Marine Serre has been leavening her shows with menswear for a while now, and during the last three seasons has taken to showing her mainline during the men’s weeks in Paris. But what you see here, she said, is her first full and standalone menswear collection. “I’ve been building my masculine archetypes,” Serre said in a showroom appointment, “but it’s taken a while for me to feel satisfied that I have developed a full vocabulary.” She will hold a show at womenswear in a few weeks—so why none to launch this? “I didn’t want to come out with a full menswear show the first time round, because that seemed a bit presumptuous,” she said.
It really wouldn’t have been. Still in her early 30s, Serre has built up a compelling business with distinct codes and USP that combines the sustainable, the feminocentric, the inclusive, and the French. This collection, to be released in three phases June through August, was remarkably cogent yet impressively broad. Phases included boxy tailoring in wool jacquards that countered the dadness (not “sadness,” as my spellcheck just suggested) of the jackets with more youthful leaning Bermudas and a new hikecore version of her rise sneaker (dreamy in berry). Pants were delivered in the late ’90s bootcut (definitively NOT ’70s bell-bottom) silhouette that has been creeping back up the index.
Which leads nicely to the denim. Serre pointed out that creatively she could have offered a multitude of pieces (she cited 60-something outerwear concepts), but added that both her ethos and her business sense demanded she rigorously self-edit. The result was three denim shapes; straight, slightly baggier and articulated by a triple seam behind the knee, and a darted yoke, slightly carrot-shaped cut, whose outseam angled from crotch to flippable cuff. For this old timer it was instantly reminiscent of the engineered Levi’s Twisted: following the carpenter jean explosion seems another subset that’s due a revival. For me, however, it was the articulated knee cut that was especially fresh in this selection. Serre was also wisely circumspect about where and how to use— and not overuse—her powerful crescent moon logo. On denim it featured heavily on the paler blue washes but barely at all on the black pieces, which were partially conceived as mix-and-matchable with the tailoring for evening looks.
Accessories included daintily jaunty bowling bags and more rugged models inspired by mail bags. It was also notable how many ties—both leather and fabric—were in the collection, including in an all denim look. Said Serre: “I just think they bring something elegant, refined and unusual today.”
Other stories included the upcycled spliced T-shirts that must take so long to combine so ingeniously, sprayed faded-moon leather outerwear, fine soft sportswear fashioned from upcycled scarves, djellabas and shirting in upcycled bedsheet cotton, and some moonstruck argyle knits. For a first “full” menswear collection, this was a varied yet defined offering that exhibited consideration on all its many levels.