Paris Fashion Week Review: Fall/Winter 2023 Menswear
In Paris, the new year kicks off with menswear and haute couture for Paris Fashion Week, and the runway offerings did not disappoint! This month, fashion houses gave the City of Light a shot of life with the latest fashion looks for men. Here were some of our favorite fall/winter 2023 menswear shows.
Saint Laurent
The Saint Laurent menswear show by artistic director Anthony Vaccarello was a stunning feat of sleek lines and dramatic looks. Black and white colors ruled supreme at the show, and it’s easy to see why – they’re color palette classics. You can’t go wrong dressed in black or white; these colors automatically elevate, and Saint Laurent capitalized on that.
The looks and silhouettes at the Saint Laurent show were clean, simple, and elegant. Long black trench coats, stylish white trousers, and trademark dark sunglasses. Androgynous-looking models could be found on the runway, making it a somewhat gender-bending show, some critics observed. And for Vaccarello, this was his intent. The Italian designer – who was formerly a creative director at Versace – was quoted in Vogue saying, of male and female-styled outfits, “I really want them to be almost one person,” said Vaccarello. “So women could be the men, and the men could be the women. No difference. I want more and more to put them at the same level. No distinction.”
Large, dramatic bows were also seen on men’s shirts, blurring the gender lines even more, and I loved it.
Louis Vuitton
Leave it to Louis Vuitton to think outside the box. The famed fashion house – which began as a luggage business – radiated energy for fun and whimsy with its latest collection. Looks included oversized jackets and pants with colorful, cartoon-like designs on them. Of course, LV luggage was on full display, as it’s the company’s legacy style piece. Additional fun pieces included floor-length jackets with graphic designs printed on them, like a giant eye, lots of headwear and sunglasses, and even big, fluffy coats, ideal for colder months to come. Leather jackets in yellow stripes, mesh shirts, and wild green raincoats all made for an adventurous and fun-filled LV show.
Louis Vuitton tragically lost its artistic director Virgil Abloh in November 2021, when he passed away after a two-year private cancer battle. Since his death, the brand has been working to establish creative continuity in his absence. Vogue notes how Abloh “spoke about the importance of remembering and cherishing the child within the adult…and that was conjured up again in the set for this show.”
Dior
Iconic fashion house Dior’s men’s line, helmed by English designer Kim Jones, held the kind of show that’s expected of the house: an excellent one. The show was filled with pale colors and loose-fitting silhouettes, the kind you might normally associate with summer and spring – not fall and winter. But Jones and Dior are boundary-pushing and innovative when reinventing the house of Dior time and time again. Jones is also a fan of bringing Dior’s looks for women to menswear. Skirts, for one – as well as shorts wide enough to be mistaken for skirts – are part of Jones’s latest looks for Dior menswear fall/winter 2023. As skirts become increasingly popular for men to wear on red carpets, I wonder if we’ll see a boom in suits for women, too. Dior’s collection featured modern looks that were also, in a way, classic and elegant.
Kenzo
Kenzo, yet again, delivered! We love the fun and playful nature that this French fashion house, founded in 1970 by Japanese designer Kenzo Takada, always brings to the table. This season’s collection delivered on that fun and playful vibe so often found in Kenzo looks, and the show was accompanied by Beatles tunes, adding to the lively atmosphere. A beautiful plaid pattern that looked like it was plucked from the pages of a Sherlock Holmes novel featured on the runway in various forms: trench coats, trousers, suit jackets, and even shorts. Kenzo – in keeping with some of the other fashion houses’ approach, blurred the gender lines with androgynous male models and male models wearing feminine-looking scarves. Most fashion houses opted for more understated color palettes for their fall/winter collections, but Kenzo is not “most” fashion houses. Breaking the mold, Kenzo went for vibrant rust orange, bold yellows, cornflower blue, deep reds, and royal purples. We love the vibrancy and color infused into this collection.
Comme des Garçons
For their menswear fall/winter 2023 collection, Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, much like Kenzo, pushed the envelope and did so in an exciting way. Rei Kawakubo, the Japanese fashion designer who founded the label, delivered a show featuring “tailoring of the avant-garde,” WWD reports. Avant-garde looks like boxy jackets, long pink suitcoats, and some seriously wild headpieces – which were works of art – peppered the runway. If Comme des Garçons has anything to say about it, we’ll be seeing some unique and head-turning looks on men come autumn.
Lead photo credit : Photo by Tamara Bellis on Unsplash
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