layers looked all the more appealing). The inspiration had come from L’Après-midi d’un faune (The Faun’s Afternoon), an 1876 poem by Stéphane Mallarmé in which a ‘dream-like creature’ wakes up in the woods having dreamt of dancing nymphs; in his slumbering state, he cannot remember if the scene happened or not. ‘I was moved by the haziness the verses depict, by the constant blurring between the real and the imagined and by the fluidity with which the senses and fantasy slip one into the other,’ said Klausner.

In the collection, this feeling was conjured in the reimagining of a ‘masculine wardrobe’ in delicate, sheer fabrications or adorned with embellishment – from a breezy parka decorated with transparent paillettes, to vividly printed silk trench coats and safari shirts – while colours moved from watercolour hues and sun-bleached pastels to inky black and navy. ‘The idea of sensuality guided many of our choices, colours and fabrications, rendering wardrobe staples as clothing that feels soft and intimate,’ Klausner continued. ‘Like a dream that vanishes upon waking up, I hope everything feels loose, delicate, easy to remove, ready to fly away.’ JM

Studio Nicholson

‘This is who we are,’ declared Studio Nicholson, the British brand that held its first runway show in its 16-year history as part of Paris Fashion Week Men’s. The collection doubled down on its position as a leader of discerning, minimalist style: high-quality fabrics presented with low intervention, expertly cut and relatively unisex. The S/S 2027 show included both men’s and womenswear, but the majority of Studio Nicholson pieces could be worn interchangeably – a shared wardrobe for tasteful couples.

Although this was their first show, in ways it also served as a retrospective. ‘The Sorte’ trouser, which has been a mainstay for Studio Nicholson since the very beginning, opened the show in navy gabardine, and slightly barrel-legged jeans (the brand is the well-established go-to for this cut) appeared multiple times throughout. There was an expansion in other categories, particularly accessories and shoes, which included, in true summer style, espadrilles, flip-flops and garden clogs. IBJ

Junya Watanabe

The number of collaborators listed in the show-notes for Junya Watanabe’s S/S 2027 collection totalled 17: from other clothing brands, including Carhartt, Kappa, and New Balance, to every fashion assistant’s bête noir… DHL. The multinational’s logo appeared on caps created by another collaborator, artist Kota Okuda, which were blingified with ostentatious gold chains and strings of pearls.

Costume jewellery ran through the collection, which closed the gap between traditional tailoring techniques and more recent sportswear tropes, with more than a sprinkle of 1980s references throughout. There was a stone-washed denim jacket, cropped short and worn on top of a Wall Street blue-and-white striped poplin shirt. Tracksuits were high-sheen and colour-blocked, and bouclé accents and the occasional exaggerated epoulette called to mind classic yuppie style, albeit with more swagger. IBJ

Willy Chavarria

Since transplanting from New York, Willy Chavarria’s Paris shows have become a highlight of the schedule – previous outings have included a near-religious experience in the American Church of Paris, while last season’s all-singing, all-dancing spectacular played out like a telenovela on steroids. This season, Chavarria chose Espace Niemeyer, the Oscar Niemeyer-designed former Headquarters of the French Communist Party, for the show, which took place under its futuristic subterranean dome. The setting felt apt: the utopian architecture provided a reflection of a collection that Chavarria said was about a search for joy amid a time of ‘chaos and darkness’.

Soundtracked by a quartet of musicians, he titled the S/S 2027 outing Comunión (flyers for the show posited it as ‘New Age Group Therapy’) and drafted a group of friends and collaborators, including Bella Freud and Romeo Beckham, to walk the runway. Their looks continued to hone Chavarria’s signature aesthetic, one which reimagines work- and sportswear silhouettes in expansive proportions (and with new elegance) while his growing womenswear offering riffs on mid-century silhouettes.

This season, vivid colours were inspired by the work of Louis Carlos Bernal, and bolstered the joyful mood, while an exposure of the body – T-shirts were pushed over the head to reveal models’ chests; shorts sliced so short that the pockets hung beneath the hem – lent a pulsating sensual undercurrent. ‘There are two strong feelings in this collection,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘One is joy, colour, levity, and playfulness. The other is shock and awe.’ JM

Kiko Kostadinov

Kiko Kostadinov was in a self-referential mood this season, which he began by ‘looking back at the minimal geometric forms of the previous season and asking what could be challenged and pushed further’. With engineer-like precision, the collection emphasised structure and materiality, eschewing embellishment for a streamlined finish.

There was an air of Y2K cyber-core about the 33-look collection, which borrowed its colour scheme from the Apple iMac G3 range: turquoise, dove grey, grape. The canvas interventions of the late Italian artist Agostino Bonalumi were referenced through shape and drape, and through the use of internal boning to create ‘curved, rippling protrusions, emphasising a tension between softness and structure’. IBJ

Wooyoungmi

Madame Woo was searching for a universality in her research for S/S 2027, particularly what various cultures and geographies have in common when it comes to reading joyfulness in apparel. Her answer was threefold: ‘light, colour and the imprint of individuality’.

Light was articulated through surface treatments which gave garments an aged appearance, as if sun-bleached. Colour, mostly pastel but with occasional flashes of vivid chartreuse or tangerine, was applied liberally. And a sense of individuality came from pieces appliqued with playful, juvenile pictures, leather keyrings hanging from belts, and ties worn rebelliously around the head. Applying these principles imbued the 47-look collection with a feeling of levity which can be recognised the world over. IBJ

Celine

Taking place on the final day of menswear fashion month, American designer Michael Rider presented one of the collections of the season with his first standalone men’s show for Celine, held in an all-white showspace constructed in the Tennis Club de Paris. Honing an already distinctive aesthetic which is based on the idea of developing an evolving wardrobe – and combining an American preppiness with the Parisian insouciance synonymous with the house – Rider said he was thinking less about thematics, and more about what he (and his team) actually want to wear. ‘[It’s about] enjoying what we do in the studio, and desiring it ourselves, all of it, the clothes and the characters,’ he said.

Besides a multitude of great clothes (this collection will be much-imitated, particularly in its playful, thrown-on styling), what is striking about Rider is his ability to evoke a ‘Celine man’ (or indeed woman), despite the eclecticism in the looks on show. Much of this is down to his own belief in what he puts down the runway: a navy cummerbund over a red sweater, an enormous bag slotted into the crook of the arm, ballooning pants, a mix of the slouchy and the shrunken – these are familiar garments that he has somehow made feel entirely new. And, while the show might have presented these pieces in more unconventional combinations, take these looks apart and this is a wardrobe that can be adopted by a wide gamut of men. ‘It’s about building towards something bigger,’ he said. ‘Something with legs, and roots.’ JM

Paris Fashion Week culminated yesterday, marking the end of a month-long season of shows that has seen previous stops in New York, London and Milan.

With a nine-day schedule standing at nearly double the length of its counterparts, Paris remains the defining city of fashion month – not least because it comprises shows from fashion’s heavyweight houses, among them Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (to name just a handful).

After last season’s debuts dominated the S/S headlines, A/W 2026 was about the sophomore show, as designers settled into their positions as creative directors. Without the weight of expectation, we saw some brilliant shows – notably Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Michael Rider at Celine, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, and Matthieu Blazy at Chanel (all were showing their second ready-to-wear collections).

Here, reported by Wallpaper* fashion & beauty features director Jack Moss and contributing writer India Jarvis, we pick the standout shows that defined the week.

The best of Paris Fashion Week A/W 2026

Dior

Jonathan Anderson staged his A/W 2026 runway show for Dior in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries, constructing a circular show set around one of the park’s ponds (for the occasion, it had been populated with Monet-esque lily pads, meticulously constructed to look like the real thing), while the invitation comprised miniature versions of the park’s signature green metal chairs. Across the pond’s centre ran an elevated runway, echoing the line of the Tuileries’ Grand Allée, a historic promenade since the park opened to the public in 1667 after a renovation by Louis XIV. It led to a collection about ‘seeing and being seen’, a contemporary imagining of the promenade, ‘[where] a walk in the park becomes a performance’. Cue a ‘panoply of Parisians’ in eclectic, time-hopping attire, from the woozy ruffles of the Belle Époque (here transformed into mini dresses with bouncing trains) to plays on bourgeois tropes, such as fabrics that recalled heritage tweeds, blazers with golden buttons, and shearling jackets reimagined with wave-like hems. What was most striking, though, was a feeling of levity: lily-pad-adorned footwear, polka-dot motifs and crystallised denim were both playful and pretty. ‘Dior has this giant past, and I had to start there,’ Anderson said. ‘Now I feel free to release it from that.’ Jack Moss

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a walk in the park

Saint Laurent

A cinematic offering from Anthony Vaccarello unfolded in a simulacrum of a sleek, modernist home; at its centre, a sized-up recreation of a bust that lived in Yves Saint Laurent’s own apartment. Through it strode this season’s Saint Laurent heroine, her heavy-smoked eye and slick, side-parted hair a nod towards Helmut Newton’s Paris Vogue photograph of a model in Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo on Rue Aubriot in 1975. Indeed, tailoring was central to the A/W 2026 collection: eight trouser suits opened the show, while various other iterations appeared throughout (including Vaccarello’s own riff on the tuxedo, worn by model Loli Bahia, who walked exclusively for Saint Laurent this season and closed the show). Here, the silhouette was sloped across the shoulder and narrowed at the waist – though not constricted – for a riff on the power suit that was more ‘insouciant shrug than swagger’. As a counterpoint, Vaccarello looked towards the ‘troubled heroines’ of Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, as well as Romy Schneider in the 1971 film Max et les Ferrailleurs (she was this season’s protagonist, he said), to capture an ‘elegance tinged with ennui… the beauty of intimacy and vulnerability’. To capture this mood, a series of slips and dresses came in lace coated in silicone, while enormous fur coats had a vivacious confidence. Jack Moss

Dries Van Noten

For many of us, the stylings of awkward adolescence are best not dwelt upon – after all, who looked or felt their best as a teenager? Evidently, Julian Klausner takes a more romantic view of this impressionable time, but, then again, Klausner was likely a more sophisticated brand of teenager than most. In any case, this was the impression given by his A/W 2026 collection for Dries Van Noten, which was inspired in part by a visit to Lycée Carnot, and the memories of being an adolescent ‘work-in-progress’. The Lycée is a Rive Droite public school with alumni including Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord, and Daft Punk, and its Gustave Eiffel-designed great hall has been the backdrop for numerous Paris fashion shows over the years – in other words, a suitably rarefied and creatively rich starting point.

The 61 looks at Dries Van Noten asked that most teenage question: who am I going to be today? For the confident moment, a navel-bearing button-up knit with a vibrant silk skirt. When a suit of armour is required, a protective duffel coat that does the talking for you. Or maybe one day the mood might be scholastic – collegiate blazer and pleated skirt, but always, always customised, an embellishment here, a contrasting trim there. ‘Just like a pixelated picture, the more one gets far from that time of endless questioning, the clearer it becomes,’ Klausner said, a metaphor he extended through prints with digitally warped 17th-century Flemish still life paintings. Opulent, mature fabrics and finishings were styled with a youthful irreverence best summarised by the final lines from Gala Dragot’s vocal performance, which soundtracked the show: ‘Don’t be too serious... Wear a collar... Keep it blurry though.’ India Jarvis

Acne Studios

If Dries Van Noten was an homage to the experimental attitude of youth, then Acne Studios marked its 30th birthday year with a collection that declared (as one does at 30): I know exactly who I am. A/W 2026 was an affirmation of the house’s irreverent signatures, such as a revival of the particular 1996 cut of jean that made their name, and photographic elements that nod to the brand’s unconventional marketing style, including the bi-annual Acne Paper.

The setting for this season was a succession of intersecting cuboid rooms that, viewed simultaneously from the end of the runway, appeared like a Josef Albers work made three-dimensional. According to Jonny Johansson’s show notes, this was conceived ‘like an enfilade of salons … the portals marking what has come before, and what might follow’. Where a salon in the Parisian tradition might mean a bringing together of clashing or complementary ideas, at Acne Studios, the determination is to blur those boundaries as much as possible. Standout looks saw cropped aviator jackets worn with skin-tight jodhpurs and desirable point-toe pumps, Prince of Wales check jackets worn over one shoulder, and larger-than-life portraits of art school students, taken by Paul Kooiker, printed onto stiff pencil skirts and draped dresses.

Alaïa

Late last year, just after the completion of the Italian house’s sale to Prada, it was announced that Dario Vitale would be leaving his position as creative director of Versace (he lasted a single, but impactful season), to be replaced by Belgian designer Pieter Mulier. It meant that this season’s Alaïa show, watched by designers Matthieu Blazy and Raf Simons, was to be his last: the swansong of a five-year tenure defined by commercial expansion and critical success (he has also established a coterie of model muses, many of whom walked this final show, and will likely follow him to Versace). Held in an intimate showspace in the former Fondation Cartier – Mulier said he wanted it to recall a 1990s pre-iPhone runway show – the collection itself eschewed his more recent experimental silhouettes in favour of stripping things back to the essence of the house, from simple body-contouring tank dresses to lean tailored overcoats, stretch knits, and peplums and ruffles (the last flourishes rendered in Mulier’s contemporary, streamlined style).

