Refined marques, contrasting visions of menswear

Hermès and Valentino: Two very refined marques showed contrasting visions of menswear, though united in the determination to develop new sartorial codes.
 

Hermès: Puncturing old codes with poise

No menswear show anywhere this month looked classier than that of Hermès, while also managing to look modern, modish and moody.

Consistency has always been the key to Hermès, yet a regularity leavened with pioneering fabrics and the sleekest of silhouettes.
 
It helps that the house’s menswear designer Véronique Nichanian has held that position at Hermès for over three decades. In fashion terms, that is like equating her tenure to that of King Louis XIV or Queen Elizabeth II. Nonetheless, she keeps on reinventing her style. Definitely not the Ancient Regime.

Take her new blouson, a signature piece for all French men, which this season came with vertically slanted zip pockets, piped trim and roll collar. As if invented by a scientist but lovingly made by hand.
 
“I wanted to puncture the traditional man’s wardrobe. To suggest a new silhouette, and some fresh approaches. A calfskin parka thrown on; a short pea coat for a journey, a pullover with an equestrian print for nonchalance,” explained a beaming Nichanian.
 
She cut her pea coats and jackets short, and her wraparound coats long – and paired them all with narrow streamlined trousers. The designer using angled cuts and cut-outs to dream up new shapes and volumes – like the superb herringbone coats with dropped breast pockets, or other six-button blousons with single vertical flaps. None of them attention seeking, but all unexpected.
 
Plus, her use of semitransparent was perfect. Turning see-through nylon and mesh – which she called ‘gum overclothes’ into luxury items.
 
Mixing in smart detailing and neat accessories like double collars and tube scarves. Even classic elements like Prince of Wales check and Argyle got a new lease of life as pocket flaps and or jumbled patterns.
 
As ever, the materials reeked and sounded exclusive. Dipped lambskin, stirrup leather, deerskin flannel, cashmere and alpaca, polished calfskin. You get the idea. While the palette was moody, yet melodic – khaki, basalt, charcoal, anise, petroleum blue, heather, pumpkin, crocus, silex and peat. All told, there was not one duff look in this collection by Nichanian, the classiest creator in France.
 
Where other brands pack their shows with influencers, Hermès fills its front-row with many actual clients. Rarely have we seen them look happier. 
 

Valentino: Clothes for gentlemen

Clothes as much for gentle men as gentlemen, staged rather romantically to finely voiced female singers were the key story in the latest collection for Valentino by Pierpaolo Piccioli. 

See catwalk

Natty, elegant and soigné even, the collection was all about subtle shades, moderately curving volumes and a sense of contemporary chic.
 
The best elements came from couture ideas, using a highly skilled technique Altorilievo (high relief) to cut out patterns in shoulder and backs. Remarkably, the Valentino atelier also translated mythological figures using intarsia into the tailored clothes.
 
Piccioli has always loved an expansive caban, like his dense anthracite mohair wool version, which artfully imitated astrakhan was very clever.
 
The Roman-born designer also loves to focus on a color – and his choice this season was a turquoise blue, just like the invitation, seating and many looks – sequined clubbing cabans or roll neck cashmere sweaters.
 
But the overall mood was dark and print free. Moreover, his decision to slit coats up the front was perplexing, as was his choice of wide leg pants ending well above the ankle.
 
There was a touching moment at the finale, when scores of the audience began singing along to Whitney Houston’s classic, ‘Your Love is My Love’, as if imagining a romantic tryst.
 
That said, the choice of locations – the Musée de la Monnaie – was far from ideal. A Series of rooms, whose ceilings grew lower and lower the further one walked into the structure, and a twisting catwalk meant the show lacked focus. So much so, most of the audience was walking out while Piccioli was still halfway through his bow.
 
Ultimately, this was a collection of noble and elegant clothes but not quite a great fashion statement.
 
Then again, Pierpaolo does also present a Valentino haute collection in the house’s storied Paris HQ on Wednesday, and one suspects he has saved his best stuff for that event.