PARIS–It was only a few days ago that I was emailing with a fashion journalist for a major daily newspaper who was in Milano covering the men’s shows. I was commenting on the irony of the reporter’s succinct observations that many of the designers showing their spring collections in Milano substituted inspirations–say a moment of past history or a image of an individual who capture a style of a certain era–for any real design innovations. The response to one of my email was simple and so concise in its observation of the current stalemate one can sense in fashion: “When was the last time you saw an idea?” As a close observer of fashion over the years, I was unable to come up with any substantive answer. Thus the email remained without a reply and the conversation ceased.

As I left the Salle Marcel Cerdan at Bercy following Rick Owens’ menswear show, I instantly thought I might have an answer. Is it possible that I just saw an idea minutes before inside the concrete gymnasium where male models nonchalantly paraded a collection comprised of a variety of khaki cotton linen and striped long dresses, as well as single or double breasted jackets worn with long tee-shirts and long ankle puff skirts slit in the back?

PARIS–Sibling sister duo Tuomas and Anna created Laitinen in 2006 in their native Helsinki. Their style is a mix between soft prints, dark goth-ish references and sharp tailoring. This season, they are now only working on menswear “because a lot of women wear our clothes anyway–the lines were so close,” Tuomas told us. The collection, presented in a showroom in Paris’ Marais district, consists of suits produced with old-school Italian textile developers, and functional pieces reinterpreted with offbeat fabrics: football jerseys in paper thin silk and silver thread or hockey shorts made out of leather. “We like to rethink male archetypes and contemporary uniforms”, said Tuomas.