Paris Men’s Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2026
Collections of Paris Men’s fashion week are traveling in pursuit of the new. In different time zones, on the streets of the city, a punk-spirited vagabond or a teenager transitioning to adulthood, by train…
This season, Paris emphasized the importance of storytelling, while tailoring took center stage in Milan. Theatrical flourishes were prominent in many of the collections we witnessed. Louis Vuitton constructed a literal house; Lemaire blended performance art with modern dance. Willy Chavarria practically directed a short film, squeezing live performances into his show. Even Jonathan Anderson’s minimalist presentation at Dior was part of the theater. Hair designer Guido Palau’s blonde wigs created distinct characters with each look: punk aristocrats. The emotional eroticism at Saint Laurent…
Still, the most emotional moment of the week was Véronique Nichanian’s farewell after 37 years, though it didn’t move the audience to tears. At Hermès, after decades dedicated to the men’s collections, she was given a standing ovation by nearly 600 people at the Palais Brongniart where the show took place. While we all eagerly await what Grace Wales Bonner will bring to the Maison (we’ll see her debut collection in 2027), how does Véronique feel? Happy and proud, that’s all. Nichanian remains in everyone’s mind, having mastered leather pants better than anyone else and putting the concept into practice when no one else was discussing quiet luxury. She loved playing with crocodile leather and even created a Hermès wardrobe for men defined by color. Always refined with flawless details, elegant garments…
Of course, nearly 40 years of history found its place in the final show as a “best of.” An aviator jacket, a boombox-like bag, or a leather jumpsuit—distinct pieces from across the years… As Nichanian gave her final salute, moments from backstage to the catwalk from different eras were played on the screens once again. It was an unexpected farewell for a designer who never enjoyed being in the spotlight.
Grand shows compete with high emotions… Pharrell thought big for the Louis Vuitton set. A massive house had been built in the middle of the runway, crafted from wood and glass. Some likened it to an Apple Store. It resembled more a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe house in the hills of Los Angeles or just outside Tokyo. Designs that spoke of the future adorned everything that emerged from the house. Like bags that were waterproof but changed pattern when exposed to rain… Hyperrealistic paintings and water droplet effects adorned high-tech garments. It was Pharrell’s most creative collection for Vuitton to date.
LV Monogram bags were revived this time with materials like nylon. Vuitton is essentially a Maison that loves to travel. This has always been a starting point for Nicolas Ghesquière in the women’s collections. Pharrell also applies this both symbolically and practically. After the show he held in Hong Kong last season, he presented a collection inspired by India in Paris…
This time, we are on a journey through time. Pieces from the 80s? Yes! But with practical applications that speak to the future. For Williams, Vuitton trunks are now a fetish. We see derivatives of them in every collection. This time, they were made of glass and hand-painted. It was like a giant symbol of the runway. Pieces made of crocodile skin, vicuña, cashmere, and silk emphasized that the collection, titled “Timeless,” was truly timeless.
Jonathan Anderson also presented his thoughts on time, timelessness, and future myths in his second menswear collection for Dior. But his approach was a little different. He was pursuing a question like “What is the new aristocracy?” Interesting or not. Before presenting his first couture collection a few days later, Anderson said in an interview with Business of Fashion, “If they had offered me couture a few years ago, I would probably have turned my nose up at it.”
Anderson’s new men’s collection shows that the pieces are, above all, androgynous in spirit. Like taking a dress designed by Paul Poiret during the Belle Époque and giving it a punk twist for the men’s collection. Or the fur-detailed wool and silk brown coat with cuffs we saw Jennifer Lawrence wearing a few days after the show, the Poiret-inspired silk cape we saw on Anya Taylor Joy’s back, or the embroidered top from the opening looks of the show…
Jonathan Anderson takes his starting point for reimagining the Maison from the figure of a modern flâneur wandering around Paris. We saw Dior ambassadors like Louis Garrel walking the streets before the show began. Poiret’s fluid forms, intercultural aesthetic, and aristocratic elegance inspire Dior’s youth, creating new stylistic contexts. The collection brings together Dior’s codes of formality and Poiret’s historical echoes with everyday pieces like denim and parkas in a deliberate tension. These contrasts transform the style into an empathetic, vibrant, and contemporary expression.
Slim and controlled silhouettes—elongated coats, cropped blazers, frock coats, and slim-fit trousers—form the backbone of the collection, while outerwear oscillates between technical grandeur and dramatic effect. The result is a Dior vision that recodes historical references with today’s youthful energy, transforming contradictions into aesthetic unity.
