Tilda Swinton (of course) first introduced Timothée Chalamet to Haider Ackermann and his iteration of Berluti. Even though he’s due at the SAG Awards in just over 48 hours—where I’d wager he’ll be wearing something from this collection—the breakout star of Call Me by Your Name was here tonight alongside Antoine Arnault. What was his review?
“This is my first show,” Chalamet said afterwards. “It was incredible. Haider is my favorite designer; he carries the idea of artistry and [being an] auteur, which is more of a language I understand on the filmmaking side, and I don’t understand on the fashion side—but he is the closest thing to what an auteur is in fashion.”
To quibble, there are many other auteurs active in menswear right now (Jun Takahashi, Antonio Marras, and Charles Jeffrey all bubble forth) but from his one-show perspective Chalamet was on the money: Ackermann is awesome at evoking atmosphere, mood, and feeling via clothing. Tonight’s take was set in a faded pink cube whispered with dry ice at the end of the runway. On the soundtrack Nick Cave spoke about craving, for real love.
Atop the stacked-sole boots which encourage the back to straighten and the pelvis to swing and that seem so very Haider—although he doesn’t wear them himself, shows apart—came a cast of predictably lush gazillionairewear looks. Buttery is the tritest adjective to apply to leather, but for a reason: the leather trenches and pants here were more buttery than the entire dairy output of Normandy. Some of that buttery spread was evident in the slick rich sheen we saw on the runway, but much of it was hidden; both a brandy-color herringbone covert coat with matching pants and a corduroy equivalent were lined with black leather. There were black leather boxer shorts too. An emerald green suede trench and matching pant was so beloved by the designer he sent it out twice: duly noted.
For those that feel china-shop unease (me) about wearing garments so delicately precious, there were tougher, rougher, more mess up–able pieces, too: a white-shearling-lined navy coat, a green military coat with a gently distressed patina, and a series of bonded bicolor parkas in nylon in camel and gray, or in emerald and black (Stella Tennant, who modeled the camel, confessed as she left to really fancy the emerald).
To be a protagonist in the menswear mise-en-scène sketched so deeply by Ackermann at Berluti all you have to do is buy in. You probably won’t win any awards, and you absolutely will see your bank balance plummet. But you will feel like a master of your universe.
