Out of Africa and onto the catwalks at PFW

Louis Vuitton staged a punkish African safari-themed Paris menswear show
Wednesday in fittingly stifling heat. With model Kate Moss and footballer
David Beckham melting in the front row, the fashion house that made its
name from its steamer trunks in an age of more
refined travel, gave the aristocratic “Out of Africa” look a rakishly punk
twist.

Vuitton’s British artistic director Kim Jones — who grew up in Kenya and
Botswana — said he wanted to give the gentleman traveller a modern
makeover.
His spring-summer collection for 2017 was unapologetically macho, a big
game hunter gone native, with lots of African touches that go beyond the
crocodile and ostrich-skin coats and jackets in Savannah-bleached shades.

“There’s always a little London hidden somewhere though,” said Jones, who
cut the safari motifs with lots of tartan and punkish zips, belts and “dog
collar” leather chokers.
He also commissioned the famously provocative British artists Jake and
Dinos Chapman to create a bestiary of four twisted animal prints featuring
giraffes and rhinos.

Tartan was also strongly present in a number of other shows, running
through Kolor’s collection on Thursday, having popped up the previous day in
another Japanese brand Facetasm’s Paris debut.
And the trendy French brand OAMC went the whole hog with check
Crombie-style coats and trousers.

But the most striking looks on the catwalk Thursday were light years away
from designers’ traditional references. The American designer Rick Owens
channelled the Neil Young song “After the Goldrush” with his voluminous
“jumbo bodybags” in which men would wrap
themselves to shelter from the coming “ecological doom”.

Their oversized proportions, however, gave his models a few tricky moments
as they tripped on the trousers that Owens had specifically designed to
“drag
on the floor”.

The half-Iranian Barcelona-based German designer Boris Bidjan Saberi seemed
also to be dressing his men for a post-apocalyptic future in gorgeously
distressed leather and suede grey and ochre combinations — think chic “Mad
Max” — set off with corsets-cum-cumberbands. (AFP)