Haunt Couture

Paris: the home of classic couture, a city where both men and women are renowned as effortlessly chic and suave. Yet, the latest menswear trend to surface the highly respected Paris Fashion Week catwalk was reminiscent of a scene from a horror film, jaws gapped as many grasped their phones, hands shaking ready to dial the fashion police.

Designers Thom Browne and Walter Van Beirendonck brought Halloween to the A/W menswear catwalks with a frightful new fashion of monster chic! Model Frankensteins dragged their feet down the catwalk supporting jumbo shoulder pads, sportswear skull caps and black eye make up.

Plunging down the rabbit hole into a topsy turvy world without logic or proportion is a common practice of American designer Thom Browne but this latest trip into Wonderland is the most wacky to date. The pretext behind Browne's collection was a high school style punks vs. jocks face off but for inspiration Browne turned to the most unusual of sources from the Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Longest Yard. Though Browne's mission is often to entertain, these broad shouldered figures were hardly symbols of fun.

Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck's collection 'Lust Never Sleeps' continued his venture into sartorial menswear. However, Beirendonck decided to take this exploration up a notch and match the classic tailoring with horrific S&M influences. Attention that should have been drawn towards the smart, well cut candy coloured suits was, instead, directed toward the threatening, fetish voodoo style warrior masks. Though Beirendonck's menswear collections often induce a mix of violence, colour and humour I am not quite sure what to make of this one. Whatever the true meaning behind this collection is, it is clear that Beirendonck has taken his exploration of gender and and masculinity in style to a whole new level.

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