A freewheeling temper took over this season‘s menswear reveals, seeing designers embrace the ‘irrational’ and the eccentric with vibrant, experimental collections which within the warmth of Florence, Milan and Paris captured summer season’s uplifting power. Certainly, designers from Rick Owens to Rei Kawakubo, Sabato De Sarno to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, spoke of a shift in the direction of hope and optimism, albeit tentative. ’I wish to hope for some mild, even when very small,’ mentioned Kawakubo, whereas Owens known as his hundreds-strong runway forged his ’white satin military of affection’. In the meantime, the looming Paris Olympics – and its message of worldwide unity and private tenacity – was unavoidable, seeing preparations remodel the town as a backdrop to each the menswear and high fashion reveals which adopted.
After the shift in latest seasons in the direction of quiet, understated luxurious – and the undeniably protected collections this usually yielded – it felt like a refreshing re-emergence of males’s vogue month, which because of blockbuster reveals from the likes of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton is shaking off any suggestion of its demise. Right here, we unpack the S/S 2025 menswear reveals – from ’irrational’ clothes to couture-level craft and eclectic new takes on tailoring.
Nothing was what it appeared
Prada’s S/S 2025 menswear present, which featured illusory particulars like in-set trompe l’oeil belts
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Prada)
‘Fact and pretence, the actual and the unreal.’ So started a Prada assortment which noticed Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons urge the viewer to look nearer, ‘to query the reality of what we understand, to rethink, to have a look at issues nearer’. Staged amid a ‘fairytale ravescape’ – whereby fashions emerged from a vertiginous white cabin, which earlier than the present had been blaring techno music – this was a group of illusions, from belts that had been in-set into trousers to trompe l’oeil Breton striped T-shirts, or trousers which gave the impression to be constituted of tailoring wool however had been truly printed cotton. Elsewhere, shirts below sweaters or cardigans had been constructed as a singular garment. ‘Seen from afar, items can fake to be different,’ mentioned the designers. ‘Particulars could appear simplistic, naïve, however up-close, bodily, perceptions remodel.’ It was disorientating vogue, for disorientating occasions, the place even the looks of actuality isn’t any assure (simply previous to males’s vogue month, Meta launched a label for Instagram and Fb which tagged photographs that had been ‘made with AI’). And trompe l’oeil would seem all through the season: at Zits Studios, denim was adorned with plastic chains, stacks of belts or printed rips and tears, whereas at Loewe, what seemed like a cable-knit sweater was truly hand-painted cloth. ‘Issues usually are not what they appear,’ mentioned artistic director Jonathan Anderson.
Designers embraced the ‘irrational’
A Guinness-adorned sweater from JW Anderson’s ‘irrational’ S/S 2025 assortment
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of JW Anderson)
Certainly, earlier within the month in Milan, the Northern Irish designer offered an equally illusory assortment for his eponymous label JW Anderson. ‘Irrational clothes’, he described, noting that he was impressed by the free affiliation of hypnotherapy (‘Inhale. Exhale. Are you feeling dreamy? Perhaps a little bit delirious?’ learn the accompanying notes). It made for a sometimes idiosyncratic outing – from monumental knitted home coats to Guinness-adorned knits and protrusions of colored materials – which partially drew its liberated temper from viewing younger folks at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound pageant. ‘The experimentation with clothes amongst youthful generations is unbelievable,’ he mentioned. ‘The attention has modified inside menswear and inside womenswear. Folks need one thing that’s actually difficult.’
This need was echoed throughout the season, as menswear designers eschewed any notion of ’quiet luxurious’. Martine Rose, who confirmed for the primary time in Milan this season, adorned her stomping forged with prosthetic noses and tangled wigs, whereas at Rick Owens – undoubtedly a spotlight of the season – the designer staged a Hollywood epic on the forecourt of Palais de Tokyo. There, his hundreds-strong ‘white satin military of affection’ marched out in an arresting array of seems to be, from monastic hooded robes and laddered jersey bodysuits to sculptural capes constituted of tarnished gold Japanese denim (‘megacrust’ is how Owens playfully described the approach). The showstopping spectacle was a celebration of vogue’s liberatory spirit, one which Owens likened to escaping his hometown of Porterville, California and working away to Hollywood. ‘[It was] the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to to search out my folks, [the] weirdos and freaks.’
Craft was couture degree
At Loewe S/S 2025, intricate steel chainmail and shell-adorned tabard tops had been a part of Jonathan Anderson’s veneration of craft
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Loewe)
At a preview for his newest Dior Males assortment – which was impressed by the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – Kim Jones famous a rising need from his shoppers to have one thing solely one-of-a-kind. ’Folks need one thing that no one else has received,’ he mentioned. It was a part of the explanation he launched his first devoted couture assortment for males final season and, whereas his S/S 2025 present in Paris didn’t have any official couture items – he has mentioned he’ll create a couture assortment solely as soon as every year – one specific jacket took over 600 hours of hand-embroidery to finish. An identical veneration of craft got here at Loewe, the place intricate tabard-style tops had been crafted from woven steel or delicate shards of shell, an echo of the extraordinary ‘caviar’ beaded items from his A/W 2024 womenswear assortment the place every of the 1000’s of tiny beads had been embroidered by hand. Equally seductive was the simplicity of Norbert Stumpfl’s newest Brioni assortment, proven within the serene gardens of Milan’s 18th-century Palazzo Borromeo d’Adda. There, his ongoing quest for lightness – a signature of his tenure on the Italian home – was formulated within the assortment’s fabrications, which spanned featherweight wools, supple perforated leather-based and ethereal vicuña knits. Most spectacular, although, was the eveningwear, the place one double-breasted dinner jacket was embroidered with 10,000 baguette beads, every one hand-knotted in silk thread.
