Pharrell, Rami Malek, And Zoë Bleu Defy The Heat

What with the “Omega block” heat dome parking a hot, high swelter of North African air over France, right this second isn’t exactly the most comfortable moment to head out for dear old landlocked Paris. On June 24, the high was a “normal” – for this particular climatic lockdown – 103 Fahrenheit. On June 25, more of the same. It doesn’t look like that atmospheric chunk of Morocco-to-Algeria is going to move off any time before Sunday, which is the end of this fashion week, but on the bright side, the Seine is still eminently swimmable, thanks to the ‘24 Olympics, if anybody’s moved to get nekkid and take the dive because their riverfront boutique hotel ain’t quite got around to putting the pool on the roof, Nick Jones/Soho-House style.

Despite all that, when Paris’ own crucial industry of fashion calls for a quorum, as at the 2027 Spring/Summer mens’ shows this week, the great and the good appear at reveille, no matter how the asphalt sticks underfoot as they scramble down the streets scouring the storefronts for at least a shimmering mirage of a cafe with a big sweating flagon of well-iced Sancerre being twirled in a silver bucket next to their waiting table.

Pictured top, Vuitton Creative Director/songwriter/producer and possessor of many tons of well-iced cool, Pharell Williams, cheekily commits one of the seven deadly fashion sins outside the Dior Homme show on June 24, with a breezy, almost obstreperous own-brand fanny pack strapped to his back for his necessaries. Is it a fashion faux-pas like an own-goal in the World Cup? Well, yes, it can be almost that bad. Despite its (arguable) practicality, no man should wear this thing – the phone, the wallet, the passport, the analog diary if need be, all fit into pockets, and if for some reason that they won’t, that is why briefcases were invented. That is the ur-man-canon, and it won’t change.

There is a set of non-dress exceptions: high-rise steel workers, film-set gaffers, best boys, sound men and stagehands worldwide swear by all manner of tool belts, giant industrial versions of fanny packs, and the like. They get a hall pass and many kudos for the work.

But Williams is arguably the professional multi-tasker to break the dress-up fanny pack law. It’s fashion brinkmanship of a high order he’s engaged in here, risking a vertiginous dip in his style rating just for a gentlemanly appearance at a competing label’s show. As usual, he pulls it off. Perhaps it’s the insouciant hoodie, perhaps the backwards (alligator-hide or faux-alligator?) Vuitton baseball cap, but if a regular non-Pharrell dude were to attempt any piece of this, or all of it, he’d be just another forgettable tourist on trite tourist-patrol errands in Paris. Williams is a working Parisian, in effect, and here he looks readily native, which is the power of a born clothes horse at work. We don’t have to agree with the man to admire the puissance of the move.

Those beefy Parisian security boys seem ready for anything, including the heat, non? Pictured above heading into Saint Laurent’s June 23 menswear show with one of her trusty minders scanning literally every untoward gesture within a hundred yards of them, tall, tan Britain’s own model of well-aged agelessness, Kate Moss, seems to have the heat well and truly beat what with the lace-graced décolleté on that camisole.

Still! Black leather jacket? Is there some disco back entrance nearby, or a stairwell leading to one, where she could duck in and fire up a John Player Special like she used to before the mad dash to a purring limo, keeping the knees primly together on entering the car because the skirts were kinda short back then? Because, back in the Naughty Nineties, disco back stairwells were dependably the places one could actually locate Ms. Moss. Proving that they could be trained as well as any fine gun dog on a grouse, paparazzi hungering for the – diplomatically put here in British tabloid-speak – “worse-for-wear” Moss shot soon learned to go to various famous back stairwells to see which one she was in that night.

Wait! Sorry for that digressive misstep, that’s right, she’s moved on to longevity now. Abject, groveling apologies to Moss and everybody on the longevity team! Nevertheless, may we remind everybody, again, that it was precisely 40 Centigrade/103 Fahrenheit in Paris on the 23 June, as she attended the Saint Laurent show? It’s proof, if any were needed, that no matter the millibars on the barometer or the ambient temperature, when it is decreed by La Moss that nothing but black leather will do for impact, black leather it will be.

