World-famous American country singer Dolly Parton is known for her music as well as for her style. Once she said something about her looks that has become a popular quote, when she explained that "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap".
It seems that this was the motto of the newest Paris Fashion Week Men, during which many brands showcased their autumn-winter 2020 collections. However, it was not all bad. If London Fashion Week was almost a disaster and Milan was quite OK, Paris this season was somewhere in the middle.
Unsurprisingly, you had the endless conveyor belt of oversized clothes which have become a cliché already, many of which looked dystopian and " vagabondey ". We've recently seen a strong catering of brands to street hypebeasts, which makes many boutique customers feel neglected.
Another problem we noticed was that many brands looked like other brands. In some regards, it felt as if brands have made something like a Secret Santa draw, where they created clothes in each other's aesthetics. This being said, we also need to mention that this is not something bad, as long as the clothes are good and fundamentally stick to the brand's vision.
Luckily, there were some great clothes and collections too. We were surprised by the Raf Simons collection, which was quite fun and which in a way made us "get" Raf's strong following. We also enjoyed Clare Waight Keller's Givenchy collection and the Dior Men collection is also among our top favorites.
Louis Vuitton was surprisingly pleasant (about 51% of the collection), but we're still on the fence about Virgil Abloh's direction with the brand. We felt the same way about Junya Watanabe's collection, so we're definitely going to look forward to the next collections. In terms of pure concepts, we liked VETEMENTS's idea of using celebrity look-alike as models - but we wished the clothes looked better.
In terms of trends, PFW was in line with the other Fashion Weeks we've had so far this year: except for the never-ending boxy, boring oversized items (JW Anderson, Undercover, etc.), and endless gender politics pieces (Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens, Loewe, and many others), there were a lot of knits and, everywhere you looked, you could see asymmetric clothes (Yohji Yamamoto, Ludovic de Saint Sernin and more). These are quite interesting and it's rather fun to see how each brand has created its own version of the "misbalanced" look.
To conclude, it can be said that this edition of Paris Fashion Week was one of duality: tradition and anti-tradition (not modernity) being the main storyline of the collections as a whole. For the moment, the balance still falls in the direction of anti-tradition, but we feel that, in the future, it will shift towards tradition, but not tradition as we know it, but a new, modern way of seeing tradition.
Fraquoh and Franchomme
Further reading:
Milan Fashion Week Autumn-Winter 2020: A Hopeful Event What's Happening at London Fashion Week (Autumn-Winter 2020)?P.S. We want to hear from you! Which look or collection did you like best? Why? What do you make of the current runway trends? Share your feedback, questions or thoughts in the comments below! For more articles on style, fashion tips and cultural insights, you can subscribe to Attire Club via e-mail or follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
