Milan catwalk shows always display a more commercial side compared to the arty and more visually engaging Parisian events and presentations. The first designer who showcased his collection at Paris Menswear Fashion Week perfectly incarnated this difference.
Alexis Mabille indeed gave an haute couture touch to his collection: style numbers were called out as if the audience had been invited to a high fashion show, but there was also a great attention to details and fabrics.
Brocade boleros were paired with tight jeans, brocade dressing gowns were matched with black trousers and brocade trousers were worn with a black crepe tailored hoodie and sneakers. All these garments provided the perfect wardrobe for the urban dandy.
Lame and sequinned tops and trousers, signature bow ties and embroidered sneakers reinforced the flamboyant character of the collection, though the best pieces were undoubtedly the more sporty ones, and in particular light wool cardigans, sleeveless jackets and a trompe l’oeil outfit, comprising a jacket with tails printed on the trousers. 
Issey Miyake’s collection marked a great comeback for what regards the universe of menswear and Dai Fujiwara’s inspirations – Turkey filtered through the principles of Japanese design – were interpreted in a clever way.
The colours and prints that characterise porcelain tiles were reused in stripy suits, shirts and jackets, trousers had a relaxed silhouettes and the tulip, the national symbol of Turkey, was turned into an interesting graphic pattern in bright yellow on black background.
Turbans and pointy leather slippers perfectly complemented the looks, though the bi-coloured jackets and trousers with big round paint splotches were more Giacomo Balla for their cut, shape and colours than Turkish.
Despite the elegant pin striped suits in bold colours and with a 3D fabric rib motif that seemed to wind all over it, the best looks were the simplest, in particular the light cardigans or waistcoats, paired with ample trousers in natural fabrics.
Avoiding extreme clashes of colours, Bruno Pieters opted for a stripped down look, using only white, pale and navy blue, red and black for Hugo by Hugo Boss’s collection.
Most of the white and pale blue looks were actually inspired by Wolfgang Uhlig’s photographs showing the sea and the sky meeting at the horizon.
Sharply tailored skinny suits, long or short high-waisted trousers, cropped civil mess jackets, were references to the A/W 09 collection, even though they displayed less rigidity compared to the previous collection. 
The diagonal, herringbone or grid-like motifs that characterised the A/W 09 designs were reduced to minimalist small or large horizontal stripes, that almost imitated Uhlig’s horizons.
White and pale blue sheer shirts and gladiator sandals – undoubtedly two menswear trends come next season – made a welcome appearance, though Pieters obtained the most from the former by matching the shirts with white or navy blue cotton trench coats.
The designer sartorial skills emerged in his navy double-breasted suits and cropped jackets and the minimalism and repetitiveness of the collection was pleasantly broken by a touch of extravagance, sleeves or jackets decorated with circular scale-like sequins. 
The sheer shirt trend that started in Paris with Hugo by Hugo Boss continued with Juun. J. The designer reinterpreted this trend and transformed the shirt into a sort of long black jacket worn on top of a white shirt to create sheer/matte contrasts.
Juun J also focused on another trend that was already seen at Laitinen’
s presentation at Milan's White Homme, peep-toe sneakers.
The shoes reappeared later on in Paris on the same day during Julius’ catwalk show. Here peep-toe boots accompanied most of the looks created by Tatsuro Horikawa by wrapping around the models’ bodies metres of fabrics.
Fashion met fetishism and ethnicity at Julius', resulting in religious hermit/mummy kind of looks in black or white, though the leather jackets in grey and ochre definitely had more potential than rigid white straight jacket-like coats.
Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection confirmed what many fashion critics suspect: the fashion house doesn’t really have great fashion designers, but excellent stylists.
Paul Helbers and Marc Jacobs moved from one precise theme, bike messengers, turning them into pirates of the rush hour, hero-like mythical figures and butterfly-like dandies dynamically ready to fly from one place to another.
Bright yellow and orange prevailed for jackets, shirts and trousers and even in the details of the shoes; though the focus was mainly on functional fabrics such as nylon and on casual attires, 
the idea was transforming the sporty look of bike messengers into something more refined, as the tailored shorts or the oversized bags and rucksack in luxurious leathers, replacing cyclist shorts and bags in synthetic materials, proved.
Once they grabbed their theme, Helbers & Co decided not to let it go too easily,
so they blew up images of butterfly wings and printed them on sweaters, trench coats and evening jackets to evoke the urban butterfly theme.
Everything was perfectly matched and nothing looked out of place, yet, on a careful inspection, you realised that, once each item was taken out of the equation and analysed on itself, it didn't really look so extraordinarily unique, especially for what regarded the cut.
A catwalk show is probably one of the few places on earth where something that has started in a smashing way, can turn in a few minutes into something extremely boring.
This was the unfortunate case at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s where the first tailored dark looks profiled with bold white lines à la Courrèges made fashion critics hope in a great collection.
Playing with a palette comprising navy/white/tomato red and beige/black, Gaultier came up at the very beginning of the show with striking tailored jackets, suits and trench coats, yet soon this perfect balance was lost.
The first fault had to be attributed to an extremely tight denim corset, followed by tube tops in dark cotton or covered in bright orange sequins.
As soon as the show started becoming interesting again thanks to a pair of denim with bright red stitching covered in bondage straps (you may argue, those were unnecessary straps, but then there would have been no references to the bondage theme and this is Gaultier…), 
a model wearing something truly unnecessarily such as a sailor pleated skirt would stride down the catwalk, so that the show soon turned into a roller-coaster of beautiful and not so beautiful looks.
In a way contrasts were also the main theme behind Dries Van Noten’s collection, though in a rather pleasant way.
The show took place outside Paris’ Bourse or rather under the building’s eaves since it was raining, but the
rather dull weather conditions ended up highlighting the colourful prints of the soft fabrics.
The stock exchange is a rather unusual place for a catwalk show and it actually made me think about Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse and the chaotic scenes shot inside the stock exchange.
Yet, despite the location, there were no references to business or to the typical stock exchange chaos in the collection.
The only references to chaos were indeed the prints, mixed and mismatched in the trousers, jackets and shoes and sourced from mills scattered across six different countries. There were also references to lounge wear with coats that looked like dressing gowns and ties interestingly used as belts.
Opting for an outfit styled by Henrik Vibskov may be extremely tricky, after all jumpers and shirts in contrasting patterns matched with blonde wigs, the main looks out of the S/S 2010 collection, entitled "The Solar Donkey Experiment", may be excessively eccentric.
Yet the secret to make Vibskov’s designs acceptable is to visually imagine his most colourful graphics and outlandishly innovative silhouettes paired with rather minimalist garments.
Undoubtedly, though, most of his designs, such as green or red polka dot prints, are definitely dedicated to a younger generation of men who are not afraid of bold colours and patterns.
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