Feeling the heat of Paris menswear

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This was published 12 years ago

Feeling the heat of Paris menswear

The spring-summer 2012 menswear shows in Paris have melted into the past, wrapping up in a pool of perspiration on the year's hottest day.

The five-day-long menswear extravaganza kicked off on Wednesday, June 22 under cloudy skies, but by Sunday thermometers had soared to 32 degrees Celsius - a nightmare scenario for a crowd of elaborate dressers reluctant to remove blazers, corsets or any other essential but asphyxiating elements of their looks.

A model wears a creation by Japanese designer Junaya Watanabe for his 'Junya Watanabe Man' Men's Spring-Summer 2012 collection.

A model wears a creation by Japanese designer Junaya Watanabe for his 'Junya Watanabe Man' Men's Spring-Summer 2012 collection.Credit: AP

After the last show - a solid display by Swedish jeans-maker Acne - the fashion elite raced back to their hotels to pack their bags and get the hell out of Dodge before temperatures climbed further.

The heat wreaked havoc on shows from Paul Smith - where listless editors, stylists and journalists gave up taking notes to fan their reddened faces instead - to US designer Thom Browne, whose sumptuous velvet-walled venue was transformed into a sauna.

Lanvin showed early enough in the morning - and delivered such a gorgeous collection - that it was among the sole shows of the day where the clothes managed to outshine the beating sun.

Besides the weather, the other main topic of conversation throughout the week was the ongoing saga of disgraced former Dior designer John Galliano, whose day-long trial on anti-Semitism charges on June 22 coincided with the start of menswear week. He faces up to six months in prison and $US32,175 ($30,795) in fines for allegedly showering racist and anti-Semitic insults on a couple seated next to him at a Paris bar - an incident which cost him his job as creative director at Christian Dior, as well as at his own signature label.

Here are some highlights from the final shows:

THOM BROWNE

Normally models grumble when they have to wear something that hides their faces, but at Browne's cross-dressing, cabaret-infused show, the relief of those whose features were obscured behind the fringed lampshade hats was almost palpable.

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You could hardly blame them: Even for male models, who are used to donning both the hideous and the sublime, photos immortalising them in beaded flapper dresses worn with sock garters are a hard thing to live down.

There were also hourglass-shaped trench coats in navy pinstripes, with a swishy fringe in lieu of epaulettes, shrunken bowler hats hung with a bride's veil and beaded jumpsuits accessorised with knee-length ropes of pearls.

The heavily inked arms of a tattoo-embellished model emerged from a crop top covered in pearly white beads, and you could practically smell his relief that he was also wearing one of the face-shrouding lampshade hats.

But say what you will about Browne's clothes - which this season inverted the usually truncated proportions of his trademark shrunken suits - there's no disputing the man knows how to put on a show.

Held in Paris's iconic Belle Epoque-era watering hole Maxim's, where Champagne flowed like tap water, the show had all the trappings of a super display. But the event soured in the heat, which turned the velvet-covered restaurant into a sort of inferno and sent the bubbly straight to everybody's heads.

The plodding gait of the models, who peered down at the audience as they meandered among the marble tables, didn't help things. Sluggish pacing has been an issue at Browne shows in the past, but the heat made it almost unbearable.

"I can't stand this for one more second," griped one editor as he mopped sweat from his face.

Still, for all its discomforts, the show was at least memorable - and that's more than you can say for the more conventional catwalk displays, which by the last day of fashion week have already blended together into an amorphous fog as thick as pea soup.

LANVIN

Paris's most romantic label tapped into the raw emotion of Wuthering Heights - its models like modern-day Heathcliffs racing breathlessly across the moors in billowing silks and lustrous microfibres.

After veering into edgier, more hardcore territory in recent seasons, Sunday's collection was pure, unadulterated feeling.

The looks - windblown parkas, their silken hoods trailing behind like scarves, and suits in a rainbow of dusty hues - faintly quivered with raw sentiment.

Even the more stringent looks that opened the show - inspired, menswear designer Lucas Ossendrijver said, by security guards because "everybody loves a man in uniform" - breathed poetry.

"'Boys can cry,' that's our message," the label's artistic director Alber Elbaz said in a post-show interview, adding that he and Ossendrijver were careful to avoid turning their emotionally-charged men into wimps.

"Women were always strong. Men were powerful. Now women are strong and powerful - that's a deadly combination," Elbaz said. "We wanted to go back to the essence of masculinity, which is leather, which is the uniform," and inject that "with the fragility and emotion that has become our DNA at Lanvin."

