Real Men, Real Style

Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

Kim Jones' natural habitat is the open road - he has terminal itchy feet. For him, the ultimate luxury is the freedom to up and go. Louis Vuitton, the company he works for, has a rather different approach to luxury. But their points of view have proved extremely compatible in the two years since Jones became style director of Vuitton's Men's Studio, working under the artistic direction of Marc Jacobs. The reason is simple: Kim and Louis both like to travel well. And today's show offered another 41 reasons why.



Dries Van Noten Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

It may be a season of dark flowers in the world of menswear, but Van Noten edged his peers with a collection that thoroughly explored every possible permutation of the idea. Prints were derived from eighteenth-century rococo, scans of freshly cut blooms or Hawaiian gothic, and combined in unlikely silhouettes and fabrications. There was a delicate dévoré shirt, for instance, tucked into lustrous moiré trousers, then wrapped in a robe of purest kitsch. And a damask coat wrapping surf shorts and something sheer and floral.



Givenchy Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

Nerd Africa? That was Riccardo Tisci's label for his Givenchy collection, though it wasn't the first thing that came to mind when his distinctly un-nerdy warriors had filed off the catwalk. Techno-tribalism maybe; Tisci's prints were based on the technology of sound dissected and reconfigured as tribal patterns. Boom boxes and reel-to-reels and home studios broken down into their component parts, rearranged in a perfectly symmetrical pattern, detailed in bright primary colors - that was Tisci's news for today. The designer works the same silhouettes season after season - formal in precise tailoring, sporty in shorts over leggings with a sweatshirt and/or parka on top - and lets his prints do the heavy lifting for the collection.



Bottega Veneta Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Milan Fashion Week

The Bottega Veneta show began so earnestly - man in a gray flannel suit - that it immediately sparked a vision of mid-century Americana. And that initial impression never really let up, because the collection was layered with so many subtle references to the era. The intense graphicism of the scribble stitch on a cream leather blouson or the freehand paint stripes on a cotton tunic wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of an album from Blue Note, the legendary jazz label. (The finger-poppin' jazzbo soundtrack certainly helped there.) In fact, jazzy cool defined the linear crispness of Tomas Maier's tailoring. But the boxy, wide-sleeved shirts were fresh off the backs of a 1950s bowling league, and windowpane-checked slacks and rollneck knits were all about Rat Pack leisure.



Dolce & Gabbana Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Milan Fashion Week

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have found a perfect formula: Sicily as an inspiration for clothes modelled on the catwalk by Sicilians themselves. The sweet authenticity of the idea has powered their last few collections for men, and when cynics in today's audience sighed, "Oh no, not again," you wanted to slap them. Or torture them by passing on Gabbana's confident declaration: "There is so much in Sicily, we could be doing this forever."



Prada Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Milan Fashion Week

A Prada show doesn't get a title, but its set does. "Menacing Paradise" was the name given the painted façades that defined the show space today: palm fronds, sunsets, an equatorial town. There was a helicopter on the walls and the thwack of copter rotors on the soundtrack. Apocalypse Now? Well, Vietnam was on Miuccia Prada's mind, as were any of the tropical paradises that have been turned into war zones in the course of recent human history. The pain and suffering involved were more than enough to make her question what she called "the cliché of the exotic - and the cliché of summer." Beautiful surroundings, beautiful weather, with the ugliness of human nature providing the menacing counterpoint. In other words, brainy business as usual at Prada, with fashion called into play as the platform for an exchange of ideas.



Dior Homme Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

"The sun must have his shade." Kris Van Assche borrowed the cryptic line for his invitation from sixteenth-century poet Thomas Campion, which was pretty much in keeping with Van Assche's track record. He's often been partial to a little highbrow window-dressing. He insisted what he really wanted to convey was the incongruity of tuxedos on the beach. At Art Basel Miami Beach last year, he'd spent a lot of time baking in black-tie while working the art fair's frenetic beachside social circuit. That struck him as some kind of metaphor for the mix of formal and informal that is his design signature at Dior.



Lanvin Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

Alber Elbaz recently took a trip with friends who spent their whole time on their phones, photographing every single burp or wrinkle in their day. He's not the only person who has been struck by the difference between looking and seeing in our culture, but he is one of the only people with a major Parisian fashion house through which he can shape a response. Which is what Elbaz claimed Lanvin's new men's collection was. "Once, designers would go to Africa for inspiration. Now they Google Africa. So this season there were no virtual trips for us. No Google. It wasn't how it looked in a photo, but how it felt on the boys."



Saint Laurent Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear | Paris Fashion Week

Oops, he did it again. But maybe he was just a little rusty last time round, because this time, it felt more persuasive. Hedi Slimane, fashion's foremost curator of pop arcana, presented a collection for Saint Laurent that refracted his cultural obsessions through a glass darkly. The blueprint is firmly established now. First, the invitation, a little black book with excerpts from the work of a current Slimane pash (this one used abstract artist Matt Connors, and it was the best-looking show invitation in living memory). Next, the soundtrack, something garage-y from California, preferably recorded yesterday, i.e. Sam Flax's "Fire Doesn't Burn Itself." Then, the mise-en-scène: dramatic, dystopian thunderdome technology that creates an electric light field. Finally, the clothes. Ah yes, the clothes.

(via Style.com)