Key takeaways from Paris Fashion Week Men’s

Spectacles, solid wearable collections, escapism and the Olympics were among the key themes this season.

The Spring/Summer 2025 edition of Paris Fashion Week Men’s delivered despite the economic, political and logistical challenges in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics.

The men’s season, which ended on Sunday, took place amid turbulence in the luxury industry, driven by a steep slowdown in China. Add to that the uncertainties related to upcoming elections in France (which could put the far right or far left into power), the UK and the US. While not immune, menswear seems “more stable, less subject to the ups and downs” of the wider industry, says Nick Sullivan, creative director of Esquire magazine.

The celebrity game was strong: at Kenzo with K-pop star Vernon of Seventeen; at Louis Vuitton and Loewe with TikTok phenomenon Sabrina Carpenter; at the surprise show of A$AP Rocky with Rihanna and Alexandre Arnault (where guests were served Jay-Z’s champagne, Armand de Brignac). “It feels that Paris men’s week is cooler than ever. Pharrell Williams not only staged his show but also attended the Kenzo and Sacai shows. There was the A$AP Rocky show with his friends. They own Paris Fashion Week,” says PR guru Lucien Pagès.

Several editors said they had to lighten their schedules and skip some presentations as Olympics preparation snarled up traffic — but they still made it to the shows. “We anticipated the situation a year in advance, managed it, harmonized and optimized the routes,” says Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.

“This has been a good season, maybe not the most amazing season, but there’s been some very good high points,” says Sullivan, citing Rick Owens’s spectacular show with a 200-strong cast. “It’s great when designers really do what they want to do. There are luxury brands that are all in the same part of the market, so it’s great that we also have the ones that get away from that and get to do their own thing because it gives us variety.”

“Those big spectacle shows like Rick Owens were fabulous,” agrees Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief of Esquire. “The other ones were just good, solid, wearable clothes. Dior was really nice for that reason. Louis Vuitton was interesting because it was so much quieter than his [Williams’s] first two collections. From an Esquire point of view, there are many things we can shoot.”

Simon Longland, director of buying, fashion at Harrods, praised the Loewe show: “Jonathan Anderson is a designer who has created a distinct universe and design language for his vision of Loewe. Today’s show was evidently part of that but as always pushed new boundaries in silhouette, structure and shape.”

“When the market is tough, there’s a natural instinct for brands and designers to play things quite safe but customers who still shop through difficult times don’t want safe. They want new and interesting things, and they want an excuse to shop, to experiment and be inspired,” says Richard Johnson, chief commercial and sustainability officer at Mytheresa.

Among the smaller brands, buyers and editors praised Japanese brands Undercover and Auralee, Paris-based label Meta Campania Collective, and Kidsuper, which collaborated this season with Cirque du Soleil. “It was obvious [Kidsuper founder Dillane] Colm put a lot of effort into the fashion. The clothes were great,” says fashion consultant Julie Gilhart of the Kidsuper show.

Menswear eschews formality

Casual menswear dominated this season, including at Dior and Hermès. “If you’re an Hermès customer, there’s a sort of a sense that casualness is almost more luxurious than dressing up. If you’re at that level of the market, you can wear what you like,” Sullivan notes. Casual dominated off the runway too. “I’ve seen two ties this week, and [Michael Sebastian] has been wearing both of them,” he adds. (Fashion week goers favoured sneakers to walk between metro stations or take a Lime bike and avoid disruption across the city.)
“With the summer approaching, being more casual is a good thing,” says Mytheresa’s Johnson. “You kind of want to mix and match items. When we buy for the winter season, you’ve got September, back to the office, pre-festive events, more occasions to buy tailored dressed-up pieces. Summer is lighter, easier, so casual is a good thing because it’s what people want to buy at this point.”

There were inevitable nods to sports this season, as fashion week collided with the Euros and Paris counts down to the Olympics and Paralympics. Y-3, a collaboration between Yohji Yamamoto and sportswear brand Adidas, returned to the Paris schedule and presented the Japanese Football Association’s jersey. Emeric Tchatchoua’s label 3.Paradis presented a collaboration with the NBA, while Louis-Gabriel Nouchi collaborated with Puma on sneakers with “a radical mule design”.

The blokecore trend, inspired by football culture, continued. It was notably visible in the Louis Vuitton collection, which included football shirts and a bomber jacket.

Reflecting the world or escaping it?

A few designers addressed the political situation directly. In his show notes, Walter Van Beirendonck wrote, “In today’s world, everything feels endlessly dramatic. Extremes everywhere, extremists getting the last laugh.” In the collection, Van Beirendonck “explored extremes in his proportions”, wrote Vogue Runway’s José Criales-Unzueta.

Others seemed to refer to it obliquely, like Williams in his SS25 show for Louis Vuitton, titled “The World is Yours” and held at the Unesco headquarters. “There’s so much divisiveness out there in the world. It was a show about unity,” Williams said backstage after the show.

Hermès artistic director Véronique Nichanian was among those to choose escapism. She sent out a soft, light collection imbued with pastel tones. “It’s good for us at the moment, and I wish us all a little softness,” Nichanian said backstage after the show.

Dior and Ami, too, had a softness. “The Dior collection had a poetic feel,” says Longland of Harrods. “There was a sense of ease and grace to the collection, and a restricted and muted colour palette featuring only pops of colour, which added to this feeling.”

In the showroom before his final show, Dries Van Noten told Vogue Business: “Fashion can be a reflection of what’s happening in the world or when the world is in such a state as it is now, it can also be an escape, it can make you dream. For the moment and quite often, I prefer to make people dream than people confront reality. It may be naive but it’s such a chaos all over the world that I think people need something uplifting now.”

And Van Noten did make people dream. He announced in March that he would retire at the end of June after this final show. On Saturday night, some 1,000 guests convened at La Courneuve on the outskirts of Paris for a joyful and emotional celebration of his work. A number of designers turned up, including Thom Browne, Diane Von Furstenberg, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Alexandre Mattiussi, Kris Van Assche, Haider Ackermann, Harris Reed and Glenn Martens. On the runway, many of the models were those who have been walking Van Noten’s shows for years, including Alain Gossuin and Hanne Gaby Odiele.
After the show people danced around a giant disco ball. “I don’t realise yet that it’s over, but it was nice,” Van Noten said backstage.