American designer Virgil Abloh acknowledges the audience at the end of Off-White during the men's Spring/Summer 2020 collection fashion show on Wednesday in Paris. Photo: AFP

Style superstar Virgil Abloh produced one of the big moments at Paris Fashion Week Men's Wednesday when he had Gigi Hadid walk through a field of white carnations at his Off-White fashion show.

The American creator, who is one of the hottest talents in fashion right now and heads Louis Vuitton's menswear line, brought a host of stars to his front row.

Colombian singer Maluma rubbed shoulders with Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton and Chinese pop star Li Wenhan to see Hadid close the show wearing an oversized white tuxedo adorned with abstract expressionist designs by the legendary New York graffiti artist Futura.

Abloh, the first African American to head a major French label, used the veteran artist's work to great effect throughout his brightly-colored Spring/Summer 2020 collection.

Field of carnations 

US rapper Sheck Wes opened the show in another Futura-decorated white ensemble, with one of the artist's sculptures called "Nosferatu" looming out of a field of white carnations that Abloh had transplanted inside a converted market in central Paris.

His army of models trampled the carnations, which are a symbol of innocence, at the end of the show.

Abloh seemed to question what humans were doing to the planet, opening the show to the sound of steam trains that heralded the Industrial Revolution and ended it with the haunting Beatles song, "Blackbird."

The song is said to have been inspired by both nature and the US civil rights movement.

Several of the garments in the show Abloh called "Plastic" had recycling symbols alongside his own four-pointed square logo.

But he later said he was using the word as a metaphor for how "in our generation a banal term all of a sudden turns into a whole different context, basically in a matter of moments."

Socks and sandals 

The former architect introduced a line of blanket-like capes to his high-end streetwear, with his usual trainers replaced by sandals with socks and hiking boots.

A major retrospective of Abloh's startlingly prolific work in art, fashion and design opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago last week.

Maluma, the Colombian reggaeton star who appears with Madonna on the "Medellin" track of her new album Madame X, has been hailed as a "menswear icon in the making" this week by Vogue magazine.

He had already turned up at the Heron Preston show Tuesday and has been sending regular updates to his 43 million followers on Instagram of his progress through the Paris collections.

Despite Madonna wearing a Palomo Spain outfit for their video, Maluma was noticeably absent from the flamboyant Spanish designer's show Tuesday which opened Paris men's fashion week.

Belgian maverick Walter van Beirendonck created the day's most colorful and far out show he called "Witsblitz," which is full of wacky atomic superheroes as well as some rather gorgeous one-of-a-kind jackets. 

Van Beirendonck turned heads with avant-garde color combinations from his compatriot Y/Project's Glenn Martens when he went for the unexpected thorough deconstruction of everyday garments. "A pocket becomes a sleeve, a collar opens up and turns into a shoulder pad, (and) a bomber jacket can be worn upside down," he said. 

Japanese designer Jun Takahashi of Undercover took a much more conventional look at the classic black and charcoal grey double and single breasted suit/bomber jacket combinations, before adding ectoplasmic prints of people and faces that slowly emerge from the fabric as the collection wore on.

Former Dior and Calvin Klein supremo Raf Simons rounded off the day with a late-night show in the Paris suburbs.


Newspaper headline: Off-White show