Paris Fashion Week outfits for men reveal designers prepared to take a stand

The men’s autumn/winter 2017 collections for Paris Fashion Week displayed a new eclecticism featuring social and political statements.

Balenciaga’s artistic director Demna Gvasalia unveiled a corporate-casual menswear collection that reinterpreted Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders’ campaign logo on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Reflecting fear of the future and rejection of fast-paced societies, other brands such as Lanvin and Christian Dada printed statements such as ‘Nothing’, as seen on the scarf of Lanvin’s opening outfit, or ‘too fast to live” and ‘too young to die’, as on the sleeves of Masanori Morikawa’s ‘no future’ tartan college boy looks.

Closing the Paris men’s fashion week on an intellectual note, Carol Lim and Umberto Leon, the designer-duo behind Kenzo, aimed at environmental causes with nature-related prints – think Arctic glaciers, Hawaiian florals and aurora borealis dégradés – on heavily layered, matelassed and cocooned men’s silhouettes.