“The central feeling was wanting to hide and wanting to be seen at once,” the designer tells Man About Town ahead of his Spring/Summer 2027 show.
Despite the fashion week schedule being less packed than usual this season, chaos will never fail to erupt at the French capital – the unignorable heatwave that’s still being talked about even weeks on. But between the usual headliners and legacy luxury Houses was a new crop of menswear up-and-comers that’s been making some serious noise behind the scenes – case in point, Steven Passaro.
The Paris-born designer founded his namesake label in 2020, after graduating from London College of Fashion with an MA in Fashion Design Technology (Menswear). He cites Helmut Lang, Dries Van Noten, Alexander McQueen and Issey Miyake as inspirations, all references made clear through the maturity and restraint applied to his craft. Where Passaro’s design philosophy and approach differs from his industry peers is through his background, with a bachelor's degree in architecture. But it’s clear that his work was always destined for the runway.
“For me, architecture was never about buildings. It was about how a body moves through a space,” Passaro starts. “How it arrives, how it passes through, how it stands on a threshold. I design the same way. I think ‘how’ before ‘what’, which means the construction comes before the image. A garment has to hold up structurally before it's allowed to be beautiful,” he says. “I need to understand how a thing is built before I decide how it looks. The engineering isn't a constraint on the beauty, it's what makes the beauty possible.”
Those same sentiments were followed for his Spring/Summer 2027 collection, unveiled in Paris last week. Fittingly titled A Glimpse, the concept followed the notion of being half-seen, where, in his words, you’re “present and withheld at the same time”. Subtlety is the key here, stimulating the wearer’s interaction with each piece through its intricate construction that’s more felt than it is seen to onlookers and passersby.
Tailoring gives the illusion of simplicity, with a figure-enveloping cut that sculpts the torso for an hourglass figure and extended peak lapels that poke above the shoulder line. But all the glitz and elbow grease actually live in the suit’s inside, with a couture-gown-worthy amount of hours spent on creating the blazer’s skeleton, only for the body to interact with.
“The central feeling was wanting to hide and wanting to be seen at once, which is honestly how I feel about the world right now. We've never had so much freedom and so much fear at the same time. The clothes live on that line,” explains Passaro. That’s why you’ll see adornments like beaded embroidery and feathers on shirting, headwear and trousers which come alive when the light hits them, only to ascend back into the shadows and hide away. Or even an ear-flapped flying cap, bedazzled by the aforementioned beads, frames the face and offers a layer of protection that walks the line of freedom and fear.
Pleats – another signature for the Paris-based designer – arrived in forms you’d least expect, with a scrunched effect on the thigh of straight blue denim that brings his idea of “restrained chic” to life. Various gathers and folds also appear on a standout, two-tone trench coat that, through the several added layers, creates a wing-like formation that spreads out the back vent and front panelling.
“I'm trying to bring couture construction back into a man's wardrobe without it tipping into Costume,” he says about what he thinks he’s bringing to the growing menswear space. “So much of menswear is either very safe or very loud. I'm interested in the precise middle: something deeply built, that holds the body, that a man can actually live in. If I add anything, it's rigour.” And with menswear itself in a transitional period where no one aesthetic or style rules supreme over all, this stage of limbo makes for the perfect platform for Passaro to truly excel and spread his wings.
So where’s he flying to? Currently, the wind tides point to a more tailored interaction between his label and his customers.“For me, the future is one-to-one: fewer clients, deeper work, real relationships built around the body and the fitting,” he says. “That intimacy is where tailoring has always been at its strongest, and it's the part of the work I find most worthwhile.” A Glimpse is, quite literally, also a look into where his house is headed. So let his clothes hold you, and let the quiet theatrics of his designs do the rest.
