Paris men's fashion week: Raf Simons solar youth are earthbound

Misspent youth is the time when one is young, doing things that are not considered wise, or proper. Read: fun.

Raf Simons’ obsession with youth and capturing its lost spirit has been a key narrative of his work, and his emotional show on the opening day of Paris Fashion Week was perhaps less a glimpse of misspent youth but rather its abduction.

Futurist nostalgia summed up the vibe, like the muffs covering models’ hands, some of which bore the text Solar Youth or No Land and Life on Mars. The latter, David Bowie’s relic song, also scored the show’s finale.

A sneaker boot, previously announced by Simons on Instagram, debuted on the runway and came in a series of bold colours, like candy apple red and pristine white. Could this be the end of his longstanding collaboration with Adidas? It was perhaps the most otherworldly item, as the fine tailoring, great coats and utilitarian suiting were categorically pieces to wear on earth.

Knitwear was another strong category, with fine stripes across a slimmed boatneck on a silhouette of elongated sleeves and hems. Shimmering roll necks worn underneath blazers had a sci-fi quality, perhaps referring to distant life elsewhere, but it was the jackets and outerwear that you’d want to wear now, wherever in the solar system you may be.