‘This collection is about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress?’ he said backstage after the show. ‘It’s basically a vocabulary of the last five years. It’s what I learned at Alaïa, that I’m giving to the next designer. It’s like leaving the keys on the table. At Alaïa, I learned precision, editing and [that] real luxury is not what we all think. It is a perfectly cut jacket.’ Jack Moss

READ: Pieter Mulier delivers a swansong collection at Alaïa: ‘It is a vocabulary of the last five years’

Rabanne

Of all the distinct fashions of the long 20th century, it could be argued that 1940s style is the hardest to reference without veering into the territory of costume. Perhaps it’s because boxy tailored silhouettes and victory rolls are so much associated with the vast canon of British war movies, or perhaps because austerity-driven ‘make do’ dressing is antithetical to contemporary fashion at either end of the high-low scale. It’s a testament to Julien Dossena’s eye, then, that for Rabanne A/W 2026 he incorporated patently 1940s-inspired styles – T-bar heels, tea-dress florals, and clashing knitwear – without evoking even a hint of reenactment.

After all, Rabanne has always been a house noted for its futuristic bent. Unconventional, industrial materials, like metal and plastic, are at its very heart, and remained so this season alongside those more vintage ideas – coming together in a collection that the brand called ‘a little louche’. This take on modernist femininity was told through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpses of a slip through an unbuttoned blouse, a hint of lace underneath a more conservative skirt, and pussybows left suggestively undone. Dossena told Wallpaper* post-show that the character he wanted to build with these contrasts was that of ‘a resistant woman’, and that for him, there was a suggestion of retro-futurism with the 1940s-derived shapes (for example, hair pulled into sculptural pompadour styles was less Vera Lynn and more replicants in Blade Runner). India Jarvis

Rick Owens

What might the cyberpunk cousin of Marlene Dietrich wear for a night on the town? It’s a question that could only be answered by Rick Owens – whose A/W 2026 collection was an homage to the ‘dignified sequence of her life stages’, all shot through with classics from his own particular design language. Think body parts augmented through prosthetics and sci-fi silhouettes in a post-apocalyptic landscape heavy with dry ice and punctuated by magnesium-bright beams of light. Presenting the collection as the second part of ‘Tower’, which premiered during the men's collections, Owens drew from Dietrich’s qualities of ‘steeliness’ and ‘grit’, and interpreted them as sheath-like dresses, abundant piles of faux fur, and flight jackets.

Just as the German star’s enduring legacy was in part a product of her striking collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, Owens is an artist quick to credit the rich input his work receives from his creative partners. This season, much attention has been lovingly devoted to name-checking the hands through which his raw materials pass – from the third-generation, family-run mill in Como, Italy, which weaves a high-performance fibre called Kevlar (purportedly five-times stronger than steel), to the Veneto-region wash house committed to reducing water waste, which treats industrial indigo canvas. India Jarvis

Loewe

Presented on a bright-yellow runway populated by German artist Cosima Von Bonin’s plush figures of clams, octopi and dogs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s sophomore Loewe collection was a welcome jolt of energy on the Friday morning of Paris Fashion Week. ‘What is fashion but an open field for endless creative play?’ said the American designers, whose poppy A/W 2026 collection translated their colourful beach-ready debut for the winter months, resulting in a riot of curvy dégradé shearling parkas, 3D-printed slips and shaggy-hemmed dresses with trailing trains. Other elements had a sporting feel – like face-shielding sunglasses, boldly coloured anoraks and chunky riffs on half-zip ski sweaters – while inflatable elements meant garments could be transformed in size and proportion (a lobster-claw-shaped pump, shown at the re-see the following day, will be sold separately).

Such experiments were made possible by the abilities of the Loewe atelier, particularly when it came to leather: bouclé overcoats were made from intricate loops of leather yarn, while the gradient shearlings were treated ‘in the same manner as poodle grooming’. ‘As we began [creating] our second collection, we were struck by a simple truth: for us, the act of making is, at its core, an expression of joy – an intellectual, process-driven pursuit charged with playfulness,’ said the designers. ‘The path taken matters as much as the end result. It is the idea of play as rigorous experimentation and problem-solving, moving between instinct and experience, between a devotion to craft and its endless opportunities for innovation.’ Jack Moss

Issey Miyake

For Satoshi Kondo, the role of designer is as much about relinquishing control as it is wielding it. Knowing when to hold back, not to overstep the mark, to let the materials speak for themselves. This was the credo he brought to the fore for Issey Miyake’s A/W 2026 offering – a characteristically Japanese recognition of innate, simple beauty.

Titled ‘Creating, Allowing’, the collection navigated this specific tension understood by designers through pieces where the artist’s hand was inserted sparingly, never tampering with the true essence of the fabrication, only enhancing. At its best, this looked like expanses of cloth cut with technical lines that left their impression on the negative space, like the wine-coloured single-breasted coat with inbuilt cape that the model held up over her shoulders to exaggerate its rectangular construction. The innate movement of the house-signature pleats was used only intermittently and, instead, dramatically inflexible lacquered washi paper was introduced through breast plates, bodices and belts – creating a contrast between motion and restriction. Kondo’s intention with this was that the most important impact was made through the human frame, by ‘minimising design intervention and leaving the form-making to the wearer's own body’.

As for the space itself, the Carrousel du Louvre was transformed with a layer of silvery sand and ‘finely shredded aluminum foil, [serving] as a device for the interaction between "material", "people", and "clothing"’. This surface became marked and patterned as the models moved across it, another allusion to Kondo’s metaphor of ‘considered disruption’. India Jarvis

Lanvin

This year marks the centenary of menswear at the house of Lanvin – a celebration that filtered into the season’s womenswear outing through nods to the boyish silhouettes that characterised interwar ladies’ fashion. It was a time when overtly feminine curves were flattened into straight lines from bust to waist, creating an elongated, athletic outline that came to epitomise the emancipated New Woman.

Peter Copping, who took the reins at Lanvin in late 2024, imagined ‘a dialogue between generations’, which came together beautifully to meld the concerns of Jeanne Lanvin’s customers in the 1920s with those who shop the brand in the present. What do they have in common? Evidently, a love of opera – gloves were cuffed and elbow-length, and belted opera coats were voluminous enough to be worn over an evening gown, and trimmed with faux fur. They wear hats (Jeanne Lanvin’s first foray into fashion was as an apprentice milliner), with A/W 2026’s borrowing from cloche shapes but with exaggerated sou’wester-style brims. They favour a dash of restrained glamour. If some of the cuts leaned slightly austere, they were countered with an opulence of fabric and finish: hand-embroidered bead droplets, inky velvets, laser-cut fringes.

Lanvin is the oldest French maison still in operation, its HQ still in its original site – therefore, the weight of its legacy must hang heavily over every designer who takes its helm. Its founder insisted on le chic ultime, a phrase that surely needs no translation, and which is no small order. It is a comfort that, for every moment of reinvention it undergoes, Lanvin is still a place that women can go to for guaranteed elegance. India Jarvis

Givenchy

The idea of individual style was a throughline of Paris Fashion Week, one expressed by Sarah Burton with her third collection for Givenchy – the former Alexander McQueen designer’s most liberated outing yet (and, as a result, her best). ‘How can we put ourselves back together in the world we’re living in?’ was the question Burton asked this season, elucidating after the show that she was thinking about the multiplicities of a contemporary woman’s life (as such, it found a companion with the Prada show in Milan, where Miuccia Prada asserted that ‘as a woman, your life is layered – each day demands not only a shifting of clothes, but a richness of identities within yourself’). So there was some typically brilliant tailoring (Burton is known for her prowess in the medium, and has recently brought over her tailoring team from Alexander McQueen), though also more vivid expressions of style – a dress, hanging from razor-thin straps, in bright yellow leather; shimmering leopard spots that burst into tassels; silk T-shirts that had been refashioned by Stephen Jones into headpieces – as well as oversized riffs on carpenter jeans, off-the-shoulder bombers, and high-collared white shirts. ‘I wanted to make it feel very personal,’ said Burton. ‘Each woman is her own person, each silhouette is her own character.’ Jack Moss

Junya Watanabe

Junya Watanabe lets the clothes do the talking. The A/W 2026 collection was accompanied by show notes that came to two single sentences: ‘The Art of Assemblage Couture explores form born from pure creative instinct, free from conventional notions of dressmaking. Through the direct presentation of raw materials, this approach expresses the surrounding social environment.’ This succinct summary belied a frenzy of ideas, which played out over one of the most entertaining shows of the week.

Classic couture silhouettes were fashioned from a mish-mash of consumer goods and mass-produced garments. The opening look, worn by Irina Shayk, comprised a gown in a 1950s prom style, constructed from gloves, with a mesh flounce. A puff-sleeved dress, with a squared neckline and a central slit that showed a silver interior, appeared to be made from a gold Mylar blanket – its creased folds still visible, like it had just been ripped from its packet. Another dress used kitschily patterned curtains, pinch pleats and all, for its full, trained skirt, while its bodice was made from – what else? – scrap number plates.

So far, so Watanabe, but this season offered more in the way of spectacle than just unconventional materials. In a more choreographed display than usual, Watanabe called in the services of Poland-born movement director Pat Boguslawski. He directed a languid yet melodramatic routine for Watanabe’s models, who threw garments onto chairs with tango-inspired passion, and turned their heads with the kind of simpering doe-eyed expressiveness of silent movie starlets. This reference was reinforced through Eugene Souleiman’s hair design, sculpted curls slicked to the foreheads and cheeks in the manner of Josephine Baker, and glam make-up by Isamaya Ffrench – winged, heavy-lashed and sometimes tear-streaked eyes. India Jarvis

Celine

It hasn’t taken long for Michael Rider to define a signature look at Celine: a preppy, uptown-inflected uniform that feels like a vision of Parisian style through American eyes (Rider had worked at Celine previously, under Phoebe Philo, though more recently headed up US label Polo Ralph Lauren). And it has worked: his collections thus far have felt like you could wear them off the runway and straight onto the street, full of clever riffs on quotidian pieces that will no doubt be much copied by lesser brands (they have also been full of great accessories, from abundant charm bracelets to colourful handbags and slipper-like loafers). For A/W 2026, Rider continued his upward trajectory with a show held at the Institut de France amid a series of beautiful modernist speakers in wood and metal, presenting a collection that favoured perennial style over ephemeral trends. ‘Celine is a style: a mix of old and new that feels urgent and dreamy,’ said Rider. ‘Making the things we all dream of finding and wearing.’ And in among this ready-to-wear wardrobe (in the truest sense), flourishes of the playful and the romantic emerged, from enormous sequins and flashes of animal print to feathered headpieces and bold punctuations of colour. ‘Putting on clothes, a look, can change the day – [it can] change how we walk and feel,’ said Rider. ‘I love that.’ Jack Moss

Hermès

Staged on a runway of moss and soil (strangely, a trend of the week, later seen at Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton), Nadège Vanhée’s latest outing for Hermès saw her conjure what she called a ‘liminal realm’ between dawn and dusk, earth and space. It lent the collection an alien, otherworldly feel: models emerged from glowing orbs and looped around the Garde Républicaine show space on an inky runway, which also inspired the clothing’s palette of deep blues, greys and black. Mashing up the equestrian codes that remain at the heart of Hermès – here, sliced-away jodhpurs-cum-cycling shorts, dressage blazers and knee-high leather boots – with lean, futuristic silhouettes, it was a clever hybrid of the past, present and future, a liminal realm of Vanhée’s own. Ostrich and leather jump suits, with contrasting knit sleeves, were the season’s show pieces – the result of the house’s superlative leather atelier, they straddled sex appeal and function – while visible zips added an almost sci-fi feel, running down the front of dresses or slicing across the chest of a jacket. Prints came via AM Cassandre, an art deco artist, and saw clouds intersected by a geometric structure – a reflection of Vanhée’s own juxtapositions between the graphic and the elemental. Jack Moss

Comme des Garçons

A strong Comme des Garçons collection saw Rei Kawakubo find solace in her favoured colour, black, which – save for a brief interlude in bright, candy pink – made up the majority of the A/W 2026 collection. And, while recent collections have seen Kawakubo grapple with tumultuous world affairs, the choice of the colour was not necessarily to represent grief or mourning – instead, the Japanese designer said it captured the expansiveness of the creative process. ‘I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me,’ she said in a typically brief statement issued to the press. ‘It’s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the universe and the black hole.’ Indeed, the use of a single colour allowed Kawakubo’s typically provocative forms to come to the fore: this season, pillow-like constructions draped in semi-sheer black tulle, undulating pile-ups of shirred ruffles and tassels, or saucer-shaped protusions that looped around the upper body. Like any Comme collection, it was a Rorschach test – revelling in the unfamiliar, Kawakubo always challenges you to draw your own conclusions. Jack Moss

Balenciaga

Of all the creative directors at the nascent stages of new tenures, Pierpaolo Piccioli might have one of the steepest mountains to climb at Balenciaga. In the 16 years he spent at Valentino, prior to taking this new position in the spring of 2025, he demonstrated a Cristóbal Balenciaga-worthy approach to dressmaking that prioritised proportion and colour. But while Piccioli was sending out breathtaking confections of ballooning silk taffeta at Valentino, Balenciaga the brand was being injected with a new edge, at the hand of Vetements-founder Demna, whose zeitgeist-defining designs were laced with subversion and irony. How to bring the grandeur and romance that are Piccioli’s calling cards, without alienating the new demographic of customers who flocked to the brand under Demna?

