In subtle or direct ways, designers take on topics related to the chaos and cruelty in today’s world, a police-state culture.

By Cathy Horyn, The Cut’s fashion critic-at-large since 2015. Before joining The Cut in 2015, she was fashion critic at the New York Times (the second person to ever have the title) from 1999 to 2014.

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: GoRunway , Getty Images, Shutterstock,

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: GoRunway , Getty Images, Shutterstock,

Shortly before his show on Saturday, the London designer Kiko Kostadinov was talking about his fall men’s collection and its new reduced look. A dress might be a poncho, and a button was hardly to be found anywhere. He said, “I don’t want to say ideas,” and then caught himself and laughed. “Everybody’s talking about ideas. I thought that’s what we were here for.”

Well, yes. But isn’t it interesting how many genuinely good ideas come from designers at the Paris men’s shows? Compared with the women’s side and the haute couture shows, which begin today, men’s shows receive much less attention, make much less noise (apart from Dior Men and Hermès). Yet, the quality of the ideas is extremely high, especially this season, among people like Rick Owens, Walter Van Beirendonck, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, and Kostadinov.

In ways that may be subtle or direct, they take on topics that relate to the chaos and cruelty in the world today, a police-state culture. Owens called his collection “Tower,” as in a tower of light, “a prayer for love and hope.” But, he added, “towers can also be about enforcement.” He went on to say that epaulets were at first stripped away from biker jackets and shirts to avoid sensitive military connotations, “but the world around us is impossible to ignore, so the only way to do it is parody.”

Black police boots were “grotesquely” exaggerated, in his words, and long, slim coats were made from either hard, glossy black leather or Kevlar, a protective material used for body armor. (In his press notes, Owens said his Kevlar canvas was woven at a mill in Como, Italy, that has been operating since 1952.) Presented in a haze of smoke, not unlike news photos of people being tear-gassed, his models seemed menacingly tall, in part because Owens generally narrowed his silhouette. Purely from a fashion perspective, lean lines were one of the stories of the fall men’s shows — from Prada, Dries Van Noten, and Kostadinov, among others.

Rick Owens From left: Photo: OWENSCORP/Valerio MezzanottiPhoto: OWENSCORP/Valerio Mezzanotti

Rick Owens From top: Photo: OWENSCORP/Valerio MezzanottiPhoto: OWENSCORP/Valerio Mezzanotti

Also worth noting in Owens’s powerful show were tough-looking knits done in raw Himalayan wool and the hairpieces — really, hairy masks — created by a London designer named Lucas Moretti. Extending from the heads to the ankles of a few models, the hairpieces consisted of 3,000 meters of hand-tied waxed cord and required 30 “meditative hours” to make.

Rick Owens From left: Photo: OWENSCORP/Valerio MezzanottiPhoto: OWENSCORP/Valerio Mezzanotti

Rick Owens From top: Photo: OWENSCORP/Valerio MezzanottiPhoto: OWENSCORP/Valerio Mezzanotti

Van Beirendonck opened his show, held in a spartan, light-filled space that might have been a former factory, with a model riding a motorized scooter, both person and machine covered in a tent-size yellow poncho.

Walter Van Beirendonck From left: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

Walter Van Beirendonck From top: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

It was a nice, absurd touch for what was to come: guys toting brightly colored plastic guns and later wearing sweaters based on war rugs with the abstract shapes of grenades, tanks, and other weapons worked into the design — and with innocence. You had to look twice before the details registered. Van Beirendonck countered the aggression with sweetness in the form of flowers. He also used tape to block out geometric patterns in plastic on sleeveless T-shirts, including the tape rolls as bangles.

Walter Van Beirendonck From left: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

Walter Van Beirendonck From top: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

Van Beirendonck is nearly 69 years old. He was one of the Antwerp Six, the group of designers who, in the late ’80s, disrupted fashion with their original ideas. He called his new collection “Scare the Crow/Scarecrow.” A scarecrow is, of course, a scrawny object that stands isolated in a field, often dressed in human clothes, harassed by wind and birds. As he wrote in his notes, “Subcultures, as we once knew them, have disappeared. What you see here are the Scarecrows of 2026.” But, along with Owens’s dark towers, they are still providing energy.

I saw Van Beirendonck two days later as he was coming backstage at Comme des Garçons to congratulate Kawakubo. Now 83, in her black clothes, her black bob, her dark glasses and, above all, in her privacy, she is the greatest scarecrow of them all, one of the last true modernists in fashion. She has never felt the need to explain her work, and she seldom does, apart from a few cryptic words.

And what were they this season, I asked her husband (and translator), Adrian Joffe. “Black hole,” he replied, then added with a laugh, “and how we get out of it.”

Kawakubo’s show began with a heavy dose of black, punctuated by flashes of liquid matte silver (for a long tunic with a blazer) and gray. The models wore hockey masks with coarse wigs framing the creepy white plastic. Her clothing details were ingenious for being so simple. For one black jacket, the front featured several rows of slits through which pieces of black fabric, perhaps a soft wool or jersey, were pushed and then knotted on the interior of the garment to create a small cascade of bundled ribbons. Kawakubo also used black rayon lace in thick, choppy layers. It lent her easy tailoring a touch of formality, or mourning.

