A model wears a creation from Thom Browne’s cross-dressing, “Cabaret”-infused spring-summer 2012 collection.
PARIS — Paris’ spring-summer 2012 menswear shows melted into the past last week, wrapping up in a pool of perspiration on the year’s hottest day yet.
The five-day menswear extravaganza kicked off under cloudy skies and usually chilly temperatures for June, but by its last day thermometers had soared to 90 degrees – a nightmare scenario for a crowd of elaborate dressers reluctant to remove blazers, corsets or any other essential but asphyxiating element of their looks.
The heat wreaked havoc on shows from Paul Smith – where listless editors, stylists and journalists gave up taking notes to fan their reddened faces – to U.S. designer Thom Browne, whose sumptuous velvet-walled venue was transformed into a sauna.
Lanvin showed early enough in the morning and delivered such a gorgeous collection that it was among the sole shows of the day where the clothes managed to outshine the beating sun.
Many top editors, stylists and journalists will re-converge on Paris in a week’s time for the city’s rarified haute couture displays, where made-to-measure dresses start at the price of a small car and go vertiginously up from there.
Thom Browne
Normally models grumble when they have to wear something that hides their faces, but at Browne’s cross-dressing, “Cabaret”-infused show, the relief of those whose features were obscured behind the fringed lampshade hats was almost palpable.
You could hardly blame them: Even for male models, photos immortalizing them in beaded flapper dresses worn with sock garters are a hard thing to live down.
There were also hourglass-shaped trench coats in navy pinstripes, with a swishy fringe in lieu of epaulettes, shrunken bowler hats hung with a bride’s veil and beaded jumpsuits accessorized with knee-length ropes of pearls.
The heavily inked arms of a tattoo-embellished model emerged from a crop top covered in pearly white beads, and you could practically smell his relief that he was also wearing one of the face-shrouding lampshade hats.
But say what you will about Browne’s clothes; there’s no disputing the man knows how to put on a show.
Held in Paris’ iconic Belle Epoque-era watering hole Maxim’s, where Champagne flowed like tap water, the show had all the trappings of a super display. But the event soured in the heat and sent the bubbly straight to everybody’s heads.
The plodding gait of the models, who peered down at the audience as they meandered among the marble tables, didn’t help. Sluggish pacing has been an issue at Browne shows, but the heat made it almost unbearable.
“I can’t stand this for one more second,” griped one editor as he mopped sweat from his face.
Still, for all its discomforts, the show was at least memorable – and that’s more than you can say for the more conventional catwalk displays, which by the last day had blended into an amorphous fog as thick as pea soup.
Lanvin
Paris’ most romantic label tapped into the raw emotion of “Wuthering Heights,” its models like modern-day Heathcliffs racing breathlessly across the moors in billowing silks and lustrous microfibers.
After veering into edgier, hard-core territory in recent seasons, this collection was pure, unadulterated feeling.
The looks – windblown parkas, their silken hoods trailing behind like scarves, and suits in a rainbow of dusty hues – faintly quivered with raw sentiment.
Even the more stringent looks that opened the show – inspired, menswear designer Lucas Ossendrijver said, by security guards because “everybody loves a man in uniform” – breathed poetry.
” ‘Boys can cry,’ that’s our message,” the label’s artistic director Alber Elbaz said in a post-show interview, adding that he and Ossendrijver were careful to avoid turning their emotionally charged men into “wimps.”
“Women were always strong. Men were powerful. Now women are strong and powerful – that’s a deadly combination,” Elbaz said. “We wanted to go back to the essence of masculinity, which is leather, which is the uniform,” and inject that “with the fragility and emotion that has become our DNA at Lanvin.”
The collection, shown beneath the frescoed dome of a Paris stock exchange, hit the sweet spot between strength and sentiment without veering into the overtly feminine territory that has swept other catwalks, where the man skirt has emerged as a major trend.
Lanvin’s khaki tunics in the thinnest of leathers, its perfectly cut pleated trousers, its sculptural double-breasted jackets all managed to be at once manly and emotive.
Paul Smith
The audience might have been sweltering, but the British designer’s models looked as cool as cucumbers.
Wearing slim, colorblock suits made from panels of slightly different shades of blue, with sleeveless vests layered over their blazers, the models seemed to embody both definitions of “cool.”
At the Smith show, which is held in an old convent that freezes in winter and boils in the summer, editors who are normally scribbling furiously in their notebooks abandoned their pens to fan their streaming faces with the cardboard invitations.
Look after hip look went by without inspiring as much as sketch or a jotted word – which was too bad, really, as the show was full of fashion-forward silhouettes you could actually see making the leap from the catwalk to the street.
Nowhere did the sleeveless jacket, a top trend on other Paris runways, look as good as at Smith, where it was layered over blazers made from a patchwork of matte and shiny materials.
Rynshu
Will.i.am is used to filling stadiums, but a simple trip down the catwalk at Japanese menswear label Rynshu had the Black Eyed Peas’ rapper blushing.
Sporting a snug leather blazer, a pair of cropped harem pants in shiny black and clunky combat boots,will.i.am shuffled up the runway, shooting sheepish glances at the photographers’ pit as the audience encouraged him with a round of applause.
The performer is collaborating with the brand on a line christened “Will.I.Am x Rynshu” for next spring-summer and has worn clothes from last year’s collection in a music video.
He and the other Black Eyed Peas are in Paris for a series of concerts.
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