This was a really interesting collection, until it really wasn’t. That threshold between “yes, please” and “please, no more” was hit when a female model in a dark oversize—super-oversize—hooded tracksuit came out wearing the slingback sneakers that ran through the show. This look would have made a perfect full stop and pleasingly symmetrical return to the capitally good opening section: a full circle. Instead, Fumito Ganryu went on, repeating most of his ideas, but this time in black. Yes, mate: We understand it can also come in black.
But back to the beginning. Ganryu’s first Paris show post-independence from Comme des Garçons started with that supersize tracksuit, but in gray. Then we got a kind of blanket-coat hybrid—janket 2.0, post–Emporio Armani—that this time had sleeves, a double hem on the right side, and that was fastened, diaper-like, with an ostentatiously large safety pin. The pants below looked outrageously dropped crotch until the next look that teamed a multi-armed striped dark sweater above denim trousers whose crotch was so dropped, said crotch was practically rubbing up against the Pyrenees.
Ganryu inhaled a little then, and then exhaled. We saw a series of gorgeously calibrated menswear standards that were designed to both affirm and undermine the tropes of testosterone-tilted apparel—especially a blue suit that really needed to be contemplated in profile to be appreciated in full, whose line flowed outward from the shoulder blade in a properly brilliant piece of garment engineering (let’s just ignore the two stupid straps that peeked from the lining down to the skirt). The four-tier piuminos that followed were volumized versions of this A-line jacket. The ultra-volumized duffle coats were fine in a fashion show context, but just imagine wearing them on the street. Unless you were jonesing for street style attention, just like so many in the crowd outside before this show, wearing these IRL would be WTF problematic.
This show left you asking questions, such as: Why did only some models have pom-poms on their socks? Is that silhouette—most especially, that suit—really as unprecedentedly harmonious a hybrid of mid-century womenswear and 21st-century men’s as it appears? After that seen-it-before, second outing of the tracksuit, however, the most burning question of all was “Are we there yet?” Ganryu has some fascinating ideas. However, not unlike this review, they could do with some merciless editing.
