Ten collections that signalled a shift, including creative director debuts and material-led reinvention

It comes as little surprise that Paris is in the middle of a turnover. Across the Spring/Summer menswear season staged last June,  a multitude of directional shifts were seen and an unusual number of new creative directors stepped into place, resetting houses that have long been defined by continuity. Houses played around with texture, tailoring and material experimentation to push familiar codes into unfamiliar territory, all moving with an awareness that Paris was being watched attentively.

Before the next round of shows begins on Tuesday, we’re looking back at the SS26 menswear season and the collections that cut through with clarity and intention, and felt genuinely indicative of where Paris might be headed next. Below are our ten standout collections, each represented by a single look worth revisiting and sitting with a little longer.

‍3.Paradis

3.Paradis’ SS26 circled the illusion of time, set against a desert imagined as endless and suspended. Drawing on The Little Prince, Emeric Tchatchoua leaned into surrealism and sentiment, and mixed relaxed outerwear and wide shorts with sharply cut tailoring. Asymmetry, saturated sunset tones, and playful gestures like watches cascading from a coat collapsed past, present, and future into a single frame. 

Dior Men

For his SS26 debut at Dior Men, Jonathan Anderson approached the house with both care and mischief. Instead of treating Dior’s legacy as something to preserve under glass, Anderson worked it into motion, pairing sharp silhouettes with a distinctly lighter, more playful hand.The collection nodded to Christian Dior’s foundational love of tailoring, but it was disrupted through Anderson’s lens: oversized cargo shorts, relaxed waistcoats, softened smoking jackets, layered proportions and the occasional puffer slipping into the mix. 

JAH JAH

JAH JAH’s SS26 debut at Paris Fashion Week extended the brand’s Rastafarian and Pan-African ethos into fashion with subtle conviction. The label is led by self-taught designer Daquisiline Gomis and continues its evolution from Afro-vegan cultural space to fashion house, using dress as memory and movement. Titled A Silent March, the collection treated clothing as cultural signal: West African tailoring reworked into sculptural suits, Jamaican crochet, flowing silhouettes and dense textures combining into looks that felt ceremonial and defiant.

‍AWGE 

AWGE’s SS26 outing landed in Paris as a knowing exercise in disorder. Titled Obligatory Clothing, A$AP Rocky turned the runway into an American courtroom, complete with metal detectors, using the setting to interrogate how uniforms and dress codes police identity. Streetwear collided with suiting and institutional dress: clashing plaids, graphic motifs of restraint, jeans with stacked waistlines, and tailoring disrupted by bandanas and oddball accessories. The mood was intentionally unsteady, part satire, part provocation, with “Not Guilty” stamped across select looks. 

Louis Vuitton

Pharrell’s SS26 menswear for Louis Vuitton was a soft-spoken study in modern Indian tailoring, filtered through the house’s dandy instincts. Set on a giant Snakes and Ladders board designed with Studio Mumbai, the collection leaned into lived-in elegance with relaxed suiting, fluid coats and easy shirting came washed in sun-faded earth tones. It was one of Pharrell’s most restrained offerings for the house, but intentionally so: polished, highly wearable and grounded in craft, with heritage travel codes resurfacing in refreshed bags and animal prints.

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus returned last season with a proposition.Titled Not Suits, But Suits, Rei Kawakubo dismantled tailoring as we know it through their SS26 collection, inflating jackets into sculptural forms, splitting seams with zips that exposed ruffles beneath, and stacking layers until the suit became rather ritualistic. Muted greys and blacks were paired with metallic flashes and geometric interruptions, while braided wigs and oversized headwear pushed the looks into near-mythic territory.

Rick Owens 

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Rick Owens’ SS26 menswear, Temple, unfolded as a water-drenched ritual at the Palais de Tokyo, raw and unflinching. Timed with his retrospective at the Palais Galliera, the show distilled his ethos into “tough clothes for tough times,” pulling from the fetishwear and street economies of early ’90s Hollywood while balancing brutality with moments of fragile beauty.

Wales Bonner

A decade in, Wales Bonner did not overstate the moment. Their SS26 menswear show displayed a decade of craft into something sharp and assured, where precision brushed up against sportswear ease.

Maison Margiela 

During Maison Margiela’s co-ed SS26 show, models appeared with metal orthodontic staples pulling their mouths wide open, functioning as a Four Stitch mouthpiece and referencing the house’s non-logo. The presentation unfolded alongside a live orchestra of 61 young musicians, reinforcing the tension between control, exposure and performance that shaped the collection. 

IM Men

For its second Paris outing, Issey Miyake’s IM Men turned to the work of Japanese ceramic artist Shoji Kamoda, translating his restless, tactile practice into cloth. The SS26 collection was an exploration of surface, movement and form. Fabrics echoed the glazes and finishes of Kamoda’s ceramics: metallic silvers recalling Gintō pottery, scale-like patterns drawn from animalistic motifs, and tonal contrasts inspired by ash glazes.The result sat somewhere between clothing and object, where texture led the conversation and fashion behaved like a living sculpture.

Across Paris, designers seemed less interested in reinvention for its own sake and more focused on reorienting the houses they now lead. Texture replaced spectacle, and materials seemed to carry more meaning. Even the most theatrical presentations were grounded in lived reference. If SS26 showed anything, it was that Paris is no longer asking designers to shout. It is asking them to articulate. To understand what their house stands for now, and how that meaning is carried materially, structurally and emotionally. As the next season approaches, we’re excited to see how these designers carry this forward.