Paris Goes Gilded: The Men's PFW SS27 Playbook

Haider Ackermann keeps doing the one thing only Tom Ford can get away with: making the suit feel dangerous. For Spring 2027, staged among walls of mirrors at Place Vendome, he treated the shirt as optional equipment. Black jackets went straight over bare chests. A white dinner jacket arrived with a black flower and nothing underneath. The proportions stayed precise at the shoulder while trousers fell longer and more languid around the leg.

Then came the punchline. Ackermann sent men down the runway in little more than cashmere sweaters and swim briefs, one pale-pink pair carried with total seriousness under a camel knit. A businessman look arrived in a dark blazer, briefs and polished loafers, gripping a rigid leather briefcase as if the trousers had been a clerical error. It is provocative, but the joke is the point: formal clothes with pieces simply removed.

Strip away the styling and the wearable core is genuinely strong: relaxed navy pinstripes, an olive double-breasted suit, tobacco outerwear, high-waisted trousers, a slouchy leather two-piece. The day's X sweep backs the heat — ELLE called seduction front and center (https://x.com/ELLEmagazine/status/2105462749924831570), and Vogue Italia noted leather, sheers and bare skin raising the temperature (https://x.com/vogue_italia/status/2105706814130299139). The Tom Ford man still owns the suit. He just might leave his trousers at home.

Anthony Vaccarello turned Saint Laurent's Spring 2027 show into a gold rush. Forty-nine of the fifty-nine looks were built around gold — trench coats, sahariennes, wrap skirts and elongated silhouettes rendered in lame, brocade, guipure lace and latex coated in gold leaf. It was the most opulent Saint Laurent in years, and it landed with the weight of an anniversary: a decade of Vaccarello at the house, with departure rumors hanging over the runway.

For men, the translation is not a head-to-toe gold suit but the principle behind it. Yves Saint Laurent called gold a magical color, and Vaccarello treated it as atmosphere rather than ornament. The takeaway for a men's wardrobe is the single metallic gesture: a gilt leather jacket, brocade trousers against an otherwise black look, a gold chain or buckle doing the work of a whole outfit.

The conversation agrees this is a mood shift, not a gimmick. ELLE UK's runway rundown argued all that glitters at the house is gold (https://x.com/ELLEUK/status/2105628879851274303), and The Impression scored the collection 9.1 for how completely the discipline of the silhouette held the excess together. Maximalism is back on the table after several quiet seasons.

Pierpaolo Piccioli's first ready-to-wear statement for Balenciaga is a magic trick: take the techniques of the 55th Couture Collection and disappear them inside clothes nobody would call couture. Denim jeans, T-shirts, shirting and bombers were rebuilt with atelier draping, boneless-corset stitching and bias cutting, so the familiar suddenly behaves differently on the body.

The menswear details are where the idea lands hardest. A pink button-up shirt was given a hoodie. Extra-baggy tan cargo pants sprouted a skirt panel at the back. Bomber jacket sleeves were reworked into bold leg-of-mutton shoulders for blazers. Nothing screams couture; everything carries its DNA.

The X sweep caught the same signal twice: ELLE said the collection brings couture codes into everyday style (https://x.com/ELLEmagazine/status/2105757192716484826), and Vogue France pointed readers to its takeaway recap (https://x.com/VogueFrance/status/2105695786487148588). Watch the city-ready pairings — white tank, distressed denim, flip-flops — as the season's off-duty template.

At the June menswear show for STONE, Rick Owens turned the Palais de Tokyo reflecting pool into a stage for survival. In nearly 40-degree heat, models crossed a suspended metal runway over water while four lines of water jets arched over them. The collection was built around the body under stress: inflatable Climacool jackets and shorts fitted with interior fans, cooling ice vests, second-skin jersey with zippers up the spine, sharp-shouldered coats worn in defiance of the heat. Performance under pressure was Owens' own summary.

The season's biggest menswear headline was the reunion: Rick Owens x adidas, back after nearly a decade, expanding from footwear into full technical apparel plus a new angular high-performance running shoe planned for 2027. Three-stripe sweatpants sat low on the hips; hand-piped latex tanks and tensegrity chaps kept the ritual side alive. Owens pairs mass accessibility with distortion, ritual, and a very particular glamour.

The spectacle carried into this week. On October 1, Vanessa Friedman filmed a long vertical video from his afternoon Paris runway, pulling 1,070 likes and 170 reposts — the highest critic engagement in the day's X sweep (https://x.com/VVFriedman/status/2105706992086163842). WWD's PFW runway-shoe roundup flagged Rick Owens alongside Saint Laurent and Dior (https://x.com/wwd/status/2105767787243188408). When the weather is the adversary, Owens makes the uniform for it.