Paris Men’s All That

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times The scene at the Junya Watanabe show in Paris.

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times The models at Comme des Garçons wore short, moppy wigs on top of their own hair.

Junya Watanabe’s men seemed decidedly antimodern, or perhaps they were just in love as they paused on chipped green park benches and pondered life. One of them actually took a pen and paper from his breast pocket and wrote a little note. No iPad? Another model brought a newspaper to read. It seemed a curious artifact, as did Mr. Watanabe’s knitted variations on patch-pocket blazers, varsity jackets, snowflake sweaters and slightly shrunken trousers, all in faded autumn colors. The clothes were technically accomplished and all that, but something of the stale air of a boy’s bedroom lingered over the preoccupied men and their folksy classics.

Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times Joan Smalls in Givenchy.

The Paris fall men’s collections are making a big play on gender, or so it appeared from the shows on Friday. The models at Comme des Garçons wore short, moppy wigs on top of their own hair, and Rei Kawakubo’s clothes emphasized volume and softness: silky bathrobe coats and pajama pants in what looked like vintage Asian prints. The collection was engaging, mainly for the strange pinched proportions of jackets and some fabulous wide-leg denim trousers, including one ballooning style pegged at the ankles.

I’ll have more to say later about Riccardo Tisci’s collection for Givenchy, but I liked the materials he used, especially the stiff-looking suit fabrics and the dense brown fur in layered coats, and the images of snarling guard dogs that appeared as a pattern on murky plaid shirts, black shorts and tops. There was a lot that was visually compelling about the show, not least because Mr. Tisci chose a very diverse cast of models that suited what he was trying to communicate with the clothes.