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PARIS, France — Haider Ackermann loves a gang. The bullet-headed guys who rushed down his shadowy runway, muscles straining in their shiny finery and second-skin pants, were like baroque Wild Boys, dressing, the designer said, "in a madness to combine everything, no thoughts, just instinct," (although the designer's idea of chaos was actually just clashing plaids). Ackermann imagined his men as gypsies on the road, carrying everything they own with them ("Just like me," he murmured). Humble that may sound, but there's not enough drama in humility for Ackermann. So he layered and gilded and shrunk a handful of menswear tropes to his usual decadent effect. His most sartorial pieces looked licked by hellfire.
This week brings Ackermann’s debut at Berluti, the all-black invitation the very antithesis of the appetite for excess he paraded in his own collection. Maybe that’s why it felt more exaggerated than before, infused with a sense of flagrant release to counter his new more sober responsibilities.