Paris Fashion Week Homme for the Autumn-Winter 2024-2025 season promises a steady pace with 42 runway shows and 32 presentations. Boutiques are stimulating the segment with innovative initiatives, while major events by major Houses mark the advent of a new masculinity in the fashion industry.
The provisional calendar for the next Paris Fashion Week Homme has been made public, revealing a number of new features. For the Autumn-Winter 2024-2025 Season, a total of 74 events are scheduled, including 42 shows and 32 presentations spread over six days, from Tuesday January 16 to Sunday January 21, 2024. Despite a slight reduction compared to last year, the pace of this Fashion Week promises to be sustained.
If the fascination with the French woman, particularly the Parisienne, is worldwide, what about French men’s style? The history of French style has always fascinated Gauthier Borsarello, co-founder of L’Étiquette magazine and Creative Director of de Fursac.
“It’s important to remember that the fall of royalty in 1789 put an end to a men’s wardrobe whose fashions were dictated by the court. From then on, men dressed according to their function: butchers in white, railwaymen in black moleskin. All this more or less held out until the arrival of Anglo-Saxon influence after the war and rock and roll in the 1960s. The French style, marked by work uniforms, was then imbued with American influences, mixing a pair of Weston loafers with a leather jacket, cowboy boots with a Charvet shirt…”
More than just a wardrobe, French style is a kind of savoir-vivre, avoiding excess and adopting a nonchalant posture inherited from the New Wave. “It’s neither the mannered, highly polished side of the Italian, nor the rigor of the English,” explains the founder of Officine générale.
Mr Porter, the e-commerce site dedicated to men’s fashion, notes the popularity of many French brands, such as A.P.C., AMI Paris, Officine générale and Isabel Marant. “Their clothes are subtle, with finely crafted details, appreciated by fashion insiders and a wider international audience alike,” observes Olie Arnold, Mr Porter’s style director.
A worldwide renaissance
Last June, online luxury and lifestyle retailer Mytheresa opened its new men’s ready-to-wear boutique in Munich, enlarged by 300 square meters, to capitalize on the growing opportunities in menswear. Managing Director Michael Kliger says that luxury menswear consumers are increasingly focusing on luxurious basics and design-led styles. And this at the expense of ostentatious, logo-dominated fashion. Originally, the store was strongly focused on fashionable brands such as Balenciaga, Gucci and Alexander McQueen. Now, it features brands such as Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli,” explains Mr. Kliger.
Mytheresa had made its entry into menswear in January 2020 with the opening of its dedicated physical store in Munich and its e-commerce site. Since then, the platform has been working to strengthen its position in menswear, which currently accounts for 10% of business and is growing “remarkably” faster than womenswear, according to Mr. Kliger. Although the men’s boutique remains smaller than Mytheresa’s women’s clothing store, which spans 1,000 square meters and is only 10 meters away, it is profitable and seen as a relevant piece of the puzzle, according to Mr. Kliger.
In the same vein, the major retail chains in South Korea are redoubling their efforts to attract male consumers, who have recently proved to be big spenders. The Gangnam branch of the Shinsegae Department Store, the sales leader among national department stores, recently remodeled its men’s section to target the “MZ generation”, the Korean term for millennials and Generation Z. The share of contemporary items rose from 40.5% in 2020 to 46% last year in Shinsegae Department Store’s men’s fashion category, and from 47.6% in 2020 to 50.9% in its Gangnam branch.
In addition, the Pangyo branch of the Hyundai Department Store, which records the highest sales among Hyundai stores, has reoriented its men’s section towards a luxury concept, targeting higher-income male customers. The branch has attracted global luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Gucci and Tom Ford, popular with male consumers in their thirties, and opened a high-end watch section. According to Hyundai Department Store, growth in the number of male customers is set to increase from 19% in 2020 to 39% in 2021 and 28% in 2022.
New masculinity
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Featured photo : ©LVMH
