After Dark, On Foot: Menswear's Dress-Up Week

For a designer built on red-carpet gowns, the surprise of the Elie Saab and H&M collection is how seriously it takes the men's side. This is not a logo tee tossed in to fill a rail. The men's offer is built around the tuxedo, with a sharp double-breasted blazer, satin-striped trousers and an embroidered dress shirt doing the formal work.

Around that core sits a softer, later-night wardrobe: monogrammed silk separates that read louche rather than loud, a jacquard pyjama set, an oversized monogram tee, and the small details that make eveningwear feel finished, a silk tie, cufflinks, a lapel pin and a reversible leather belt.

The smart way in is not head-to-toe Saab. Take one piece with real presence, the blazer or the silk separates, and let the rest of the outfit stay quiet. Queues formed at H&M Regent Street before the 9am launch on Oct 22, so the tailoring pieces are the ones to check first.

Two of the week's biggest sneaker stories share one idea: stop fighting the heel. Song for the Mute's adidas Samba gets a collapsible, crumpled heel that lets a laced classic be worn as a slip-on, while SZA's first Vans collection does the same thing twice over, with a Knu Skool turned into a backless mule and an Authentic with a kickdown heel.

What separates these from ordinary mules is that neither pair gives up its identity to get there. The Samba keeps its gum sole and soft leather and suede build, in black, brown and base green. The Vans pair keeps its skate DNA, with distressed canvas, fish artwork by Sage Adams on the Authentic, and the Knu Skool's chunky front intact.

Worn with the relaxed trousers that dominate autumn menswear, both feel less like a shortcut and more like a decision: shoes designed for the way people actually live in them, stepped on at the back, grabbed on the way out, and still considered.

Four years into the MM6 and Salomon partnership, the joke has worn off and the idea has sharpened. The Fall/Winter 2026 drop, which landed Oct 22, pairs Salomon's trail construction with MM6's habit of bending a familiar form just far enough to make you look twice.

The headline is the Crossderby: a glossy black leather Derby, complete with Salomon's drawstring lacing, sitting on a technical outdoor sole. It is the most dressy shoe the partnership has made, and the one that best captures where men's footwear is heading, a shoe that can handle weather and a dinner in the same evening.

Alongside it, the XT-MM6 returns in three new colourways, Scarab green, Tapioca with a violet flash, and Vanilla Ice, while November brings the puffer-like XT-Boot and new ACS Pro colourways. If the Crossderby is the statement, the XT-MM6 is the daily wear: quiet branding, a small 6 embossed in the outsole, and colour that does the talking.

After a few seasons of menswear getting looser and looser, autumn 2026 is where the proportions settle. Trousers stay roomy but stop pooling, jackets stay relaxed but keep a shape, and the long raglan overcoat comes back as the piece that makes the whole thing look deliberate rather than accidental.

Colour does the rest of the work. Chocolate brown is the season's neutral, softer than black and warmer than navy, worn head to toe in different shades or broken up with olive, ochre and ecru. Texture is the other lever: wide-wale corduroy, suede, brushed wool and waxed cotton give a simple outfit depth without adding pattern.

The practical version is easy to assemble: a chocolate or camel raglan coat over a knit, wide corduroy or pleated trousers, and a substantial shoe, suede or a trail-soled hybrid. Add one flash of stronger colour, a royal blue knit or an acid-green beanie, and stop there. One confident hit beats a colour-coordinated set.

The most interesting watch of the month is also one of the smallest. Noah and Timex's Boatswain, launched Oct 15 at $228, uses a compact 31 by 35 millimetre oval case, an eggshell dial, Roman numerals and a leather strap, and then stops. The only flourish is a minute track shaped like coiled rope, visible only when you look closely.

That restraint is the point, and it follows a clear run for the partnership: a field-watch Anchor in August, then this dressier oval that drops the lighthouse and moonphase motifs of earlier versions. At a moment when collaborations usually get louder to get noticed, Noah and Timex are betting that a quiet, well-proportioned watch will be the one people actually wear daily.

Styled with the season's relaxed tailoring, the Boatswain does something a big steel sports watch cannot: it disappears into the outfit and lets the coat, the cord and the shoes carry the look. The gold-tone version on black leather is the evening pick; steel on brown leather is the everyday one.