Dear Shaded Viewers,
There is something thrilling about a Comme des Garçons Homme Plus show that refuses to sit still, and tonight’s two-act presentation — first at the Élysée Montmartre, then spilling into an installation in the courtyard of Dover Street Market Paris — did exactly that. The only text the house offered as explanation was a title, “If The War Were To End…” and somehow that was enough. Read as a question, a wish, a dare, it set the tone for a collection that felt less like armor and more like release: color as celebration, pattern as defiance, tailoring as joy.
Every model arrived under the same soft, slumped bucket hat in bone and ivory, with long curtains of silvery, raffia-like fringe falling past the chin to half-obscure the face. It was a brilliant unifying device — a “uniform” imposed on top of wildly different clothes — and it gave the whole collection the feel of a tribe rather than a runway, faces glimpsed rather than presented, identity dissolved into something collective and a little otherworldly. Hair and make-up by Takeo Arai and the remarkable headpieces by Hizume turned what could have been a styling gimmick into the emotional anchor of the night.
The opening salvo leaned into awning-stripe shirting and tailoring — candy pink and navy, jade and white, sky blue and white — cut into oversized coats, kimono-sleeved overshirts, and skirts that swung like they were enjoying themselves. Layering stripe-on-stripe in clashing scales (a pink pinstripe coat over a green-striped shirt-dress, for instance) is a classic CDG sleight of hand, but here it read fresh and summery rather than studied, helped along by exaggerated bucket-shaped silhouettes and an easy, walking-pajama looseness through the leg.
Just as the eye adjusted to stripes, the palette shifted into a dreamier register: camouflage prints rendered in lilac, seafoam, lemon, and blush, cut into clean swing coats worn over simple bright shirting and slouchy khaki trousers. It is camo with all of its menace surgically removed — a print built for combat reimagined as a print built for pleasure — and it might be the most purely beautiful idea in the whole collection. Tonal ivory and dove-grey camo, draped into ruffled hems and drawstring skirts a few exits later, pushed the same idea into something almost monastic and quietly spectacular.
Just when the show threatened to stay gentle, it didn’t. A lavender double-breasted blazer landed over a sherbet-green wide trouser and a riot of striped knitwear; a few exits on, an electric chartreuse blazer collided with a yellow mesh top and a blush satin ruffled skirt, the whole thing grounded — if that’s the word — by sculptural wedge boots that curve up at the toe like a smile. This is Homme Plus doing what it does best: throwing pieces together that should not work, and watching them work anyway.
Then, the tartan arrives. A patch worked red-navy-yellow plaid suit, double-breasted and a little surreal in its piecing, paired with a poppy-red shirt and balloon trousers gathered at the ankle, is the kind of look that makes you want to applaud out loud. A second pass swaps in a white windowpane shirt beneath the same patchwork tailoring, proving the fabric mixing was never an accident — it was a whole vocabulary.
The finale stretch turned the lights down without losing the wit: a black double-breasted coat slashed open over a flash of red shirting, voluminous black balloon trousers ballooning even further beneath a black-and-yellow suit, and — best of all — a black tailored jacket whose sleeves and back panels erupt into shimmering silver snake-print mesh worn bare-chested, equal parts biker and ballroom. A tan trench with mesh paneling in marigold over liquid cobalt trousers closed out the moody passage on a genuinely covetable note.
And just when you thought the graphics were done, the house’s own name became the print: oversized COMME des GARÇONS lettering, splashed across a black jacket and orange-and-sky tropical-toned shorts, and again on a black-and-yellow tailored coat worn over a red-and-black typographic skirt. Branding as pattern, logo as costume — it’s a knowing, funny final flourish from a house that has earned the right to wear its own name like a print.
The footwear collaborations deserve their own round of applause: the Mexicana x Comme des Garçons Homme Plus extended boots gave nearly every exit its sculptural, curved-toe wedge silhouette, turning the floor into something closer to a kinetic art piece than a runway. The George Cox x Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Patchwork Derby brought a softer, scholarly counterpoint, and Kids Love Gaite added its own playful signature underfoot. The Nike x Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Pegasus Premium CDG SP wasn’t on the runway tonight, but its absence only makes the eventual reveal more anticipated.
With lighting by Thierry Dreyfus casting the Élysée Montmartre in a glow that made every stripe and swirl glow like stained glass, an artist collaboration with Nejc Prah threaded through the installation at Dover Street Market, and a score mixed by Ugo Nardini (ADC303) that kept the energy buoyant rather than ominous, this was a Comme des Garçons Homme Plus collection that chose hope. If the war were to end — and the title leaves that delightfully open — this is exactly the wardrobe you’d want for the morning after: striped, plaided, camouflaged in candy colors, and completely, unapologetically alive.
Later,
Diane
