Fashion mixes with politics at Paris Men's Fashion Week

CNN

28-01-2025

As Paris Men's Fashion Week kicked off — one day after the second inauguration of US President Donald Trump and amid the rising power of France's populist right — focusing on clothing might seem a touch frivolous.
Yet throughout the week, designers demonstrated their ability to engage with a larger societal landscape; by addressing concerns about inclusivity, protection and freedom, the Fall-Winter 2025 season provided a stage to escape as well as ideas to navigate the current climate.
From Willy Chavarria to EgonLab or Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, messages of unity and acceptance were sent down the runways.
When the 'French population feels increasingly powerless in the face of the government, fashion's soft power, as an industry and an art, lies in its capacity to produce new discourses, images and impact other industries,' Carole Boinet, director of French cultural publication Les Inrockuptibles, told CNN.
On the runways, workwear came back with a bang, reimagined and fused with contemporary wardrobes.
As bearded models in plaid shirts, raw denim and lumberjack-inspired lines walked the Junya Watanabe runway, the figure of the hipster seemed to hail back to 2010, when the aesthetic permeated youth subcultures and became a global phenomenon.
But it was 'good old workwear originally crafted for forestry workers,' as outlined in the show notes, that was on the Japanese designer's mind. With that, the collection reflected the season's running themes: the great outdoors and function in outerwear.
At Louis Vuitton, men's creative director Pharrell Williams teamed up with Nigo, the designer of LVMH fashion stablemate Kenzo and founder of Japanese fashion brand A Bathing Ape, to co-design a collection that merged workwear and sportswear. Inspired by the practical wardrobes of engineers, chefs and gardeners, the clothing — including a double-breasted indigo blue denim jacket, a striped box-cut ensemble and a baby pink sleeveless blouson — were both elevated and practical.
Inspired by Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book, 'Where the Wild Things are,' Sacai founder and designer Chitose Abe, who has built a global business with her penchant for hybrid materials and oversized silhouettes, played with 'ideas of living in nature, untamed and unrestricted by convention.' She showed a collection of cocoon-shaped furry knitwear, some with exaggerated pockets, and also continued to create co-branded pieces with US workwear company Carhartt, which took the form of leather and puffer jackets in shades of dark brown and green.
Throughout the week, designers used their platforms to make overt political and social statements. New York-based designer Willy Chavarria, a recent winner of the CFDA's Menswear Designer of the Year Award, brought his collection to Paris for the first time, to mark the tenth anniversary of his eponymous label. Shown in the baroque setting of the American Cathedral, his sculpted, reworked tailoring once again took inspiration from his Mexican-American background; they came in a palette of gold, plum and burgundy.
As Chavarria explained to CNN, resilience and resistance was at the heart of his collection, as he sought to put forward a 'message of human dignity and equality.' He emphasized 'the importance of us coming together to preserve our rights as citizens, as immigrants, as LGBTQ people, as women, all of us who are very much under attack right now.'
Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix, the creative duo behind the Paris-based gender-fluid label EgonLab, incorporated playful Victorian nods as they presented garments that challenged traditional masculinity. Backstage, the designers explained their focus on disenfranchised communities.
'Minorities are systematically attacked by new politics around the world,' they said, adding that amid what felt like 'a modern witch hunt,' they called for 'minorities to unite and fight inequality.'
At Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, war was on the mind of Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, whose collection, named 'To Hell With War,' showcased deconstructed army staples, disheveled khaki uniforms and army boots. Models wore reimagined helmets adorned with flowers, reminiscent of the flower power movement of the 1960s and '70s, when protesters focused on positive values, such as peace and love, in their fight for freedom.
Charles Jeffrey, founder and designer of London fashion label Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, drew inspiration from Berlin's Weimar Cabarets.
With exaggerated stage makeup, homoerotic banana-shaped accessories and a peel-like effect on garments, deconstructed kilts and disheveled knitwear, the designer — who opened the show in heels and spoke to spectators via a microphone — sought to echo the label's roots in nightlife. For designer Jeffrey, it was 'an opportunity to make people come together… when we have right-wing governments saying, 'you are only two genders'…we are a multitude of things,' he told CNN ahead of the show.
Some designers took a more introspective approach, focusing on the narratives embedded in clothing and tailoring details that might go amiss on camera. Dior's collection referenced the H-line created by its founder Christian Dior for Fall-Winter 1954-1955 – a controversial silhouette at the time as its flattened shape appeared, for some, unfeminine. In a cinematic setting, models descended with dramatic covered eyes, à la Stanley Kubrick's 1999 erotic psychological drama 'Eyes Wide Shut.' The collection also played with contrasting volumes from baggy male skirts to opera coats and dusted pink bows.
Bianca Saunders, the first Black British designer to win the prestigious ANDAM fashion prize, looked at the tension between constraint and movement, and suppleness and rigor, Shirts were creased, trousers' seams were twisted and their ankles were knotted. .
Citing Robert Longo's photography, which captures men and women in exaggerated, contorted movements, she said that she took inspiration from 'how very structural menswear is pushed and pulled, all that subtlety of twisting things… capturing movement and slowness in the garment.'
Craftsmanship and experimentation also took center stage at Rick Owens' show at the Palais de Tokyo. True to form, Owens distorted and exaggerated body shapes while radically playing with techniques and textures — see the 'dracucollar' jackets in wax-drummed leather, 'megacrust' jeans, a crusted effect achieved by pressing bronze foil and wax onto denim, and even kemp fibers – an eco-friendly and subversive material also known as 'dead hair'. As it often is with Owens, fashion knows no bounds.