Men’s fashion – Despite Omicron, Paris Fashion Week relies on physical presence

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From this Tuesday, Paris Fashion Week intends to showcase men’s fashion, despite the pandemic. Last June, six houses had organized parades, this week, they will be 17.

Seventeen ready-to-wear houses out of the 76 registered will present fashion shows this week in Paris.

REUTERS

After Milan, the week of men’s ready-to-wear starts this Tuesday in Paris, betting on the “physical” presence, despite the wave of the very contagious Omicron. Of the 76 houses listed in the official calendar, 17 are organizing parades, compared to six in June, in a more serene health context. Among them, Dior, Hermès, Rick Owens and Y/Project, as well as Kenzo, with its brand new artistic director, the Japanese Nigo, famous in the streetwear world, at the helm.

Louis Vuitton is hosting two fashion shows on Thursday, for Virgil Abloh’s latest collection. The creator popular with millennials and the first black designer to head a luxury house died in November of cancer, at the age of 41.

“Digital enriches the physical, but does not replace the emotional and sensory side of the show.”

Pascal Morand, Executive Chairman of the Haute Couture and Fashion Foundation

In addition, nearly thirty brands, including Courrèges and Issey Miyake, plan “real” presentations that are less formal than fashion shows, with several time slots, to which journalists and buyers are invited. “This testifies to the deep aspiration of brands, of fashion players for the physical,” welcomes the executive president of the Haute Couture and Fashion Foundation, Pascal Morand. “Digital enriches the physical, but does not replace the emotional and sensory side of the show.”

“The culmination of a long work”

Egonlab, a French brand founded two years ago by Florentin Glémarec and Kévin Nompeix, which made a name for itself with artistic videos, enters the official calendar with a fashion show. “It is important for a house to move on to the stage of physical parades, it is the culmination of a long work. All the more so after this long period of Covid, during which we had to reinvent ourselves digitally in order to be able to survive”, explains Kévin Nompeix.

“Today, all brands want to parade,” adds Florentin Glémarec. “Marching alongside the big houses that have influenced us a lot, that does something to us.”

However, Egonlab “does not leave the digital side 100%” and at the same time developed with a start-up “an NFT and metaverse project (the future virtual world on which the digital giants are working, editor’s note) in collaboration with Crocs”, the manufacturer of plastic clogs, adds Kévin Nompeix.

(AFP)

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