In a fully digital menswear season featuring 68 brands, videos by Asian designers stood out for their energy, ideas, and no-holds-barred fashion audacity. Barely halfway through the six-day Paris menswear fashion week featuring Fall-Winter 2021 collections, a gang of a dozen Asian creators grabbed attention for their upfront style, novel ideas and excellent castings.

Few schools of designers appear to have profited from the lockdown to rethink their DNA as smartly as these creators. For instance, Kidill, a Japanese label whose video recalled the Transavangardia of '80s Italy, even as it referenced UK goth punk and street graffiti. Kidill’s designer Hiroaki Sueyasu is also a gifted tailor so his absurdist, angry black-and-white face prints ended up looking bold and brilliant.

Similarly, Sankuanz, China’s hippest designer, who managed to stage a stealth video underneath and inside the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the night. And respect for Kolor by Junichi Abe, the Comme des Garçon alumnus who always commands lots of attention. It turned out to be an actual co-ed show set in a dreamy wood, where the cast appeared in Abe’s latest version of amalgamated fashion, a composite collection where garments intermingled.

One can also include Sulvam, with its fishtail smocks; cut-out sweaters; retro soul-singer leather clubbing jackets and chainmail-print pajamas by designer Teppei Fujita.

Plaudits for the train journey video to a rocky seashore from Taakk, the subtlest of the new generation Japanese fashion designers. Soft yet quirky materials; marvelous green moiré velvet jackets; perfectly styled modernist M-65 jackets and orchid-blotch print sweatshirts.