MENSWEAR at Paris fashion on Friday (June 28) took on a distinctly feminine feel with floral embroidery, skirts and sheer fabric at juun.j, Henrik Vibskov and Ann Demeulemeester.
Hard on the heels of Raf Simons on Wednesday (June 26), designers spurned overly masculine looks in favour of feminine silhouettes on day three of the men’s collections for spring/summer 2014.
At South Korea’s juun.j, models sporting lipstick and slicked down hair, wore a string of unisex designs such as oversized sheer shirts and tiny shorts teamed with tailored jackets in white and royal blue.
Accessories included oversized loop earrings and handbag-style gold lame ipad holders.
Henrik Vibskov continued the trend with a print dress, wrap skirt and black mini-dress worn over shorts.
And Ann Demeulemeester used delicate tumbling floral embroidery on jackets and trousers in multi-layered ensembles equally suited to men or women.
Dries Van Noten’s collection late on Thursday (June 27) was all about flowers with some looks featuring no less than three different floral prints.
The Antwerp-based ready-to-wear designer, who has never offered couture, will hold a retrospective next year at Paris’s Museum of Decorative Arts.
“When you study history, sometimes it’s acceptable for men to wear flowers and sometimes people consider it very feminine,” the Belgian was quoted as saying by the fashion website nowfashion.com following a preparatory visit to the museum’s archives.
It all began on Wednesday with Raf Simons who as well as having his own label is also artistic director at Christian Dior.
The Belgian designer used drop crotch garments to create the impression that models were wearing miniskirts or dresses.
Other ensembles had a similarly feminine feel courtesy of motifs embroidered with sequins and striped tunic tops in pink and purple.
Phillip Lim on Wednesday also relied heavily on floral designs.
The men’s collections wrap up on Sunday (June 30) with the much awaited second menswear collection for Saint Laurent by French designer Hedi Slimane.
Industry watchers will be looking to see if he continues with the grunge theme he chose for his menswear debut and also his second women’s collection for the brand.
Credited with revolutionising menswear during his stint at Dior from 2000 to 2007, Slimane teamed jackets cut short with narrow trousers in an androgynous, pencil-thin look copied by mass-market designers worldwide that also spread to the rock world.
Stars Mick Jagger and Pete Doherty went on stage in Dior Homme, and even legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld shed 45 kilos (99 pounds) to be able to slide into a Slimane suit.
Then, on Monday, four days of couture collections get underway with the must-see collection of the season – Christian Lacroix’s return to Paris fashion after a four-year absence.
The 1990s darling of fashion editors lost his house in 2009 after it ran up losses of around $15 million when it was hit by the sharp downturn in the luxury market.
He is making his return with a collection of 18 reinterpretations of pieces by the late Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli for the relaunched couture house.
Schiaparelli, whose greatest rival was Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and who died in 1973, was famed for her collaborations with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau.
