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Francis Montesinos Gets Loco at MBFW Madrid

Cities | Madrid | 18.02.2017

Francis Montesinos takes things to another level for AW17/18 as per usual. The show starting off with bagpipes and a set based on Adam and Eve, elf-styled models walked the runway to Peter Pan music, decked out in green, colorful woodsy green outfits and floral patterns.

The men sported Robin-Hood esque furs, sheepskins and feathers, grandpa-esque knitwear in bold colors like purple and bright green and the occasional pop of white when needed. Wearable? Not sure, but certainly fun.

Words by Lori Zaino and photos from Ugo Camera IFEMA.

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Devota y Lomba Take Menswear Back to the Classics at MBFW Madrid

Cities | Madrid | 17.02.2017

Devota y Lomba brings it back to the classics with a huge presence of menswear f0r AW17/18–and not just for men. Both women and men sported tweed capes and baggy, belted suits and an all-over masculine vibe.

The belt was a big feature this season, hooking together voluminous layers under suit jackets and snazzy dress pants. Jackets layered over untucked shirts,long vests and colorblocked blazers also took the collection from a typical Savile Row dapper style to an edgy new level.

Tweed and wool offer winter warmth and bowties paired with the baggy trousers offer a juxtaposed tailored, yet untailored look that we at BDMOTP absolutely love. Plus, we loved the layered blazer upon blazer and white cuffs.

Words by Lori Zaino and photos from Ugo Camera IFEMA.

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Agnès b at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 28.01.2017

Always save the best for last.

Because there is no substitute for class, here is Agnès b. After all this is the designer who once worked with Quentin Tarantino to create the style and the characters of Pulp Fiction. She also worked with David Lynch. And it must be said it often takes a great stylist – perchance always – to create a great film. So that neither the brand nor the name needs an introduction by Best Dressed Man.

Therefore we like to close with the Agnès b. feature shoot because it puts the perfect finishing touch over one fashion week homme in both range and variety of styles which today come out of France, and for which the country is well-known, if not famous.

Here is a small Anthology for the week.

Fittingly the week opened with grand old style deacon Lucien Pellat-Finet who under the motto ‘the bad taste of yesterday is the good taste of today’ playfully recreated what is universally known as a style of French Pop.

As the week continued there was Officine Générale with a new collection, a rather new brand (2012) based upon a French style notion of, well, being French and therefore inevitably French Nonchalance. A casual style most ‘decontracté’.

Our Fashion Tour de France continued to Commune de Paris 1871 where we identified a rebellious form of what we dubbed Workman Chic. Super French indeed.

So here is the closer. And no comments left. As there is no substitute for French Class.

Voilà Agnès b.

Words by Sandro and photos from Agnès b.

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Paul & Joe at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 27.01.2017

Best Dressed Man was very kindly received last week at the Paul & Joe showroom & atelier on rue Commines in an area of Paris in what may be considered the local garment district in order to get a preview of the latest Paul & Joe men’s collection for purposes of this short article. The facility, well-hidden in a friendly courtyard was conducting big brand business during the day as large package orders were being hailed out in order from the premises in order to be shipped to Taiwan. Entourage and decoration are everything in fashion they say, and so it remained with us that the people at Paul & Joe were friendly and hospitable, that the designers were available, and the press agents attentive and to the point, while we visited a large showroom set up in a lavish and lush animal and flower and jungle theme, an inspiration which of course you will be able to find back in the preview of the AW 17/18 menswear collection. In the middle of the room there was a life-size panther mannequin sitting under a tree as a quiet bland orange light gently changed the shades on floral patterns and rustling leaves.

The new collection is classy yet simple and straightforward in a trademark Paul & Joe style but also accessible in its range, and it holds enough elegance to keep spoiled urban chic critics at bay especially because we find here yet again one of those where-have-you-been-until-now retro 80’s looks and designs in plain and simple terms. Jungle flower patterns with animal faces occasionally glimpsing through (the love of animals is a recurrent theme with Paul & Joe), but best 80’s feature of all is that remarkable and recognizable bland set of colors as well as the rather simple cuts and designs which define this forgotten decade handsomely, and which Paul & Joe managed to bring back in delightful fashion.

This retro style is more necessary today than ever before because all of life today often seems to run us simply by as we rush on in the double fast lane of digital technology and a complete lack of real-time personal communications.

But the 80’s was an era when people are still talking face to face and at least one decade before the onset and onslaught of the age of information and the internet. It explains well therefore why also other good brands besides Paul & Joe, like for example Carven or ACNE have recently created 80’s retro looks, because in a time when nothing of traditional value still seems to appear what it once was, it is only normal that people start looking for a safer and a simpler world of yore.

