Strong Basics Trumped Risk-taking at Paris Men’s Trade Shows

PARIS — With retailers on edge and visibility lacking, brands and buyers were playing it safe this season during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. In the fall collections showing at Man / Woman and Welcome Edition trade shows, staples like heritage outerwear and high-quality knits were top priorities on shopping lists.

“The majority of buyers are saying it’s complicated, but they’re here and they’re placing orders,” said Man / Woman cofounder and director Antoine Floch. “Both established and emerging brands are making sales.”

Man / Woman, at its habitual venue just off Place Vendôme, welcomed around 80 exhibitors, while Welcome Edition moved to a new setting in Montmartre, and showcased around 150 brands.

Paul Batista, cofounder of Welcome Edition, said the show had outgrown its previous location near Bastille and that buyer turnout had been strong this session. The configuration of the venue, in a former department store, allowed for several different levels and more intimate showroom spaces for key brands.

“When markets get a bit challenging — and the U.S. market is a bit challenging — brands up their game and consolidate product-wise,” Batista observed. “There is still an appetite for good product. The brands here have a clear identity and a clear idea of where they are going. The ones that are sticking to brand, to their core competencies and DNA, are the ones that are doing well.”

Several vendors said initial orders last year had been significantly down, but that brisk repeat business in-season had been stronger than expected, resulting in a good year overall and tempered optimism for the coming season. But navigating such fluctuations is a major headache for brands and retailers alike.

“It’s all over the place. Some people had great years, some really bad,” said Charles Arnett, business development consultant for hemp specialist Jungmaven, at Man / Woman. “No one canceled orders, and some European customers did quite well and reordered in season.”

“2025 was a good year and we’re feeling excited for 2026; we’re expanding men’s,” said Joe Leman, head of menswear for unisex clothing store R.Place near Newquay, England. “We’ve seen some really good finds in collections we’ve never bought before.” He continued, “The collections are better, and the colors and prints are good, and our buyer is looking for that.”

Karl-Heinz Müller, the founder of former trade show Bread + Butter and owner of 14 Oz. stores in Berlin, is convinced the smaller, independent brands presenting at the Paris trade shows and showrooms have their role to play on a market where bigger brands are focusing on direct-to-consumer and pushing smaller boutiques out of prime retail locations.

“They have become competitors,” said Müller, who highlighted wool pieces, outsized outerwear for both men and women and a strong denim offer among his Paris highlights this season.

Sorasak Chanmantana, owner of Onion, with two stores in Bangkok, was shopping for high-quality basics from independent brands. “I love how smaller companies think about things. Smaller brands often have better quality, because they have to try harder, they are more focused on qualities and small quantities,” he said.

“Analogue is the new black,” joked Colin Campbell, owner of high-end T-shirt maker Sunray Sportswear, at Welcome Edition. “People are going back to stores and brands need to have a really strong story, not just the veneer of a story.”

Off-calendar elsewhere around town, storytelling was also key to standing out in the Paris ecosystem. The Sphere showroom highlighted two new designers this season, Rkivecity and Gardouche, alongside returnees Cachí, C.R.E.O.L.E, La Cage, Lazoschmidl and Ouest Paris. The space also featured a booth for Maison du Savoir-Faire et de la Création, a platform connecting French textile manufacturers with fashion and clothing professionals. It aims to improve understanding between various players in the supply chain, given growing interest in local manufacturing, including from international brands, which account for 20 percent of traffic on the platform.

Fourteen young Japanese designers, meanwhile, shared the runway for the Tokyo New Designers Fashion Show at the Palais de Tokyo thanks to guidance from a Paris catwalk habitué, with Anrealage’s Kunihiko Morinaga as their mentor, and the backing of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Brand Highlights From the Paris Trade Shows and Showrooms

Gloverall

Showing at: Man

Category: Outerwear

The historic British coat-maker, which celebrates its 75^th anniversary this year, was a first-timer at Man as it seeks to transition from a winter business—its bestsellers are traditional duffle and pea coats made from Scottish wool and crafted in London — to an all-seasons model under Mat Bickley, who joined the company as brand director and senior head of design and marketing a little over two years ago. “We’ve got a really good perennial but I’m trying to create a year-round brand,” he said. Its new trans-seasonal collection, which was designed in collaboration with Carolyn Massey, includes lightweight insulated jackets stuffed with a wool byproduct called Duffel Wool, instead of down or synthetic materials, which Bickley said makes them breathable and thermo-regulating. There was also a line of jersey pieces to celebrate the brand’s anniversary.

