LVMH Prize Showroom Heralds a New, Culturally Diverse Approach to Menswear
PARIS — Delphine Arnault likes to say that the LVMH Prize for Young Designers is a good barometer for the industry at large.
“It’s really like taking a photograph of fashion at a given moment in time,” said the executive, who is the force behind the prize and a key talent scout at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. “Each year there is a slightly different message.”
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After mirroring the rise of genderless fashion and a growing focus on sustainability, the showroom for this year’s edition heralded the arrival of menswear from new cultural horizons, with the 20 shortlisted brands including for the first time candidates hailing from Egypt, Ghana and Saudi Arabia.
It also reflected the emergence of the Middle East as a pool of design talent, with the presence of Egyptian-born, Qatar-based Yasmin Mansour, Saudi Arabia’s KML and Lebanese brand Renaissance Renaissance.
The 20 labels are competing for a grand prize of 400,000 euros and mentorship by LVMH teams in such areas as sustainable development, communication, copyright and corporate legal aspects, marketing, manufacturing and the financial management of a brand.
Ahmed Hassan, who founded KML in 2022 with his sister Razan, showed in Paris last June as part of the Saudi Fashion Commission’s Saudi 100 Brands initiative. The label aims to redefine menswear for a new generation of luxury clients.
“We live in a very interesting time in Saudi where in the past 30 years we’ve been buying a lot, and I think now it’s the time where we do fashion that is more culturally relevant to us,” Hassan said. “We’re trying to bring some of the fading traditions, such as men wearing skirts, for example.”
His elegant monochrome pieces are often transformable. The top of a black coat can be detached to make a cropped jacket, while a white shirt features a button-off back. His skirts come in narrow or fuller styles, but not all customers are ready to adopt them.
“The conversation is very interesting, because when we see the older generation and the younger generation, they love our work,” he said. “The older generation, they relate to it, they’ve seen it before, and the younger generation think it’s cool and sexy and they want to experiment with it. Our generation is the generation that forgot its tradition, in a way.”
The brand, sold exclusively at its studio in Riyadh, wants to expand into accessories. For Hassan, the LVMH Prize is an important step in that direction. “Recognition is one thing, and it is the most important thing for us at this stage, and then also connecting with the right people to execute, to manufacture, to develop,” he said.
‘Afroluxurious’ elegance
David Boye-Doe, the founder of Ghanaian brand Boyedoe, said funding was crucial to scale up his genderless label, but he also saw the advice he could glean as crucial.
“We want to produce in a more ethical way, so mentoring is one of the key areas,” he said. “Without the correct mentorship and collaboration, you abuse the money.”
Some of his pieces, including a burgundy-colored coat with fringed trim, are made from fugu, a handwoven fabric originating from the northern parts of Ghana. It usually comes in vivid colors, but the label makes darker versions that it thinks are better suited for an international market.
“We blend Afroluxurious heritage with ethical elegance,” said Boye-Doe. “It’s African luxury: our way of interpreting luxury.”
Also among his designs were pants assembled from the waistbands of reclaimed jeans, and a coat pieced together from the leftover inseams. The designer usually sources items from Accra’s sprawling Kantamanto market, Africa’s largest secondhand clothing market, which burned down on New Year’s Day.
“No matter the challenges, even losing our source of getting those things, we focus more on how we thrive,” he said. “Even to be here, to be selected as one of the first Ghanaian brands, is a testament of how we have thrived over the years.”
The label, which has shown at Lagos Fashion Week and Portugal Fashion, is also present at the Tranoi trade show in Paris this season. Boye-Doe sees his role as clearing the way for other emerging African luxury brands.
“We call ourselves the underdog, where people are not expecting that this thing is coming,” he said. “Because of us, other Africans, other Ghanaians can see that it can be done.”
Redefining American fashion
Even in markets like the United States, designers are challenging established ways of making and selling men’s clothes.
“My business model is all bespoke custom orders,” said Josh Tafoya. The Parsons graduate moved from New York to his native New Mexico during the pandemic and has since been exploring his family tradition of weaving.
“It’s a lot of Spanish influence, Mexicano influence and Genizaro,” he explained, referring to the name given to detribalized Native Americans in the Southwest starting from the 17th century.
