Ouest SS26

Lights dim, projectors whirred (in reality we were outside but use your imagination), and suddenly we were no longer in Paris but at a mid-century drive-in theater, complete with popcorn in hand. For SS26, Arthur Robert of Ouest Paris transported us into a cinematic dreamscape where Americana collided with NASA nostalgia,an evocative play on masculinity staged inside a hôtel particulier.

At first glance, the models weren’t striding down a traditional runway. Instead, they lounged, shifted, moved quietly through the space as though caught mid photo shoot. It gave us time to absorb the intricate contrasts of the collection. The sharpness of tailoring against the shimmer of metallic nylon, the cowboy’s stoicism recut in the logic of an engineer, the businessman’s authority reframed as something almost costume-like. This wasn’t fashion as pure spectacle, it was an invitation to watch as much as it was to question what we were watching.

Robert’s reference point this season is as specific as it is poetic. NASA’s photographic archives from late 1960s Houston, where boardroom suits lived side by side with test flight silver suits. That strange duality, the rigidity of corporate America alongside the fantastical ambition of space travel manifested in tailoring lined with Western flares, Zippers exposed like seams of machinery, and nylon in metallic tones that gleamed like moonscapes under the theater spotlights.

It’s Americana rewritten; one moment we’re in the cowboy’s desert, the next in Mission Control. The result is a gallery of archetypal male silhouettes; astronaut, businessman, ranch hand, fetish idol. Each refracted through Ouest’s lens of irony and play.

But Ouest doesn’t just idolize the myth of the American man. It deconstructs it. The collection moves fluidly between humor and reverence, strength and artifice. There’s a nerdy elegance in the details, checks and patterns lifted from ‘60s officewear alongside leather heavy looks that signal subversion more than tradition. This felt less like conventional fashion week and more like an auteur’s film. Ouest staged not a runway but a series of scenes, half-ironic, half-earnest, that asked us to reframe Americana. Not as nostalgia, but as mythology writ large for a global stage. Supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Dr. Martens, the show drove home something urgent. In fashion, as in cinema, archetypes endure not because they are real, but because they are endlessly re-playable. And in Ouest’s hands, they are not just replayed, but remixed. Cowboy hats with a space age gleam, suits that whisper both conformity and rebellion, masculinity made almost fantastical.

Arthur Robert asked us to sit back at the drive-in, popcorn in hand, and watch the myths of man unravel under the Parisian night. And we did, eyes wide open, taking in every frame.

OUEST Paris website