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Louis Vuitton Mittel European Mode

Louis Vuitton showed a take on the new patrician gentleman chic Thursday afternoon, Jan. 21, the first major show of the Fall 2010 men’s collections in Paris.

This season, the house looked east for inspiration, specifically to Vienna's Secession art movement and its world famous creators, like Egon Schiele.

Though Schiele was an imprisoned and impoverished artist, Vuitton’s models were Old Money dandies; and where before Vuitton’s men’s fashion had an expensively reinvented vintage mood about it, these Fall 2010 clothes, and models, looked like they were born with the proverbial silver spoon in the their mouths.

Watched by Kanye West, who showed up in a full-length wolf coat, the show was staged in Center 104, a north Paris cultural exhibition space, which once was the city’s public undertaker.

The clothes did not look so much designed as engineered, particularly the star act, a series of remarkable coats in bonded calf leather.

Like every second line in Europe, Vuitton featured down jackets, though its puffers were in lemon hues with large panels, one of the few attention-seeking items in this cerebral, low-key collection.

Vuitton’s men’s designer Paul Helbers – who took his bow with the house’s overall creative director Marc Jacobs - is also an expert at coming up with the smartest new accessory. His best idea were riding boots dissected at the ankle with horizontal zips and trimmed in gold just above the heel. Shown in contrasting color of teak and anthracite, these will be real collectors items and globally influential.

Emphasizing the new sobriety, Helbers send out bizarre clog boots.

“Today’s laptop workplace has blurred the boundaries between tailoring and casual pieces,” explained Helbers, whose accessories distorted the boundaries too.

The collection was light on logos, in keeping with the new temperance and "don’t flaunt your money" moment in Europe. Sure, there was the odd classic print on sausage roll shaped bags, but most of the calf leather and canvas totes had the tiniest of brand marks.

Men’s fashion has entered the era of determined understatement.

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