If Milan Fashion Week revealed designers retreating towards reassurance – softer silhouettes, familiar codes, clothes as comfort – Paris offered a different reading of the moment. Here, the collections suggested a quiet optimism: fashion as curiosity, invention and renewed pleasure.
Long burdened by its status as fashion’s spiritual capital – a city where seriousness and severity often reign – Paris loosened its grip this men’s week.
Across the runways, there was a sense of play and possibility. From Louis Vuitton’s architectural pragmatism to Dior’s poetic excess, Louboutin’s provocation and Amiri’s romanticised Americana, Paris made a case for menswear as an expressive, forward-looking force.
Futurism at Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton’s menswear show unfolded around a prefabricated house designed by creative director Pharrell Williams. Linking fashion to architecture was a pointed gesture in itself, but the concept went further: the house, filled with artworks (presumably drawn from the Fondation Louis Vuitton on whose grounds it stood), positioned the brand squarely within the fabric of culture.
Show notes described Vuitton as being “measured by usefulness”, with engineering that extended beyond surface appeal. Innovations included LV Silk-Nylon, a leather-like material, and a new technical fabric that arrived crumpled like paper in jackets and shirts.
Styled in easy, carefree layers, the strongest moments came through gestures of relaxed elegance: coats nonchalantly tied at the neck, crystal-strewn shoulders, and bags rendered in every conceivable hue.
Jaden Smith for Christian Louboutin
When Christian Louboutin announced Jaden Smith as its new creative director last year, it raised more than a few eyebrows – Smith’s included. In footage from his debut presentation, he admits to being genuinely shocked when Louboutin first reached out.
Unveiled in Paris, Smith’s first collection is the result of nearly a year of research, drawing on hip-hop, cinema, art, photography and even 19th-century science to forge a new visual language. The result is younger and punchier: the name stamped across belts, emblazoned on baseball caps and slashed diagonally over red suede trainers.
The signature red sole is reimagined as paint poured over boots; a cowboy boot is wrapped in ghostly photographic imagery; loafers morph into slingbacks; and Oxfords are punctured clean through the sides.
After years of commercial success, Louboutin was due a reset – and with Smith at the helm, this may be it.
Eclectic opulence at Dior Men
Under new creative director Jonathan Anderson, the Dior man is restless and young – a flaneur in search of poetic inspiration. For autumn/winter, Anderson found it in the work of Paul Poiret, the early 20th-century designer whose imagination drew heavily on the Middle East, East Asia and North Africa.
The result is what Anderson calls “eclectic opulence”: formal dress coats worn with frilled necks, jumpers trimmed with beaded epaulettes, parka coats topped with brocade capes. Elongated, slim tailoring is offset by shrunken wool jackets – including a reworked Bar silhouette from womenswear – while jacquards, velvet and embroidery lend a lavish mood. A joyful new Dior man has arrived.
Amiri's Americana
One of the buzziest brands on the circuit, Amiri looked to its California roots, drawing on music, counterculture and West Coast style.
The result was a modern cowboy: Western shirts with embroidered collars, velvet-flocked jeans and golden cowboy boots. Cardigans bloomed with sewn flowers, while suits carried a subtle, magical sparkle. Show notes spoke of a “sense of occasion brought to daily life” – and by folding evening touches into daytime wear, Amiri reminded us that dressing up isn’t just for women.
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