Milan and Paris - setting the fashion agenda

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Urban style with a French twist

Highlights from the Hermes autumn/winter 2011 collection, shown at Paris Fashion Week. Photo: AFP Photo

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It’s that time of year again - the menswear shows in Paris and Milan.

The real world male is slow to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the influence of these new offerings. But at these Italian and French fashion centres, the design firms and fashion houses are carving out the shape and line of your trousers for 2012, whether you like it or not.

As always there are hits and misses. Thankfully, not all the trends will take, and it does seem that as times passes it is becoming harder and harder to spot common threads in the collections.  What happens now is that the designers draw from different influences – military, preppy, lumberjack Americana etc - thereby producing disparate collections.  You get the idea, nothing is wrong.

If you look back 25 years, fashion wasn’t always so hip, but this state of commerce was inevitable as designers looked for the best possible way to represent and differentiate themselves from their fellow designers.

I’m more than aware of my own likes and dislikes, but then there is always the zeitgeist and any designer worth his salt will still want to be either creating it or right on the curb.

At the recent menswear shows, Raf Simons showed the definition of pre-zeitgeist, just when I thought he was slowly slipping from the edge.  His amazing collection of duffle coats with a silhouette that verged on couture, showed what it takes to be on top – features and details that will influence the high street, but given his price point, will not be replicated.

Dries Van Noten chose what must be one of the most cliched and overused inspirations for designers the world over - David Bowie, more specifically his Thin White Duke period. Yet Dries proved (again) that he is the master of story and realisation. Any other attempt would have been a heavy-handed affair of overt Bowie-isms and unwearable costumes.  Dries knows attitude is important, but skill and finesse are essential.  Pleated trousers and double-breasted jackets of course, but great tieless shirts and fur lapels and collars took it to the next level.

The duffle popped up again at Christopher Bailey’s Burberry, with technicolour results.  Tailored short trousers with a mod-influence and cool two-tone sneaker-shoes showed a confident Bailey who has no trouble reaching into the deep and hallowed halls of the Burberry archives. He will no doubt have a few classics of his own added in the future.

Lanvin was another hit with its young noir sophisticates. As was Muiccia Prada with her uncanny ability to reign in completely distant, foreign and sometimes complex ideas to make a clean and coherent collection. Bad taste and cliche became good taste and fresh - see her brown suede jackets reminiscent of a used car salesman from a Ren and Stimpy cartoon. 

Finally, Adam Kimmell. The American who continues to show in Paris, had another successful outing, proving his ability to romantically and perhaps ideologically paint an America that exists in the heart of us all.  With each passing season, Kimmell furthers his artist’s desires and longings with shows that exceed expectation.  His backwoods motorcycle punks, wearing suit trousers and biker jackets, captured the fly-over states of ‘real America’ with all the skill of an artist’s observation. It neither poked fun of nor exaggerated. It was subtle and brilliant.

So the mainstream will laugh and mock the followers of fashion week, but the designers will have the last laugh when their work has permeated all that will inevitably follow.

Fashion or folly? What did you think of the Milan and Paris shows?