Refined brands, contrasting visions of men's fashion

Hermès and Valentino: two very refined brands showed contrasting visions of men's fashion, although united in the determination to develop new sartorial codes.

Hermès: piercing old codes with aplomb

No menswear show this month looked more elegant than Hermès, while still managing to look cool, trendy, and moody.

Consistency has always been the key to Hermès, but a regularity seasoned with pioneering fabrics and the most elegant silhouettes.

It helps that the house's menswear designer, Véronique Nichanian, has held that position at Hermès for more than three decades. In fashion terms, that's like equating her tenure with that of King Louis XIV or Queen Elizabeth II. However, she continues to reinvent her style. Definitely not the Ancien Regime.

Take their new jacket, an iconic piece of clothing for every French man, which this season arrived with vertically slanted zipper pockets, piped trims, and a roll neck. As if invented by a scientist but lovingly handmade.

“I wanted to puncture the traditional men's wardrobe. Suggest a new silhouette and some new approaches. He put on a calfskin parka; a short jacket for a trip, a sweater with an equestrian print for indifference,” explained a radiant Nichanian.

He cut his peacoats and jackets short and his double-breasted coats long, and paired them all with narrow, streamlined pants. The designer uses angled cuts and slits to imagine new shapes and volumes, such as gorgeous herringbone coats with dropped chest pockets or other six-button jackets with simple vertical lapels. None of them seek attention, but they are all unexpected.

Plus, his use of semi-transparent was perfect. Turning sheer nylon and mesh, which she called “rubber clothing,” into luxury items.

Combining elegant details and elegant accessories such as double collars and tube scarves. Even classic elements like Prince of Wales check and Argyle got new life as pocket flaps or messy patterns.

As always, the materials sucked and sounded exclusive. Dipped lambskin, stirrup leather, deerskin flannel, cashmere and alpaca, polished calfskin. You get the idea. While the palette was changeable, but melodic: khaki, basalt, charcoal, anise, petrol blue, heather, pumpkin, saffron, flint and peat. In all, there wasn't a single boring look in this collection from Nichanian, France's classiest designer.

While other brands fill their shows with influencers, Hermès fills its front row with plenty of real customers. We have rarely seen them happier.

Valentino: Men's clothing

Clothing for both men and gentlemen, staged quite romantically for female singers with fine voices, was the key story of Pierpaolo Piccioli's latest collection for Valentino.

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Nasty, elegant and even soigné, the collection revolved around subtle tones, moderately curved volumes and a sense of contemporary elegance.

The best elements came from couture ideas, using a highly specialized Altorilievo (high relief) technique to cut out patterns on shoulders and backs. Surprisingly, Valentino's atelier also translated mythological figures using intarsia into tailored clothing.

Piccioli has always liked spacious cabins, like his dense anthracite mohair wool version, which ingeniously imitated astrakhan and was very clever.

The Rome-born designer also loves to focus on one color, and his choice this season was turquoise blue, as was the invitation, the seating and many looks: sequined disco cabanas or cashmere roll-neck sweaters.

But the general atmosphere was dark and free of impressions. Additionally, his decision to cut the coats in front of him was baffling, as was his choice of baggy pants that ended well above the ankle.

There was a touching moment at the end, when dozens of spectators began singing Whitney Houston's classic, 'Your Love is My Love,' as if imagining a romantic date.

However, the choice of location, the Musée de la Monnaie, was far from ideal. A series of rooms, whose ceilings became increasingly lower as one went deeper into the structure, and a winding walkway meant that the show lacked focus. So much so that most of the audience left while Piccioli was still halfway through bowing to him.

Ultimately, this was a collection of noble and elegant clothing, but not a big fashion statement.

Elsewhere, Pierpaolo is also presenting a haute Valentino collection at the house's historic Paris headquarters on Wednesday, and one suspects he's saved his best stuff for that event.