At Paris Fashion Week, one artist can hide another

The fall-winter 2024-2025 men’s collections, which were held in Paris from January 16 to 21, allowed certain designers to confront the art of collaboration. If, in recent years, this style exercise – combining one’s universe with that of an artist or another label – may have caused an overdose, it remains an interesting proposition, provided one does not lose one’s identity.

At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson, head of style for the Spanish house since 2013, summoned contemporary American artist Richard Hawkins not only in the decor, but also on the clothes. His large canvases made of colorful collages mixing the faces of celebrities – we recognize Justin Bieber –, flowers, butterflies, naked men and even floating letters are hung on the walls of the large white room, installed within the guard Republican. This imagination is also found embroidered on long knitted dresses, zipped hooded jackets and even tote bags.

In the rest of the collection, checked shirts slipped into wide leather pants, little jacquard sweaters combined with jogging pants, demure blouses or even jackets from which sections of colorful fabric escape, “like the teenager who gets out of bed and takes with him the pile of laundry that is there”, explains the designer, at the end of the show. The soundtrack, a mix of interviews with Sean Penn and Justin Bieber (him again!), and extracts from westerns, was here a direct reference to the United States, which we also felt in the collection , between lumberjack shirts and the grunge spirit of the 1990s. Heroes and bad boys, a very American duo! »

At Issey Miyake, designer and artist Ronan Bouroullec was invited to infiltrate the decor and the collection. On the white walls of a space in the Palais de Tokyo, pants, scarves and blouses painted with his abstract and colorful patterns were hung. “ They contacted me a year and a half ago and told me that the design team wanted to work with my designs for the next collection. At first I said no! I find that collaborations in fashion are often not very respectful, it is quickly swallowed up, used… »explains the designer.

Intergenerational costumes

The no finally turned into yes, and Bouroullec then set about painting abstract, colorful patterns, made of lines and curves, which the design team reproduced on the clothes. Its features, painted with a fine-tipped Japanese brush, fit perfectly with soft pants, long T-shirts, loose capes or even buttoned blouses, most of which are fashioned in the house’s typical pleats. We find these patterns on scarves and soft cushions, which accompany long straight coats. The color palette, from ecru white to acid green to deep pink, serves this poetic proposition perfectly.

It is with another artist that Chitose Abe, founder of the Sacai brand, has teamed up this season: Mark Gonzales, cult Californian artist and skateboarder, who was one of the first to take this discipline to the street, at the beginning from the 1980s. He thus imagined patches with messages of love – ” One Love “, “The Good Vibes Tribe”… – which have been flocked to knitted sweaters, plump down jackets or zipped bomber jackets.

We find the designer’s tics: layering, exaggerated volumes and deconstruction games, in the loose jackets or pants. On their feet, the models wear the fruit of another collaboration, with the shoemaker JM Weston, whose Derby Golf models and Worker ankle boots bear the Sacai signature: an elongated sole which protrudes at the back of the heel.

Seven collaborations! This is the score of the Junya Watanabe collection, which deals with different fashion brands. These nourish his experiments on the costume, which he deconstructs and reconstructs in different materials: in a total Levi’s denim look, in Carhartt overalls, in Brooks Brothers wool… The Japanese has a universe unique enough to allow himself to bring so many guests and achieved its goal: to offer costumes capable of appealing to all generations.

This desire to speak to as many people as possible is also found in the casting, which brings together old men (with wrinkles, and not just silvery manes), others, barely adults, punks with hair standing on end. head, slick gentlemen. All highlighted and all unique in Watanabe’s experiments.