Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.

Paris–You know something is in the air in menswear when one of the most prolific and perhaps most experimental designers–at least in terms of creating new shapes and using new technical materials–espouses a return to the endangered art of craftsmanship. Raf Simons did just that with his fall show.

I remember seeing Mr. Simons’ clothes for the first time in the January 1995 at a small showroom in Milano, where he presented extremely tight single-breasted suits in dark grey and black wool. They were inspired by the culture surrounding English schoolboys. But that was when Tom Ford’s Gucci era was getting underway. Those hyper-sexually-charged clothes dominated for the next decade. What Simons did that–and does now–is embrace a counter current ambiance.

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.

PARIS–When the lights dimmed inside the Couvent des Cordeliers in the heart of Paris’ university district, a shadow could be seen lurking towards the piano, covered with a large tan fox fur cashmere blanket. The shadow began playing a concerto while snow was dripping against the ray of a white spotlight at the end of the platform. From under the snow came an unshaven model wearing a dark grey washed leather coat with olive sleeves, a navy wool tweed coat, cotton shirt, and knit wool scarf each layered one upon another and belted at the waist. He also wore a charcoal wool twill pant, grey socks with open knit fringes and broken-in leather shoes. White snowflakes were scattered atop the model’s black fox fur hat.

That was one version of the early twentieth century émigrés from Soviet Russia that John Galliano imagined and recreated for his fall show. Another look was a beefy charcoal wool coat with a fur lapel and gold trim worn by a Rasputin look-alike.

The collection was based on the life of the dashing ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, spanning from the revolution to his years of exile in London, as captured by the lens of photographer Irving Penn.

PARIS–Did I just see a leather jumpsuit? And was that another, in shearling?

As Hermès fends of hostile bids from luxury (and French) rival LVMH, it seems as if menswear designer Véronique Nichanian has taken the incursion as a personal challenge: not to revolutionize the storied brand, far from it, but to take the apparel (the company has only been making clothing since the 1920s, that’s “only” in comparison to the leather goods Thierry Hermès began fabricating in 1873) to the limit of what it can mean to be Hermès.

Hence: leather jumpsuits, perhaps the cleverest stab into a history built on not only leather, but essentially functional harnesses for horses.