On the last day of the Spring/Summer 2016 Paris menswear season, Lanvin's menswear designer Lucas Ossendrijver took the brand down a New Wave, Thin White Duke, rock and roll road. That is a pretty on nose assessment of the style. When you don this Lanvin collection, you are so cool that you can wear a leather coat or jacket when it's 90 degrees out and never break a sweat. Layering of multiple garments looks like a breeze and bunching up the arms of a jacket above the elbow so that the underlying pattern shirt looks like tattoo sleeves is rebelliously chic.
“I wanted things to have a lived-in feel — like it belongs to you — not squeaky new,” noted men’s wear designer Lucas Ossendrijver. “I like the idea that things aren’t perfect.” The collection did not stray from recent efforts, the dark palette vaguely dystopian; the silhouettes — high-waist pants, satin jackets, diner shirts — vaguely Fifties, and the attitude veering between rock star and haute bicycle messenger.
The smorgasbord of options included a variety of suit silhouettes — from linear to zoot loose — in an airy, wool-nylon blend with a slight sheen that billows and ripples luxuriously. Overcoats had the same relaxed, breezy feel, including ones in paper-thin leather bonded to cotton toile. While the intense handiwork will surely be lost in an Instagram post, the two men view it as a way to stand out from the pack.
And so tank tops sagged low under slouchy suits; quilted vests dangled extra threads from each vertical channel, and utility details came etched in ragged stitches on a full canvas worker jacket. Kudos to team Lanvin that these labor-intensive clothes looked so effortlessly cool.
Ossendrijver claimed the collection celebrated a renewed passion for craft and manual, artisanal attention to detail. "It's not about decoration," he said. Lanvin's decorations do indeed have a slightly haphazard quality. Is that fringe or just a lot of loose threads? Well, it's fringe, of course, and it's that sort of ambiguous touch that gives these clothes their very particular personality. Which makes them stand out, in fact.
