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The results of this menswear season’s top 10 most-viewed shows list on Vogue Runway are in. Every season, this list acts as a failsafe indicator of which collections have captured the attention of those who are more interested in the clothes than the front rows. As ever, the list is ordered according to the amount of views each collection logged on Vogue Runway within its first 48 hours of publication. And as ever, this season has thrown up a few surprises.
There are four new entries on the list this season, of which only one – Yves Saint Laurent – we expected to see. That reliably blockbuster show has been held outside of the mainstream menswear calendar for the last few seasons, and its in-season arrival on the Paris schedule made it an almost certainty to figure here. The three other new entries include the oldest designer on the list, the second youngest designer on the list, and the longest serving non-founder creative director in all of fashion.
This season, eight of the top 10 collections were presented in Paris, with only two in Milan. That will be catnip to those who contend that Milan lacks “energy”. And only one of the collections on the list was not presented on the runway, which will cheer those who relish watching fashion theatre in its purest form.
Two of the collections were debut shows for creative directors at well-established houses. And you needn’t need to be a fashion clairvoyant to divine which show, this season, would be the most-viewed.
Haute-bourgeois boys in leather pants plus the hottest bags in the business make Hermès an irresistible viewing pleasure for many among menswear’s cognoscenti. So it’s little surprise to see French luxury’s most serene heritage marque sliding back into this season’s top 10, making it the first of the list’s new entries. And without wishing to spoil the reveal at the other end of this list, there is a satisfying symmetry to the fact that Véronique Nichanian is the longest-serving creative director in all of fashion (menswear included). Ravissante!
Second new entry Grace Wales Bonner is also the second youngest designer on this list. This season, she was presenting a collection that marked her 10th anniversary as one of the most precarious of entities in fashion: a London-based indie. In her review, my Vogue Runway colleague Sarah Mower described as a “total disgrace” the fact that GWB has not yet been tapped to be creative director of another brand or house, and that reading is fair enough; however, another way of seeing it might be that Wales Bonner is simply too self-determined to let herself be pinned down. Her three-pronged combo of artistic practice, conscious menswear opulence and hit Adidas output seems to have generated a stable and self-sustaining business ecosystem that she’s thriving in. Chapeau!
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