I was going to dedicate the top of this letter to the Paris runway shows on Friday (and I will get to them), but my plans changed when I encountered a sleeve that stopped me cold.
I was at the Marais showroom of Salon C. Lundman, a Stockholm label started by Christoffer Lundman in 2023. There on the racks was a stout wool coat, its sleeves bending like parentheses.
And this is what I know now: A sleeve can make you think of the best pasta you’ve ever tasted. Of an angel’s harp. Of a perfectly hit baseball. It can leave you thinking that your own flaccid raincoat isn’t only inferior, it’s an insult. (When I put my arm through the sleeve and it took the natural bend of my never totally straight arm, my outlook improved at least 10 percent.)
Lundman, 47, is a particular sort of purist — one worth paying attention to. He keeps no archive, preferring to start fresh each season. He doesn’t use vintage pieces to stoke new designs, but sketches instead. (You’d be amazed how few designers do that.)
“It’s created quite instinctively,” Lundman said of his collection. I don’t want it to feel precious or overworked.”
I grabbed a cashmere sweater with Tic-Tac-size ribbed cuffs and a triangular notch at the collar. That’ll make it easier to get on, but it’s also the Maldon on the vanilla ice cream that makes an ordinary thing sublime. I tried on a spongy black blazer and shoved my hands in the pockets as if I’d been doing so for years. The collection is not cheap — a cashmere overcoat I admired retails for 2,800 euros (about $3,300) — though as Lundman noted, that’s about the wholesale cost for a similar Prada coat now.
Going through the racks, I thought of something Jockum Hallin, a founder of Our Legacy, said a half-hour before. His label was showing a boiled-down collection of obsidian leather jackets, straight-cut jeans, everyday cotton shirts and boxy sweaters with breezy weaves. The collection was called “Just Clothes.” Hallin said that the label (which took investment from LVMH Ventures Fund in 2024) plans to expand. “We’re going to open these stores,” he said, “and we need just clothes.”
That’s a deceptively humble phrase, another way of saying “this old thing?” It’s what you say when you know something is so good, so you don’t need to draw attention to it. So yes, Lundman is making “just clothes,” but they’re much more than that.
Other things worth knowing about:
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Will someone please wear Junya Watanabe to the Oscars? Junya Watanabe makes blazers the way Picasso painted faces. His latest turned the models into gala-bound chimney sweeps but I was especially taken by the tuxedo jackets cobbled from discordant leather strips. Elegant, but off.
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Willy Chavarria said his show wouldn’t get political. He stayed true to that, staging a 20-minute “living movie” packed with melodramatic lip-synced performances, Julia Fox, Romeo Beckham, a parade of lowriders, a boy band, a brief interlude for an Adidas collaboration and one fake murder in front of thousands. There were clothes, too, but who will remember those over the theatrics?
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I ran into the rapper ASAP Nast outside the Comme show wearing a 1990s cream Comme Homme work jacket with a 3-D pocket, which he’d bought this week at the Archivist Store. It was, as the kids say, a grail. But he also had a tip: For great vintage shopping, go to Belgium.
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It’s rare for a runway finale to leave the audience emotional, but at Comme des Garçons Homme Plus it did. After a mostly black collection of ruffled suits, spliced tailcoats and rumpled shorts, Rei Kawakubo sent out seven models in similar outfits, now rendered in ethereal white. The climactic transition left some teary-eyed, feeling as if Ms. Kawakubo was acknowledging the darkness of the world right now — and that perhaps there’s light to be found.
The Indelible Fit of the Day
When most people lose their luggage, they go to Uniqlo or Gap to buy essentials. Not Nick Wooster. On Friday night the fashion industry lifer told me that earlier this month, when his bags were lost, he went to Dover Street Market in London and bought the bulk of this how-can-you-not-respect-the-zaniness outfit.
Style Outside
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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