So gentlemen please allow Paul & Joe to bring this lost and forgotten style back for you in beautifully simple and classy fashion with their coming menswear collection for AW 17/18.

(An honorable mention deserves a showroom item perched high upon a mannequin which can only be described (now that we are talking 80’s) as a furry Pimp Coat (in white no less) in what may very well be a classy tribute to ‘Rick James’ and the character ‘)

Words by Sandro and photos from Paul & Joe.

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Commune de Paris 1871 at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 27.01.2017

Commune de Paris 1871 is a high end French menswear brand whose name is based upon the peoples uprising that took place in the spring of that year in Paris, but which was crushed in bloody fashion after only two or three months. Therefore, it stands for a rebellious spirit and we find that vibe back in the CDP look book under inspirations. In fact, it is that very typical spirit which can only be described to foreigners as perhaps ‘rive droit’, that cradle of the spirit of the revolution.

But today’s contemporary ‘communards’ (the rebellious rabble of yore) are coming in the form of BoNoBos (bourgeois not bohemienne) as the style of CDP is to be called rather BCBG (bon chic bon genre) or perhaps even simply high-end chic urbain. They also come in form of urban tourists as this is the theme of the new CDP AW 17 collection. And to mark the event in colors and great stylized shapes and patterns the collection also prides a cool collaboration with a well-known graphics design bureau (Les Graphiquants). And this is a hit. For the patterns and colors in the garments are refreshingly modern and interesting yet simple as something out of a museum for design or modern art.

The press release therefore describes the wear rightly as Fancy Workwear, Fun, with Bold Graphics, Simplicity and in the style of a Uniform. So that despite the uppity mix of great fabrics (lots of wools, cashmere, alpaca, moleskin and satin) and a refreshingly rich and popular look (grand sweaters, baseball caps, high school sports or bomber jackets), and beyond all what wealthy young people can afford today, there is still this link to the simplicity of the humble worker, the bus driver, postman, or taxi driver. Which of course is very Parisian in its conception – let’s call it Worker Chic.

You see, what we failed to mention, is that de Commune de Paris 1871 store in Paris was recently broken into by thieves and robbed. And you’d think they would take the money or the I-pads, but no, they only came for 6 shirts or sweaters. So what better advertisement there is in this day and age when the first thing to be robbed in Paris is the Apple store or Kim Kardashian, to have your high end fashion store robbed by people who only take a couple of shirts?

It thus seems that the spirit of 1871 is still alive on the Rive Droit.

Words by Sandro and photos from Commune de Paris 1871.

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Sankuanz at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 26.01.2017

Sankuanz may very well be China’s answer to Julius from Japan in that the inspiration for the collection comes from a rather dystopian future, with the one difference that the ominous source of all the colorful and oddly shaped sartorial trouble is perhaps not a book (the Julius show theme was based upon a 1984 sci-fi novel), but rather some twisted take on the aberrant universe straight from the millennial gaming industry’s classics like the Half-Life, Bio Shock, or Fallout series, in that most of the characters of the cast are dressed in industrial tech fabrics and materials (designer Shangguan Zhe is using DuPont materials, UHMWPE, as well as aramid fibers for his creations), as well as in bio-hazard suits, which – as gaming legend would have it – must warrant all of us different levels of protection from whatever assault or onslaught both natural or unnatural the future may hold.

Comes to mind a well-known quote from Half-Life 2 as perhaps a fitting motto for the Sankuanz collection AW 17:

“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference. So wake up Mr. Freeman, wake up. And smell the ashes.”

When then you read that the Sankuanz show press release tells us pointedly that the outfits and garments on the runways are for a time of ‘an unravelling of the establishment’ (cue Half-Life, Fallout, Bio Shock and recent events in modern-day politics from Brexit to the election to Donald Trump), then you realize that designer Zhe perhaps is onto something.

And to be as disruptive and as blunt as possible (sound familiar?) he then continues to rub salt in our aesthetic wounds by parading in front of us as word prints on hazard wear with the following brutal catch phrases as the dark and stark reminder of the realities of our barren times: ‘immigrant’, ‘massacre’, ‘natural selection’, ‘visual pollution’, and simply ‘destroy’.

Hence that the show is called ‘destroy’ and we must make a special citation here for the originality of the runway show invitation which came in the form of space age material wrist bracelet / band – in tatters and rolls, and, who knows, probably resistant to any form of rhodium radiation:

“Welcome. Welcome to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers.”

(from Half-Life 2: that pervasive disembodied voice of a ubiquitously droning announcement in an abandoned city)

Words by Sandro and photos from Sankuanz.