For this season, his second collection, Piccioli pinned his hopes on a collaboration with Sam Levinson – the creator of Euphoria, the teen drama responsible for making internationally recognised stars out of its cast, which includes Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer. Audiences at the Balenciaga A/W 2026 show were treated to a preview of clips from the HBO show’s third series (airing publicly in April), which played on screens across the venue; its interplay of light and dark was found running through the collection, which Piccioli had titled ‘ClairObscur’. The collection itself was a largely black affair, in light-catching high-gloss fabrics, punctuated by the occasional neon-toned print that harkened to Euphoria's colour-saturated visual style. If Euphoria – boundary-pushing, youth-orientated, and ever so slightly contentious – feels more spiritually within Demna’s wheelhouse than Piccioli’s, the High Renaissance references (‘ClairObscur’ is a play on clair-obscur or chiaroscuro, the artistic style beloved by Mannerist painters, which manifests as dramatically contrasting tones to create intense depth) brought proceedings firmly back into Piccioli’s world. India Jarvis

READ: Balenciaga taps Euphoria’s Sam Levinson for A/W 2026

Jean Paul Gaultier

After the shock factor of his debut last season – one which divided both critics and online commentators with its barely-there silhouettes and trompe l’oeil prints of nude bodies – Dutch designer Duran Lantink seemed to hit his stride this season, using his eye for the surreal and the sculptural to create a disruptive cast of archetypes, from the raver to the cowboy. Marlene Dietrich (or, more specifically, a treasured mesh T-shirt printed with the filmstar that Lantink had found in a vintage shop) was one figure on the moodboard, inspiring the clever opening tailoring, which came with jutting folds and sculpted lapels, while also being printed on a dress installed with dry ice (a nod to her favoured vice – cigarettes). The designer said she was a master in subverting tropes: ‘dominant, sexy and graceful, the ultimate hybrid’ – a mood that informed the shape-shifting collection. Tailoring metamorphosed into tech-y sportswear, trompe-l’oeil bodysuits of artist’s dummies were overlaid with lingerie, and puffer jackets became bodysuits. ‘It’s a spirit that suits the house of Gaultier, a place where the world is perpetually turned upside down,’ said Lantink via press notes. ‘Feminine and masculine, inside out, vintage and new, underwear as outerwear, technical and tailored all at once.’ Jack Moss

Chanel

Matthieu Blazy said that his sophomore ready-to-wear collection began with a quote from house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel. ‘Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.’ It seemed an apt description for Blazy’s own vision for Chanel thus far, one which elevates the quotidien through expressive acts of craft, and finds joy in both the functional and the glamorous. These are special clothes, no doubt (as anyone who has had the chance to see them up close can attest), though they are designed to be worn, not simply exalted. As such, he will no doubt be satisfied by the busy shop floors earlier this week as his debut collection landed (it was an ongoing fashion-week talking point), and more so to see those purchases worn by attendees to the show on Monday evening (and not just by the usual high-spending customers, but editors and stylists alike).

Staged amid a series of vast primary-coloured cranes – Blazy is, after all, still in the process of constructing his Chanel – the designer’s A/W 2026 collection was a brilliant and comprehensive exercise in wardrobing, which, to borrow Coco Chanel’s categorisation spanned the ‘caterpillar’ (roomy blazers, tweeds reformulated into lumberjack-style overshirts, simple jersey dresses), but also the ‘butterfly’. The latter came in an extraordinary stream of lustrous, colour-sturated looks at the end of the show, loaded with embellishment – appliqué flowers, lace and beads – and matched with models’ pastel-coloured or metallic hair. Over the 78 looks, there was a multitude of iterations of the Chanel woman, and the accessories to match (from gleaming metallic court shorts, to squashy crescent-shaped bags that recalled croissants). ‘Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ said Blazy. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’ Jack Moss

READ: Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore Chanel collection is made for ‘women to be unapologetically who they are’

Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière staged his A/W 2026 collection for Louis Vuitton amid a show set by Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle, seeing rolling green hills – like those found in pastoral landscapes – abstracted into a series of sharp, futuristic peaks. The collection itself had a similar rationale, drawing inspiration from nature – ‘mountains, forests, plains’, and the clothing traditionally used to live among such elemental landscapes – and reimagining them through a series of Ghesquière’s typically idiosyncratic, time-travelling silhouettes. The idea of expedition seemed a throughline – supersized-wide-shouldered jackets, shearling hats and furry-hooded duffel coats seemed primed for protection, while bags hung on leather staffs like bindles – though there was a ceremonial feel to garments, which recalled traditional rural dress (though, in Ghesquière style, they were mashed up in such a way that the references were hard to place). ‘It is not an escape from our realities, but an echo of them,’ said Ghesquière of the vivid collection, which also featured the ‘urban pastoral’ works of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. ‘[It is] a new folklore, for the future.’ Jack Moss

Miu Miu

Miuccia Prada has long interrogated a woman’s place in the world: how they move through it, and a wardrobe that feels reflective of their needs. For A/W 2026, she was thinking about the ‘smallness of the body’ – not in its physical proportions, but in opposition with the vastness of the world around us. It feels like a response to our current era of overload: the runway at Palais d’Iéna was covered in a layer of soil and moss, a reminder that beyond the pomp and ceremony of luxury fashion, we are simply humans living in communion with the earth (as a seatmate commented, perhaps this was her instruction to ‘touch grass’). ‘I am obsessed with the smallness of the body – in a human sense, the contrast between ourselves, our bodies and the vastness of that which surrounds us,’ she said. ‘Who we are, and the scale and magnitude of what we have to face. This collection is not about fragility – there is a confidence, and a strength. But always about a confrontation between a human and the expansiveness of the world.’

As such, the collection segued between moments of strength and intimacy: for the former, enveloping trapper hats, hiking shoes and sporty shearling-lined parkas, for the latter, slip dresses, satin shoes and bejewelled embellishment. There felt something of the 1990s to it: not only in the more minimal looks, which intersected the middle of the show, but in that contrast between glamour and utility (a parka over a mini dress; a studded handbag; a block heel), and also the appearance of Chloë Sevigny, a longtime house muse who first walked for Miu Miu in 1996. She was joined by a coterie of ‘individuals’ on the runway, from models Gemma Ward and Kristen McMenamy to the actress Gillian Anderson, who closed the show. Jack Moss

READ: Miu Miu’s all-star cast for A/W 2026 featured Gillian Anderson and Chloë Sevigny

Nothing is quite what it seems with the S/S 2025 collections, seeing designers riff on wardrobe staples with illusory tricks – from trompe l’œil to twisted silhouettes and unexpected fabrications. Whether the turned-up hemline of a leather Loewe overcoat – as though perpetually caught in a gust of wind – or a surreal Hodakova shoe, which squashes together a beach flip-flop and high-heeled pump, these are pieces that appear as one thing, but are actually another (a response, no doubt, to our increasingly disorientating digital age). The effect is something like a surreal collage; garments that implore a second look.

S/S 2025’s twisted wardrobe staples

As such, in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), photographer Nicole Maria Winkler and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture these looks in a surreal interior of their own: a liminal apartment whereby Winkler’s archival photographs become trompe l’oeil wall coverings, or adorn folding screens and chests of drawers. Inhabited by Swiss artist and model Veronika Kunz, the space – which was imagined by set designer Kim Harding – is completed with modernist furnishings, from a Ron Arad bed to an Afra and Tobia Scarpa Cassina sofa.

‘Nicole and I have been friends for many years and have played with trompe-l’œil before, and this story was a further exploration of that theme,’ Harding told Wallpaper*. ‘Delving into Nicole’s archive of still lifes, we created some interesting stand-alone pieces to sit among the set itself.’

Model: Veronika Kunz at Kunz Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kim Harding Studio. Hair: Sophie Jane Anderson. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Makeup by Mario. Manicure: Sasha Goddard at Saint Luke using Dior. Digi tech: Anna-Sophia John. Photography assistant: Tom Porter. Set design assistants: Matilda Greenwood, Heather Allen. Fashion assistants: Nathan Fox, Rebecca Evans-White. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the March 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

‘A soft suit is just as practical as a tracksuit but, in daily public life, much more appropriate,’ says Giorgio Armani, the 90-year-old fashion designer, who, in one glorious swipe of a sentence (there will be more later), begins to lay bare some of where we happen to find ourselves with menswear in the autumn of 2024.

Saint Laurent’s A/W 2024 menswear collection, shown in Paris in March at the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection – the Tadao Ando renovated modern art museum in the 1st arrondissement – offered further illumination. An opening double- breasted suit jacket that was generous in shape – everything falling impeccably from a wide and stern 1980s shoulder, worn with a loose-cuffed trouser and tie – set out a convincing case for a tailoring mood pertinent with languid elegance. Creative director Anthony Vaccarello subsequently explained that this collection’s tailoring was based around the idea of the haute couture technique ‘flou’, in which the sole purpose is to make a garment as fluid as possible.

New elegance: unpacking tailoring’s new momentum

Despite the obvious nod to the past wardrobe of Yves himself, this collection’s ease – you could imagine it being worn by the dancers of Pina Bausch’s company for example, and they have always been persuasive on the fluidity of suiting – offered a way to do elegance that, even if it was a somewhat full-on proposition, did not feel stuffy. It’s a path that we are increasingly seeing mined by exciting emerging voices in custom tailoring, such as New York’s Ralph Fitzgerald or Swedish duo Atelier Saman Amel, who are putting their own stamp on the future of tailoring and dressing up.

The idea that suiting goes in and out of frontline fashion can become a flaccid conversation, with suiting and tailoring largely seen as the muscular guts of menswear. ‘The demise of the suit has been talked about for decades, and yet it survives; the tailored jacket still has a role to play; eveningwear has actually become more popular in recent times because I believe there is a renewed desire to be elegant,’ Armani says, on point. ‘To me, a suit remains the epitome of efficiency, modernity and ease. I find it more relevant now than ever before. But for sure, everything is a lot more comfortable than it was years ago.’ I ask him why Armani suits are having a moment – which they are. ‘Armani suits are popular because they never look stiff or unnatural.’

Tailoring does not exactly stand still – it’s always evolving – but equally, there are times when it gathers momentum. This season is one of those times. It’s been brewing since Covid. But there is a definite incoming shift toward the idea that formal is the new casual, which is not to say that you’ll suddenly want to wear a stiff three-piece suit at breakfast or return to in-depth conversations regarding the merits of Don Draper’s tie-pin. Rather, it is more about how formal menswear codes or classic garments can infiltrate a daily wardrobe and make it feel fuller. This new seasonal mood is also as much to do with styling things up or down, as it is about the clothes themselves.

That said, there are also plenty of bold new tailoring proposals flying about when you look. From directional designers such as Martine Rose – a suit blazer that knots in front, below its lapels, for example – to Magliano, founded in 2017 by Luca Magliano, whose work is bringing a breath of fresh air to Italian menswear with a mission to liberate the wardrobe from binary stereotypes while celebrating queerness.

Magliano’s A/W 2024 collection, shown on the steps of the Nelson Mandela Forum in Florence, saw his fantastically eclectic cast (experiencing tailoring with fresh eyes is made easier when you witness it embodied by characters rather than regular models) lead out with a lightly tailored single-breasted jacket stripped of a formal lapel and collar with seemingly random button placements. It was styled with mismatched, loosely cut trousers and a white T-shirt. Other experiments revolved around interesting twisting and tying ideas as jacket closures.

‘Reconstructed suiting’ was this season’s theme at Junya Watanabe Man. Watanabe has a strong reputation for consistently skewing men’s dress codes and, for A/W 2024, the designer showed blazers that had sliced open trousers attached to them to form a new kind of jacket silhouette. In one particular fusion, Watanabe brought together jeans and a blazer, forcing the formal-casual conversation into something with bite. After the show, Watanabe emailed a typically short point of consideration: ‘I wish for men of different generations to wear these suits.’ And surely they will.

‘In terms of the overarching mood within men’s clothes, I feel there is definitely a ‘return to elegance’ movement happening,’ says Dag Granath, one half of Atelier Saman Amel, who founded their custom tailoring house in 2015. ‘Silhouettes are becoming more sophisticated. I feel that the interest in sensationalism is over and people are focusing more on beauty now.’ A Saman Amel suit is made completely by hand and will take around 35 hours to make.

Having just opened their second atelier in London’s Mayfair – the first being in their hometown of Stockholm – Granath says they try not to think too much about a formal-casual dichotomy. Rather, their approach is to collaborate with their clients to create clothing that just effortlessly works. ‘Tailoring is moving away from being about occasions or having to wear it only for specific reasons,’ says Granath. For A/W 2024, their ‘Curated Looks’ – a series of proposals and ideas for clients to take inspiration from – are largely made from fabrics of their own development with a rich, dark palette of navy and charcoal, midnight brown and taupe.

Earlier this year, Davies & Son, the oldest operating tailor on Savile Row, worked with another incoming tailoring visionary, Satoshi Kuwata, who, with his label Setchu, won the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2023. Together, they have created three bespoke non-gender-specific outfits that take the rigours of Savile Row tailoring and marry them with Kuwata’s signature starting point of origami and the way in which a kimono can be folded and stored in a box.

‘I am not interested in designing for trends,’ says Kuwata, who recalls that his initial love of suiting came from seeing his father wearing them when he was young. When he finally made it from Japan to Savile Row, he says it was love at first sight. He eventually trained at Huntsman, as well as at fashion houses such as Givenchy. His genderless double-breasted ‘Origami’ jacket, inspired by vintage workwear and Savile Row cutting, features multiple folds to sublime effect. ‘A timeless approach is very important to me,’ he says.

