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It was after a sublime Auralee runway show on Tuesday, when the designer, Ryota Iwai, told a fleet of journalists that this collection was — as they always are — inspired by daily life, that it hit me: These clothes work because they’re advanced normcore.
If I were to give you a flat description of what Mr. Iwai shows, you’d think I was describing the closet of a suburban dad: gray zip-up hoodies, pullover fleeces, a puffer vest, banker blue button-ups and wan bluejeans.
The Auralee show, and others from the first blush of Paris men’s fashion week, swirled with the ghosts of normcore, that aughts movement of wearing pedestrian, mundane clothes as an anti-fashion declaration. Normcore burned bright and fast. It was snuffed out by the steroidal jolt of Instagrammable fashions: your look-at-me trompe l’oeil jeans and your leopard sneakers.
But what if normcore didn’t die. What if it just mutated? In Paris, the prosaic is still there, though it has been polished into something if not more luxurious, at least more interesting.
Look at Auralee, where Mr. Iwai is a master at making the familiar feel arresting. His flannels come cumulus soft, his fleeces are plush enough to make a Patagonia wilt and his corduroys are tailored to utopian perfection.
These pieces certainly cost (a wool Auralee hoodie sells for $1,585), but they appeal because they’re something you can convince — or maybe fool — yourself into believing you’ll want to wear in several years. Fashion, it could be said, is no longer for the risk-takers. It’s for investors.
Strong evidence for this evolution derives not from the shows but the crowds outside them. On Wednesday, I lost count of the number of store buyers wearing $1,000-ish monotone fleece jackets from the French label Rier. Want to look as if you’re going to a fashion show in 2025? Dress as if you’re walking your labradoodle. Chuck on a sloping overcoat, a black sweater and some New Balances. Voilà, right this way to the front row, sir.
A small personal anecdote: The most compliments I received this week were for my thigh-length black work jacket with two slant hip pockets and a leather collar. Some fellow showgoers mistook it for an Auralee creation. It was, in fact, a Comme des Garçons Homme jacket from 1990. As ever, nothing is really new.
After all, what is the Row, the label that whips the fashion cognoscenti into a lather, if not advanced basics? At its showroom on Tuesday afternoon, I encountered a conventional camel V-neck in a feathery cashmere and black leather clogs that were like Birkenstocks sent to finishing school. I thumbed my way to a pistachio work jacket that felt like grasping a prince’s pillow. For a certain shopper, that hand feel is enough to validate a cost beyond anything a suburban dad could fathom.
At Lemaire, which is on a hot streak thanks to its curved Croissant bags, which seem to hang on the shoulder of every other Parisian under, say, 47, the designer Christophe Lemaire spoke of clothes “rooted in everyday life.”
Many models in its runway show were dressed sparingly: a T-shirt with an earth-tone suit, a tan peacoat over a white button-up, a swingy dark raincoat. This was normcore, Paris style.
But, this is underselling a collection that also dove into a debonair blue leather jacket, a “Donnie Brasco” leather trench and a tough-guy leather blazer — pieces too opulent to be called average that serve as indications that Lemaire is feeling its financial success.
The advanced normcore case landed strongest at the showroom of Carter Altman, a winsome 26-year-old Detroit native working in London who designs under the name Carter Young. His racks held a wardrobe of burnished basics: white T-shirts, blue striped shirts and nothing-to-them suits. But nothing screamed lawn-mowing middle-age dad quite like a pair of pleated jeans.
“Are people still quoting normcore?” Mr. Altman pushed back when asked if that’s what he was doing, holding up those flaccid jeans. After a beat, the notion settled in. He grabbed some bulbous, pre-distressed sneakers and then a chestnutty leather jacket.
“I guess you could describe this as a bit normcore,” he said, sounding oddly proud.
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