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Walter van Beirendonck at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 25.01.2017

What would you expect? Hey after all this is the man who once dressed up to be photographed like Godzilla while sporting a biker beard – and as a giant mushroom with a frog on his bold head.

Yes folks, it is Walter van Beirendonck again, the old Belgian master, this time with a pagan quality show which can only be related somehow to the 18^th century histoire of a local Belgian gang called the Buckriders who once upon a lost time terrorized local populations dressed up as goats. For here was a pagan ensemble dressed up as goats playing drums and disharmonious instruments with a pan-like creature goading and guiding and egging on the models on the runway as the Piper at the Gates of Dawn – if not the terrified fashionistas in the crowd and audience.

But hey what matters, if the quality of the style of menswear is actually really good – if not even a little chic despite the multiform accessories and interesting sartorial contraptions pasted across (or hanging form) the designs; the colorful symphony outstanding in its pallet and imagination if not the range and variety of materials; and if through the medieval chaos or 18^th century angst both modern elegance and class still manage to shine through.

In short, this old master once delivered again, as amazingly Walter van Beirendonck keeps on dreaming up yet ever more harrowing tales – or beautiful stories if you want, in the pursuit of tailoring excellence and the power of wild imagination in men’s fashion.

Hold on for the ride! For here come Walter’s Buckriders…

WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK MEN FW17, Paris, 1/18/2017

Words by Sandro and photos by Walter van Beirendonck.

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Julius at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 25.01.2017

The date is 1984 but the setting is the far or the near Sci-Fi future in which all people are plugged into a digital matrix that eventually will lead to what is called a technological ‘singularity’. Not so far off perhaps according some like Elon Musk and others who believe that AI – artificial intelligence – will take over to the point that there will be no escape from such a dystopia and the human free will and agent will be entirely replaced by a technological paradigm for the ages. This is the setting of the Julius collection AW 17 and probably also the real vision of the future of designer Tatsuro Horikawa from Japan, and we have to say that the cast of characters created by his extraordinary post-urban if not apocalyptic street style designs is one to savor and cherish, if not from a viewpoint of style, then surely from a perspective of grand design and sartorial art where lifeless automatons once called humans roam freely in a cyberspace digital super portal with no direction home.

Oh well, but that still does not explain the 1984 reference but for that if you must know that it was precisely the year in which George Orwell’s famous dystopia was playing out (written many years earlier of course), that a grand classic Sci-Fi novel was written upon which many a future movie or book in the genre was going to be based. It’s called the Neuromancer by William Gibson published in, you got it, 1984, which is about a hacker (sound familiar) in a far dystopian future who can no longer get back into cyberspace as he has been punished by a corporation who take away his access to cyberspace by poisoning his neurological system necessary to plug in. The rest of the story is best left up to the digital cyber creatures crawling on the Julius runway. Sartorial marvels and gems all at best, no more human at worst.

Words by Sandro and photos from Julius.

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Officine Générale at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 24.01.2017

The young French brand Officine Générale (2012) under direction of designer / creative director Pierre Mahéo remarkably seems to sell more product in the United States than in France and is currently opening up its second store in Paris. It prides itself therefore in the collections on what is considered the typical French, look, style, and quality and of course inevitably the question will then be raised what exactly is considered as ‘French’ in the sartorial arts.

Well, we all know it when we see it, when we recognize it but let’s try to define it. Take a good look at the collection below in the slideshow and you ask yourself why what you see is so very French; then try to define what you see or what you think. It is,frankly, easier said than done, but Best Dressed Man will give it a try here.

Of course ‘French’ style means a certain degree of elegance – or rather élégance – the phonetics themselves defining the meaning of the very word by difference of the accents with which it is pronounced. A certain aspiration to chic, or class, or good style, or good taste, but WITHOUT being BCBG (bon chic bon genre, like let’s say, Tommy or Ralph Lauren etc.).

It clearly also means a certain ‘decontraction’ of style – a casualness in dressing up – as in casual wear or as in the word ‘décontracté’ – like loosely wearing your shirt hanging out of your pants for example – and Pierre Mahéo in a recent GQ interview makes the interesting comment that indeed this liberty of style does not only belong to women but certainly also to men; and that when this freedom of wearing the things the way you want is applied also to men that this is so very French.

What is even more interesting is the point made by Mahéo that casualness is really not so much about the clothes themselves that you are wearing but that it has everything to do with the way you wear them which makes the look French (Le Look anyone?). As an example the designer gives the idea that older and used shirts and sweaters are often much better in wear, because of the wrinkles that give a natural look – so that one may look very ‘décontracté or casual indeed. No need to buy stonewashed or pre-shrunk or faded clothes therefore. For that is NEW.

