1) Kiko Kostadinov.

A Londoner of Bulgarian descent, Kiko Kostadinov founded his eponymous brand in 2016: a blend of composite and futuristic streetwear with a very strong ancestry of classic British sartorial style.

A series of particularly successful collaborations, such as with Asisc, Camper, Stüssy, and Mackintosh, in which Kostandinov has been able to bring his own minimal, unstructured language to each piece, have also contributed to his rapid rise to the Olympus of today’s most talented emerging designers.

The Kiko Kostadinov show at Paris Fashion Week AW23/24 Menswear was focused purely on the collection, with no digressions or stage corollaries. The designer paid homage to French fashion designer Anne-Marie Beretta, Italian fashion godmother Mariuccia Mandelli aka Krizia, American costume designer Irene Lentz and Roman sisters Fontana, in what was one of the brand’s most structured collections, albeit totally moving away from its streetwear approach.

Geometric silhouettes, tailored cuts, bright colors and bold juxtapositions were the leitmotif of his runway show in Paris, which we bet will turn into a flywheel that will catapult him into fashion hyperspace.

2) Liberal Youth Ministry.

Antonio Zaragoza, founder of the brand Liberal Youth Ministry, will remember the AW23/24 Paris runways that just passed as the most significant of his life. The brand, founded just in 2016, debuted on the French runways with its proverbial rebellion, mixing artistic distresses with Aztec influences and unexpected references to past decades.

Between elements of football culture, soft lines, and youth subcultures, the collection synthesized multiple references into future-oriented streetwear pieces.

3) Taakk.

For Fall/Winter 2023, Japanese menswear brand TAAKK was inspired by abstract paintings. Led by designer Takuya Morikawa and founded in 2013, TAAKK has attracted interest because of the vibrancy and avant-garde nature of its design, as well as its focus on the craftsmanship of each garment.

Underlying the collection presented in Paris is extensive research into materials and technical fabric treatments, making one reflect on the process a painter puts into painting a canvas: graphic representations of layered paintings, contrasting textures of intermediate sketches, and fabrics with altered jacquard angles.

4) Kidill.

Kidill is a brand started in 2014 by Japanese designer Hiroaki Sueyasu that fuses punk culture, skate, androgyny, and streetwear influences. The brand has a strong subcultural imprinting, which it reworks with eco-friendly themes and materials to create a new way of doing fashion.

For its debut show at Paris Fashion Week, it presented a collection inspired by films that portray an out-of-control adolescence, always borderline between nihilism and rebellion.

5) Casablanca.

Casablanca is a brand that revisits the timeless apres-sport aesthetic in a modern key.

Founded by designer Charaf Tajer in 2018, the brand has its roots in Moroccan culture, from which it draws palettes that evoke scorched earth fields, the color of terracotta, white linen, and turquoise to the use of lightweight yet top-quality materials.

Silhouettes are refined and inspired by elite sportswear, and he applies Neapolitan tailoring techniques to tennis-inspired garments; designed in Paris and made in Marrakesh.

The show presented at Paris Fashion Week AW24 Menswear, titled “For the Peace,” opens with a touching speech by creative director Charaf Tajer, while a huge war fighter covered in flowers towers center stage.

Heaven and hell; war and peace; beauty and monstrosity: the message is as dual as the East and the West, which has always divided-and inevitably.