The struggle to stay warm as energy bills soar across Europe has finally hit the men’s runways in Paris. The French solution? Let them wear poles.
At Givenchy they were tall and black, while at Wales Bonner, they came in a skintight salmon pink. Elsewhere, there were classic black turtlenecks at Hed Mayner worn with faux fur stoles and candy pink versions at Walter Van Beirendonck.
On the opening night of Paris fashion week, Saint Laurent showed off turtleneck jumpers, some of which were transformed into dresses. Covering the wearer’s mouth with it, they seemed to swallow the models whole.
The polo neck has a long tradition within the European style. “They are a classic,” agreed backstage Matthew M. Williams, creative director of French label Givenchy, who opened his show with five of them. “We do this kind of thing every season.” Williams is best known for his punk take on tailoring, but this season he’s paired his polo shirts with sleek black suits and broad-shouldered camel coats. Some skimmed the chin, while others were so wide you could wear a jumper under them.
During the 1960s, polo collars entered the wardrobes of intellectuals like Samuel Beckett and Michel Foucault, and Italian movie stars like Marcello Mastroianni, who often teamed them with a trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Overnight, they would become the unofficial uniform of both Left Bank thinkers and the red carpet on the riviera.
Some Saint Laurent turtlenecks seemed to swallow the models whole. Photography: Pixelformula/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock
Recently, however, the polo neck has become a thorny issue in France. It began last fall, when French finance minister Bruno Le Maire urged civil servants to ditch shirts and ties for a polo collar instead of turning up the heating, and peaked when Emmanuel Macron arrived. to a meeting with one in black cashmere. prompting opposition leader Marine Le Pen to tweet: “Don’t you have enough heating? Let them dress in cashmere.”
A favorite among the 1% too, both fictional (Succession’s Shiv Roy wears £700 versions of Gabriela Hearst) and real (LVMH’s billionaire owners the Arnault family are rarely seen in anything else), they’re also the de facto uniform of technology. CEOs who are among the richest people in the world.
Few in France will want to look like Macron this week. Tomorrow, Paris will come to a standstill when thousands of workers strike on the capital’s public transport network in opposition to the reform planned by their government to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
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A solution then is the fashionable fleece. A thick cream version of North Face was seen three times in two days, not on the catwalk, but on the people who make it possible: the hosts, journalists and photographers. Outside the Givenchy show, one host, Khaldo, said his was so warm he could get away with wearing “just a T-shirt underneath.” There was, he agreed, no need for a polo neck underneath.
Source: news.google.com