As Paris Fashion Week neared its final hours, I found myself once again talking about clothes with ASAP Rocky.
Come on, who else could’ve been the Ebert to my Roeper, here? Rocky loves a fashion show! From Milan to Paris, he has been my unofficial fashion week north star. He wasn’t always visible, but when he was, I felt reassured that I was heading in the right direction.
That direction for both of us on Tuesday afternoon, was a mood-lifting Miu Miu show. I liked what I saw. Rocky concurred.
His outfit was further testament of his appreciation. From his chocolate brown fleece to his cutesy curved-collar button-up, the man was Miu Miu’ed out. His sights, he said, were now on the snakeskin sneakers that had just traversed the runway.
Miu Miu introduced men’s wear only in the past few years. The fleet of male guests in attendance, all wearing the brand’s corporate blue shirts and dusty tan work jackets, were proof that the progression into men’s wear was prudent for Mrs. Prada’s pet project.
There were more surefire hits for men in this collection. A Joseph Beuys-style felted suit would be great for daily wear; a cigar brown leather blazer had the sort of winsome fade that men go mad hunting for in vintage stores; and a sandy shearling-lined jacket was this season’s REI-style zip-up. (Requisite warning: Miu Miu may appear egalitarian but doesn’t come cheap. If the current season fleece is any indication, that jacket will sail in at around 10 times the price of a new Patagonia coat.)
“We really wanted to create an elegance with nothing — through the everyday, through direct manipulations of simple pieces,” Mrs. Prada wrote in the show notes of the collection.
Simple, yes. But, with all those boxy shapes and nubbly textures, you could also tell that Mrs. Prada had actually stopped to contemplate how the Miu Miu man should look. That’s a low bar but one many designers failed to clear at Paris Fashion Week.
The men’s looks in too many shows were paltry castoffs reflecting no deeper thought — by the designer, and through the transitive property, by the wearer. While women got challenged by bedazzled chaps and tiered tulle skirts, men were served forgettable overcoats they’d be better off buying from Theory.
This isn’t a universal truth. Though rumors persist that Jonathan Anderson is departing Loewe, you can, for now, count on him to propose something cunning for his male shoppers to chew on. Loewe’s felted gray suit (two makes a trend?) projected a pajama-like ease. Hiking boots brandished a toe so fat it looked as if it had been smushed by a mallet. In a good way.
It was Balenciaga’s creative director Demna who had the most to say about his men’s wear, for his collection began with an experiment in what he personally wished to wear.
Last Halloween, Demna said he decided to wear the “worst thing” possible: a suit. (Only a guy like Demna, who once did his backstage interview wearing a gimp mask, could shock by wearing a suit.) He went to an unnamed bespoke tailor and had a suit produced. He abhorred it.
“The pants were too tight,” he said. “They were too cropped. I couldn’t move. I felt like an idiot.”
His Halloween was brief, but the idea of a reliable suit lingered. He made one for himself and was shocked to discover how difficult that was.
“It’s much easier to put four sleeves, tie two of them, put a color somewhere,” Demna said. “The suit is the most difficult. It’s so hard to get that golden ratio.”
His show opened with a series of salaryman suits cut to perfection. The rest of the show maintained this yen for real clothes. Puffer jackets looked plucked off the back of motorbike couriers; a weighty camel coat carried buttons already chipped, as if to say “look how long you could wear this.” There were demure white button-ups that wouldn’t rankle the HR department and bluejeans so wan they were nearly white.
“I want most of the things I do to be wearable and desired by someone,” Demna said.
He was his own best fit model. Backstage he faced the scrum of press in a humble single-breasted black suit worn with a black shirt. Like his collection, it was conservative but considered. Demna never looked better.
