A melancholic Portuguese fado, the sound of trumpets in New Orleans, or the urgent
beat of a new rock band — the music that accessorized the spring 2006 men’s shows
in Paris also ran deeper, influencing the clothes, the mood, and providing links to the past.

At Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane’s increasingly tight tailoring and too-short pants worn
with white socks fused a young Paul Weller with magazine-land’s current dubious
darling, Pete Doherty, in an overly literal collection that had many people scratching
their heads. Comme des Garçons fared better, with the Rolling Stones motif of large
lips and a stuck-out tongue printed over nearly everything, and musical notes
playing down the side of tuxedo trousers. The result was light and whimsical;
cheeky, if you will. Number (N)ine explored a Guns N’ Roses wasteland of
disaffected youth in fringed leather jackets and leggings, and in her first men’s show, Ann Demeulemeester

went down an equally angst-ridden but darkly poetic (à la Patti Smith) road of
shrunken or elongated crumpled jackets, dropped crotches, and keys dangling from
lapels. Kris Van Assche‘s second collection was on the money with a sultriness pared down in signature style as he explored the traditional preening of the South American male using a clean, somber palette enlivened with touches of red, purple, and forest green. Sultry, but without the somber quality, John Galliano let rip with a delirious parade in which music met fashion in a carnivalesque New Orleans funeral as sheet music erupted out of the back of waistcoats and seams surged this way and that, propelled by the color, patterns, and the marching musicians moonlighting as models.

Frequently the message was light on music (Dries van Noten‘s live orchestra aside)
and strong on the idea of travel and leisure; think of the Fitzgeralds on the Riviera; as
in Rykiel Homme’s sharp and colorful port and starboard affair resplendent with
credible espadrilles, or Yves Saint Laurent‘s ode to writer Paul Bowles in Morocco,
in which long-line, lean jackets and baggy pants met leopard-print slippers and fabric
weaves carried subtle reflections of traditional tile patterns. Paul Smith took off to the country to laze on a summer afternoon with a light, lean, and fresh collection of soft colors and simplicity, and Hermès seemed increasingly young
this season, focusing on the discreet luxury it does so well, like the tiny punching
on a suede jacket that was an imperceptible H repeat pattern, or the flash of
a crocodile belt at the waist. Marc Jacobs has suddenly discovered the Louis Vuitton playboy, the type of lounge lizard who works the marina in his short-shorts and gilt
buttons during the daytime, with a handy line of nightwear stashed in his retro
hold-all should the yacht decide to sail. For Gilles Rosier, God is in the details, and the designer’s globe-trotters are having a hard time figuring out what not to
pack. Dries van Noten continues to out-do himself, taking on the legacy of Dali’s
Spain, but shaking off the surrealism and absorbing instead the Moorish
heritage; dusty colors and embroideries of the corrida; in a beautiful way.

There was also a more experimental and technical bent to the season, which was refreshing after so many history and music lessons. Though Pierre-Henri Mattout’s outing at
Dormeuil had all the primness of well-brought-up English schoolboys, the story was in
the fabric developments, turning the house’s traditional weaves on their heads with
bleaching, fading, printing, and denimizing. And although it seemed literal, the parade
of ’20s club- and resort-wear at Issey Miyake was actually an exercise in extracting
color from fabrics to leave just a hint remaining as trim. All very labor-intensive
but subtle; and sure to cost a fortune. On the other end of the scale, Kim Jones went ahead with his singular vision, and this time he seemed more certain; the play-on-proportion clothes, with croppings and cut-outs, were more palatable. Mining a
vein somewhere in between, Alain Gossuin‘s first full collection, with near-naked
boys getting dressed in front of an alcohol-infused crowd, was the result of
mathematical rigor and pattern rethinking that produced clothes that were young and
sexy instead of self-consciously intellectual.

-Karl Treacy

Photos: Dior Homme s/s ’06

Comme des Garcons s/s ’06
(N)ine s/s ’06
Van Assche s/s ’06
John Galliano s/s ’06
Gilles Rosier s/s ’06
Dries Van Noten s/s ’06
Kim Jones s/s ’06