The models were dancing. Again. Here, during the first full weekend of the men’s Autumn/Winter 2025 shows, a noticeable number of fashion houses had decided that merely showing off their new clothes wasn’t enough.
No, no, the audience should be given a performance right out of Alvin Ailey . Runway shows are out. Free Jazz dance recitals are in.
At Brioni, designer Norbert Stumpfl paused a walk-through of his collection of one-percenter signifiers (croc-skin coats, vicuna jackets, cashmere sweaters looped devil-may-care style over jackets) to allow me to take in the gyrational stylings of a dancer. For a few minutes, a man wiggled and plied across a red carpet. He swished his coat about like a matador with a cape, as if to say: “Look ma! No lining!” Hours later, at a presentation at Corneliani, more dancers skittered along a rotating platform, doing some pseudo-break dancing in marbled gray sweaters and slate suits.
They paused between slides to bro-hug it out. “I think male dancers are very emotional,” said Stefano Gaudioso Tramonte, the label’s style director. Read more: Menswear fashion week in Paris begins with fewer shows and designer changes Beyond providing some Instagrammable drama, the performance, which was choreographed by Kate Coyne, the artistic director of the Central School of Ballet in London, expressed that the label’s pressed trousers and flat suits weren’t as restrictive as they seemed.
“All the fabrics are very rigorous,” Guadioso Tram.