Comme des Garçons From left: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

Comme des Garçons From top: Photo: Shutterstock/ShutterstockPhoto: Shutterstock/Shutterstock

I found the show incredibly moving, in part because the emotional buildup was slow and in part because of the tender music. It was from Michel Polnareff, arranged by Ugo Nardini. The songs were “Goodbye Marylou” and “Love Me, Please Love Me.” Shortly before the end, Kawakubo sent out a group of models in white, some in garments that looked crunched like paper. Some guests saw angels. Or could they be ghosts?

Although Watanabe’s superb collection dealt with variations on the masculine suit — from a jazzman’s lean early ’60s look to an aristocrat’s familiar tweeds to a young man’s blue blazer — it seemed to me more about memory. The notion of a memory is a big thing in the collections. It surfaced at Prada in the scratched marks on some garments and in the personal gesture of obvious exposed shirt cuffs.

Junya Watanabe From left: Photo: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOSPhoto: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOS

Junya Watanabe From top: Photo: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOSPhoto: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOS

Watanabe, though, fully embraced it. Looking at the suits and wool coats in his showroom, I was absolutely mesmerized by the combinations of materials, the shadings of gray, the variety of buttons — the obsession of it! — and the fresh use of patchwork for tailored styles as well as jeans. I found some lovely trousers in well-washed brown corduroy or denim made entirely of patches, yet stitched and pressed to perfection so the technique almost appeared trompe l’oeil.

Junya Watanabe From left: Photo: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOSPhoto: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOS

Junya Watanabe From top: Photo: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOSPhoto: YANNIS VLAMOS/YANNIS VLAMOS

Julian Klausner’s second men’s collection for Dries Van Noten also had a strong sense of memory, thanks to fantastic knitwear and gestures like a detachable knitted collar on his strict and good-looking wool coats. “I think there’s a reassuring feeling to wearing a sweater,” Klausner said.

Dries Van Noten From left: Photo: GoRunwayPhoto: GoRunway

Dries Van Noten From top: Photo: GoRunwayPhoto: GoRunway

He proposed them as neat vests and pullovers in vaguely vintage patterns and chunky mock-turtleneck sweaters with an embroidered Fair Isle design. The collection also included some easy kilts in solids and checks with raw edges, soft capes, and a kind of cotton apron you can wear partially under a sweater, suggesting shirttails. They will come in different patterns.

Dries Van Noten From left: Photo: GoRunwayPhoto: GoRunway

Dries Van Noten From top: Photo: GoRunwayPhoto: GoRunway

Klausner said of the collection, “I was thinking of coming of age, leaving home, going off to university, taking the things you love — hand-me-downs, your granddad’s coat, and your childhood blazer.”

By contrast, Kiko Kostadinov was letting go. The designer, who recently opened a shop on the ground floor of his East London studio, told me, “I kind of wanted to reset and learn again how to make clothes. The style is very reduced, very straight lines. There are no jacquards, no textures, no prints. It’s all in the cut.” He added, “And no references or categories. A lot of clothes fall in between.”

Kiko Kostadinov From left: Photo: Courtesy of Kiko Kostadinov/@lucatomboliniPhoto: Courtesy of Kiko Kostadinov/@lucatombolini

Kiko Kostadinov From top: Photo: Courtesy of Kiko Kostadinov/@lucatomboliniPhoto: Courtesy of Kiko Kostadinov/@lucatombolini

Not only do I admire his nerve to change, but the results are also compelling. The generally lean silhouette in high-quality, lightweight wool or cotton that drapes beautifully — for jackets, trousers, and some simple popover tops — leaves a more distinctive impression than some of his previous collections. I loved the fresh evening look of a tailored ivory jacket that closes diagonally (without an obvious button) over soft black pants. “For me, it’s a new language for the brand,” he said.

Willy Chavarria put on an ambitious show, his third in Paris, in an arena that featured not only his signature tailoring, his ongoing collaboration with Adidas, and dressy women’s clothes, but his new streetwear line — the wonderfully named Big Willy — *and *a full-on performance that included singers, an elaborate set (with a video backdrop), and a pretend street fight that ended with a dead body. Unfortunately, the theatrics overtook the clothes, and the show lacked the pure emotion of last season.

Willy Chavarria From left: Photo: Gaspar J Ruiz Lindberg/Gaspar J Ruiz LindbergPhoto: Courtesy of Willy Chavaria

Willy Chavarria From top: Photo: Gaspar J Ruiz Lindberg/Gaspar J Ruiz LindbergPhoto: Courtesy of Willy Chavaria

On Saturday night, Véronique Nichanian presented her final men’s collection for Hermès before a huge crowd that included editors arriving for the spring couture shows. Nichanian has been designing for Hermès for 37 years, and her collection of sporty layers, trim suits, and abundant leather pieces (including a mocha jumpsuit from 1991), offered proof of why the 71-year-old had a long run: She was good at her job. She completely understood what Hermès needed, and didn’t need, in terms of fashion.

Hermès From left: Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Hermès From top: Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

The company gave her a wonderful, appropriate Nichanian kind of send-off: At the finale, a group of video screens descended from the ceiling and showed the designer through different ages, taking her bows. Now Grace Wales Bonner will take over as men’s creative director. And *that’s *exciting.

Menswear Meets the Moment