No, above all, to look and feel French in your menswear, you need that globally branded French attitude well-known in pop culture which simply is called ‘nonchalance’, a the-devil-may-care or casual I-don’t-care attitude – and you don’t even need to be pretending to be chain smoking unlit cigarettes loosely dangling from your bottom lip in order to obtain it.

For here is the Best Dressed Man on the Planet guide of tips on how to look positively French:

Unbutton your collar or wrinkle or flap it halfway up (think: Eric Cantona) and whatever you do, do not straighten it
NEVER wear a tie
Wear a T–shirt, turtle neck or V–neck sweater under your jacket and NO shirt
Knot your favorite neck scarf or foulard tightly around your neck
Do wear clean wrinkled-up or old clothes – in other words, don’t fold your clothes too crisply, and wear them out but not completely
Often buy something elegant or a little chic and NOT too poppy or sporty, like something made by Officine Générale for instance
Make sure your belt misses the buckle, or that your shirt, jacket, or coat misses a button here or there (and pretend you never noticed or are too lazy to fix it)
When choosing colors go against the grain, be very contraire (wear light colors in winter and dark colors in summer) but never disagreeable
Wear ‘baskets’ (hmm Converse) or other types of old timer sneakers under an elegant two piece suit or beautiful alpaca sweater
Always dress down gently and never dress up

Since indeed the theme of this Officine Générale AW 17 collection is the French look, Pierre Mahéo defines for us in the press release what he considers to be typical French style icons for men:

“This «French style» seems to exist. Roger Vadim, Maurice Ronet, Francois Truffaut, Jonas Bloquet, Louis Garrel, Jacques Dutronc, Tahar Rahim, Jean-Michel Frank, Benjamin Biolay, Nicolas Godin… a few names from a list that will never be entirely exhaustive.”

Finally, so as to end this essay while leaving it ambiguously open to multiple interpretations, it’s said that Napoleon was once asked about who was the better soldier, the Englishman or a Frenchman!? His answer, as history shows, is both pointed and telling when applied to men’s fashion, and may perhaps explain the last thing that you may want to know before buying (and trying) your first item at Officine Générale so as to create a French look for men:

“An Englishman is proud, and proud people make good soldiers; but … a Frenchman, he is vain, and a vain man – he can or will do anything.”

Word by Sandro and photos from Officine Générale.

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Henrik Vibskov at Paris Fashion Week Homme AW 17/18

Cities | Paris | 23.01.2017

When observing Henrik Vibskov’s marvelous creations and collections on the runway each time they somehow seem to resonate with E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 story about a Kingdom of the Dolls, better known publicly the world over as ‘The Nutcracker’. Here are colors, cuts, and shapes and forms gently playing out the grand cabaret of characters from childhood dreams, and when you read the press release indeed it is mentioned that some of this latest marvel of a Henrik Vibskov collection was inspired by ‘puzzles’, ‘painted wooden toys’, and ‘board games from the 60’s’.

Add to this that two of Henrik’s projects this year include working on Madame Butterfly in Belgium as well as on Swanlake here in Paris, then you will understand that we did not witness just an ordinary fashion collection homme but rather an entire theatrical set where a small drama was being played out in front of all the grateful fashionistas present. For where fashion design ends perhaps this is also the place where the theatre of dreams may begin.

A sport and exercise based theme necessary for a time when our lives are hectic was actively being played out by 12 human dolls in slow motion on a stage in the middle of a grand square runway in a ballroom like setting – before the show, during the show, and still continuing and slowly dying out with the music after the runway show was already over. Of course the unexpected effect of having different elements of a similar theme going on at the same time but at a different pace, makes for most a most marvelous experience: The doll-like fashion creations parading around the grand ballroom on the runway while slow motion dolls are performing a stationary sport or yoga like exercise on the stage in the middle.

We have seen this concept applied before at fashion shows (notably Philipp Plein) but never seen it implemented this perfectly and professionally. Because if the choreography or the music are off – even by one beat – the effect is gone and the show will fall apart at the seams. But the Henrik Vibskov AW 17 show was executed and rehearsed to perfection.

And so all the patterns and colors and the style are clearly recognizable as Vibskov – and especially his sweaters are things worthy of wonder and admiration – during this grand parade of the human dolls while a cacophony of impressions, sounds and various colors slowly comes to a grand decrescendo as if when imagining or witnessing a recently discovered antique tablet or mural – full of colors and odd shapes – from deep in the Aztec or Mayan jungles having come alive for the first time, only to slowly fade away again into the hidden world of dreams.

Henrik Vibskov is a master, and you can even spot him on the runway below.