On the final morning of the Paris shows, Jacquemus, the French label known for putting women in huge hats and men in tiny shorts, showed its first autumn/winter menswear collection.

The show was titled Le Meunier (‘the miller’) and the invitation arrived with a loaf of bread and the promise of breakfast. Outside, rain spat down but inside the Palais de Tokyo this promise was fulfilled, with guests served buttered bread, Comté cheese, juice and croissants. There were no seats, no light change, and no starting pistol. As people ate, models snaked their way through the crowd before assembling round a table to eat their share.

The inspiration was “the intersection of land and labour” but really this was about real men in real clothes. “I don’t want to show fantasy,” said the brand’s founder, Simon Porte Jacquemus, despite dealing primarily with fantasy in past collections. “It is about work, about those who wake up early, about reality and about real clothes you can wear.”

Workwear jackets and wide-fitting trousers came in cotton canvas and denim. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

On the not-catwalk, this was translated literally: workwear jackets and wide-fitting trousers came in cotton canvas and denim, and all models wore duck boots. The jackets came melded with utility vests; work shirts and fisherman jumpers came thickly knitted and in a neutral palette. The white ones were undyed; the khaki green, sunflower yellow and industrial orange versions mirrored a Provençal landscape instead of a typical winter sky.

Accessories, increasingly the brand’s golden goose, were minimal – a necklace wallet, a couple of larger bags, and a stiff leather necktie. Pockets abounded. The touches of realism were present – jackets were triple stitched for durability, and two models wore spectacles – but looked elevated enough to pass as high fashion. Blink and you’d miss the wheatsheaf embroidery doubling up as stripes.

With his womenswear collections (there have been 10), Jacquemus tends towards sensuality, clothes that resemble a second skin, and lots of thigh – even in winter. For his first menswear show last June, the designer followed suit, showing musclemen and more flesh on a beach near Marseille. The front row was a line of beach towels and many models went barefoot. Today, there were shorts, but they were long, “because you know workers wear shorts in winter,” he said.

Though his clothes are always wearable, this collection was more obviously so. It’s worth noting too this was probably Paris’s most diverse lineup of models, and the clothes are relatively affordable for designer fashion.

The Jacquemus designer insisted his ‘real people’ theme was not political. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Yet, as with every show that reveals a flash of yellow or a line about “real people”, there were questions about whether he was piggybacking on the current situation in France. Not so.

“It is not political,” he said. “There is this ‘affaires des gilets jaunes’, and workers who are suffering, but I don’t want to use their fight. This is a fashion show and everyone loves workwear in fashion.” Plus, these collections were sketched months before the protests.

This fashion week, there have been a lot of firsts – the first Loewe men’s show, the first Céline menswear show – but for Jacquemus, his first Paris menswear collection was not that unusual. The designer often talks about the difference between Paris and the rest of France, once telling this newspaper his customer “is not Parisian. They are French, and there is a difference”. Before relocating to Paris and launching the label aged 19, Jacquemus grew up in Salon-de-Provence in southern France, and often refers to making clothes for “the people I grew up with”. Today, that sentiment remains.

“It is my fantasy that this sort of guy is still down there, still working. But the reality is that he has probably come to the city to find work.”