PARIS, Jan 29, 2006/ FW/ --- Early Sunday morning, while Paris was just waking up, Jeroen VanTuyl presented his Fall 2006 menswear collection entitled ‘Man. Machine’ at the Palais de la Bourse, waking up a sleepy audience with an innovative approach to men’s clothing.

As the title implied, the collection was inspired by robots, the Isaac Asimov kind of robots reintroduced to a new generation of audience by the movie ‘I, Robot’ starring Will Smith.

Interpreting AI’s through men’s clothing is a hard feat, yet young VanTuyl did it with aplomb, sending lean trousers on the runway, cut at the knees three times, then reconstructing it to give it shape like a robotic joint, without losing the slim silhouette of the pants.

Choosing gray and blue as the base color palette, then adding subdued tones of orange and magenta, the collection is definitely for young men who can carry clothes with style.

Suit jackets were also tailored to look slim, with boxy to sloping shoulders. Taking the ‘Man Machine’ into a different context, pockets were puffed and made 3-D with straps closed by a button.

The 3-D pockets were also used in dress pants, a new take on carpenter pants, yet with a more formal look to it. One thing is sure though, a young man will have enough room for his mobile phone, PDA, iPod and mini-hard drives.

A more risqué take on formal clothes is putting a hoodie with a suit jacket. Looks good on the runway, and would make sure that a man is warm during those cold winter nights, yet one cannot help but ask the question, ‘how do you hide the hoodie when you walk in a room full of women in gowns and men in tuxedos?’

Perhaps, there is a way to hide it that was not obvious in a 15-minute catwalk presentation. Nevertheless, it was a good collection overall and brings Jeroen VanTuyl as one of the names to watch in the burgeoning Paris menswear fashion scene.

Jeroen VanTuyl

Jeroen VanTuyl

Jeroen VanTuyl