At this Paris Fashion Week, 3. Paradis, Wales Bonner, and Blue Marble each redefine what menswear can be today. Spiritual journeys, cultural heritage, intimate narratives for these three brands, clothing goes beyond style to become a language, a space for identity exploration, and a poetic manifesto.
Blue Marble: Climbing one’s inner mountain
For his Spring-Summer 2026 collection, Anthony Alvarez draws on childhood memories from the Toulon region. It’s a return to his roots in a misty Mediterranean landscape, where models walk across a ground that is strewn with dead leaves, just like a sensory hike.
From the very first silhouettes, the scene is set: mountain imagery is printed on trousers, while a T-shirt boldly declares “Beyond”, a true call to push one’s limits. A shirt reads “Each path a hike,” reminding us that every journey is an ascent, both physical and symbolic.
Blue Marble’s wardrobe revisits outdoor essentials: oversized denim in various washes, XXL raincoats, and under-the-arm bags. The silhouettes are topped with curious hats adorned with miniature pine trees, reimagined tourist trinkets that gradually migrate from headwear to torsos, like a gentle shower of memories.
Some pieces feel almost encrypted, with intentionally unreadable messages embroidered onto the garments. It’s no longer the destination that matters, but the journey. The standout piece? A shirt adorned with a garland of flowers. A poetic remnant of the foliage crossed a way to carry a visible trace of the effort made.
3. Paradis: The dreamer’s walk
With Steps to Nowhere, Emeric Tchatchoua offers a true symbolic crossing of the desert: feet in the sand. The desert here is manifold: both real and imagined, barren and fertile, a space of introspection and mirage. A palette of warm, neutral tones punctuated by vivid accents supports this visual narrative. As the silhouettes progress, the colors intensify like hallucinations, giving way to bold fuchsia and orange expanses. The indigo blue of the Tuareg people, a recurring thread throughout the collection, evokes both the nobility of travel and The Little Prince. It inspires a hybrid headpiece, somewhere between a cheche and a baseball cap. A fusion of nomadic and urban influences.
Illusion lies at the heart of the collection: off-kilter buttonholes, trousers with quadruple belts, trench coats with double collars. Watches shift from wrists to prints, eventually reclaiming their objecthood, clustered like charms or transformed into bags.
The final silhouette, a vision in all white, feels like an apparition or a wedding with the unknown.
3.Paradis stays true to its core style: sculptural tailored suits, perfectly controlled oversized cuts, and XXL woven leather totes, carried like faithful travel companions. And of course, the signature white doves, symbols of peace and hope, remain a defining emblem of the house.
Wales Bonner: 10 years of purposeful tailoring
This season, Grace Wales Bonner celebrates ten years of her eponymous label with a collection rich in tributes. A winner of the LVMH Prize and now a central figure in contemporary fashion, the British designer stages her show at Lycée Henri-IV. A bastion of knowledge and learning, and the perfect setting for her scholarly wardrobe.
The Spring-Summer 2026 collection, titled Jewel, echoes the Met Gala theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” A natural transatlantic dialogue for the British designer of Jamaican descent, who was also a member of the event’s committee.
Wales Bonner’s style continues to blend the codes of dandyism, preppy silhouettes, and elegance shaped by diverse diasporic heritages. But this season, the line feels even more focused, more intimate. The designer herself speaks of “soulful clothing”, garments infused with spirit and depth.
Shorts the centerpiece of the collection. Strike a balance between laid-back summer ease and the precision of tailoring. The wardrobe moves fluidly from refined workwear to evening silhouettes, without ever breaking its thread. The 1960s and ’70s are evoked not to recreate an era, but to distill its symbols: self-affirmation, Black beauty, and the liberation of bodies and gender.
At 3. Paradis, Wales Bonner and Blue Marble, menswear turns into more than just a stylistic exercise, it evokes personal stories and collective memory alike. These three collections trace singular paths, far from macho codes and standardized silhouettes. A language of intimacy emerges, asserting that menswear, too, can be a space for exploration, of self, of others, of the world.
Article by Julie Boone.
