Je n’ai pas eu le cœur de présenter une mode fantaisiste, ludique, cocasse… mais plutôt des vêtements simples, élégants, sobres, comme nous essayons tous de l’être aujourd’hui, dans notre vie quotidienne de parisien

I did not have the heart to present a superficial, playful, and funny collection… but rather simple, elegant and sober clothes, the way we are all trying to be today in our Parisian daily life.

(signed Agnès B in the program notes from the show, thereby becoming the one designer at Paris Fashion Week Homme to make reference to the terrorist attacks on Paris back in November both in word as well as in her creations)

By far the best show we covered during Paris fashion week, this show was an homage to France and to style for men per se as we know it from the sober and distant past. It has a New York or Chicago feel from the twenties and the thirties where you expect a newspaper boy with a Gatsby casquette to appear in order to sell a freshly printed Tribune to a man who looks like Dick Tracy or, hey, why not Dillinger. It breathes class, distinction, quality, character and timelessness.

Whoever said that best of man’s fashion was to be found in Milan? For if this is the future of menswear in France, this return to the sober past of functionality and style will herald a new era in style pour homme: The milkman, the newspaper boy, the accountant, the lawyer, the scholar, the sailor, aye, the journalist – functional all in character, and impeccably dressed by Agnès B. Dandies please not apply.

The idea was always that mode pour homme in France should always come as chic – like, let’s say, as in Givenchy, or Saint Laurent. But now here comes Agnès B with a serious challenge to the global pre-conception that good times will last forever and that we are always entitled to our chic and our success. No, indeed we are not, and Agnès B, either willfully or intuitively, brings us back down to earth with the most functional, practical and most basic of styles for men. The style of the art of functionality and character from the men of yore who knew where was their place and position in society, and what was expected from them. A style for men who do not aspire too much. Or want too much. For men who like to stay calm and keep things simple but classy. This is the functionality and sobriety of a style which can only be compared to that what people must have lived in London in the forties during the Blitz.

And then on a separate and final note in the collection on the runway Agnès B suddenly makes an homage to La France by allowing for a cameo appearance of traditional French dress during revolutionary times. You will be able to find three pictures in the slideshow below.

Vive la résistance!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Sandro and photos by Mous.