Top trends from the Paris Men's Fashion Week

By

Chenu Alexis

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Jan 23, 2018

The Paris Men's Fashion Week ended on Sunday 21st January, after a run of 55 catwalk shows for the Autumn/Winter 2018-19 collections, all brimming with hot new trends.

This season's ubiquitous, must-wear looks were those of the adventurer and luxury globe-trotter. For Thom Browne, Paris' École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the national fine arts academy, morphed into a camp-bed dorm within a snow-covered forest, where the models showed with rolled-up sleeping bags tied to their legs. At the Etudes and White Mountaineering shows, mountain-climber snap hooks were put to clever new use, while Kim Jones clad its models in hiking boots, increasingly popular as city footwear. Checks were everywhere, the red and black tartan predominant at Alexander McQueen, Facetasm, Juun J., Y/Project and Dries Van Noten.

Colour-wise, while yellow was a constant with a large number of labels - AMI with its pullovers, Kenzo with its turtleneck sweaters, and from Y3's bright yellow to the fluorescent hues in Juun J. and the pastel ones of Wooyoungmi's macs - the other trend spotted on the catwalks was the monochrome look: yellow at Kenzo, purple for Berluti, shades of interstellar grey at Louis Vuitton. Chromatic coherence was a constant throughout.

Men's looks for winter 2018 featured a strong dose of show-off Hollywood-star glamour, studded with sequins, rhinestones and the like. Louis Vuitton showed silvery lamé jackets and trousers, blending street style with uber luxury, Balmain presented chain mail-style tops with golden stripes, and Berlin collective GmbH matched metal-finish leather trousers with tops borrowed from motocross kits. At Palomo Spain, cowboy-style chaps made an appearance, while Wooyoungmi was big on the leather-and-cowboy-boot combination. To very great effect.

In terms of prints, the widespread use of Nordic designs was a leitmotif, notably at GmbH and also at Y/Project and White Mountaineering. Graphic design for its own sake is out, and the mood was more abstract, with galactic explorer flights of fancy and otherworldly ideas featured notably at Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten and Louis Vuitton.

Above all, one thing was clear: oversize is mandatory in men's looks for the Autumn/Winter 2018-19. The trend was most evident in the layered effects presented by Lanvin and Vetements, in the use of scarves-blankets of extravagant dimensions, notably at Thom Browne, and in the giant, knee-high Ugg boots developed in collaboration with Glenn Martens and his Y/Project label.