‘A soft suit is just as practical as a tracksuit but, in daily public life, much more appropriate,’ says Giorgio Armani, the 90-year-old fashion designer, who, in one glorious swipe of a sentence (there will be more later), begins to lay bare some of where we happen to find ourselves with menswear in the autumn of 2024.
Saint Laurent’s A/W 2024 menswear collection, shown in Paris in March at the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection – the Tadao Ando renovated modern art museum in the 1st arrondissement – offered further illumination. An opening double- breasted suit jacket that was generous in shape – everything falling impeccably from a wide and stern 1980s shoulder, worn with a loose-cuffed trouser and tie – set out a convincing case for a tailoring mood pertinent with languid elegance. Creative director Anthony Vaccarello subsequently explained that this collection’s tailoring was based around the idea of the haute couture technique ‘flou’, in which the sole purpose is to make a garment as fluid as possible.
