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Damir Doma’s Spiritual Spirit

There’s a new liquid silhouette in men’s fashion that’s been floating across runways in Paris these past few days, nowhere more evident than at the runway show on Saturday, June 27, by Damir Doma, the Munich-born designer about whom insiders are predicting big things.

Whether lots of men will actually don many of the clothes in Doma’s rather romantic wardrobe is debatable – neither linen jumpsuits nor chunky weave silk coats with sleeves that end six inches past fingertips are easy looks.

But sometimes in fashion the whole point is to suggest new ways of wearing clothes and thinking about style. So, swaddling the body in flowing, priestly robes, like Doma did, lends a certain exotic gravitas, and suggests that one’s priorities in life are aesthetic and not material.

“I wanted to create clothes that had some distance from the body, to suggest space,” said Doma, a designer of Croatian origin who has recently made Paris his home.

Doma also showed his take on the new industrial sandals on European men’s runways. His was part Timberland-type sole, part monkish upper straps, and underlined that this young designer can cut the commercial chops too.

Staged in the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum, the best moment was rusty red series of looks, telegraphed by his red invite. Billowing tunics, askew ponchos, huge folded cotton scarves and loose leggings worked together to create a rather spiritual moment, heightened by the custom-made score that sounded like the theme music to a science fiction movie where wise pastors benignly manage the planet.

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