Craig Green’s wandering warriors win over Paris

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jan 19, 2020

There is something quite noble about any show by Craig Green, the king of nomadic chic, who made his Paris runway debut on a chilly Sunday morning.

Each look on his catwalk is an assemblage of artefacts – found, researched, borrowed or magnified – that come together in unexpected proportions and odd angles in a soaring drama.
 
No menswear show on the European calendar is more anticipated than that of Green, the most original mind in menswear today. Nor has any other designer in men’s fashion won more ecstatic critical acclaim that Green. And this Fall 2020 collection will be no exception.

He opened with intergalactic explorers, in all-white or steely gray numbers made of finely finished satiny puffers with flap pockets and protective midriffs, all covered in inflated harnesses and padded headgear – protected, polished and powerful.
 
Green then riffed on many of his signature touches – extended silhouettes, multiple collars and endless drawstrings in various high-tech worker wear fantasies. But he also added a new take with almost molecular multi-plissé body armor. Even the strands of his string singlets were separated and stood to attention.
 
Space Age shamans marched with soft-shell samurai and poetic wanderers in this show, staged in a looming 19th-century salon with verrière ceiling  in the Temple district of Paris.
 
Half way through he went into overdrive with really beautiful giant collage floral prints – green-petaled sunflowers and soft russet thistles.
 
With serial music cut Himmelfahrt by Mark Allen Shepherd seething on the speakers, as if heralding the landing of an extraterrestrial, the cast marched victoriously at the finale. Uber avant garde, and yet easily refinable into wearable fashion-forward clobber. No wonder the show was packed full of major retailers.
 

"Emerging like landmarks within this terrain, a select system of visual codes that hold special significance begins to grow," read Green’s program, tempting inclusion in "Pseuds Corner" of Private Eye, though this is a mild quibble about a great show.
 
One, which quite rightly, won Green the loudest ovation on the official clap meter of the menswear season in Europe so far.