Scene-stealing runway sets from the A/W 2019 menswear shows

Kenzo: Creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon are renowned for their innovative set design concepts. Just look to S/S 2019’s jazz club-inspired setup or the scene of Kenzo’s Memento 3 collection, complete with a sumptuous feast and verdant interior inspired by Rousseau’s ‘The Dream.’ The brand were brewing up something a little more hallucinatory for A/W 2019, with a trippy, kaleidoscopic show set in Paris, bursting with figures and optical patterns: an Ayahuasca dreamscape painted by the Peruvian artist Pablo Amaringo. Photography: Yang Wang

Louis Vuitton: For his sophomore show for the Parisian maison, men’s artistic director Virgil Abloh had Manhattan on his mind. At the Jardin des Tuileries, the designer erected a New York Street-inspired catwalk, complete with rows of grocery and barber shops, bins spilling with rubbish, towering lampposts, discarded furniture and swirling leaves. The show also featured a live installation by graffiti artists Jim Joe, Lewy Btm and Futura. Models drifted across the set like commuters striding through the New York streets. Real Big Apple thinking.

Marni: Creative director Francesco Risso amped up the bass for A/W 2019, with a runway set stacked with piles of speakers. Guests sat on tiered rows of seating, as if assembled inside a giant sound system, a volume-turning take on set design.

Off-White: It’s often noted, that despite the presence of social media, allowing access to once off-limits fashion shows, that runway spectacles are better seen in the flesh. Ever innovative Virgil Abloh turned this concept on its head for A/W 2019. The staging of Off-White’s show was accompanied by a set resembling a forest floor, overlaid with a green screen. The result? As viewers watched through Instagram, a series of mesmeric animations were applied to the catwalk, provided an alternate digital reality for those at home.

Prada: The Milanese brand had a light-bulb moment for autumn. Working with regular collaborators AMO, Prada created a theatrical field of lighting in its recently opened Deposito space of the Fondazione Prada. A catwalk was formed from eerily illuminated glowing light bulbs, a nod to the scientific experiments documented in Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein, which inspired the cartoonish prints in the collection. Photography: Osio

Loewe: A/W 2019 marked Jonathan Anderson’s first fully fledged menswear runway show for the Spanish house, one held in the same location as his lauded womenswear shows: the Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris. Anderson is renowned for incorporating art into his catwalk designs. His S/S 2019 show for Loewe’s womenswear was divided into a series of exhibition rooms, inspired by the avant-garde Sixties art gallery Signals London. For A/W 2019 menswear, Anderson hung Gelbe Modellierung, a 1985 fabric sculpture by Franz Erhard Walther at the head of Loewe’s catwalk. The piece was part of a series of installations the artist created between 1978 and 1986 called ‘wallformations’, constructed using sheets of canvas and basic clothing patterns.

Qasimi: London-based designer Khalid Al Qasimi worked with production company BOUM on a breathtakingly stark show space. At the old Collins Music Hall in North London, in a forgotten underground venue, models descened a triple-floor scaffolding stairwell and walked into the centre of a looming concrete interior, lined at ground level with rows of black chairs. Sumptuous high loom carpet underfoot provided a luxurious contrast to the bare and stripped-back show set.
 

Sacai: In the curving first floor Galerie Courbe at the Grand Palais in Paris – a stark glass-roofed space which opened in 2013 – guests were seated in single line on eclectic seating, from deep shell-like sofas to desk chairs, stools to foldable garden seats. A smattering of faded rugs also lined the catwalk, adding to the mix-and-match aesthetic. Photography: Stéphane Aït Ouarab, La Mode en Images.

Cerruti 1881: A trip by chief creative officer Jason Basmajian to the Royal Academy of Arts’ ‘Oceania’ exhibition in London last autumn, inspired Cerruti 1881’s A/W 2019 show set. Held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the show’s catwalk was populated with contemporary takes on totem poles, constructed using everyday materials like air conditioning tubes and piles of wooden blocks shrink wrapped into plastic pockets.

Neil Barrett: For his brand’s A/W 2019 show, at his vast concrete-line Storage Associati-designed Milan HQ, Neil Barrett lined his catwalk with digital screens. These displayed a series of films focused on the city alight at night. Their musical accompaniment? The pulsating frenetic sounds of Shygirl’s ‘Want More’.

Ermenegildo Zegna Couture: Artistic director Alessandro Sartori looked to commuter life for inspiration, holding Ermenegildo Zegna Couture’s show in the grand foyer of Milano Centrale station. Sartori collaborated with events behemoth Bureau Betak, which dressed the space in large LED columns illuminated with endlessly scrolling numbers, like haywire train timetables. If only every evening commute was as exciting.