Paris Fashion Week once again became a mirror not only of style but of the collective psyche. The Spring–Summer 2026 collection from the House of Gaultier, created by Duran Lantink, provoked laughter, shock, and awe. Women walked the runway in bodysuits and leotards printed with images of male hairy bodies — chests, legs, armpits, even penises, all realistically rendered and unapologetically hirsute. Some called it a scandal. Yet beyond the surface lies something deeper: an artistic sensitivity to the spirit of the age.
For decades, European culture tried to tame the male body. Hair was seen as primitive, bestial, uncontrolled — and therefore had to be shaved, polished, civilized. The “metrosexual” was born — smooth, refined, aesthetic, a light version of womanhood rather than a descendant of warriors. Europe raised generations of gentle men, but in doing so, disarmed itself symbolically.
Now, with danger once again looming over the continent — not only military but civilizational — a different archetype is returning from the subconscious. The image of the beast, wild and hairy, unafraid of blood. Artists, as always, sense these tremors before anyone else. Lantink’s collection doesn’t depict war, yet it speaks of it through the body. It speaks of the absence of men who can fight, of women who must now carry that missing strength within themselves. Their hairy-printed suits are not parody, but invocation — a magical summoning of instinct.
There is fatalism in this irony. Europe, which long condemned masculinity as a source of violence, now seeks its resurrection — even if only as a fashion motif. Hair becomes a symbol not of barbarism but of survival. Fashion, as ever, speaks in metaphors, but its signs are real. Behind the shimmer of the catwalk stands a civilization uneasy with its own beauty — yearning again for the courage to be wild.
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