‘A suit can be worn by all,’ Ralph Fitzgerald offers in answer to what makes a suit a great piece of design. Fitzgerald, based out of New York’s Chrysler Building, is making quite a name for himself (Marc Jacobs is a client), ‘cutting suits high up in the clouds in the most beautiful and iconic skyscraper’. Growing up in London, Fitzgerald says his early interest in clothes came from his mother taking him to London markets. His first suit, mod in style, was from Adam of London, in the Portobello Green Arcade. He trained under Douglas Hayward, of Mount Street Tailors, who dressed the likes of Roger Moore, Michael Caine and Steve McQueen, before working on Savile Row for Kilgour and Huntsman. He set up his own practice in 2023.

‘It’s a London cut, with a nipped waist, low button position and lower gorge,’ Fitzgerald says of his aesthetic, which also favours a strong shoulder and lightweight construction. ‘I love to work with cloth with texture over decoration – it’s importanthow the fabric plays with and absorbs light,’ he says. ‘I’m constantly collecting rare and unique fabrics; vintage cashmere, alpaca, flannels and twills.’ Fitzgerald says he’s been cutting a lot of double-breasted suits and tuxedos this year. ‘I believe men will always enjoy getting dressed up to the nines.’

As someone more likely to wish to dress like a figure in an Egon Schiele painting than up to the nines (the latest Schiele sartorial obsession being a 1910 portrait of publisher Eduard Kosmack wearing a murky green-brown, slope-shouldered jacket with no obvious fastenings that is housed at the Belvedere museum in Vienna), I find Fitzgerald’s energy inspiring. ‘I want my clients to be able to walk into any room and have no second thoughts or doubts,’ Fitzgerald says. One of fashion’s greatest attractions has always been its power to transform, and not just the way we look but also the way we feel, the way we move. The best tailoring has always been particularly momentous in that regard.

Models: Adam Khan and James Copestake at Xdirectn, Robert Knighton at Next London, KC McNaughton at Perspective, Zayd Ansa at First, Yom Peter at Genesis, Titas at Head Office, Thomas Garrick at Present, Tony Gilpin at Cococasts, and Oliver Rhys Henderson Casting: Cococasts. Grooming: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Photography assistants: Colm Moore, Joseph Barrett. Fashion assistant: Hayley Downes. Hair assistant: Motoharu Imaizumi. Skin assistant: Kosei Kitada. Production assistants: Minna Vauhkonen, Archie Thomson, Ady Huq. Special thanks to Rapid Eye.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

A freewheeling mood took over this season‘s menswear shows, seeing designers embrace the ‘irrational’ and the eccentric with colourful, experimental collections which in the heat of Florence, Milan and Paris captured summer’s uplifting energy. Indeed, designers from Rick Owens to Rei Kawakubo, Sabato De Sarno to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, spoke of a shift towards hope and optimism, albeit tentative. ’I want to hope for some light, even if very small,’ said Kawakubo, while Owens called his hundreds-strong runway cast his ’white satin army of love’. Meanwhile, the looming Paris Olympics – and its message of global unity and personal tenacity – was unavoidable, seeing preparations transform the city as a backdrop to both the menswear and haute couture shows which followed.

After the shift in recent seasons towards quiet, understated luxury – and the undeniably safe collections this often yielded – it felt like a refreshing re-emergence of men’s fashion month, which thanks to blockbuster shows from the likes of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton is shaking off any suggestion of its demise. Here, we unpack the S/S 2025 menswear shows – from ’irrational’ clothing to couture-level craft and eclectic new takes on tailoring.

Nothing was what it seemed

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal.’ So began a Prada collection which saw Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons urge the viewer to look closer, ‘to question the actuality of what we perceive, to reconsider, to look at things closer’. Staged amid a ‘fairytale ravescape’ – whereby models emerged from a vertiginous white cabin, which before the show had been blaring techno music – this was a collection of illusions, from belts that were in-set into trousers to trompe l’oeil Breton striped T-shirts, or trousers which appeared to be made from tailoring wool but were actually printed cotton. Elsewhere, shirts under sweaters or cardigans were constructed as a singular garment. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was disorientating fashion, for disorientating times, where even the appearance of reality is no guarantee (just prior to men’s fashion month, Meta introduced a label for Instagram and Facebook which tagged images that had been ‘made with AI’). And trompe l’oeil would appear throughout the season: at Acne Studios, denim was adorned with plastic chains, stacks of belts or printed rips and tears, while at Loewe, what looked like a cable-knit sweater was actually hand-painted fabric. ‘Things are not what they seem,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Designers embraced the ‘irrational’

Indeed, earlier in the month in Milan, the Northern Irish designer presented an equally illusory collection for his eponymous label JW Anderson. ‘Irrational clothing’, he described, noting that he was inspired by the free association of hypnotherapy (‘Inhale. Exhale. Are you feeling dreamy? Maybe a little delirious?’ read the accompanying notes). It made for a typically idiosyncratic outing – from enormous knitted house coats to Guinness-adorned knits and protrusions of coloured fabrics – which in part drew its liberated mood from viewing young people at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

This desire was echoed across the season, as menswear designers eschewed any notion of ’quiet luxury’. Martine Rose, who showed for the first time in Milan this season, adorned her stomping cast with prosthetic noses and tangled wigs, while at Rick Owens – undoubtedly a highlight of the season – the designer staged a Hollywood epic on the forecourt of Palais de Tokyo. There, his hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ marched out in an arresting array of looks, from monastic hooded gowns and laddered jersey bodysuits to sculptural capes made from tarnished gold Japanese denim (‘megacrust’ is how Owens playfully described the technique). The showstopping spectacle was a celebration of fashion’s liberatory spirit, one which Owens likened to escaping his hometown of Porterville, California and running away to Hollywood. ‘[It was] the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to to find my people, [the] weirdos and freaks.’

Craft was couture level

At a preview for his latest Dior Men collection – which was inspired by the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – Kim Jones noted a growing desire from his consumers to have something entirely one-of-a-kind. ’People want something that nobody else has got,’ he said. It was part of the reason he introduced his first dedicated couture collection for men last season and, while his S/S 2025 show in Paris did not have any official couture pieces – he has said he will create a couture collection only once each year – one particular jacket took over 600 hours of hand-embroidery to complete. A similar veneration of craft came at Loewe, where intricate tabard-style tops were crafted from woven metal or delicate shards of shell, an echo of the extraordinary 'caviar' beaded pieces from his A/W 2024 womenswear collection where each of the thousands of tiny beads were embroidered by hand. Equally seductive was the simplicity of Norbert Stumpfl’s latest Brioni collection, shown in the serene gardens of Milan’s 18th-century Palazzo Borromeo d'Adda. There, his ongoing quest for lightness – a signature of his tenure at the Italian house – was formulated in the collection’s fabrications, which spanned featherweight wools, supple perforated leather and airy vicuña knits. Most spectacular, though, was the eveningwear, where one double-breasted dinner jacket was embroidered with 10,000 baguette beads, each one hand-knotted in silk thread.

But there was still a slice of reality, too

If the enthusiasm for ‘quiet luxury’ has tempered in recent months, there nonetheless remained an appetite for the particular pleasure of real clothes – perhaps best epitomised in Paris by Auralee, Ryota Iwai’s Tokyo-based label which celebrates ten years in business this year. In its relative normality – there were no tricks here, just sweaters, jeans, and the like – it was impossibly desirable, the type of collection which makes you want to throw out your entire wardrobe and start again. It is down to Iwai’s exacting but uncomplicated approach, where tactile, meticulously sourced fabrics (Peruvian Alpaca, Mongolian cashmere, New Zealand wool, Indian cotton) meet a sensitive, considered palette (this season: pale green, red, buttercup yellow) which makes it anything but boring. ‘People put a lot of pressure onto their clothing, perhaps hoping to make a huge statement but I’m more interested in how smaller changes can highlight something about the wearer,’ Iwai told Wallpaper* prior to the show.

There is nothing normal about Hermès – and yet, despite Veronique Nichanian’s dedication to painstaking craft and truly luxurious fabrications, her collections end up feeling entirely effortless, and even thrown on. This season, she said she wanted to evoke ’a sweet summer’, and as ever there were plenty of real-world clothes here: breezy Oxford shirts, blouson jackets and bowling-style knits – in a palette of blues and pale pink – would fit into any man’s wardrobe. The same goes for Dries Van Noten, who has made a career of instilling the quotidian with a louche romance. His final show – earlier this year Van Noten announced he would be leaving his namesake label after 38 years – was a celebration of this, presenting a final collection which captured the designer’s distinct eye for colour and tactility. For this, he will be missed. ’This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ he said. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on.’

The suit is still ripe for reinvention

Each season, it feels like there is a diktat on the suit: it is double- or single-breasted, narrow or full, cropped at the ankle or pinched at the waist (as such, it often deemed emblematic of the season’s mood). For S/S 2025, though, there was little consensus, except that the suit remains ripe for reinvention, as designers across the board riffed on the garment in differing and distinctive ways. At Loewe, the show opened with razor-sharp black tailoring, evocative of the uniforms of security guards or gallery attendants. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision,’ said the designer, who noted inspiration from the ‘singular’ creative vision of figures like Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, whose work populated the show space. But there was illusion at play here, too: the fabric, a woven silk mohair, was designed to hold its shape with an almost-spongey finish. ‘These are things [that] are incredibly difficult to do but that which when you see them it feels effortless,’ he said.

There was experimentation of a different kind at Junya Watanabe, where the Japanese designer’s paean to denim included classic wool tailoring spliced with the fabric for an intriguing hybrid. Meanwhile at fellow Japanese label Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo’s Homme Plus collection contained plenty of tailoring cut in the designer’s cerebral manner, whether sliced-apart tailored jackets adorned with ruffle-like collars, or those out of which flashes of vividly coloured lining emerged. Colours were equally vivid at Issey Miyake Homme Plissé, where double-breasted blazers, waistcoats and ties were crafted from the brand’s signature lightweight knife pleats in crisp shades of green, orange and blue. Entirely crease-resistant, and undeniably easy in their roomy, stretchy silhouettes, they will prove a useful companion next summer. And, for the brave, so too will Gucci’s super-abbreviated tailored short shorts, part of a youthful S/S 2025 collection which creative director Sabato De Sarno said was inspired by the ’freedom, energy [and] community’ of surfing.

Sportswear was given an Olympics boost

Even for the most sports-averse, it was near-impossible to avoid the looming summer of sporting events ahead on menswear’s European tour – whether the Euros (which Emporio Armani hosted screenings of in both Milan and Paris), or the Olympics. The latter, taking place in Paris later this month, felt particularly prescient, not least because Parisian luxury goods conglomerate LVMH is one of the event’s principal sponsors. Unsurprisingly, then, Pharrell Williams evoked the Olympic spirit at his third menswear show at Louis Vuitton, which was held at Maison l’Unesco and made a plea for global unity and community (in fact, if you squinted, you could see the Olympic rings adorning the Eiffel Tower in the distance). ‘[It is] the celebration of human athletic prowess,’ said the designer, who featured several football kits adorned with ‘LVFC’. Meanwhile, at Wales Bonner, the British designer continued her successful collaboration with Adidas Originals, which here featured a shimmering sequinned version of the brand’s Samba sneaker, alongside slouchy basketball shorts and hoodies, striped polos and – most memorably – a pair of three-stripe swim trunks. And at Gucci, Sabato De Sarno’s surfing inspirations made for a collection of sleek, graphic menswear in sporty, luminous tones – including one of the season’s most covetable accessories: sunglasses on fluoro straps, worn like chokers around the neck.

Recent years have seen Japanese designer Junya Watanabe become one of fashion’s most prolific collaborators. For his A/W 2023 menswear collection alone, he worked with 18 brands – among them Oakley, Carhartt, Brooks Brothers, Palace and North Face – on pieces interspersed throughout a collection inspired by the work of Berlin-based label Innerraum, which creates futuristic accessories referencing the protective elements of motorsports gear. The collection was shown in Paris in January 2023. 

This month, one such collaboration – with Vancouver-based athletic-wear label Reigning Champ – arrives in stores, its designs also drawing inspiration from motorsports gear, in this case, motocross, a form of off-road motorbike racing. A prescient inspiration to designers in recent seasons – several brands have created iterations of the signature motocross leather jacket – the distinct uniforms are recognisable for their bold, logo-heavy designs featuring colourful elements and motifs. 

Full speed: Junya Watanabe MAN x Reigning Champ A/W 2023 

In the concise, limited-edition collaboration, Watanabe and Reigning Champion choose to eschew such colour for a series of all-black pieces, with motocross instead referenced in biker jacket-inspired quilted sleeves and shoulder pads on a round-neck cotton sweater (a version of Reigning Champion’s signature midweight terry sweatshirt). A pair of matching sweatpants, meanwhile, come with a draped drop crotch. Reigning Champ describes Watanabe‘s process as ‘deconstructing’ its most recognisable pieces.