Traces of the new aristocracy weren’t limited to Dior. We saw them at Dries Van Noten too. In fact, the two were like distant cousins, and you could even easily fit in pieces from Dario Vitale’s short-lived Versace days between them. The show notes read: “In this, my second men’s collection, I wanted to explore the idea of growth. But I approached it not from a dramatic or romantic place; rather, by celebrating the joy of new beginnings. The opening up of possibilities, the purity and honesty of those first attempts made while stepping outside the comfort zone. Six months after my June presentation, after that moment when graduates celebrate at dawn on the beach, they are now leaving home: university, new adventures… setting off to discover and learn. Packing their bags, boarding the train to the big city.”
The Paris collections travel in pursuit of the new. In different time zones, through the city streets like a punk-spirited vagabond, or from adolescence to maturity, by train… Van Noten’s suitcase seems to carry a legacy on the journey to the big city. Like your favorite blazer, or a coat handed down from your father. Knits take center stage: argyles, stripes, jacquards; sometimes neat, sometimes deliberately distressed. Velvets, ribbed cottons, wools, denims that look like they’re partially coated… Wide capes, pencil coats, and patterns that never stand alone…
Anthony Vaccarello also takes us to dawn in Paris with the tailoring of the 1930s in the Saint Laurent collection. The starting point is James Baldwin’s cult novel Giovanni’s Room. The focus is on dressing for “the next morning”: with the emotions left over from the night. This is precisely the feeling that runs through the collection; characters oscillating between fragility and eroticism, that strange emptiness created by leaving a lover’s room. Silhouettes are the backbone of the collection.
There are long, fluid forms, yet clearly structured at the shoulders. Coats and trench coats fall below the knee; leather ones are belted at the waist, framing rather than hugging the body. Some looks are almost like a single line: narrow shoulders, straight-leg pants, a low center of gravity. There is sometimes a deliberate imbalance in the legs. Short shorts emerging from under long jackets or socks ending below the knee deliberately disrupt the safe rhythm of the classic male wardrobe. Leather trench coats, with their shiny surfaces, almost mirror the night.
And the curtain… “Mine Eyes” takes its name from a Shakespeare sonnet and is the title of Lemaire’s show at the Opéra Bastille, a presentation that was more modern dance than a classic fashion show. As dancer Julie Anne Stanzak and actress Doona Bae moved across the stage with chairs, elegant coats, flowing dresses, and fluid suits emerged as a natural extension of this performance. According to Christophe Lemaire, the collection was approached pragmatically: garments focused on everyday life, utility, and functionality were presented with a sensitivity reminiscent of Pina Bausch’s stage. Speaking backstage after the show, Lemaire clarified the presentation’s purpose: “The world we live in today is becoming a little less human, and fashion can sometimes be overly materialistic. At the end of the day, it’s interesting to show people character diversity and human depth. For us, style is largely about personality.”
I am someone who thinks a lot about what creative people I admire can do in different disciplines. It’s clear that Willy Chavarria, like Tom Ford, would create wonders in cinema, although his would be more like Ken Loach’s sensitive stories that look at the lives of the working class. Chavarria is one of the industry’s rare political figures and, more broadly, a figure who incorporates Latin American labor rights into his shows. For this reason, he has been heavily criticized. This time, Chavarria set that idea aside and presented us with his own West Side Story. The new line, along with the Big Willie and Adidas collab, presented three different collections. Each carried a different rhythm, a different feeling; but they all converged on Chavarria’s long-standing idea of a political, fragile, and body-conscious masculinity.
We watched performances by Mon Laferte, Lunay, and the Santos Bravos group. “I live in New York; at street level, in a corner apartment with large windows. There’s almost no distinction between the city outside and the world inside my home. I guess that’s why. I watch people. I watch them rushing to work while I make my coffee. I watch them meet at street corners. I watch them enter the restaurant across the street. I watch them say goodbye. I watch them kiss. I watch them argue. I watch them jump into taxis and leave. I watch people fall in love. I watch them drift apart. We are all under the same sun, under the same moon, sharing the same universe, breathing the same oxygen, smelling the same trash. I feel connected to all of them.”
The fashion house you love reveals how you view life. What we call fashion taste is closer to the question “What kind of world do I believe in?” than “What am I wearing?”
