Yohji Yamamoto Homme and Dries Van Noten

Two exemplary designers and independent thinkers staged consecutive menswear runway shows Thursday evening in Paris, in powerful reminders of how this is turning out to be a vintage season for men’s fashion.
 

Yohji Yamamoto Homme: Between Zidane and Wim Wenders

There’s a wee game that us fashionistas like to play at Yohji Yamamoto Hommes shows – spot the hipster appearances, on and off the catwalk. And this season turned out to be a bumper harvest.

Soccer great Zinedine Zidane, an old friend of Yamamoto’s since starring in Y-3 campaigns two decades ago, sat beaming in the front row. Though the big catwalk star was Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker who shot a very insider documentary on Yamamoto called ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’ back in 1989.
 
Wim enjoyed two tours of fashion duty on the concrete catwalk inside Yamamoto’s European headquarters on rue St Martin in Les Halles.

First, in a hunting vest under professional crepe coat lined in stripes, a look finished with a gent’s high white collar and black silk stock, looking like a wise Viennese psychoanalyst. On his arm an Asian beauty in demure pleated skirt and oversized six-button blazer.
 
Later, the couple appeared in white gent’s skirts splattered in abstract floral paint motifs. The five-times married in a black ankle-length men’s skirt held up by suspenders. Clownish yet very cool, with the outfits finished with YY and WW.
 
“We became like brothers a long time ago. We share the same memory of being very young – Tokyo was bombed, and Berlin was bombed. Bombed cities,” emphasized the 80-year-old Yohji, in between pulls of his trademark post-show cigarette.
  
While actor and former model Norman Reedus looked suggestively unkempt prowling the concrete in a great black suit. Covered in embroidered fabric letters reading. ‘Entertaining People’ below his knee; ‘Yoyo Sale’ on his back 
 
Other knowing displays included Max Vadukul, the noted photographer, attired like his runway mate in beige linen dusters. His letters read ‘La Boheme’, La Boheme. One of several other guys to marched out arm with a female model. His date’s look read: ‘Yohji Not for Sale’.
 
The heart of the show was the opening. Eight dark coats, in pinstripe, herring bone and gabardine –finished with very fine hand-paintings of geisha gals, Asian lingerie models and saucy femme fatales.
 
“I think men should be men; women should women and gay should be gay,” said the ever-sibylline Yohji, in a jam-packed backstage.
 

Dries Van Noten: Europe’s hippest tailoring

A proclamation in favor of modernist tailoring from Dries Van Noten, and the latest nail in coffin of street style by an important designer.
 

Cutting back and forth between cigarette slim coats and expansive classy crooners coats, this collection amounted to a great wardrobe for guys who want to look cool yet classy.
 
Above his coats were something else: undertaker’s coats in midnight blue crepe or petrol blue whip-chord that reached almost to the ankle; Victorian double-breasted looks with patch pockets; and the Hollywood idol slim cocoons. 
 
Dries’ suits were also excellent – most especially the long double-breasted looks, whose waists started at the hips. His trousers were first rate too: like a reverse pleats denim wide leg pant; or cargo pants with pockets finishing below the knee.
 
“We varied from narrow to super wide pants, and played with volumes because, well, every guy is different,” noted Dries.
 
Above all, there was  plenty of creative garment making: from cabans and duffle coats with horizontal fasteners and micro gilets with flap pocket that finished halfway up the chest; to a series of wide jackets that were clipped on at the side with mini metal harnesses. Adding in strips of leather and lambskin gloves to suggest some martial mode.
 
Practically devoid of color until a finale with blown up leopard prints used in nylon spy coats, dusters and cargo pants. Though again, by pixelating all the prints they looked very new.
 
This Fall 2024 collection was entitled ‘Theme for Great Cities’, which was also the soundtrack, Simple Minds classic booming out of the loud-speakers inside the show locations – a disused office building at the back of Montparnasse Tower.