The most fertile imagination in menswear, that would be Craig Green for the uninitiated, staged his latest show in Paris on Sunday, and it was, in a word, sensational.
Riffing through materials, epochs, cultural references and diverse artistic moods to create the most original menswear of the European runway season that began in Florence at Pitti 12 days ago and ended in the French capital today.
“I started off with the Beatles, which in Britain are seen as part of the furniture. But this was about how prolific they were. I liked the idea of the potential of youth,” explained Green in his critic-packed backstage.
His opening look echoed the cover of the Beatles album “Help!”, where the Fab Four pose like cool French members of the Maquis, with Hamburg ship captain caps. Though Craig’s hero’s cape coat was cut diaphanously with shards, tails and triangles of fabrics. Like many cast members, the model had a handkerchief dangling from his mouth. A reference, the designer explained, to an ectoplasm of fabric, referencing both the mind-expanding drugs which so influenced the Beatles music and a canine image, since it “was quite dog-like in a weird way.”
Which led into Green’s bang on nouvelle coats, taken from the patterns of coats for dogs. And hinting at clerical collars, which Craig marvelled, “are weird hard white plastic that you cannot stain, which I didn’t know.”
Dog coats that became sleeveless padded parkas, one in the same mustard yellow as the sand on the runway in this show staged inside the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a museum of science and industrial artefacts. An ideal home for a Craig Green show.
“I was also obsessed by harvest yellow, the color of that era, late ’60s, early ’70s, and loved the idea that babies cried more and people have more arguments in a yellow room,” he laughed.
A show that included super original tunic jackets and safaris with all sorts of cross straps, grommets and tags – made in blends of solid hues and micro floral prints. Think super chic strait jackets. Worn with asymmetric shorts or some fantasy trousers in panels of bleached out windowpane checks.
In a runway season of shorts, and at a moment when half the men in the current giant tourism boom Europe is witnessing are wearing shorts, Green made by far the coolest: scrunched up dhotis; silk cargo shorts; upside down blazer shorts.
After seeing those looks, one understood another inspiration, which Craig described as people “trying to play LPs backwards to find messages. Which is very different to now.”
Many looks worn by models with tiny robotic shades with punchy lights, made from the lights of doll’s house. Riffing “on the Beatles and the psychedelic era and the idea of mind-opening drugs. Like LSD, as they were kind of allowed to, which again now seems kinda alien.”
At his finale Green went for floral fantasy, as he admitted that getting older, you “like to garden more, and cling to the earth. Which the young never do.”
A brilliant final quartet of panels of fabric florals, posh paisleys, daffy roses or orange phantasies – in finely draped parkas and dusters. In a mixed recycling moment, these came from vintage bed sheets, his team found “that were quite smelly and weird. It’s interesting how people all feel comfortable sharing sheets, but not underwear.”
Green now does shows just once a year. Last year in London, two years ago in Paris. “I think once a year is less anti-social for my team, it’s the most they can bear,” explained the thoughtful Craig.
Most models this Sunday walked on fab’ new triple welt brogues-meets-grand slam golfer collage layering shoes, the designer’s latest linkup with shoemaker, Grenson. But at the finale, four models were barefoot. Abbey Road cover style in the Marais. Or zen masters on LSD from Merseyside, forever on the road. And, with the greatest respect to all Craig Green’s colleagues, the climax to the most important menswear collection this season.
Optima Temporis, as my Jesuit Latin teacher used to say.
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