Retail price range: From 50 pounds for jersey to 695 pounds for core line classics like a Harris tweed duffle coat; the new trans-seasonal line from 225 to 350 pounds.

Minnessak

Showing at: Man / Woman

Category: Bags

Veteran handbag designer Jas Sehmbi, who previously saw success with his Jas M.B. brand, launched his sustainably minded label Minnessak, which means “keepsake” in Swedish, two years ago. The brand’s bags are all crafted in East London and are available in 14 different styles, from pouches to backpacks, made from upcycled items including repurposed flight jackets, Japanese obi silk or deadstock denim from Japanese label Fullcount, combined with deadstock Riri zippers and vintage leather.

Price range: 18 to 95 pounds (wholesale)

Spomenik

Showing at: Man / Woman

Category: Ready-to-wear

It was the debut trade show for Spomenik, from Japan, with its boxy workwear pants incorporating graphic patchworks and appliqué details made from deadstock fabrics. Created by Kotona Yamashita, who is behind the Kotona label for women, the brand is named after memorial architectural monuments in former Yugoslavia, and her designs echo the symbolism of such sculptures. The most graphic pieces incorporate up to 300 different patchwork elements, imitating traditional quilting motifs. The genderless lineup is available in a range of six different sizes.

Prices: approx. 450 euros (retail)

Mifland

Showing at: Man / Woman

Category: Leather goods

It all started with a vintage leather bag for Tobi Egberongbe, who launched his Mifland brand in 2011 and is based in Atlanta and New York. An art collector and lover of vintage goods, he was inspired by traditional luggage and how it is designed to last to create his hard-wearing shoppers, satchels and saddle bags from sturdy Italian leather designed to take on a patina as they age. It was a return to leather goods and a brand relaunch of sorts for the designer, who had pivoted to ready-to-wear during the pandemic. Highlights in the collection included natural tan bags with colorful paint splashes done by hand, with no two pieces alike.

Price range: $265 to $1,200 (retail)

Indi + Ash

Showing at: Welcome Edition

Category: Menswear

After 13 years working at Ralph Lauren, Matthew Aprile was seeking a more artisanal approach when he created his Indi + Ash brand in 2016, advocating for handwoven fabrics and analogue dyeing techniques. With a background in textiles — his family owns a sweater factory in Morocco, where he worked for a year after graduating in art history — he wanted to focus on processes like handwoven fabrics dyed with natural and mineral colors like henna, turmeric and iron water, as well as natural indigo. The artisanal processes and unique textures give his designs a unique hand and a comforting muted color palette. The brand has around 10 stockists in the U.S. and was showing in Europe for the first time.

Pricing: $220 to $598 (retail)

Mooncastle

Showing at: Welcome Edition

Category: Knitwear

Roy Tsukishiro is now chief executive officer of the knitwear producer founded by his grandfather in 1966. The historic firm, based in Osaka, offers classic sweater silhouettes in high-end fabrications crafted from blends of wool, cashmere, silk and different cotton weights in a broad range of intense colors, from classics to brights, that have retailers coming back season after season. Recent innovations include jersey pieces in ice cotton.

Pricing: 56 to 190 euros (wholesale)

Rkivecity

Showing at: Sphere

Category: Menswear

A native of India, Ritwik Khanna graduated from FIT in New York before returning to his homeland to work in textile waste management. This inspired him to create his New Delhi-based brand, which he conceived as a research and design laboratory exploring circularity. He repurposes and reconstructs vintage pieces, with brand logos hidden in the collection here and there. This first ready-to-wear collection was inspired by the exclusive private school he attended in Rajasthan, Mayo College, and includes a multitude of uniform references and upcycled fabrics, like suits made with the school’s colorful yet faded striped canvas tents. The collection included a collaboration with Kartik Research on denim.

Pricing: 108 to 450 euros (wholesale)

Gardouch

Showing at: Sphere

Category: Ready-to-wear and couture

Gerrit Rietveld Academie graduate Rémy Guerra founded his Gardouch genderless label in 2024, naming it after the village in the southwest of France where he grew up. He conceives his designs with an anthropological approach, he explained, calling on his own memories to build an imaginary world of silhouettes with fun nostalgic nods. Jeans had distinctive jagged hips that initially came from a pattern-making error for the self-taught designer, who studied multimedia art. This first ready-to-wear collection was inspired by the designer’s grandfather and the ’50s, with padded skater dresses made from tulle-stuffed silk or wool and paired for instance with cute sweaters with sporty references, like a cream and red design that echoed the spots of the Tour de France cycling shirt.

Pricing: 360 to 1,950 euros (retail) for ready-to-wear