Translated by
Cassidy STEPHENS
Published
Jan 17, 2023
After three years of turbulence due to Covid-19, Paris is back to its former glory with this season’s Men’s Fashion Week. For the first time, the shows will all be held in physical format, but they will continue to be broadcast on the Paris Fashion Week platform, just like the other events. What’s more? Eight houses that deserted the City of Light in recent years are making a comeback. In total, 80 labels will present their collections for autumn-winter 2023/24 this January from Tuesday 17 to Sunday 22.
As a reminder, the Paris Men’s Fashion Week, which reached 60 shows in 2019 -it counted 53 in January 2020 just before the pandemic-, also had in the past multiple parallel shows organised outside the official calendar. For this return to normality, the programme is expected to be more balanced with 47 shows and 33 presentations.
The biggest luxury houses, from Dior to Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Loewe and Kenzo, as well as the most prominent brands such as Y/Project, Marine Serre and the young labels Botter, Bluemarble and Casablanca, to name a few, will be present. Not forgetting the young British designers, also closley followed, such as Bianca Saunders and Grace Wales Bonner (note that seventeen young British talents will also be present at the London showroom in Paris as part of the Tranoï show).
Back in Paris after having showed in Florence as the guest of honour at Pitti Uomo in June, British designer Grace Wales Bonner, whose father is Jamaican, is opening this Parisian edition, which starts this Tuesday January, 17. The much awaited Saint Laurent show is scheduled on the same evening, after having abandoned the men’s calendar for the past five years, apart from a small appearance in Paris in February 2019. Creative director Anthony Vaccarello had made a habit of presenting his men’s collections abroad long before Covid, with New York in June 2018, a Malibu beach in Los Angeles the following year, Venice in July 2021 and the Marrakech desert last summer.
Other returning designers include Japanese labels White Mountaineering and Sacai, who will show on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 respectively, as well as Bode, who showed for the first (and only) time in Paris in June 2019. The menswear label, characterised by its vintage fabric patchwork, was launched in 2016 by New York designer Emily Adams Bode, who just won the 2022 CFDA award for menswear.
Another highlight of the season is the Maison Margiela show, which will close Paris Fashion Week on Sunday evening. The label, led for nearly eight years by John Galliano, usually presents its men’s ready-to-wear collections in a mixed show during the Women’s Fashion Week. This season, he decided to take to the men’s runway.
Following Maison Margiela’s example, other fashion houses, which used to show during the Women’s Fashion Week, have opted for the men’s calendar. Like Botter, which, after having taken its very first steps on the catwalk during Men’s Fashion Week in January 2020, chose to show at the Women’s Week in 2022. The two Dutch designers Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter launched their brand in 2017, winning the grand prize at the Hyères Festival in 2018, to which they added the grand prize at Andam 2022. They headed the creative direction of Nina Ricci from 2018 to the end of 2021. They are scheduled to unveil their new collection on Friday 20.
Similarly, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who first walked the catwalk in June 2019 at the Georges Pompidou Centre, migrated to the women’s programme in 2021. The designer, who has just been appointed head of creation at Ann Demeulemeester, will make his comeback at the Men’s Fashion Week on Sunday, January 22.
Others are going in the opposite direction, such as Y/Project, led by Glenn Martens, who also oversees styling at Diesel. Since 2021, Y/Project has presented men and women together twice a year, in January and June. The label is now moving to the women’s calendar at the end of February, so will not be showing in January as originally planned.
This season, the capital has recorded four other defections. Thom Browne, Californian brand Rhude by Rhuigi Villaseñor, who is now creative director for Bally, Graig Green and Celine, which unveiled its autumn/winter collection in Los Angeles on December 8.
On the other hand, the schedule for presentations is full with the arrival of the 032c brand, launched in 2016 under the aegis of the designer Maria Koch by the Berlin magazine of the same name, and with the returns of Berluti, the Chinese Ziggy Chen and the French label Uniforme.
The latter, founded by Rémi Bats and Hugues Fauchard, will present its collection as part of the Sphère showroom, operated by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM) with the support of Defi, which each season highlights the work of the most promising young designers on the Parisian scene. In addition to Uniforme, seven other brands were selected this season: Arturo Obegero, Christoph Rumpf, Jeanne Friot, LGN Louis Gabriel Nouchi, Ponder.er, Steven Passaro and Valette Studio.
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