Is It a Vibe Shift — or Just Summer?

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Something is happening in the streets of Paris: culture isn’t being created on the internet, nor on the runways of the French capital, where the latest round of men’s shows kicked off Tuesday, but around — and in — the Canal Saint-Martin.

Since the city lifted its ban on swimming in the waterway last Wednesday (a measure aimed at helping residents cope with a historic heat wave), much of its social life has reorganised around the canal. Throngs of people line the banks of the canal at all hours: drinking, talking, playing music, making out and jumping in the cool water.

In this edition:

• From the Knicks win to Paris’ heatwave, are collective experiences catalysing a cultural reset?
• Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton and Dior show menswear in Paris.

Walking along the canal, Paris feels more like Marseille or Rio. A guy who has buzzed his hair and dyed it candy pink bikes by wearing only flip-flops and board shorts. Actor and Jean-Paul Gaultier face Marin Judas spins around on an inflatable pool float, arms behind his head. The crowd lining the canal boos, then cheers as a teenager chickens out at the top of a footbridge before ultimately jumping in.

The excitement crescendoed last Sunday as the Canal and surrounding neighborhoods were packed with open air block parties for the Fête de la Musique. Previously a low-key gathering, France’s annual celebration of music has exploded into a nationwide bash in recent years — its loosely organised, ultra-inclusive setup seized on by Gen-Z as an antidote to pandemic-induced social isolation and a subsequent era of ticketed, curated, self-aware fun. This year, despite the 40-degree Celsius heat, the parties around the Canal Saint-Martin raged on until the bars ran out of beer and the hoods of cars were dented from being danced on.

Creative minds are taking notice. Haider Ackermann was out in the streets at the Fête de la Musique. Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy posted kids jumping into the canal on Instagram. An artist friend told me he’d been going swimming there every day — even taking a canal-side meeting with an important curator.

“I feel like there’s a whole new moment. Something is changing,” Dior’s creative director Jonathan Anderson said Wednesday after his menswear show. “Rave culture is starting back up, kids are dancing, they’re mixing things up. They’re dressing up, but the whole idea of totemic fashion… I don’t know.”

Is it a vibe shift, or just summer in the city? In Paris, the canal has always been a popular place to hang out, particularly when the temperature climbs. But it’s hard to shake the sense that we’re on the verge of a cultural tipping point — driven by global warming, sure to reshape city living in the summer months, as well as a rejection of rampant social atomization and inequality. While the crowd in the street during the heatwave and Fête de la Musique has skewed young and middle class, it ultimately cut across age and socioeconomic status.

Paris’ euphoric response to a scorching heatwave came on the heels of a similar pique of collective effervescence in New York, where the Knicks first championship win in over 50 years provoked an outpouring of hometown pride. Big, shared emotions are sure to take hold in more countries in the coming weeks as the World Cup enters its final rounds.

Whether these are just instances of good old summer vibes — likely to go the way of camp friends and beaded necklaces — remains to be seen. But the streets seem to have some urgent messages for fashion: After years of living through the “K-shaped economy:”— in which the wealthy grow far wealthier while inflation and insecurity pinch the middle and lower classes — as well as social isolation exacerbated by Covid-19 and technology, the appetite for collective, inclusive experiences that allow people to meet in the middle is staggering.

In recent years, fashion brands have responded to narrowing interest in expensive handbags and clothing by narrowing their businesses further, focusing on capturing growth at the very top end of the market. Could it be time to rethink that approach? Humans are pack animals: exclude too many people from the party, and who really wants to come?

Heat Wave Fashion Week

On a more practical note, blazing temperatures that are increasingly the norm have clear implications for what kind of clothes brands ought to show, and when. At the Paris menswear shows, no one wanted to look at, touch or think about cool-weather clothing.

At Saint Laurent, parachute tops stood out for their weightless beauty. (They also typified Anthony Vaccarello’s highly incremental approach to translating the brand’s womenswear codes to men, representing a faithful callback to last September’s floating jewel-tone gowns.) Sweaty, transparent plastic derbies were sure to stir the pot in any weather—but were a particularly effective bid for online engagement under the present heat.

At Dior’s menswear show by Jonathan Anderson —an excellent, if unfocused, third outing — Old World frock coats were rendered in poplin rather than the usual heavy brocade. The show opened with an ultra-light, relaxed tartan suit that was, for me, one of the most desirable looks of the season.

Louis Vuitton almost nailed it by constructing a massive cresting wave for its set. It was a refreshing visual that could have made for a timely bit of synesthesia, but the message was undermined by a collection weighed down by thick cardigans, gratuitous embellishment and layered-on styling.

Of course, Vuitton’s audience is global—reaching far beyond the European heat wave. Some degree of seasonal misalignment is also inevitable across brands: spring-summer collections are usually delivered from February or even late January: retailers appreciate having some weather-appropriate novelties to tide them over to the warmer months.

But as men’s fashion weeks struggle to re-assert their relevance — the schedule has gotten thinner in recent seasons as brands opt for co-ed collections, off-calendar shows, lookbooks and presentations — one option could be to lean into greater seasonal alignment, taking advantage of the June and January slots by sharpening their focus on hot- (or cold-) weather innovations and resort silhouettes.

High summer is already an important category for many brands — a last bastion of accessible pricing that also benefits from deadline-driven shopping ahead of vacations. The opportunity of selling fashion for hot weather escapes feels even more urgent now that the hot weather keeps coming to us.