Dries Van Noten Menswear S/S 2026 Paris

[bc collector]

And I wonder, how does men’s fashion in 2025 engage with a person my age or even older - straight or less inclined to have the clothes do so much talking about the person wearing them? Are designers really thinking we’ve silently adapted to what the younger generation considers normal?

I hear you, man. Customers over 40 have been totally erased by the marketing forces that operate today. Unless you consider non-fashion brands like Zegna, Cucinelli and the likes.
I suspect there's a bigger issue at stake in this conversation... Gen-Z and Millennials are the (almost) exclusive target of today's market because they are more easily impressed by the numberless stunts designers produce instead of innovative design. It's much harder to convince someone who already has OG Margiela or Lang or old DVN to buy into what fashion is offering today (basically, logo merch) and suits probably think it's not worth the effort.
If you add to this the fact that so much empty fashion proposals today are wrapped in political, identitarian, queer mumbo-jumbo, you have the perfect combination: suits are happy because they are selling millions of basic tees and sweats with astronomical mark-ups, while young customers gobble up the scheme feeling very up-to-date and part of the cultural conversation. In short, there has never been a time when Big Business and Counterculture (if you want to call it that) went hand in hand like today.

p.s: Going back to DVN, Julian never got the memo that most DVN customers are 30 or older, and not just by chance but because Dries was addressing people like him: mature, cultivated, provided with sure taste...I wonder if this desperate effort of behalf of Puig to appeal to kids will not go to the detriment of the brand original identity.

 

[Darko]

And I can't decide are those sneakers tragic or comical 🤔
Tbh Ugly AF