“My family comes from a lineage of weavers, both sides, and I’m trying to bring that culture back. It’s slowly dying in New Mexico,” added Tafoya, who had brought with him a nearly century-old piece woven by his grandmother.
His genderless pieces incorporate traditional elements like Mexican serape stripes, or Chimayo-inspired chevron motifs, but he imbues the designs with his own theatrical flair in a bid to challenge perceptions of Southwestern identity.
“I’ll play into campy little motifs, like gunmetal for the Bandito bullet suits. And I’ll play a lot with Western denims, but also with metallic fringes, because cowboy is a little flamboyant, it’s funny,” said Tafoya.
“When I went to Parsons, we were taught American fashion, and it was sportswear and the traditional brands,” he continued. “That’s not my vision of American fashion. This is my vision. This is the oldest part of the Americas.”
At a cocktail party on Wednesday, Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of womenswear at Dior, was among those who stopped at Tafoya’s stand. Also making the rounds was Sarah Burton, who was preparing to show her debut collection for Givenchy on Friday and will be joining the LVMH Prize jury as a result.
The chic crowd also included Sidney Toledano, senior adviser to LVMH chairman and chief executive officer Bernard Arnault; Tod’s Group’s chairman Diego Della Valle, who lingered at the Torishéju booth; designer Gabriela Hearst; image architect Law Roach; milliner Stephen Jones, and models including Natalia Vodianova, Elle Macpherson, Toni Garrn and Paloma Elsesser.
LVMH Prize ambassador Jaden Smith said he was “blown away” by the selection. “Everybody here right now is at the forefront of fashion, innovation and design,” he said.
The rapper and actor, who is known for his bold choices on the red carpet and has his own clothing line, Msftsrep, demurred when asked if he had any tips for the young talents. “If anything, I’m here to learn things from everybody who’s here,” said Smith. “I would love to study with them and learn things from them.”
Fellow ambassador Lily James described the excitement of discovering the new voices shaping fashion.
“Hearing about their stories, their identities, they’re sharing their heritage, their cultures through their fashion and it’s subverting something traditional and turning everything on its head — honestly I feel overwhelmed by the talent in this room, incredibly inspired,” she said.
James advised the finalists to keep honoring what makes them “unique, individual and authentic, because there’s only one of you and that’s your superpower.”
Overcoming Adversity
Meanwhile, Delphine Arnault praised the resilience of the designers who have struck out on their own despite the challenging market conditions for independent brands.
“It takes a lot of courage, a lot of passion, and they put themselves on the line,” she said. “All the designers who are here could very well be working in the studios of large brands, so you have to have a very strong entrepreneurial side. Most of them have to do the work of 10 people on their own or with just one other person.”
Danial Aitouganov, for example, left his job as menswear designer at Louis Vuitton under Pharrell Williams last summer to focus on Zomer, the label he cofounded with stylist Imruh Asha.
The Dutch designer has eight years of experience working for brands including Vuitton, Chloé and Burberry, but admitted it was a challenge juggling design duties with everything else. “We are small, so I’m learning as we go, and learning production and finances was really not on my résumé,” he said. “I would love to have guidance in that.”
Cynthia Merhej, the designer behind the Renaissance Renaissance label, has faced more challenges than most, steering her brand through the coronavirus pandemic, a huge explosion that destroyed swathes of Beirut, economic crisis and most recently, the conflict between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel.
“I’m very happy to say that now the company is finally back in Beirut. We’ve been producing everything there for the last two years,” said Merhej, who had briefly moved some operations overseas.
“A lot has now changed in terms of the landscape politically. We don’t know for the worse or for the better, but what we know is now at least it’s a bit more stable,” she reported. “It’s really hard to run a business when every day you don’t know if there will be a currency.”
Having made the semifinals in 2021, when the event was held online due to the lingering effects of COVID-19, she was happy to attend the showroom in person.
“It was obviously incredible to be nominated the first time, but to come back and actually have face-to-face contact, and for people to be able to physically touch the garments and to see them, it makes a huge difference,” Merhej said. “During COVID, it felt a bit isolated because we didn’t actually get to meet each other. It didn’t feel real because I didn’t see the other people’s collections. It’s really nice to be back.”
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