Former excellent Bond villian and international stage and screen player Rami Malek clearly got the same memo that Kate Moss received, and his black leather bomber looks really crisp here, what with those excellently generous French cuffs on the shirt turned back over the jacket sleeves, en route into the Saint Laurent show. Looks breezy and cool. Why he tucked his tie between the second and third button of his ice-cold striped shirt placket, as most military school cadets are required to do when not wearing their blouses or Ike jackets, is a mystery, but it has the effect of making Malek seem ever more cool-cucumber-ish and untouched by the local swelter.

Yes, Malek could have worn a more seasonal get-up, and it would have seemed more reasonable. But he shouldn’t have any of his people change anything about this gear, at least not for the moment – it’s working. He should have his people figure out another villain role, because villains are the drivers of the engines of plot, and Malek is very good at making those characters seem real. Memo to Mrs. Bezos: Make those writers you have squirreling away on the thing bring back the splendid Lyutsifer Safin from the dead – that whole Poison Garden shooting scene where he pings Bond five-six times in No Time To Die was the best!

Sharp red-carpet shooter Edward Berthelot snagged the big one, and finally, we can also breath a sigh of relief that there is at least one well-dressed man in Paris at the shows who understands heat and how to work in it. Malian star soccer forward Mamadou Sidibé exudes understated competence and resourcefulness in his hopsack-weave linen suit en route into Dior Homme on June 24, but what really carries this outfit into the ice-cold stratosphere of style is the choice of the tie-free wing collar. That is some good shirt, and it’s working hard. The man in it has been around the world and then some. We should mention that the average daily temperature in Sidibé’s natal district of Kayes, Mali, is 107-plus Fahrenheit in April and May? Just part of the reason that he looks so coolly at home in 102 Fahrenheit.

The Dior Homme showrunners had to have issued a memo – Hey, remember, it’s summer and it’s kinda hot in town this year – because the excellently dry James Marsden, who will be reprising his key X-Man Cyclops character in December’s hotly awaited Avengers: Doomsday, is studiously cool in a plaid shirt and regulation dad-khakis, with sensible shoes and socks. It’s the dad-khakis that make this kit, because, teamed with an actual plaid shirt, the combo screams: After lunch, we decided to leave the navy linen blazer back at the hotel, because it’s too damn hot, okay? Okay???

It’s a fact that Marsden’s partner, Dutch model Frederique Brons, is perfectly attired for the weather and her pinpoint-perfect white dress masks the need for any sort of jacket on any male within twenty yards of her. Because nobody within twenty yards of her is looking at any of the boys.

Swedish rapper Yung Lean, aka Jonatan Aron Leandoer Håstad, took a different, non-dad yet still summery climatic dressing route to the Dior Homme show, with the baggy jeans under an excellent white wifebeater and a plaid shirt in a sort of wash of – you guessed it – the Swedish national colors of blue and gold on a light green ground. Smart summer dressing!

But let’s back up a minute. First, while we might be forgiven for thinking it impossible since the Nordic country is one of the “happier” ones, Sweden does actually have, and generate, rappers. Yung Lean – whose stage name is taken from lean, the sugary drink some aficionadi concoct from codeine-based cough syrup – is considered one of the more gifted writers and singers among them, and regularly tours Europe.

Yung Lean’s partner, the actress known as Zoë Bleu – or Zoë Bleu Sidel, or Zoë Bleu Sidel Arquette, or more rarely, Zoë Arquette – is dressed as summery as possible for the occasion in a long, grand blue halter top dress. It’s the spaghetti straps carrying all that flow of fabric down below that make this dress work so well, and make it so especially right for Paris through this blazing weekend. The dancerly clinch she’s in with Yung Lean for the benefit of the photographers en route into the show is quite athletic. Note the extreme balletic placement of the feet – she’s not giving up an inch of her stride, in fact she’s ferociously extending it. Good for her. Zoë Bleu is teaching us something: When on display in Paris, push it.