Men's fashion week, which ends this Sunday January 26 in Paris, celebrated through the fall-winter 2025-26 collections from 68 houses the return to a certain form of elegance and the search for comfort, all with a touch of political demands.
“Neo-dandy”
“There is a desire to return to a form of elegance. Quite a few brands have pushed this neo-dandy figure a little. We want to recreate this kind of man who wants to dress and who wants to dress well “deciphers for AFP Adrien Communier, head of the fashion section for the magazine GQ France.
The costume is everywhere: in “mix and match” and very ample at AMI, in a style reminiscent of that of English students at Cambridge, in velvet at Hermès, with inspirations from the 1970s at Amiri and latino at Willy Chavarria or more strict at Egonlab.
The master in this field remains Kim Jones, who presented at Dior Homme a very graphic and refined collection, with costumes inspired by Monsieur Dior's archives which elongate the silhouette.
At Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams and Nigo also offered a collection mixing the streetwear codes that are dear to them with those of dandyism, including suit sets associated with bombers, leather jackets and even Teddy jackets.
Comfort again and again
“Faced with this evolution of the costume, there are still many very comfortable things”underlines Adrien Communier. Between loose clothing and soft materials, like Yohji Yamamoto who presented a series of large quilted jackets matched with pants, there are “like a desire to bundle up”, insists the specialist.
The “layering” (superposition of several layers, Editor's note) is also always in style, whether at Yamamoto, SuperKid, Hermès, Kolor or even Auralee, which goes so far as to layer its knitted dresses over wool sweaters with XXL sleeves.
At 3.Paradis, Frenchman Emeric Tchatchoua has taken comfort to the extreme with down jackets cut like duvets and pillows.
The pants get tighter
If the pants are still largely loose and fluid with still a lot of baggy Bermuda shorts which illustrate the revival of the 2000s, the pants are gradually tightening and shortening, like at Dior.
-“In my opinion, we are returning to something that will be strongly inspired by the 2010s,” largely dominated by slim pants, explains Adrien Communier.
Touches of color
Due to the winter season, the collections are largely available in a palette of dark colors, always with brown, lots of khaki, taupe but also beige or cream.
A few touches of color nevertheless emerged: from the powder pink of Dior to the candy pink of Vuitton and Kenzo, red, blue and yellow at Bluemarble or even yellow at AMI.
Political parades
News also made its way onto the catwalks. For his first fashion show in Paris, Californian Willy Chavarria stood out with a colorful and politicized fashion show, peppered with references to the film Emilia Perezworn by a transgender actress and in pole position for the Oscars, and to the pro-LGBT speech of the Bishop of Washington to American President Donald Trump.
The fashion world has “fear” of the latter and does not dare to stand against him for fear of commercial reprisals, Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck declared to the press after his show. He presented a futuristic show with models wearing jackets bearing badges “peace, not war” on the song Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. “It’s horrible what’s happening in the world right now.” lamented the 67-year-old Belgian, believing that there was “too many wars, too much right-wing extremism.”