Founded in 2007, Reigning Champ claims to create ‘the finest athletic wear in the world’, with all pieces constructed in Canada. An ongoing collaboration – Watanabe has reinterpreted Reigning Champ’s collections for several seasons – this latest collection follows a S/S 2023 collaboration that featured sweatpants adorned with the works of American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Junya Watanabe MAN x Reigning Champ A/W 2023 is available now from Reigning Champ’s website and selected retailers.

reigningchamp.com

British outerwear brand Baracuta – still synonymous with the G9 Harrington jacket first crafted in England in 1937 – reveals its latest collaboration today, teaming up with Junya Watanabe to create a reimagined version of the G9 imbued with the Japanese designer’s avant-garde sensibility and eye for cut and form (Watanabe was a protégé of Rei Kawakubo and remains part of the Comme des Garçons group).

Watanabe was given free rein to rework the seminal garment – Baracuta note it was the designer’s ‘experience and ability to interpret’ that provided the roots of the collaboration – here focusing primarily on silhouette, expanding the G9’s proportions for an oversized fit. Watanabe approached the redesign through deconstruction, taking apart the original pattern and reimagining its shape in panels of varying fabrics for a subtle feeling of patchwork. The final jacket is all black, recalling both the original G9 Harrington and a classic bomber jacket. 

Baracuta x Junya Watanabe

Otherwise, Watanabe chose to retain many of the original G9’s features – namely the umbrella back yoke, classic two-button ‘dog ear’ collar, raglan sleeves and recognisable slanted pockets. The jacket also keeps the tartan lining of the original design, though here Baracuta’s recognisable Fraser tartan  becomes mixed-up with a ‘punk-style’ tartan of Watanabe’s own choosing (in the collection’s accompanying images, the jacket is worn with a tartan kilt – one of the Japanese designer’s own iconic pieces).

The limited-edition Baracuta x Junya Watanabe jacket – which the brand call a ‘true collectable’ – is available from today (11 November 2022) on Baracuta’s website and in Eye, Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe retailers. 

baracuta.com

Mood board: The Japanese designer let his spliced, bondage-centric, punk garments speak for themselves, bathing his runway in blood curdling red light with his models taking to the catwalk without any music. Then, the punk icon connotations became clearer (and the black and blonde Debbie Harry hair styling and smeared make up) as Blondie’s Heart of Glass boomed across the venue. Watanabe reinterprets his delightfully deconstructed style each season — sticking to his signatures while presenting his fans with something new and sartorially exhilarating. There was a rebellious force behind his autumn offering, which featured sharp tailoring, corset dresses and mini skirts in lusty red leather and leopard and zebra skin, grungey toned tweed, reinterpreted and twisted, with exaggerated architectural volumes, bondagey buckles, harnesses and zips. Watanabe’s official theme was ‘sexy’, and this was a seductive them rooted in power, lust and rebellion.

Best in show: As usual, Watanabe’s tailoring was spot on. A blazer was formed from deconstructed panels of leather and tweed, and cinched at the waist with buckles. A series of leather skirts appeared to be architecturally in-built with architectural accessories, part skirt, part luggage.

Finishing touches: There was something bourgeois about the quilted clutch bags that Watanabe proposed, their padded contours subverted when they were tessellated across the body, worn hands free from harnesses, in a militaristic manner.

Mood board: Junya Watanabe could teach our testy politicians a thing or two about the essence of collaboration. Since the early 1990s, he has worked in partnership with heritage brands and specialists in their fields to create hybrid garments. Collaboration – which has become a hackneyed ploy by so many brands for seasonal attention – becomes a meaningful project between experts. His partners always bring a certain tradition and knowledge to his modish approach to men’s everyday clothes. 

Best in show: The A/W 2020 collection entitled ‘Classico’ coordinated Italian archetypes with streetwear sprezzatura and opened to the smoky trumpet of ‘Arlecchinata’ by Nini Rosso. The clothes paid homage to Italian motor sports, from Watanabe’s signature patchwork denims to the line of racing car leathers applied to jeans or cut with traditional suiting fabrics. The back of a leather biker was neatly spliced into a hunting jacket; nylon bombers were cut into windowpane check blazers. This was a retro uniform for grown-ups.

Team work: Alliances this season were multiple: on show were tapered and wide-leg jeans with Levi’s. New for the season was outerwear with French maritime manufacturer Guy Cotton and tailoring with Caruso. Icons of Italian motoring had logos applied across the collection – break manufacturer Brembo featured on a puffa cut into Crombie coat. Producer of cycling parts Campagnolo and motorcycle manufacturer Moto Guzzi helped channel the machismo meets retro/classic workwear mood.

Mood board: In the field of fashion consumption, we’re being urged to consider our wardrobe choices with even more environmentally sensitivity. Brands that have been cultivating a specific vision for decades, eluding trends and passing tastes, have particular provenance. Junya Watanabe – tailoring’s leading punk – is renowned for his spliced and deconstructed take on classic silhouettes like leather jackets and suiting, taking for S/S 2020, the beige trench coat, and turning it into something new, like a voluminous skirt a ball gown, or razor sharp cape, or splicing its buckled and buttoned boob tube form onto a white shirt. Watanabe paired these astonishingly constructed garments with flashes of neon, from skinny cap-sleeve t-shirts to sporty leggings. He silhouettes had a relaxed 1980s élan.

Team work: Watanabe collaborated with Spanish graffiti artist Bicicleta Sem Freio and Brazilian design collective Bicicleta Sem Freio on a series of graphic, prismatic prints which featured on leggings and technical skins.

Finishing touches: Alongside spiked chokers, models sported chunky pearl necklaces. Ladylike yes, but these accessories also had a punky DIY charm, with pearl beads appearing as if they’d been wrapped in pieces of colourful foil.

Mood board: There’s been a resurgence in authentic workwear for a couple of seasons now – a push back to the self-conscious, curated streetwear look that had a hold over menswear for a long time. Kanye West wore a Dickies jacket to this year’s Met Gala; Heron Preston has collaborated with New York’s Sanitation Department (DSNY) to redesign the uniforms of its workers; Craig Green often ascribes his sculptural, padded separates to traditional workaday garb. Multi-pocketed military vests, field jackets, cargo pants – each is representative of a fixed idea of masculinity, one rooted in physical labour. Junya Watanabe always riffs on an unpretentious, utilitarian style, repurposing shapes that are rooted in practically and no pomp. They are suspicious of fashion.

Best in show: Watanabe has reviewed and renewed workwear since launching his line in 1992. He began by making patterns for Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons in the early 1980s and, to this day, his approach is one of slicing open archetypal clothes and remixing their heritage. For S/S 2020, field jackets and fisherman vests were cut into the front of tailored jackets. A Raglan bomber was set into a shirt; a Levis’s denim jacket had a classic Oxford shirt back. Logos for Fergus Henderson’s iconic London restaurant St John, the Amsterdam Tulip Museum and Copenhagen fishery Fiskerikajen were printed onto bags and jackets. Watanabe embraced the independent voices shaping culture today, featuring the front covers of arts quarterly Real Review and New York-based paper Civilization as prints on large canvas shoulder bags. This was canny and cool.

Sound bite: Watanabe’s clothes are playful yet not impractical. His look underscores a masculine approach to dressing obsessed with detail, cut and fit. ‘I think a big reason for that is the interest in craftsmanship and the discovery of details that actually work and improve a garment,’ Olie Arnold, style director at Mr Porter said. Watanabe’s collections usually derive from traditional workwear and tailoring, where the occupational elements are essential to create a credible piece for the farm or factory. ’His ability to rework and reimagine these details and present them in a contemporary, but still functional manner, is what makes his work so coveted.’

Mood board: Takeshita Street in the Harajuku district of Junya Watanabe’s native Tokyo abounds in boutiques dedicated to Kawaii culture – the Japanese aesthetic that revels in cuteness and colour, Hello Kitty, Lolita fashion and the fetishisation of childhood. Yet, on Harajuku’s streets a more sinister subculture is rising: Yami Kawaii imbues the saccharine elements of Kawaii style with more sinister overtones, related to the grotesque. Watanabe dosen’t deal in clichés. The hybrid nature of his clothing takes classic shapes like a trenchcoat, an MA-1 bomber jacket, or a pretty floral smock and smartly splices and deconstructs them into something new. The Kawaii girls that walked on the catwalk in pairs for his A/W 2019 show, had an uneasy undertone, their hair in thick bunches, eyelashes long and clumpy, their lips offputtingly pink. The mashed up dresses/denim jackets/parkas/chunky knits they sported, changed shape according to the pose each model struck on the catwalk.

Best in show: A trenchcoat was spliced with a floral prairie dress, with trails of taffeta fabric. A white leather jacket was sewn into a delicate smock with pointillist blooms. Spliced, diced perfection.

Finishing touches: There was a toughness to Watanabe’s Kawaii gang, and models sported chunky cowboy boots embellished with rows upon rows of pointed studs. What else could you need for walking the streets of Harajuku?

Mood board: On the streets there are always well dressed men over 40, no matter how much the world excites itself over the sudden appearance of actor Timothée Chalamet or a bevvy of instafamous teenagers at the latest fashion show. ‘Older men possess stronger personalities and are cooler than the younger men,’ a statement from Junya Watanabe read. ‘I designed this collection thinking for people of my generation or older.’ A good jean. A bold jacket. A heavy soled shoe. A confident, assured and lived-in look breezed through Watanabe’s A/W 2019 collection. The show opened to the gusty, brassy jazz of James Brown. The soundtrack had an upbeat, gentlemanly oomph. 

Best in show: The theme of the show was ‘Silver Swagger’ – Watanabe’s expression for a hip, mature style made up of New Balance trainers, patchworked jeans and smart army surplus coats. Good shirts. They were all worn by a cast of older models with street-savvy panache and played to a wider mood as noticed by Ollie Arnold, style director at Mr Porter. More than ever, the dress codes of different generations are merging. ‘Nostalgia can play a big part and we’re finding that as trends are recycled they’re resonating with older men that may remember it the first time around. I think Watanabe’s show did this. It presented a perfect mix of traditional and modern menswear,’ Arnold said. Levis were cropped and lean with cargo detailing – a hallmark of Watanabe’s. Recognisable staples were cut up and rearranged. Denim jacket sleeves were added to tailored blazers. Double-breasted styles boasted quilted leather biker sleeves. A casual stripe shirt came with a technical hiking jacket back. This was tailoring but remixed; a patchwork of masculine wardrobing. 

Team work: Prints and graphics applied to sweatshirts and T-shirts were lifted from American dad iconography. LA-based screenwriter Youthana Yuos supplied the motifs for a pig and chicken shirt. The L’Antica Pizzeria in Milan lent its logo, as did UCLA. Elsewhere, tweed caps continued the partnership with Béton Ciré. Standout was an ivy green down-jacket made in collaboration with Canada Goose.

Left, jacket, $2,160, by Templa. Wool jacket, £625, by Stone Island. Shirt, ¥9,000 ($81); trousers, ¥33,000 ($299), both by Nonnative. Shorts, £100, by PE Nation. Collar, ¥8,000 ($73); hat, ¥16,000 ($145); gloves, ¥11,000 ($100), all by Nonnative. Shoes, €305, by Roa. Right, jacket, €890; vest, €545; liner, €490, all by Nemen. Shirt, £305, by Descente Allterrain. Trousers, £305, by Stone Island. Hight. Fashion: Jason Hughes

Few of us will ever take on the trek to Everest Base Camp, but that hasn’t stopped men’s fashion from harnessing the mountaineering spirit, now as sought after on the street as on Himalayan hiking trails. Think haute couture meets high performance: a tapedseam, Thermolite-padded and heat-bonded spin on the savoir-faire of Savile Row.

It’s a trend that trekked firmly onto the A/W18 runways: take the reflective and multi-pocketed gilets and fleece sweaters at Lucas Ossendrijver’s Lanvin, Gucci’s gem-swathed hiking boots, Junya Watanabe’s collaborations with North Face, Karrimor and Canada Goose, and Prada’s celebration of functional nylon. Even at June’s Pitti Uomo 94 – considered the epicentre of tailoring and Italian sprezzatura – the menswear platform’s I Go Out installation was aimed at assimilating fashion with an active lifestyle.

The installation showcased nearly 30 global activewear brands, including hiking shoe stalwarts Danner and Diemme, and merino wool specialist Reda Active, against a leafy eco-friendly backdrop. This fresh-air focus is one pioneered by hip menswear retailers like the UK’s End and Present, and Japan’s United Arrows & Sons, as well as niche, expedition-inspired magazines such as Stay Wild, Sidetracked and Another Escape.

British fashion boutique Browns bolstered its sporting connections in April, inviting customers on a 10km run to celebrate the opening of a Satisfy pop-up shop at its east London store. Satisfy, a Paris-based running brand, is one of ten high-performance labels that Browns’ menswear buying manager Dean Cook chose to stock for spring, before increasing the boutique’s buy for A/W18.

Breaking down the distinction between functional and high fashion, Browns presents performance-wear brands – running-shoe label Hoka One One and Canadian outerwear specialist Arc’teryx – alongside luxury labels. ‘We don’t have a dedicated sports section on our site,’ Cook says. ‘The clothing is geared to be worn with brands like Rick Owens.’ Browns are also the exclusive UK stockist of knitwear studio Byborre, and have celebrated the launch of its newest collection with a pop-up space at its Browns East outpost in Shoreditch, on view until mid-November.