The collection, shown beneath the frescoed dome of a Paris stock exchange, hit the sweet spot between strength and sentiment without veering into the overtly feminine territory that has swept other catwalks here, where the man skirt has emerged as a major trend.

Lanvin's khaki tunics in the thinnest of leathers, its perfectly-cut pleated trousers, and its sculptural double-breasted jackets all managed to be at once manly and emotive.

PAUL SMITH

The audience may have been sweltering but the British designer's models looked as cool as cucumbers.

Wearing slim, colourblock suits made from panels of slightly different shades of blue, with sleeveless vests layered over their blazers, their faces fresh and shine-free, the models seemed to embody both definitions of the word cool.

The audience of fashion insiders, on the other hand, could be taken to collectively define the verbs "to broil", "to melt" or even the noun "sauna".

At the Smith show, which was held in an old convent that has the advantage of freezing in winter and boiling in the summer, editors who are normally scribbling furiously in their notebooks abandoned their pens to fan their streaming faces with the cardboard invitations. Look after hip look went by without inspiring as much as sketch or a jotted word - which was too bad, really, as the show was full of fashion-forward silhouettes you could actually see making the leap from the catwalk to the street.

Nowhere did the sleeveless jacket, a top trend on other Paris runways, look as good as at Smith, where it was layered over blazers made from a patchwork of matte and shiny materials.

RYNSHU

Will.i.am is used to filling stadiums but a simple trip down the catwalk at Japanese menswear label Rynshu had the Black Eyed Peas' rapper blushing.

Sporting a snug leather blazer, a pair of cropped harem pants in shiny black and clunky combat boots, will.i.am shuffled up the runway, shooting sheepish glances at the photographers' pit as the audience encouraged him with a round of applause.

The performer is collaborating with the brand on a line christened "Will.I.Am x Rynshu" for next spring-summer and has worn clothes from last year's collection in a music video. He and the other Black Eyed Peas are in Paris for a series of concerts here.

The collection had a kind of eccentric rocker vibe to it, with lots of second-skin leather pants and slashed black jeans. In fact, it was hard to imagine any man without a platinum record daring to don the blazer covered in white sequins that glimmered like fish scales.

ARNYS

The house that has come to define Left Bank elegance delivered beautiful clothes tailored for men of taste and leisure, those who take breakfast by the pool before heading out for a spot of clay-court tennis followed by an unhurried multi-course lunch.

Striped silk jackets looked like they had not-so-distant origins as pyjama tops, while Key Lime pie-coloured trousers were clearly destined for lounging.

The sole faux pas were the neo-Jodhpurs, linen pants that ballooned through the thigh and clung like plaster casts to the models' calves.

The show was held in a postage-stamp sized park, and the models had to change in a bus parked outside the wrought iron gates. You could tell it was the tail end of the shows because the models were listless and sleepy-eyed and surlily refused photographers' shouted out orders to look up.

"These guys are really a band of monkeys," quipped a particularly vociferous and outraged Italian photographer.

SONGZIO

Korean label Songzio delivered a convincing collection of suits in black and white linen that felt like summery variations on the tuxedo. Unlike the low-crotched carrot pants that have swept Paris runways, the high-water trousers here were slim through the thighs and flared at the ankle. The outerwear, biker jackets in paper-thin leather and calf-length linen trenches, were fetching. The whole collection was quietly lovely, with the models' hair - slicked back with egg yolk yellow paste - the sole extravagant touch.

DIOR HOMME

The motto of the collection, less and more, appeared contradictory, but seeing as the show boiled down to a long parade of variations on the same three minimalist, stripped-down suits, it actually made perfect sense.

It was like the label's menswear designer, Belgium's Kris Van Assche, had taken his marching orders from the thumping techno soundtrack, which featured a female voice repeating "do it, do it, do it and do it again" on a loop. Van Assche did one look - low-slung, drop-crotched, high-water trousers and plain-front jackets with bat wing sleeves - and then did it again, and again, in different shades.

There were, of course, nice pieces, like a razor-cut jacket with thin lapels and trompe l'oeil panelling in buttery leather and a double-breasted jacket with metal closures that looked like a door knocker in guise of buttons.

But on the whole, these were the kinds of edgy clothes you could see fashion-forward, deep-pocketed young men like Van Assche himself coveting. It was hard to imagine how the silhouette, with its vaguely Amish and mod influences, could have much appeal beyond that narrow demographic.

