Paris Fashion Week: Celebrities do Dior

It was all about the celebrities and the parties at Paris Fashion Week menswear shows on Saturday as the buzz around the French capital geared up ahead of the weekend change-over to the glamorous haute couture season.

Here are the highlights of the fall-winter men’s collections.

DIOR HOMME’S FASHION HYBRID

“The idea of ‘the hybrid’ is intrinsic,” designer Kris Van Assche said of his fall-winter collection for Dior Homme, shown on a catwalk lit by harsh bands of red neon light.

The Belgian-born designer took guests on a journey through an individual’s changing fashion identities — how a skater or child of the Swinging Sixties who grows up to become a businessman still has traces of his former identity inside.

This starting point led to some interesting looks and a very diverse collection. The bread-and-butter Dior suits were given a retro kick with an old-fashioned bow tie. Scarves and ski hats mixed up with a stylish smoky leather jacket.

Enviable camel duffel coats also made a comeback. Elsewhere, classic suits featured unexpected insets of funky blue plaid — hints that beneath the businessman there’s a fun person lurking to get out.

In terms of aesthetics, the exaggeratedly voluminous pants — called Oxford Bags — were the collection’s most striking feature. They overwhelmed the skinny models — giving many looks a playful edge.

“It’s a young Parisian who creates a skate park in the 800-square-metres (8,000-square feet) apartment he lives in a [historic] Haussmannian building,” the Belgian designer said.

Mere mortals may wonder if such a person really exists — most families in the city would be happy to live in a home a tenth of that size.

But the idea perfectly chimes with classy yet emphatically street clothes that van Assche showed. You could certainly see the sons of the one per cent in the procession of snazzy black suits with a distinct Wild West cut and string ties, or the red overcoats that seemed to be channelling the raffish charm of gambler Wild Bill Hickok.

Van Assche said he took his new dark-and-dangerous-to-know look — a big departure from the bright and flowery colours of his previous more “bourgeois” collection — from a mix of eighties New Wave music, the Berlin of electronic pop pioneers Kraftwerk and skateboard culture.

“I am distancing myself from Christian Dior,” the designer said before the show. “We wanted to be radically 2016-2017. There is a younger, more fashion, perhaps less middle-class edge about this collection that is not at all nostalgic.”

“It is good to have certain references, but we mustn’t abandon ourselves to that nostalgia, it won’t get us very far,” he said.

His last collection full of the white rose Dior motif was “particularly colourful for me”, he said.

“After that I wanted to do the opposite, to do black, the night, Berlin, a collection with a very different tone.”

And it seemed to go down well with his celebrity guests. Korean K-pop star T.O.P said he “loved it” while Chinese movie heartthrob Yang Yang was equally taken. “It’s great,” he said.

Van Assche denied, however, that the collection’s heavy reliance on black and other sombre colours was a reflection of the mood in Paris after the terror attacks.

“I have never found that black was about darkness. I think there is a lot of beauty and romanticism in it,” he said.

Earlier the Paris-based label Etudes — whose studio is near the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people died in November’s attacks — seemed almost to be on a war footing, with a collection largely comprising military-inspired and camouflage outfits, fighter pilot fatigues and parachute suits.

Fresh from his Golden Globes win for playing a mysterious hacktivist in the techno-thriller Mr. Robot, actor Christian Slater was seen admiring the new looks from Dior Homme’s front row in Paris — decked out in head-to-toe Dior. Although he seemed comfortable in this new fashion environment, the attention of the dapper 46-year-old didn’t stray from acting for too long.

“We go back to work in March on the show again, so I’ve just been focused on that, really. It’s just that’s where all my attention is right now,” he said. “That and walking the dogs.”

American hip-hop recording artist Rakim Mayers, aka ASAP Rocky, joined him on the front row alongside actress Noomi Rapace.

KENZO’S COLORFUL FALL

Fall is just as much about colour as spring or summer.

That was the overriding message at Kenzo’s tonal harmony of a show on Saturday that featured 46 funky looks in almost every colour of the rainbow.

Often the musing blossomed from a white single-breasted suit and baggy pants. Then, more tamely, purple appeared alongside grey on a bomber, and bright pink came as a flash on winter gloves.

Then the colours went full throttle when a pale blue bomber sheened past guests with large lapels and assorted shiny pants.

The vibrancy continued with stylish check burgundy pants and a must-have wearable yellow ochre sweater with truncated torso — a new signature for designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim.

TRAVIS SCOTT BRINGS DOWN THE HOUSE

Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci held one of Paris Fashion Week’s hottest parties on Friday night in a sprawling historic apartment overlooking the illuminated Arc de Triomphe.

US rapper and recording artist Travis Scott, who had attended the menswear show decked out in Givenchy, made a surprise performance at the soiree. The 23-year-old — whose debut album Rodeo was released in September — caused even more of a surprise to the security team as he climbed onto the bar to rap.

Needless to say, he got everyone moving.

BALMAIN’S GAY HUSSAR

Models were transported back to the era of the Hungarian Army’s elite horsemen, the Gay Hussars, for Olivier Rousteing’s luxuriant sophomore outing for Balmain menswear.

Thick gold lacing adorned strong-shouldered military jackets alongside quilted red cummerbunds and rich dark velvet pants.

Large leather gauntlet gloves evoked a mood of aggression alongside knee-high leather quilted boots, tassels, shiny buttons and military insignia.

There is no doubting the craftsmanship of the richly constructed garments, and as a piece of fashion drama no one delivers better than Balmain. But styles such as these may be an acquired taste — certainly they are not for the shy.