The Place des Vosges was Issey Miyake’s chosen stage – a rare acquisition, even by fashion week standards. The 17th century square was used with aplomb to put on the Franco-Japanese house’s spectacular musical extravaganza in homage to the pleat.

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Louis Vuitton’s blossoming boyhood

Bystanders stopped to gawp at the sheer spectacle of designer Virgil Abloh’s spring offering.

A bouncy castle, balloon sculptures, Louis Vuitton-branded flags and even a Louis Vuitton crepe stand populated the Place Dauphine – a normally quiet square that is well-known among Parisians as strolling territory.

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This season, Abloh, artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection, chose the blooming flower as the theme.

He used it literally in flower garland accessories and in prints of flower bouquets on loose silk twill shirts or on silk hoodies with a streetwise edge.

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Yet he also used it metaphorically to produce a show that was, at its heart, all about growing up as a boy and developing a personal identity.

“Through the stages of boyhood, young men’s encounter with clothes and fashion is yet to be influenced by societal programming,” Abloh said. “Our exploration of dress codes is still liberated ... of social norms, gender conventions.”

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This idea became the springboard for much experimentation among the 58 looks.

Large straw gardening hats, baggy fuchsia skirts, billowing grey ponchos met white rubber boots and several looked meshed together surreally with a large kite.

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Yet while there were plenty of ideas, there was a hollowness to some looks, which seemed more aimed at delivering a forced message than a wearable aesthetic.

Rick Owens explores Mexican heritage

Rick Owens said he was spurred on by US President Donald Trump’s policies on the Mexican border wall to explore his own personal Mexican heritage in this season’s show.

The references produced a typically funky and complex display, but one that seemed only very loosely based on the Mexican theme.

A key look was the sharp-shouldered tailored silhouette, often against a bare chest.

It featured sometimes with dazzling sequins that Owens said were “like the folkloric skirts my mum wore in school pageants growing up in Puebla, Mexico”.

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Raised in Southern California by a native Mexican mother, Owens said his father worked with Mexican migrant farm workers – a point that influenced his creative process here.

Long hair with a centre-parting, perhaps a nod to Native American styles, featured alongside large leather platforms, a bold take on the proportion of a cowboy boot.

The logo of the migrant farmers, whose flag featured an Aztec eagle, was featured across over-shirts and T-shirts.

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The show was set inside the Palais de Tokyo fountain area, features a sculpture by Thomas Houseago, a British contemporary artist who the fashion house said “had been thinking of border walls and Aztec hieroglyphics as well”.

Hieroglyphic-shaped banding adorned aggressive-looking black trousers in wax “megalace”, in homage to Houseago.

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Yet other styles, including jumpsuits and silver jackets, merged the universes of Glam Rock and the space age in a stylish mad hat melting pot.

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