There was an inordinate sense of pace at Lanvin on the final day of spring summer 2015’s menswear itinerary. All the same, if any brand has a firm hold on quick perspicacious elegance in our modern world it’s one of Paris’ first fashion houses, and on the homme catwalk the menswear duo Alber Elbaz and Lucas Ossendrijver didn’t hold back any of their luxury prowess. The stylised dandy has been largely neglected this season, however Elbaz and Ossendrijver reinvigorated him with a new wave edge.
Laced with vagabond-esque trinkets and the kind of unshapely yet oh so constructed threads that tip us off he might care a little more about his image that he would like to let on. This is male luxury at Lanvin, notice that each look has a certain sheen to it, whether that may be the shimmer of a textured shirt, the lick of a cable thin belt strap, or the brash bunching of rippling fabric. Nothing could be boxed into any explicit calculated categories of menswear, which does wonders for the drawing power of the house; instead the candid formality was only intensified as cuts got wider and a little more confident towards the end.
Lanvin for the sui generis man, much like Lanvin for la femme, is ostentation without the affected over-artifical strain; in many ways it has a masculine demureness that is an ectype reflection of Elbaz’s graceful design and lifestyle ethics.
by Liam Feltham
Images courtesy of Style.com