Paris Closed. The Boxers Stayed Out.

Alessandro Michele staged Valentino's 'Antilibrary' show inside the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, and the menswear half is the most talked-about men's styling of fashion week's closing days. Plaid boxers were deliberately worn above waistbands in multiple patterns; a hot-pink 'Villain Teen' cap anchored a brown sequined cardigan and loose light-wash denim; a black-and-white polka-dot shirt with a floral sequined bib was tucked into blue foulard boxers.

The details kept coming: mis-buttoned double-breasted blazers, a closing look of a neutral suit under a translucent sheath. Critics read it as Michele playing with 'glamour in the wrong way' — personality dressing as the luxury proposition. It arrives just as quiet luxury's reign is declared over, and the timing feels deliberate.

Nothing here is in stores yet — this is a runway styling story. But the message is already legible: underwear-as-outerwear has found its luxury register, and it is theatrical, maximalist, and very Michele.

With fashion month over, the conversation pivots to the holiday drop calendar, and this is a stacked seven days. Nike's Air Force 1 '01 'Subway Rat' (hairy grey suede, subway detailing) landed Oct 7 at $150; the Brain Dead x adidas Samba Bowling 'Animal Pack' drops Oct 8 at $250; Converse's SHAI 001 Shroud 'Shock' — a blacked-out upper with a zippered shroud hiding a volt-green tongue and laces — arrives Oct 9 at $140 via SNKRS.

And then the headline act: the Air Jordan 1 High OG 'Royal' returns Oct 10 at $185 — the first OG-leather retro since 2017, packaged with special 1985-era Chuck Kuhn photography. Sneaker News calls it a stop-the-presses release even in a soft AJ1 market.

The throughline is retrospection done right — each drop revives an archive silhouette with one genuinely new twist rather than a straight reissue.

Matthieu Blazy's third Chanel ready-to-wear show (Oct 5, Grand Palais, one year into the job) is the week's consensus commercial-cultural event. AFP reports Chanel revenue up ~16% in H1 2026 on 'Blazymania' — this undone code is moving product, not just pleasing critics.

The menswear-relevant message: mannish tailcoats, raw-edged gilets, Charvet shirts, knee-length tweed skirts with raw hems, sheer-panelled jackets, blazers worn with no shirt, belts knotted badly on purpose. Blazy's own line — 'I like the idea that you wear your Chanel suit like a T-shirt' — plus the new stretch 'smocked tweed' makes undone tailoring the house's export product.

Expect raw hems, tailored gilets and sheer layers to filter to the high street within a season or two. The runway reads as styling, but the tailoring reads as wardrobe.

Pierpaolo Piccioli's Balenciaga SS27 (Oct 1) applies 55th-couture techniques to 'prototypical' menswear: a pink button-up shirt given a hoodie, extra-baggy tan cargo pants with a skirt panel at the back, bomber sleeves rebuilt as leg-of-mutton blazer shoulders, a white tank with distressed denim and flip-flops.

The house line is 'the body as the basis' — couture methods made relevant for basics. It is a shorter burn than Valentino's maximalism, but it lands on the same thesis: ordinary garments, strange construction.

Between Michele's boxers and Piccioli's hooded shirting, the closing argument of PFW menswear is clear — the revolution is happening at the waistband, the hem, and the construction detail, not the silhouette.