According to the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual survey, wearable technology is the third biggest worldwide fitness trend of 2018. Increased interest in quantifying our physical activity has extended into a desire for super-functional gear – such as Japanese label And Wander’s odour-reducing Deodorant Stitch pieces, or Italian hiking footwear label Roa’s use of resistant aramid fibres, a material seen in bulletproof vests – whether or not we’ll actually test such items to their limits.

Ultra marathon-running twins Steve and Nick Tidball launched British label Vollebak in 2016. Their ‘100 Year Hoodie’ is made of Kevlar, pitched as being five times stronger than steel and able to withstand extreme temperatures. In May, the brand launched a global treasure hunt, enlisting former military operatives to hide a lifetime discount card, and encouraging active Vollebak enthusiasts to find it. Another brand using an adventure-led retail strategy to emphasise the strength of its product is Woolrich. Its Milan flagship features an Extreme Weather Experience Room, a snow-filled space where customers can test out its signature parkas to temperatures of minus 20°C.

Performance-wear stalwarts are also designing specifically for the luxury market. Salomon’s Black Edition (a sell-out collection for Browns) sees the French brand’s footwear styles reinterpreted in monochrome, while North Face’s Black Series (available in select fashion stores only) blends technical prowess with a more everyday aesthetic.

Material innovation is keeping leading brands at the top of their game. Rainwear expert Herno, which has an annual turnover of nearly €100m, turns 70 this year and marks its 50th year selling in Japan. The label produces nearly 3,000 prototypes a year at its HQ in Lesa, Italy. ‘We have exclusivity on a specific type of machinery for the next three years,’ says Herno president and CEO Claudio Marenzi. ‘It is focused on the production of 3D-thermobinding and ultrasound stitching for the neck and armholes of garments.’

Similarly, two years ago, Stone Island, the Italian sportswear brand founded in 1982, introduced the Prototype Research Series, an annual project showcasing treatments that have not yet been industrialised. For 2018, the brand predicts a turnover of nearly €200m, an 83 per cent increase on 2016. It attributes this success, in part, to selling to high-end retailers (Mr Porter buying director Fiona Firth notes an uplift for 2018), and to pushing a wide range of performance-focused products, not simply entry-level categories.

A host of newer brands, too, is developing high-tech fabrics and treatments. Leonardo Fasolo, who cut his teeth at CP Company and Stone Island, co-founded Nemen in 2012 in a bid to ‘investigate unknown territories in textile research’. Specialising in dyeing techniques, the brand created one-of-a-kind hand-sprayed nylon jackets, and has just developed a nylon with a flame-retardant metal lamination, which when acid-dyed resembles Tyvek (a protective synthetic fibre commonly used in construction).

The month it launched in 2017, Alpine outerwear brand Templa was awarded the prestigious Ispo Brandnew Award for Apparel. ‘Every piece is meticulously made to function in different moments,’ says Templa’s Antwerp-based co-founder Anati Rakocz. Its outerwear boasts details such as internal sleeve extensions, Recco Avalanche Rescue technology, and a removable snow skirt. For S/S18, the brand launched with three global stockists. For autumn, it increased its retail presence by five times. ‘We push the boundaries of functionality and design,’ says Rakocz. ‘Our pieces are meant to be worn on the slopes but can be placed in any urban location.’ Whether you are base jumping or just strolling, looking the part is no sweat. §

As originally featured in the September 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*234)

Mood board: Before hybrid garments were the silhouette du jour, there was Junya Watanabe. The Japanese designer is renowned for his spliced, mash-up aesthetic, which sees him deconstruct and piece garments back together with the precision of a punk tailor. Watanabe adopted more of a couturier’s sensibility for S/S 2019 – with a spring offering presented to a spectacularly uplifting Queen soundtrack – which fused his signature denim and patchwork tartan with voluminous tulle petticoats, evening gown silhouettes and pleated volumes. Burgeoning Parisian designers like Marine Serre and Y/Project’s Glenn Martens have taken a couture-inspired approach to their spring collections. Amongst new streetwear norms and sporty aesthetics, are these proportions the new rebellion?

Best in show: Distinctive shapes and silhouettes were cut and spliced together. Take a pair of dungarees, one leg a straight jean silhouette, the other a petticoat of voluminous net, a stripe t-shirt spliced together with a pretty puffball dress. Elsewhere there were patched denim overcoats, bias cut gowns dressed down with t-shirts and tattoo motif body suits, and band t-shirts that will all sing on the shop floor.

Finishing touches: Just in case those couture shapes and swathes of tulle and net got a little too saccharine, models strode the catwalk to Queen’s The Millionaire Waltz and Somebody to Love, in highlighter hue cropped wigs, punk dog collar necklaces and stacked Buffalo boots.

Mood board: Watanabe’s clothes have no pomp, no obvious political agenda, and (for this season) no bold logos. He delivers a wardrobe of practicality and technical know-how. For S/S 2019, it consists of multi-pocketed gilets, cargo pants and light windbreakers – the functionality of the garments are pulled into focus. Pockets are exaggerated just so and small bags engineered to fit around the body. Military uniforms are always at the core of his men’s collections. Contemporary menswear does tend to be a battlefield. Radicals such as Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela favoured utilitarian, army detailing at the height of the 1990s – their standardised cuts and efficiency the antidote to the previous, flashier decade. As streetwear, couture detailing and activewear collide, the menswear shows are an amalgam of recalibrated classics.

Finishing touches: At the top of the catwalk, Watanabe had installed a giant green army tent – even the invitation was in a warm olive green. Military drums and Barry Gray’s score for Thunderbirds spoke of childhood innocence and obsessing over heroes. Military clothes are archetypal – they have a sober pragmatism. Largely un-gendered, unremarkable too, they are the opposite of peacocking. Dries Van Noten uses army fatigues and coveralls as a canvas for jazzy, optic prints from the 1970s; Andrea Rosso – the designer behind MYAR – repurposes surplus garments giving them new life. Watanabe translates these codes into an urban context with a flourish of whimsy. Take the repeat apple print by London-based illustrator Tracey English used on shirting and t-shirts.

Team work: New for S/S 2019 is a collaboration with Ark Air – the RTW arm of Arktis, an English company who have made military uniforms since 1985. Founded by two ex-Royal Marines, the Devon-based factory provides camouflage garments and military-grade smocks superior to standard-issue uniforms. Vests, field jackets and shorts in pinstripe and classic windowpane check become a new technical suit. Classic stripe shirts are treated like sports jackets. Pieces made with Levi’s, Heinrich Dinkelacker, New Balance and Trickers also appear, as do authentic sailor hats made in French Brittany by Béton Ciré.§

Scene setting: Two seasons ago, Junya Watanabe staged his A/W 2017 show in the halls of Paris’ Faculty of Pharmacy, but for A/W 2018, the Japanese designer took guests deep into the underbelly of the building, directing them downstairs into its stark tiled corridors, lined with glass display cases and patchy paint. The campus location of the show emphasised the sports hall sensibility of its accompanying collection, with Watanabe pairing his punky deconstructed signatures and hybrid silhouettes with bright spandex leggings, striped socks, stompy Buffalo boots and geeky aviator glasses.

Mood board: The collection had all the Watanabe hits, like deconstructed suiting, with the sleeves of pinstripe blazers billowing like capes, leather jackets boasting architectural bulges, shirts and trenchcoats fanning across the body in pleats. Watanabe’s punk aesthetic is apparent in the way he cuts and splices his garments and favours animal prints and tartans, but there was also a sense of eighties post-workout ease to the collection, seen in those Spandex leggings, paired with fluffy mohair jumpers and fur coats. Watanabe favours practical performance pieces in his menswear line, and has collaborated with The North Face and Canada Goose on his outerwear. For A/W 2018 this aesthetic infiltrated his women's designs, seen in boxy puffer jackets and A-line anoraks.

Best in show: Hybrid styles are essential to Watanabe’s output, and the designer splices garments together into new innovative forms. For A/W 2018, he presented a series of pretty tea dresses, their shapes cut and pasted with knitwear necklines and sleeves.

Mood board: Junya Watanabe’s clothes have a norm-core confidence. They are conversant, utilitarian and good. While so many designers partner up with the most random brands to feed the zeitgeist, Watanabe has quietly carved out a large customer base of men who are there for his commitment to meaningful collaboration. You get the best of both worlds. From wide-cut denim jeans made with Levi’s to New Balance trainers and The North Face raincoats, Watanabe makes clothes that are practical yet performative. Functional decoration was the theme for A/W 2018; the models wore a series of recognisable uniforms, unified by an assured authenticity.

Best in show: As always Watanabe looked to practicality and the poetry of details designed for garments with a specific use. Much of the collection had reflective strips sewn across it, either in thin white across the front of jackets or bold fluro yellow as patches at the knee. Curiously Kim Jones in his final collection for Louis Vuitton had flashes of fluro too – his was a nod to travel, an attitude on the move. Watanabe reclaimed the subversion of workman’s uniforms favoured by Paris’ new guard. He did it first. Consequently A/W 2018 sits neatly amongst the buzzy archetypes of menswear, yet with a candid disregard for the cyclical, sycophantic world of fashion trends. The duffle coats, heavy plaid shirts, cargo trousers and jeans are anti fashion in their utility.
 
Team work: Four jackets made in Arctic Tech fabric are manufactured by Canada Goose. Graphics were created with designers Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips at The Designers Republic. The Italian graffiti artist Matteo Ceretto Castigliano, known for his minimalist public interventions, also worked on motifs used across jumpers and knits. Other notable collaborations for A/W included remodelled sleeping bags and trail packs by The North Face which have been reinterpreted as jackets. Carrying over from last season, outerwear is made using Karrimor backpacks. Filson bags feature, as do shoes by the Heinrich Dinkelacker, the German company who have been using the Goodyear welting production method since 1879.

Scene setting: There are worse ways to start a saturday morning than with a Junya Watanabe show on the Rive Gauche. The brand staged its show at the Université Paris Descartes. An utterly French name that goes to perfectly complements the venue: a neoclassic cloister-style university complete with statues of French philosophers. In such a studious atmosphere, the guests chairs were set, making a zig zag shape. Models walked decidedly down the catwalk, stopping at every corner in front of the photographers with a determined look on their face. It was a very intellectual affair, but then with Junya Watanabe it always is.

Mood board: 'Punkette' was the mot du jour. Models wore red eye pencil drawn around their eyes in what seemed - but was not - a tentative manner, and had their Isamaya Ffrench designed make-up paired with the most otherworldly hairstyle we have seen so far during Paris Fashion Week. Hair created by Kamo Katsuya, was tied up in dozens of knots around oversized metallic nails, forming a kind of psycho-inspired mohawk. Complete with nail-decorated chokers and bracelets, the effect was very Tim Burton-esque. It was the perfect counterpoint to the graphic shapes they were modeling and the sweet prints present everywhere in the collection. The show was all about contrast, both aggressive and mild, spiky and smooth, black and white.

Team work: From the first few dresses, a murmur started around the guest seats. Weren't those prints awfully familiar? Hadn't we already seen those retro-looking, hand-drawn spots and those naïf inspired drawings of trees and houses? Wasn't the cotton twill present in most of the looks terribly similar to, well... Marimekko? Indeed it was. Junya Watanabe is - even more than Demna Gvasalia - the king of unexpected collaborations. Last season he surprised everyone by working with The North Face. This time he teamed up with the most famous of Finnish brands, taking their  recognizable cotton twills just the way they leave the factory, and draping them around his models in a haphazard way. It was not just original yet idiosyncratic, it was also nostalgic and emotional. For who doesn't have a memory of a Marimekko dress, print or house fabric? Paired with the underground-inspired make-up and the college setting, the show made for a delicious madeleine de Proust.

Scene setting: Last year, Joe Corré, son of Vivienne Westwood and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, burned £5m of his punk memorabilia. His mementos, from vinyls to buckled and distressed designs from his parents’ SEX boutique on Kings Road, would no doubt have appealed to Junya Watanabe. His A/W 2017 collection was a celebration of all things punk, from tartan to leopard print, fishnets to Dr Martens, the cut-and-paste aesthetic of punk culture given his typically architectural twist. As audience members discussed the high volume of Watanabe’s soundtracks (it was the first show of the morning), a soundtrack featuring T Rex’s 20th Century Boy and Children of the Revolution blasted down the long catwalk at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Paris.

Best in show: It was a show that celebrated Watanabe’s most noted designs – sculptural jackets resembling folding origami or patchwork circles, reworked leather jackets and deconstructed skirts. Watanabe has always been a fan of tartan, and this punk signature was cut and pasted in a variety of patterns, alongside leopard prints and rich upholstery fabrics. However avant-garde, Watanabe’s collections always make use of classic and universally wearable silhouettes; a camel trench-coat featured distinctive patchwork sleeves, while a black tuxedo overcoat featured panels of plaid and leopard print. An impressive experiment in fabrication, a school uniform tartan dress featured tiny pleats that swirled concentrically from the middle of the body.

Finishing touches: In true punk from, models sported cropped mohawks and mullets in a variety of bright colours. They stomped the catwalk in dog collar chokers, fishnet tights and thick-soled creepers, some even theatrically throwing off their coats to the sea of watching photographers.

Mood board: Shoppers flock to Junya Watanabe because of its playful reassessment of archetypal men’s clothes; smart jackets, neat denims and tidy shirts are always at the fore. The S/S collection was shown in a concrete parking garage, festooned with colorful graffiti and was modelled by a cast of gypsy mobsters, some of whom had tattoos painted on for the show. All in all, Watanabe pushed a more relaxed, laid-back look for the season drawing inspiration from the 1998 Serbian farce, Black Cat, White Cat directed by Emir Kusturica.

