The Best—and Weirdest—Men’s Trends From the Fall Shows

Conservative cobbling, however, was just one element of a shift toward formality that informed a vast number of this month’s hundred-plus shows. Also on view: tailoring aplenty, vests and topcoats. What’s new about this spin on traditionalism is that it’s imbued with an of-the-moment ease. A bevy of well-appointed double-breasted suits were on offer—at Berluti, Gucci and Officine Générale—but models often wore them unbuttoned, reflecting a loose, liberal approach to tailoring. Last year, sporty puffers prevailed. This time round, Valentino, JW Anderson and Jil Sander all presented Savile Row-style overcoats, albeit in slope-shouldered cuts roomy enough to allow for layering underneath.

I saw weirder styles, too—Rick Owens saw fit to dress a man in a one-legged, ribbed bodysuit, for example. But the more effective experiments were riffs on proven styles of the past. The spliced, diced and resized trench coats and military bombers that Chitose Abe presented at Sacai combined familiarity with inventiveness. Though British designer Craig Green pushed his kaleidoscopic quilted coats to extravagant extremes, they were still rooted in work wear. Even polarizing leather trousers, which brands from Salvatore Ferragamo to Dunhill to Fendi proposed with straight faces, felt functional in decidedly straightforward cuts.

The dominant push toward proper clothes was clearest at Louis Vuitton, which has become a catalyst for trends under its hype-maker/men’s artistic director Virgil Abloh, who recently prophesied streetwear’s decline. While models in actual suits sauntered past, the celebrities in the front row, clad in last year’s garish streetwear, suddenly looked entirely out of fashion.