Vogue Hommes English Version Fall Winter 2019

Duane Michals, who is contributing to Vogue Hommes for the first time, is 87. It’s hard to be believe, as this mischievous bundle of energy, talking to us from New York, still has an incredible freshness and vitality. For certain observers, he is one of the great conceptual minds of the 20th century. His photographic series, or sequences, covered in words and poems, let the light devour the subject, and raise the question of man in the face of time passing, like no other. Barthes, Foucault and Bellour held him in high esteem. For others, he was an incredible portraitist, who refused to set up a studio and worked like an amateur. There was a portrait of Johnny Cash, for example, in which the singer was inside, in the shadow…

Punk at Comme des Garçons, romantic at Homme Dior, oversized at Raf Simons, ultra–stylised at Prada, coolly new wave at Celine by Hedi Slimane… black forged its way onto the catwalks to become the ultimate character trait for winter. This is the first time Vogue Hommes has built an entire issue around a trend: no easy task when that trend is black. A symbol of modern elegance and a chromatic obsession for fashion’s great reformers, from Chanel to Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and the maverick Japanese designers of the 1980s (Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo), it seemed we had exhausted black’s every possibility. And so the challenge facing Vogue Hommes is to take this most fundamental of colours into new territory. Another country. That country could be the “ultra–black” imagined by…

You could sum up this story in three emoji: a horse, an apple and a watch. Or is it a case of opposites attract? On the right, Hermès, a saddle–maker established in an age when horses were everywhere that built its legend on their disappearance; on the left, Apple, a personal computer manufacturer established in an age when personal computers didn’t exist that built its fortune on their omnipresence. Two major shifts in civilisation and two contrasting approaches that are, perhaps, characteristic of the companies in question: luxury à la française and the American way of life. We could talk about the quest for excellence and intelligent design. We could allude to shared values, but the most fascinating thing about this collaboration is that two worlds that could not be…

EVENING PERFECT ALL NIGHTER THE DAY AFTER The ideal choice for keeping tired eyes out of sight. HEAD STRONG Yes to hats in all shapes and sizes. IT BAG BOOT CAMP IMMACULATE CREATION Trainers, in dominant white give blacka kickstart.…

Pierre Soulages taught us that, in painting, black is light. In watchmaking, it is matter. Black is never simply black. It is the black of a high–performance carbon composite, transposed in 2013 from racing yachts to the cases of Richard Mille watches. Filaments two to three times finer than a human hair are woven then heated under high pressure to produce a laminated, grainy black like growth rings in a tree. It is the matt black of rubber whose ribbed texture echoes the striated finish of steel on the BR05, the new urban watch collection from Bell & Ross. At Cartier, it’s the steel itself that is black. Coated with non–crystallised carbon, it flirts with the many nuances of a textured black calfskin strap and the also black dial: all…

IN THE BEGINNING, THE COLOUR OF LABOUR Obtained through calcination, from Antiquity through to the Middle Ages, black was symbolic of labour. White was reserved for prayer and red for battle. 1419 THE COLOUR OF MOURNING Black clothing became more widespread in the late Middle Ages after the powerful Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, wore black as a sign of mourning for his father, John the Fearless, assassinated in 1419. Immediately, the prince’s subjects and courtesans began to imitate this new style of dress. Philip’s influence spread as far as other European courts: Charles V of Spain wore black his entire life. 1670–1789 BLACK NO MORE A symbol of power, integrity and dignity at the beginning of the Ancien Régime, during the Age of Enlightenment, black was eclipsed by…