Best in show: Hybrid garments for the modern man; fine wool suiting had tough biker jacket sleeves attached in leather. Denim jackets – the result of an ongoing collaboration with Levis – had sleeves that were turned inside out, revealing paisley print lining. A double breasted jacket was worn with swagger, the matching trouser finished with an athletic, jersey rib cuff at the ankle.

Team work: Like his early mentor Rei Kawakubo, Watanabe is notoriously singular in his approach. He chooses to forego traditional advertising and retail in favour of collaborations with other brands. Spring embraces multiple collaborations; Levi’s for denim, knitwear from John Smedley and shoes by Heinrich Dinkelacker.

Mood board: Geometry was the name of the game at Junya Watanabe's latest collection where beautiful 3D sculptures were constructed out of thick felted wool. Skirts and dresses emerged as intricate cages of circles, squares and rhomboids, while ballerina-like body suits and leggings provided a clean black foundation.

Best in show: Although most of the show was cut from dramatic black, we loved the shots of chili red and fuchsia pink that added a jolt of feminine energy to Watanabe's rigorous architectural structures.

Finishing touches: As always the headgear in this show deserved special attention. In addition to black plastic swim caps that kept the models’ hair waterproofed and hidden from sight, Watanabe constructed hats from tightly coiled rings or two cylinder disks that clamped the models heads together in a black vice with nothing but a tiny hole from which to peer out.

Mood board: Cages over cotton seemed to be the prevailing theme in Junya Watanabe’s spring collection where the Japanese designer took a basic, mannish shirt as his key silhouette but then clamped down on it with a series of shiny patent leather strips that wrapped around the models torsos.

Best in show: Those men’s shirts looked great in their elongated and exaggerated dress forms, but Watanabe’s best moment in this collection was more jungle-esque. Half way through the show he introduced a brief series of animal printed textiles that hung over the model’s shoulders like wild pelts with gauzy oversized shirts and black jeans.

Finishing touches: The headgear at a Junya show always deserves its own special fashion chapter. This season Watanabe played with bands of concentric circles that bounced over the model’s heads like giant Slinkys. Also noteworthy: the enormous vertical tower hats in black vinyl that looked like upside down flower vases.

2

Kickboxers throwing punches at a live match hosted by Snoop Dogg, who rapped his heart out in front of tattooed, motocross-padded models at Philipp Plein’s men’s show

5

Hunchbacked models at Maison Margiela

8

Metal cage-covered rooms, of varying proportions, built by OMA for the Prada men’s show space

1

‘Boob bag’, handcrafted from dark shiny leather, on Christopher Lemaire’s runway (‘Free the nipple!’ cried social media immediately afterwards)

7

Thugged-out Looney Tunes characters dripping in bling at Jeremy Scott’s women’s Moschino show

32

Kilograms of culatello consumed by 1,000 people in three hours, together with 170 bottles of Fortana del Taro red wine, at Caruso’s Milan presentation

1

Rising section of the runway at Saint Laurent, where models and rock star Julia Cumming from Sunflower Bean started their catwalk procession

9

Male models blatanly flashing their genitalia in frontal windows strategiacally cut out of their flowing floor-length tunics at Rick Owens

1.1

Million followers on Instagram for 29-year-old Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, the most-followed fashion designer in France

13,000

Hands that work on Kiton’s suits

2

Kickboxers throwing punches at a live match hosted by Snoop Dogg, who rapped his heart out in front of tattooed, motocross-padded models at Philipp Plein’s men’s show

2,000

Trees and plants that Ermenegildo Zegna planted inside Milan’s former Fiera for its fashion show, all of which were later replanted as part of the Zegna Oasis environmental project

6

Models swaddled in a cocoon of white bows at the Comme des Garçons show

27

Headdresses in the shape of lampshades at Junya Watanabe

14

Years after their first outing that Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson reprised their Zoolander roles by staging a surprise live runway walk-off at the Valentino show in Paris

10

Boys at Gucci doing the girl thing in silky bow-front blouses

1

Mary J Blige impromptu concert, staged by DSquared2’s Dean and Dan Caten at the end of the brand’s 20th anniversary show in Milan

38

Moncler Gamme Bleu menswear models who quick-changed out of their jockey-inspired uniforms into totally new looks under flashing strobe lights

4

Kanye West charity concert nights organised by Bernard Arnault’s son Alexandre at the Louis Vuitton Foundation during Paris Fashion Week

13

Face and ear piercings on the female models at Givenchy, while four men had their mouths held tightly shut with cage-like metal clamps

25

Couples (both hetero and gay) dressed for 25 sports at Moncler Grenoble’s pop-up ski lodge in New York, including a bride and groom in full wedding outerwear

12

Days to assemble Chanel’s pop-up brasserie set inside Paris’ Grand Palais, which featured 9m-high walls, tiled floors, 100 seats and 14 barmen serving coffee, juice, champagne and croissants

1

Life-sized, fully functioning roller coaster, complete with screaming riders, installed inside Milan’s retired Fiera for Philipp Plein’s womenswear show

50,000

Books in the pop-up library at Julie de Libran’s Sonia Rykiel show

72

Age of ex-model Benedetta Barzini, who was the star of Antonio Marras’ runway show

7

Spinning 20ft towers that glided across the Kenzo runway like giant chess pieces

14

Infants, toddlers and children, plus one very pregnant model, walking the runway at Dolce & Gabbana’s women’s show

32

Fur handbags in the shape of bird of paradise flowers on the Fendi runway

6,000

Rare pearls on a $150,000 Calvin Klein dress, which was stolen from the hotel room of actress Lupita Nyong’o after the Oscars

8

Models wearing cashmere shoe laces at the Brunello Cucinelli presentation

2

Handbags shaped and printed like ceramic coffee saucers at Chanel

Mood board: Junya Watanabe picked up his pencil and began drawing his collection like an architect, transforming pleats, honeycombs and nets into massive and impressive 3D clothing.

Best in show: We were spoiled for choice in this gem filled show, but the best of Watanabe's new creations were the pleated pieces like a bulbous dress cut from black Python petals that swayed grandly through the air.

Finishing touches: As interiors buffs we could not help but be bowled over by the headgear that looked like magnificent rigid lampshades cut from sturdy black wool felt. We suggest they get exhibited at Milan's Salone del Mobile next month.

15,000

Tons of steel used to create Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation, the new site for the French brand’s fashion shows

6

Artworks that Miley Cyrus glue-gunned together from toys and stage debris for her exhibition 'Dirty Hippie' with V Magazine

54

Storeys that showgoers ascended for Jason Wu’s fashion show for Hugo Boss at 4 World Trade Center

75

Number of arches on Fendi’s runway, designed to recreate Rome’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana

32

Models’ heads shrink-wrapped into flat plastic helmets at Junya Watanabe

1,000

Different poses by model Coco Rocha in a leotard in her book Study of Pose, shot by Steven Sebring with a 360-degree photography rig

35

Golf ball-sized rivets on a single Marc Jacobs woman’s jacket

34

Models with black patent face braces at Alexander McQueen

5

Outfits that may, or may not, have been put through a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style blood bath at Comme des Garçons

1

Life-sized Barbie who roller-skated down the Moschino runway

15

Models in stripes and oversized wigs that danced in white stilettos and socks for Jean Paul Gaultier’s farewell to ready-to-wear fashion

6

Claws forming the soles of Rick Owens’ cave girl/Grecian platform sandals

42

Bicycle wheels spinning on the Antonio Marras runway

6

White sails billowing on the Lacoste runway

32

Fashion editors who left New York Fashion Week early to fly to Cupertino for the Apple Watch presentation

6

Women’s hats in the form of a man’s suit at the Thom Browne show

130

Length in metres of Chanel’s life-like street, created inside Paris’ Grand Palais, featuring seven-storey buildings, pavements, potholes and protesting models

10,000

Size in square feet of the Pepto-Bismol pink house on the runway at the Marc Jacobs show

16,000

Precious gems that encrusted the $2m ‘Fantasy’ bras worn at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show

5

Cement skateboard ramps on the runway at Kenzo

7

Dancers from British choreographer Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance Company who sizzled on Gareth Pugh’s runway

2

Years that Farida Khelfa trailed and filmed Christian Louboutin for her first documentary

150,000

Number of copies of The Karl Daily, Karl Lagerfeld’s satirical newspaper distributed during Paris Fashion Week

9.7

Millions of page impressions generated by 89 fashion bloggers during Calvin Klein’s show - a fashion week record

300

Stuffed elephants waiting on the guests’ seats at Oscar de la Renta’s show

15

Age in months of North West, who secured her own gold chair with calligraphed nameplace at the Givenchy women’s show. She wore a sheer black lace top for the occasion

28,000

Fresh flowers for sale at Marni’s pop-up market at Milan’s Rotonda della Besana

130,000

Flowers planted on Tommy Hilfiger’s sprawling golf course-cum-music carnival runway

6

Giant red cherries inscribed with skulls loitering at Jun Takahashi’s Undercover show

5

Enormous purple sand dunes constructed for the Prada show

4

Weeks it took Argentine artist Alexandra Kehayoglou to create Dries Van Noten’s mossy runway

4

Cost in euros of a box of limited-edition Kellogg’s Fashion Flakes designed by Anya Hindmarch

14

Number of oversized metal rings piercing the eyebrows of each model at Rodarte

7

Number of former supermodels on stage to tell stories for Olivier Saillard’s performance art piece ‘Models Never Talk’ during New York Fashion Week

10

Length in minutes of Polo Ralph Lauren’s 3D movie, projected on a 60ft-tall wall of water in New York’s Central Park

30

Length in minutes of a one-act fashion play written by Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill for the Opening Ceremony show

20

Number of gold safety pins holding together one of Anthony Vaccarello’s dresses for Versus

30

Types of brocade replicated by Prada from centuries-old textiles for its women’s collection

12

Cream-filled, penis-shaped cookies served on each tray before the Acne show

Fashion week, these days, is about much more than just the collections. Showmanship is the name of game, and in the meticulously executed sartorial extravaganzas, the sound space is an element that no producer or designer can afford to overlook. Music royalty - past, present and future - is enlisted to ensure a full assault on the senses.

This season there were live performances by Clare Maguire at Burberry Prorsum, Mary J Blige to celebrate the Caten brothers' 20th anniversary at Dsquared2 and Snoop Dogg at Philipp Plein, while Dior Homme enlisted the Paris Scouring Orchestra, set back with electronic beats. Here, we bring you our ultimate catwalk compilation of the men's A/W 2015 show season...

Burberry Prorsum
'Cosmic Dancer', 'Whenever You Want It', 'Shadows' and 'House of the Rising Sun' performed live by Clare Maguire

Dsquared2
'Whole Lotta Love - Dubstep Edit' by Led Zeppelin; 'Back in Black' by AC/DC; 'Black Dog' by Led Zeppelin; 'We Will Rock You' by Queen; 'Weather With You' by Crowded House; 'A Place To Stand' - Ontario Canada's theme song; 'Take Off' by Bob and Doug McKenzie; 'Pass That Dutch' by Missy Elliot; 'Ehi Oh!' by Biancaneve e i sette nani; 'Wild Thing' by Devil Doll; 'The Immigrant Song' - (Streetlab mix) by Led Zeppelin; 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana vs Adam Freeland; 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by (Butch vig-mix) Nirvana; 'Black Dog' by Led Zeppelin; 'Tom Sawyer' by Rush; 'Are You Gonna Go My Way' by Lenny Kravitz; 'Rebel Rebel' by David Bowie; 'Hot Child In The City' by Nick Gilder and a live performance of 'One' and 'Family Affair' by Mary J Blige

Roberto Cavalli
'Every Other Freckle' by alt-J; 'Cupid Carries a Gun' by Marilyn Manson; 'God's Whisper' by Raury; 'Cleaver Lever' by The Growl; 'Come Easy' by Sunset Sons; 'Track 20 Symphony 2808' by Nero

Giorgio Armani
'Downton Abbey theme song' by The Chamber Orchestra Of London; 'Johnny and Mary' by Todd Terje feat Bryan Ferry

Canali
'Opal' by Byetone; 'Etude N°6' by Philip Glass; 'EXhale' by Plastikman; 'Back 2 Black' by Herman Schwartz; 'Gimme some' by Weval
Music production: Matteo Ceccarini

Gucci
'Clock Tick' by Abel Korzeniowski; 'Daydreams' by Abel Korzeniowski; 'Carlos' by Shigeru Umebayashi; 'Stillness Of The Mind' by Abel Korzeniowski; 'Going Somewhere' by Abel Korzeniowski
Music production: Michel Gaubert

Philipp Plein
'Jump Around' by House of Pain; 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC; Magnum PI main theme; 'What's My Name' and 'Drop it Like it's Hot' performed live by Snoop Dogg; 'Requiem' and 'Jungle Jazz performed live by Les Tambours du Bronx; 'The Blue Danube' by Strauss; 'The Thieving Magpie' by Rossini

Cerruti 1881
'Whisper' by David Byrne; 'Cooper Union' Dialogue by Joseph Beuys; 'Come Out' by Steve Reich; 'Straum' by Nils Okland

Valentino
'Valley of the Birds' by Emerald Web; 'The Imitation' by Alexandre Desplat; 'Hip Hop Spa' by Fatima Al Qadiri; 'Up and Down' by Koreless