KENZO

The show was like a ray of sunlight that pierced the dense blanket of grey clouds that shrouded Paris on Saturday morning.

Founded by a now-retired designer, Kenzo Takada, the Paris-based label has wanderlust in its DNA, and the collection hopped from one holiday hotspot to another - from Havana to Portofino, Hawaii to Saint Tropez.

Bermuda and cargo shorts replaced trousers on the casual chic suits, served up in a high-octane palette of fuchsia, electric blue, canary yellow and a bright green that conjured up a well-manicured, highly-fertilised lawn. Short-sleeved shirts with oversized flowers or Hawaiian prints nudged out the business-ready button-downs, with sailor stripes and polka dots proclaiming the official start of summer.

"We imagined a man who when it comes time to go on holiday, throws all his straight-laced suits into the bin," designer Antonio Marras said in a backstage interview, as dressers made the final pre-show adjustments. "We wanted to have a very vacation spirit while at the same time keeping a certain sophistication."

After collections on Friday dominated by a sombre palette of greys and charcoal, the Kenzo show, with its peppy Beach Boys soundtrack, was a welcome breath of fresh air that distracted the fashion world from the task at hand and got them thinking about more important things than clothes: holidays.

BERNHARD WILLHELM

You can say what you will about Willhelm's clothes - zany club kid knits - but when it comes to putting on a memorable fashion show, there's simply no disputing the German designer's almost preternatural gift.

It's safe to say that no one who saw Saturday's display - a potent cocktail of kitsch that included fast cars, a porn star and a muscle woman - will be forgetting it anytime soon.

Staged in a Mercedes dealership off Paris's Champs Elysees Avenue, the display was a veritable riot for the senses: Models sported sweat pants knit with XXL in oversized letters and bulky cowl sweaters that left wide swaths of chest uncovered, or itsy-bitsy Speedo bottoms, worn only with socks and shoes. A pair of jeans was reduced to a shell of its former self, with all the fabric removed apart from the yellow-stitched waistband, inseams and hems.

But the most memorable piece in the show - if not of all Paris fashion week thus far - was the one-piece thong bathing suit, worked within an inch of its spandex life by its amateur model, a real-life adult film star. He got a run for his money though, from the other nonprofessional on the catwalk - a lady bodybuilder in a teeny bikini who paused to flex her well-oiled biceps.

MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA

The experimental Belgian house continued to cater to hipsters worldwide with a collection that mixed Adidas-style sportswear with casual suits cut from sheer, featherweight fabrics in a way that looked to be a sure hit in Brooklyn, Amsterdam and Tokyo.

Held in a gilded Paris theatre, the show started with a short movie featuring models walking and running in place as the camera zoomed in on their crotches. The purpose of the film wasn't exactly clear, as the same models later emerged from backstage and zigzagged among the rows of seats, giving the audience a much better look at the clothes than the movie had.

There are only so many possible variations on the suit, so other Paris houses have incorporated sheer panelling as a way of dressing up the menswear staple, but at Margiela, transparency was more than a gimmick. Prints or stripes shone darkly beneath inky silk overlays on pants and jackets and the models' abundant tattoos shown through transparent knit sweaters. The suits were worn with thin little nylon windbreakers or ample rainslickers that look like the love children of an Adidas tracksuit and a Moroccan djellaba.

CERRUTI

High-sheen fabrics have emerged as another big trend this week in Paris, but nowhere have they shone like at Cerruti. The label served up slim, two-button blazers and snug trousers in a crinkly, reflective material that turned what would otherwise have been nice but unremarkable garments into real attention-grabbers. A jacket in glittering silver was fit for a rock star, while you could see any man with abundant self confidence and a bit of pizzazz pulling off the shiny peacock blue pants.

SMALTO

French suitmaker Smalto sent out a solid collection of commercial pieces dominated by slim, single-button suits in luminous materials.

The show also included 10 pieces described as "masculine haute couture", hand-crafted looks made from materials including ostrich and crocodile. According to the collection notes, Smalto - under the direction of Swiss-Korean designer Youn Chong Bak - is the only menswear label registered with the Chambre Syndical de Haute Couture, the body that regulates Paris's wildly expensive made-to-measure couture lines.

The strong show ended with a literal whimper, as the little blond boy modelling the Mini Me version of what the notes described as the "three-piece tuxedo for men and children" sobbed his way down the runway, tears streaming down his little face.

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