The Weirdest, Wildest, and Most Important Fashion Shows of 2022

Paris Trend Week, June. Every little thing was likely rather smoothly—and then the horses started out shitting. At the Casablanca demonstrate, 4 shiny equines ended up corralled in the center of the carpeted runway, on the lookout handsome and a little uneasy as attendees filtered to their seats. As influencers edged shut to the pen to snap horse selfies—and the horses snapped selfies of their own—the scene struck me as a powerful symbol of the heady environment that experienced pervaded the whole large fashion ecosystem that summer, the initial considering that the onset of covid wherever the runway calendar was packed with in-person displays, presentations, and functions. The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that lovely outfits was no for a longer time captivating enough—or maybe not even the issue of runway shows any more. You desired great apparel, but you also desired horses.

“Fashion week” (an imprecise expression, but the very best we have for now) hasn’t been the insider-y trade affair it as soon as was ever due to the fact the rise of the supermodel in the ’90s. And these days, with thousands on thousands of folks observing dozens of reveals in human being and on their phones, brand names have to devise significantly elaborate strategies of entertaining them. The viewers expects much more than a bunch of products stalking down a catwalk: they expect a effectiveness. This calendar year, makes shipped in extravagant fashion. Louis Vuitton, for 1, erected a colossal dreamworld in a courtyard of the Louvre to pay a ultimate tribute to Virgil Abloh, total with a marching band imported from Tallahassee and a Kendrick Lamar live performance. Other flexes ended up extra subtle. Gucci, in what would be Alessandro Michele’s final clearly show for the Milanese powerhouse, forged 68 sets of painstakingly sourced identical twins. Rising designers obtained in on the pleasurable in their individual means, way too, as when Mowalola returned from a three-12 months hiatus with a entire body-baring assortment of X-rated ecclesiastical-use. The concept was crystal clear: as long as fashion sits at the middle of preferred tradition, and dollars floods by means of the ecosystem, the brands are likely to act appropriately.

On the other hand, 2022 may be remembered as the 12 months when the whole endeavor obtained a minimal way too ambitious—when items began going haywire. Like when the songs kicked on at Casablanca and the startled horses started off pooping all in excess of the flooring, which most visitors gamely experimented with to ignore. (The stench, even so, was challenging not to discover.) It was a reminder, significant as ever, that normally the best rewards are located by peeling again the layers of spectacle and remembering why these demonstrates exist in the very first location. Beneath all the ’grammable moments and VVIP front rows and at the heart of the constellation of situations and activations that now circle the standard schedule is, with any luck ,, some wonderful and compelling garments that will inform how you and I gown.

As the menswear demonstrates whip around the corner—things kick off at Pitti Uomo in Florence on January 10!—we’re on the lookout again, with a obvious bias toward events this GQ author was existing for, at the moments from the men’s demonstrates this yr that we will not shortly neglect.

Dior Men’s

January, Paris

When it will come to the scale and ambition of his function, the only individual Kim Jones can outdo is himself. This year, Jones unveiled a buzzy Dior collaboration with ERL in LA, and ended the 12 months with a celebration of not a person but two blockbuster collections in Cairo, such as a person presented to 800 friends in entrance of the freakin’ Pyramids of Giza. The 2nd was a collab with the buzzy and excellent Tremaine Emory of Denim Tears. (Supreme x Dior Men’s when?) But Jones established the tone for a calendar year described by a quieter form of hoopla with his very first Dior outing in February, the place the designs marched out in gray and beige wool-and-leather-based Birkenstocks, which would go on to scream off retail cabinets for $1,100+ a pop, offering out numerous instances above. There ended up lots of exasperating tendencies in menswear this 12 months, but you have to idea your Steven Jones Millinery beret to Jones for guaranteeing that the most covetable shoes of the total 12 months were gardening mules encouraged by a couturier’s inexperienced thumb

Maryam Nassir Zadeh

February, New York