News: Paris Menswear Show Spring 2006

From Jeanne Lanvin to Metrosexuals
By: Mari Davis
Photo below: From the Spring 2004 Lanvin menswear collection
Photo by IndigitalTV

DALLAS, Apr 15, 2005/ FW/ --- Long before the term ‘metrosexual’ became chic, there was Jeanne Lanvin in 1926 opening a men’s division in her fashion house, adding another entry in the long venerable history of the house – the first couturière to dress a whole family, i.e., men, women and children.

Historically, men in high society are as well dressed as the women, but tailors and seamstresses were separated both by their gender and the gender of their clientele.

A hundred years after Jeanne Lanvin’s revolutionary move, it is now common for one fashion house to have both menswear and womenswear.

In Paris alone, almost all of the big houses have an ‘Homme’ division – Dior, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, Hermès, Rykiel, Yves Saint Laurent and Louis Vuitton.

Add to that the Japanese houses – Kenzo, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Junya Watanabe.

And the relatively newcomers to the scene – John Galliano, Dirk Schönberger, Gilles Rosier, Gaspard Yurkievich, Marcel Marongiu.

Then of course, there are the men’s only labels – Daniel Faret, Raf Simons, Kim Jones, and Kris Van Assche.

Things have changed since the time of Jeanne Lanvin. With the turn of the 21st century, metrosexuals became the ‘new man’ in fashion.

Yet, if we really look at it, with the advent of the metrosexuals, men’s fashion has just come full circle from the time of Louis XVI when the King of France was as flamboyant in dressing as his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

So, in July, when the ‘boys of summer’ in the U.S. are battling it out on the baseball field, Paris’ ‘boys of summer’ are on the catwalk, strutting the Spring 2006 menswear collections.