However there was nonetheless a slice of actuality, too
Auralee S/S 2025, which noticed Ryota Iwai have a good time the pleasures of actual garments
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Auralee)
If the passion for ‘quiet luxurious’ has tempered in latest months, there nonetheless remained an urge for food for the actual pleasure of actual garments – maybe greatest epitomised in Paris by Auralee, Ryota Iwai’s Tokyo-based label which celebrates ten years in enterprise this 12 months. In its relative normality – there have been no methods right here, simply sweaters, denims, and the like – it was impossibly fascinating, the kind of assortment which makes you wish to throw out your complete wardrobe and begin once more. It’s all the way down to Iwai’s exacting however uncomplicated strategy, the place tactile, meticulously sourced materials (Peruvian Alpaca, Mongolian cashmere, New Zealand wool, Indian cotton) meet a delicate, thought-about palette (this season: pale inexperienced, crimson, buttercup yellow) which makes it something however boring. ‘Folks put a number of stress onto their clothes, maybe hoping to make an enormous assertion however I’m extra focused on how smaller modifications can spotlight one thing in regards to the wearer,’ Iwai informed Wallpaper* previous to the present.
There may be nothing regular about Hermès – and but, regardless of Veronique Nichanian’s dedication to painstaking craft and really luxurious fabrications, her collections find yourself feeling solely easy, and even thrown on. This season, she mentioned she needed to evoke ’a candy summer season’, and as ever there have been loads of real-world garments right here: breezy Oxford shirts, blouson jackets and bowling-style knits – in a palette of blues and pale pink – would match into any man’s wardrobe. The identical goes for Dries Van Noten, who has made a profession of instilling the quotidian with a louche romance. His ultimate present – earlier this 12 months Van Noten introduced he could be leaving his namesake label after 38 years – was a celebration of this, presenting a ultimate assortment which captured the designer’s distinct eye for color and tactility. For this, he will likely be missed. ’That is my 129th present; just like the earlier ones, it seems to be forward. Tonight is many issues, however it’s not a grand finale,’ he mentioned. ‘Creating is about leaving one thing that lives on.’
The go well with remains to be ripe for reinvention
Gucci’s abbreviated riff on the go well with, proven as a part of the home’s S/S 2025 assortment
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Gucci)
Every season, it appears like there’s a diktat on the go well with: it’s double- or single-breasted, slim or full, cropped on the ankle or pinched on the waist (as such, it usually deemed emblematic of the season’s temper). For S/S 2025, although, there was little consensus, besides that the go well with stays ripe for reinvention, as designers throughout the board riffed on the garment in differing and distinctive methods. At Loewe, the present opened with razor-sharp black tailoring, evocative of the uniforms of safety guards or gallery attendants. ‘That is my very own interpretation of precision,’ mentioned the designer, who famous inspiration from the ‘singular’ artistic imaginative and prescient of figures like Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, whose work populated the present house. However there was phantasm at play right here, too: the material, a woven silk mohair, was designed to carry its form with an almost-spongey end. ‘These are issues [that] are extremely tough to do however that which if you see them it feels easy,’ he mentioned.
There was experimentation of a special form at Junya Watanabe, the place the Japanese designer’s paean to denim included traditional wool tailoring spliced with the material for an intriguing hybrid. In the meantime at fellow Japanese label Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo’s Homme Plus assortment contained loads of tailoring minimize within the designer’s cerebral method, whether or not sliced-apart tailor-made jackets adorned with ruffle-like collars, or these out of which flashes of vividly colored lining emerged. Colors had been equally vivid at Issey Miyake Homme Plissé, the place double-breasted blazers, waistcoats and ties had been crafted from the model’s signature light-weight knife pleats in crisp shades of inexperienced, orange and blue. Solely crease-resistant, and undeniably straightforward of their roomy, stretchy silhouettes, they’ll show a helpful companion subsequent summer season. And, for the courageous, so too will Gucci’s super-abbreviated tailor-made brief shorts, a part of a youthful S/S 2025 assortment which artistic director Sabato De Sarno mentioned was impressed by the ’freedom, power [and] neighborhood’ of browsing.
Sportswear was given an Olympics enhance
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton)
Even for essentially the most sports-averse, it was near-impossible to keep away from the looming summer season of sporting occasions forward on menswear’s European tour – whether or not the Euros (which Emporio Armani hosted screenings of in each Milan and Paris), or the Olympics. The latter, going down in Paris later this month, felt significantly prescient, not least as a result of Parisian luxurious items conglomerate LVMH is likely one of the occasion’s principal sponsors. Unsurprisingly, then, Pharrell Williams evoked the Olympic spirit at his third menswear present at Louis Vuitton, which was held at Maison l’Unesco and made a plea for world unity and neighborhood (actually, in case you squinted, you might see the Olympic rings adorning the Eiffel Tower within the distance). ‘[It is] the celebration of human athletic prowess,’ mentioned the designer, who featured a number of soccer kits adorned with ‘LVFC’. In the meantime, at Wales Bonner, the British designer continued her profitable collaboration with Adidas Originals, which right here featured a shimmering sequinned model of the model’s Samba sneaker, alongside slouchy basketball shorts and hoodies, striped polos and – most memorably – a pair of three-stripe swim trunks. And at Gucci, Sabato De Sarno’s browsing inspirations made for a group of glossy, graphic menswear in sporty, luminous tones – together with one of many season’s most covetable equipment: sun shades on fluoro straps, worn like chokers across the neck.
Supply: Wallpaper
