Paris
NCS
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Against the backdrop of a scorching heatwave in Europe that has not spared the French capital, the menswear version of Paris Fashion Week wrapped up on Sunday.
The sweltering circumstances had been maybe an incidental metaphor for the strain the business is feeling as the international luxurious business experiences a troubling slowdown. To this finish, the Spring-Summer 2026 collections felt restrained. In a local weather of uncertainty, designers proposed modular, adaptable wardrobes attuned to a worldwide shopper, and the consideration shifted away from slogans and theatrics towards refined development and nuance, with block colours, versatile clothes and a watch in the direction of utility. That mentioned, when it got here to indicate manufacturing, the bar remained excessive, with runways as soon as once more staged at main Parisian landmarks, attended by a bevy of A-List visitors.
The week’s most anticipated occasion came about at the famed Hôtel des Invalides, the place Dior introduced its first show by Jonathan Anderson, the founding father of London label J.W. Anderson, who stepped down from Loewe after remodeling the luxurious model over the previous 11 years. Pop royalty and business titans, together with Rihanna, Sabrina Carpenter, Donatella Versace and Robert Pattinson, all sat entrance row for his extremely anticipated debut, which was set in a room mimicking interiors of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie museum that includes 18th-century artworks.
Off the heels of Dior Men’s period of Kim Jones, who supplied elegant twists on menswear in theatrical runway shows, Anderson ushered in a playful, on a regular basis sense of luxurious, delving into the home’s heritage by reintroducing traditional silhouettes morphed in new methods. The Bar jacket, cinched at the waist and launched in the Nineteen Fifties, was introduced outsized — with a skirt-suit model concurrently showcased by Carpenter in the entrance row — whereas cargo pants featured trailing panels that echoed the 1949 Dior Delft ball robe. Flowers, central to Christian Dior and his backyard in Granville, featured as minute embroideries and a purse that replicated a canopy of the 1857 guide “Les Fleurs du Mal” by French poet Charles Baudelaire.
At one other Parisian cultural landmark, in entrance of the Centre Pompidou, Pharrell Williams introduced an impressive present for Louis Vuitton with Beyoncé and Jay-Z arriving final earlier than the sundown occasion. But the assortment proved extra understated than its presentation, regardless of its deal with India’s sartorial affect on modern style. The set, by architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, was a life-sized tackle the historical Indian board sport of Snakes and Ladders. Tailoring got here with an air of easy dandyism, with indigo overcoats and mustard pleated shorts earlier than transferring towards mountain climbing stylish, with windbreakers and climbing boots full with bejeweled socks. The eccentric present felt spun off from a Wes Anderson set, and that was intentional — with jacket motifs paying homage to the Louis Vuitton trunks featured in Anderson’s 2007 train-journey movie “The Darjeeling Limited,” set in India.
Rather than a museum setting, the British-born designer Grace Wales Bonner celebrated the tenth anniversary of her eponymous label by going again to highschool. Titled “Jewel,” the assortment took the stage at the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV secondary college in the metropolis’s Latin Quarter and explored the concept of inheritance.
The clothes’ layered, preppy strains drew on British know-how via collaborations with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard and milliner Stephen Jones for berets. Staying true to her signature fusion of genres, Bonner additionally partnered with streetwear model Y-3. In addition to sporty, paper-thin knits and sheer bejeweled shirting, Bonner paired flared silhouettes with patent opera pumps, and elevated tailcoats with baobab brooches and pops of colours on lapels and collars.
Block colours and daring messages
At a number of shows, brilliant colours snuck onto the runway, typically paired with equally subversive messaging, and, at different instances, a playful new tackle custom.
For his second presentation in Paris, American designer Willy Chavarria opened with a daring efficiency — in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — straight referencing the Trump administration’s contested deportations of Venezuelan migrants to prisons in El Salvador. The sequence included 35 males in white t-shirts kneeling on the runway ground, showing to echo images taken inside the Cecot megaprison; it was a declaration towards “people being profiled and persecuted with no due process,” per the present notes.
From this emotional starting, Chavarria, who usually weaves Latino sartorial codes into direct political statements and messages of inclusion, revisited retro inspirations: zoot fits and movie noir-inspired silhouettes in child pink, lavender and brass satin gown coats, full with a collaboration with traditional shoemaker Charles Jourdan.
At Saint Laurent, inventive director Anthony Vaccarello’s inspiration got here from the queer communities of Seventies Fire Island in New York. That summer season vibrancy translated into clothes via splashes of mustard, lime, and tangerine hues, with sturdy suiting softened by silk shirts topped by ton-sur-ton skinny ties or ethereal chiffon blouses with pussy bows.
And, at Dries Van Noten, newly appointed inventive director Julian Klausner unveiled his first menswear assortment for the Belgian model. Titled “Just a Perfect Day,” the modular wardrobe shifted and loosened up over the course of an imagined evening out, enjoying with each the hybridity of formal and informal in addition to masculine and female. The assortment featured sarongs layered over trousers, silk waistcoats paired with boxing shorts, and conventional cummerbunds — in mint or sizzling pink — added to extra informal silhouettes.
On the final day of menswear style week, Jacquemus, led by Simon Porte Jacquemus, hosted its closing duties. The label has change into recognized for translating Provençal traditions into exuberant womenswear, menswear, and viral equipment.
The grand present at Versailles drew a glowing entrance row together with actors Matthew McConaughey, Gillian Anderson and Laura Harrier. Known for weaving his personal biography into his work, Jacquemus as soon as once more regarded to his South of France childhood, however this time bringing his rural upbringing to the courtroom of the king, at the palace’s maze-like Orangery.
The assortment featured a milky palette of white, eggshell and comfortable pinks, constructed as ruffled aprons and corseted blouses. Tablecloth-inspired embroideries, and playful tassels referenced conventional Southern France — as did trompe-l’œil leather-based equipment formed like garlic, strawberries, and leeks. Memory and fable intertwined in the present, from Marcel Pagnol movies to the designer’s great-grandmother and the English vacationers of his childhood, he defined backstage.
He used the French time period “endimanché,” or dressing up on Sunday, to explain the crisp, opaline really feel of the assortment, “almost like a nurse, very minimal… my grandmother was always in white with bijoux, very pure.” Provence, he added, “is always a dream… a very important cliché.”
Scroll for the highlights from the Paris Fashion Week males’s shows.