Lanvin
'Science and Industry' by Andy Stott;  'Happy House' by Siouxsie and the Banshees

Maison Margiela
'Cancer For The Cure' by Eels; 'Twilight's Last Gleamings' by  William S Burroughs; 'The Night' by Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons; 'Stripes' by Bell Orchestre; 'Loaded' by Primal Scream; 'Water / Light / Shifts' by Bell Orchestre; 'Shake  the  Disease' (remastered)  by Depeche Mode; 'Let's  Wade  In  the  Water' by Marlena Shaw; 'Eight  Sum' by Amon Tobin; 'Paul's  Nightmare' by DJ Paul Elstak; 'One  Minute To Midnight' by Justice

Kris Van Assche
'Negative Creep' and 'The Magnificent Bukkake' by Koudlam
Music production: Michel Gaubert

Kenzo
'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by Saint Etienne

Dior Homme
'Landsc Apes' by Koudlam, arrangement by Thomas Roussel and performed by Paris Scoring Orchestra

Junya Watanabe
'Oh Honey' (Original 12'' Version) by The Delegation; 'Say That You Will' by George Duke S; 'Float On' by The Floaters; 'Unicorn' by Dizzy Gillespie & Lalo Schifrin; 'Safari Vibes' by Daniele Baldelli; 'Cosmic Funk' by Lonnie Liston Smith; 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You' by John Lloyd Young

Dries Van Noten
'Be My Baby' performed by DM Stith, written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector

3.1 Phillip Lim
'When I Put My Hands On You' by The New Basement Tapes; 'Reduct Live' by Skee Mask; 'Cylo' by Skee Mask; 'Security Of The First World' by Public Enemy

Paul Smith
'Snare Liftoff' by Justin Hurwitz & Tim Simonec; '54-46 Was My Number' by Toots & The Maytals; 'Witness Dub' by Roots Manuva; 'Mirror In The Bathroom' by The Beat; 'Just Can't Stop The Dub' by The Beat; 'North Of The River Thames' by Doctor Pablo and The Dub Syndicate

Comme des Garçons
Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack mixed with Alessandro Cortini electronica
Music production: Frédéric Sanchez

Saint Laurent
'Me Suive' by Mystere collective, written and composed by Marlon Magnée, Sacha Got and Sam Lefèvre in Brittany for Saint Laurent 'Paris Sessions'

Mood board: A return to dandyism was the order of the day at Junya Watanabe, tipping the scales back to formality (after seasons of denim trickery) in a collection of tuxedos and top hats filtered through his signature textile patchwork that here included silk satin, velvet, leather and corduroy.

Scene setting: Watanabe rolled out the red carpet to transform the cold concrete of the Palais de Tokyo into a classy cabaret, opening the show with the shadow play of a slow-spinning disco ball.

Team work: Here, casting was key - with Watanabe’s inspirations deriving from the Sapeurs (the Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People) that began in colonial French Congo, he tapped a handful of genuine Parisian dandies to represent.

The Japanese designers keep the creative flame of Paris burning bright. Junya Watanabe, one of this special group's top stars, stoked the fire even more this season with a wildly imaginative collection based on collaging. Watanabe started with circles, cutting up suede, patent leather and tulle into round spheres and then stitching them all up again to create fascinatingly artistic tunics, dresses, and capes that billowed with back volume. The surfaces later swelled into 3D formations created by rhomboid, square and diamond shapes, and then abruptly deflated into flat prints on leather. These were worn with oversized shorts, or asymmetrical skirts, and paired with platform lace-up oxford shoes with short white socks. With their hair bound into swim caps and their heads squashed into plastic helmets, there was something almost retro space age about this collection. But one can never put a Watanabe collection into such a tight, descriptive box. The pops of acid bright colours created a circus-like flavour, while the models luscious red lips had been taped together as if the designer were declaring that there was no need for this woman to open her mouth; her clothes, after all, could and would do all the talking.

A sure-fire clue into the complex inner workings of a Junya Watanabe show can usually be found on the model's heads, where a basic hair-do suddenly takes on fully loaded artistic licence. This season Watanabe had his women clamped into closely fitting skull caps. They were made from what appeared to be discarded hair clippings that had been swept up from a salon floor and glued back together in all-black, puzzle-like formations. Collage was, in fact, this collection's theme, and though it's been a bit of a buzz word for Parisian designers of late, no one has done it with the skill, intricacy or poetic grace of Watanabe. Wool, netting, tulle and even flashy sequins were all employed as the raw materials for his artistic canvases. Working first in circle constructions that looked as if the clothes had been hole-punched with giant cookie cutters, Watanabe then moved to triangles, waves and petal shapes, allowing the diverse materials to pile up like a secret garden on tunic tops, ponchos, capes and dramatic long skirts. All of the sport and street elements of his past collections had been erased here, unless you count the puffer jackets that were reconfigured into Michelin Man funnel-like shapes. Meanwhile, Watanabe worked in an almost universally black palette. It is a true testament to this designer's workmanship that so much depth - not to mention emotion - was transmitted, while using such a flat, colourless hue.

Fashion week, nowadays, is about much more than just the collections. Showmanship is the name of the game, and in the meticulously executed sartorial extravaganzas, the sound space is an element that no producer or designer can afford to overlook. Music royalty - past, present and future - is enlisted to ensure a full assault on the senses. Here, we bring you Paris Fashion Week's catwalk mega-mix from the S/S 2015 menswear collections.

WEDNESDAY 25/06

Valentino
'L'eau à la Bouche' by Serge Gainsbourg; 'Le Serpent' by Geum; 'I Giardini Di Kensington' by Patty Pravo; 'All Under One Roof Raving' by Jamie XX

Raf Simons
From the soundtrack of 'Under The Skin' by Mica Levi
Music production: Michel Gaubert

THURSDAY 26/06

Louis Vuitton
'Hounds of Love' by Kate Bush
Music production: Honey Dijon

Dries Van Noten
'First Movement' from Rosas danst Rosa ballet
Music production: Thierry de Mey

FRIDAY 27/06

Junya Watanabe
'The Bead Game' by Joe Henderson

Kris Van Assche
'Being Boiled' by The Human League; 'Patient Zero' by Radiohead; 'Theme From Great Cities' by Simple Minds; 'Love Action (I Believe In Love)' by The Human League; 'Collapsing New People' by Fad Gadget; 'Master And Servant' by Depeche Mode; 'Only After Dark' by The Human League; 'Thoughtcrime' by Rodhad

Cerruti 1881
'Motherfuckin' Deer Bit Me (with Shaun Partridge)' by Boyd Rice; 'Drinking in LA' by Van Bran 3000; 'Behaviour' by Pet Shop Boys & The KLF; 'Gary in the Tardis' by The Timelords; 'Elvis On the Radio, Steel Guitar in my Soul' by The KLF; 'Strip it down' by ENO & HYDE; 'Chill out (Wolf in The Jungle Remix)' by The KLF; 'What Time is Love?' by The KLF
Music production: Frédéric Sanchez

Comme des Garçons
'Toreador Del Amor' by Tuxedomoon; 'Triumphant Procession' by Tuxedomoon; 'Merci Stephane' by Ghedalia Tazartes; 'Part II' by Ghedalia Tazartes; 'Zil Veli' by Ghedalia Tazartes & Jacques Berrocal; 'Lachrimae Antiquae' by John Dowland; 'Tazarama' by Ghedalia Tazartes

Givenchy
 'Elegant Stomp' by The Martinez Brothers feat. Kissey; 'Deep Breaths' by The Martinez Brothers feat Kissey; 'Untitled (finale)' by The Martinez Brothers.
Music production: The Martinez Brothers

SATURDAY 28/06

Dior Homme
'Natures Makes Mistakes (K7 version)' by Son Of Sam; 'CTI - Mary' remixed by Michel Gaubert

Hermès
'With Me' by Cashmere Cat; 'Exercise #5 (September)' by CFCF; 'Lude Pre (Red Hot + Bach)' by Francesco Tristano & Carl Craig; 'Unsung Deaf Hero' by Time Paris; 'Devils' by Say Hi

SUNDAY 29/06

Paul Smith
'Marquee Moon' by Television; 'Friction' by Television; 'Folly Of Youth' by Pere Ubu; 'Untitled Instrumental' by Television; 'Coming Apart' by Tom Verlaine; 'Venus' by Television
Music production: Andrew Hale & Peter Smith

Saint Laurent
'Bright Blue Day Haze' by Mystic Braves
Music production: Mystic Braves

Mr Watanabe does nothing by half. His shows are penetrating studies, each with an obsessive singularity, and Spring's menswear is about the workers of Japanese folklore. Lacquered topknots and fierce painted eyebrows cleared any doubts, with tinges of sumo-style from the first denim collage, through a patchwork frenzy, to the final reds from the land of the rising sun, with the designer's hallmark trim tailoring and utility designs softened in a washed and shredded fabric collage. Signifiers of the kimono abounded, with blown-up signage and wave graphics paneled into Junya's hooded anoraks and rockabilly denim - the latter printed at times in a Spirograph of oriental florals. Breaking the denim blues with a passage of washi paper-coloured looks, Watanabe stretched a diverse and jubilant collection from a theme so close to home.

Junya Watanabe piped Oasis through the sprawling salons of a hotel particulier in Paris' 16th district, delivering an Autumn show rife with clashing cultures that realigned his menswear with the soulful punk aesthetic of recent womenswear triumphs. Although there was no avoiding the quilted hunting jackets and parkas that are today his menswear bread and butter, Watanabe mixed up the offering with teddy boy tailoring in flannel and corduroy, pairing frock coats and trim blazers with fat, knotted ties and polka dot shirting. With zany, synthetic wigs worn under smart bowler hats, he went hell-for-leather, patching checks, hides and pinstripes across raw denim and closed the show with spidery grunge knitwear - both revisiting and trumping his own signatures to rock star effect.

Fashion week, nowadays, is about much more than just the collections. Showmanship is the name of game, and in the meticulously executed sartorial extravaganzas, the sound space is an element that no producer or designer can afford to overlook. Music royalty - past, present and future - is enlisted to ensure a full assault on the senses. Here, we bring you Paris Fashion Week's catwalk mega mix from the A/W 2014 menswear collections.

WEDNESDAY 15/01

Valentino

'Before Long' by Ryuichi Sakamoto; 'With or Without You' by Twin Shadow; 'NYC 73-78' by Beck; 'The Sheltering Sky' by Ryuichi Sakamoto

Raf Simons

'Speak To Me', by Pink Floyd; 'The Great Gig in the Sky', by Pink Floyd; 'On the Run' by Pink Floyd; 'Baby's on Fire' by Brian Eno

THURSDAY 16/01

Rick Owens

'Heavy Heat', remixed by RP Boo

Louis Vuitton

'Love is the Message', by MFSB

Music production: Honey Dijon

Dries Van Noten

'Sympathy For The Devil', by The Rolling Stones; 'Gimme Shelter' by Rolling Stones

Music production: Kid Koala aka Eric San
 
FRIDAY 17/01

Junya Watanabe

'Baby Blue' by King Krule; 'Ocean Bed' by King Krule; 'Easy Easy' by King Krule; 'A Lizard State' by King Krule; 'All Around the World' by Oasis

Kris Van Assche

'Destination/Rocket Number 9 (Gesaffelstein Remix)' by Gesaffelstein/Zombie Zombie

Music production: Michel Gaubert

Cerruti 1881

'Hymn to a Great City' by Katia & Marielle Labèque; 'Red Right Hand' by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds; 'Ashes To Ashes' by Warpaint

Music production: Michel Gaubert

Givenchy

'Flawless (Fashion Show Mix)' by The Martinez Brothers; 'Interlude 01' by The Martinez Brothers; 'The Kid (Fashion Show Mix)' by The Martinez Brothers

Music production: The Martinez Brothers

Comme des Garçons

'Hidden XS' by Fuck Buttons; 'Broken Head' by Cluster & Eno; 'Computerwelt' by Kraftwerk

Maison Martin Margiela

'Koln (January 24, 1975 Part I)' by Keith Jarrett; 'Koln (January 24, 1975 Part II A)' by Keith Jarrett

SATURDAY 18/01

Dior Homme

'Swan Rot' by Michael Nyman; 'Prawn Watching' by Michael Nyman; 'Human Drama (Paula Temple Remix)' by Planningtorock

Music production: Michel Gaubert

Hermès

'Golden Arrow' by Darkside; 'Hijk' by C.A.R; 'Paper Trails', by Darkside; 'Swept Away (New Jackson Remix)' by The XX; 'Got Well Soon' by Breton

Music production: Thierry Planelle

SUNDAY 19/01

Paul Smith

'Soft Parade' by The Doors; 'Soul Kitchen' by The Doors; 'LA Woman' by The Doors; 'My Wild Love' by The Doors; 'Touch Me' by The Doors

Music production: Peter Smith & Andrew Hale

Umit Benan

'Danny Boy' by Jackie Wilson; 'Hellhound' by Son of Dave; 'Stupid' by Bobby Womack                                       

Thom Browne

'Prologue' (from Birth OST) by Alexandre Desplat; 'The Rendezvous' (from Birth OST) by Alexandra Desplat; 'Birth Waltz - Finale' (from Birth OST) by Alexandre Desplat

Saint Laurent

General Education' by Froth