The Vuitton or Dior man is a dreamer at peace with order. He seeks the new without severing his ties with history. Sacai wants both function and poetry. (The new collection featured Freddie Mercury and Mohammed Ali together and was a collaboration with Levi’s.) Someone who loves Comme des Garçons loves to think with fashion rather than just love fashion. For them, beauty is not about everything being symmetrical; it contains discomfort, emptiness, and sometimes even mistakes. “Black hole,” said Rei Kawakubo after the show. The interpretation is up to you. Someone who loves Hermès does not consume fashion hastily. Here, clothes are not a “trend” but a habit.
So, who is the Rick Owens man? He is a warrior who destroys status from the outset and a dark figure. He sees the body as a sculpture and clothing as armor. (The models he chooses are generally no different from Hercules). To love Rick Owens is to love darkness; it is to dare to wander on the fringes of civilization, to fall outside the norm. Owens’ shows are always like a cult. The reflection of what is seen on the catwalk is also felt in the front row, goth. Inside the Palais de Tokyo, the models walked through the fog. The slender silhouettes that began in Milan continued here, though we couldn’t expect anything less from Rick Owens. The harsh-looking sweaters made from raw Himalayan wool and the hair masks extending to the ears, bearing the signature of London-based designer Lucas Moretti, were the most talked-about aspects of the show. (Hair is taking center stage this season, from Dior to Rick Owens.)
In 2008, John Calapinto described Rick Owens in The New Yorker: “A sleeveless black T-shirt made of frayed silk (inflated in the gym, leaving tattooed arms exposed), baggy black shorts, and underneath the shorts, gray sweatpants with the seams turned out; the frayed ends of these pieces, with their laces undone, were stuffed into hand-sewn leather-ankled sneakers priced at one thousand two hundred dollars.” His long, straight, black-dyed hair framed his face; combined with his expression dominated by large, dark eyes, it gave him a strangely Iggy Pop-like air. Nothing has changed; nearly 30 years later, Owens continues to speak from the same post-apocalyptic universe.
The theater continued at Walter van Beirendonck. The show opened with a gang of motorcyclists and soldiers with rifles. But don’t be alarmed, it was caricatured. Almost in cartoon aesthetics and neon lights… Still, we saw traces of the dark world we couldn’t escape in all these collections. Willy, Rick, and Walter discussed power games.
And from there to the real world… Auralee, the brand of Tokyo-based designer Ryota Iwai, kicked off Paris Fashion Week. It also served as the perfect palette cleanser between Milan and Paris. The collection focused on two points: Color usage and textures and their harmony with each other. It started with brown and its shades, then continued with singular, rich, and pure colors. Cobalt blue, mustard yellow, electric blue, purple, mint green, and red. All these tones created a Rothko effect on silk shirts, cashmere pants, or shearling coats. We saw the distribution within the look rather than block colors. In my opinion, the star of the collection was the bomber jackets…
Another person designing for our everyday life was Alexandre Mattiussi. Ami has always been successful in offering pieces that are objects of desire we want to see on us every day. At Kiko Kostandinov, everything was very simple. We could say it was back to basics. The fabrics were in their purest form; no zippers or buttons, no visible stitching.
Mike Amiri said the following when describing his collection: “I like the idea of artists wearing tailor-made pieces with an everyday attitude. A jacket over a Henley, boots instead of classic shoes. It’s important that clothes feel like an extension of who you are.” For Amiri, the ideal balance is precisely this: pieces that can exist on stage but blend into real life the moment you step off. They shouldn’t look like costumes or performance wear. A reflection of how we actually dress. Western wear, military jackets, leather, and classic denim—modern American classics…
Among all these loud collections, my hidden favorite is Kartik Research. The brand’s tagline, “Indian Vintage Future,” sums up everything you need to know about them. Its founder, Kartik Kumra, is only 25 years old. Recently, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose his designs for his inauguration ceremony. The Raag collection pays homage to a craftsmanship brand that emerged in Ahmedabad in the 1970s and even caught the eye of Robert Rauschenberg at the time. Kumra has taken this almost forgotten appeal out of the archives and brought it into the present day, with a subtle yet effective update that doesn’t lean on nostalgia. On the runway, silhouettes moved comfortably between heritage and street style: stone gray kantha tuxedo jackets, barn jackets adorned with floral vines, and loose-fitting pistachio green linen suits.
Cover photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto (Getty Images)
