It was all disco at the Comme des Garcons show later that day. The kids who modeled the clothes came out in bunches onto a square catwalk that was lit up in those garishly colored club lights that you can experience at a club only if you have a time machine or go to Brighton Beach in New York. They did a kind of a half-hearted dance, and it was all fun and disorienting. At the end of the show the exhausted audience burst into applause at the performance, but I am afraid the joy of the presentation hid the silliness of the clothes, which were more fit for boys than men. I find Kawakubo’s insistence on infantilizing men puzzling; and if I was in a more serious mood about fashion, perhaps I’d find it alarming, but I am not the one to bring identity politics into this game. Next day I asked the critic Angelo Flaccavento what he thought about my takeaway, and he agreed.

A Sacai show has become a highlight of my Paris fashion week, and the one on Saturday was no exception. Chitose Abe put out another impressive collection with look after look that were both wearable and fascinating in the complexity of their construction and the mix of materials. As some other designers are increasingly doing, Abe mixed in some women’s looks from the pre-collection, which added to the show, but also showed how much more interesting womenswear can be when put alongside men’s clothes.

The same night Geoffrey B. Small staged a show that was full of emotion, as soft in its presentation as his materials are to the touch. It was his one hundredth season in Paris, and the collection was aptly named “100.” In lieu of the soundtrack a violinist played the works of Oskar Rieding, Alessandro Scarlatti and Ferdinand Kuchler, accompanied by a dancer. In this collection Small continued to express his take on classic men’s tailoring, unstructured, and somehow both ethereal and earthy, which made the entire collection feel human, exactly the thing at the center of Small’s ethos.

I started my Sunday at Lanvin, where Lucas Ossendrijver continued taking the label into a sporty direction and erasing Elbaz’s influences, such as tuxedo jackets and floppy bow ties. Instead it was all evening-wear as active-wear. The technical prowess of this formidable design house was on display as always – masterfully executed hooded parkas and pants, and things like that. There was nothing particularly missing per se, but somehow such work no longer feels fresh or relevant; it’s too luxurious for the young and too sporty for the old.

Thom Browne’s evening show was a worthy finale because it was one of the few that got my thoughts racing. Browne showed straight-up women’s clothes on men. Forget gender fluidity or androgyny with its implications of ambiguity – there was nothing ambiguous about Browne’s clothes, they were on-the-nose provocative. Browne famously refuses to talk about his collections, preferring us to make our own conclusion. So, here is mine – it was thought-provoking to see how he put men into slim long skirts and high heels, so they would feel how women feel, constricted and constantly aware of their bodies. And the show did give me an idea for a new article, but I won’t divulge that yet.