Welcome to the HERO SS15 daily roundup – the most important shows, themes and concepts, contextually curated for your reading pleasure. The best place to understand the week’s events in fashion.

“Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity,” or so the quote, popular in the 1960s goes.

Today, Rei Kawakubo, equal parts (intellectual) warrior and pacifist turned that statement inside out and encouraged activism with her non-violent protest clothes, taking military garb and using it against itself.

These weren’t standard field jackets, however. Highlighting the designer’s intensity, they were far grander than that. We’re talking the brass-buttoned kind, as models were clothed in layers of tailored ‘net’, keeping the beasts caged within. The first look’s leopard X across the front was both a form of restraint and the mark you make on your ballot paper in the polling booth. And those boots weren’t the winning entry for how long you could make a winklepicker – even if on one level, they were – but a throwback to a style called a poulaine, which French soldiers sawed off in 1396’s Battle of Nicopolis so they could stage a retreat.

Kawakubo uses her label Comme des Garçons, shown here as Homme Plus, to explore ideas. It is fashion, but also resistance to the banal – a carbonated mind is better than a new shirt, but this designer enables fans to make use of both. That the show was in a disused magasin in Paris’ art nouveau/deco La Samaritaine was wry and brilliant – for other designers, these clothes would make a store defunct. For Kawakubo, they reinforce the fact she is an idol. 

Junya Wantanbe SS15 : Look 23

Over at Junya Watanabe, another talent in the Comme des Garçons stable, the designer patchworked sumo (that was the noise on the soundtrack) and denim into each other, to create new workwear, a hybrid of East and West. A bit of Jazz was thrown in too – capturing the idea of this collection as the cool, rhythmic discordant.

At Maison Martin Margiela, a lightening bolt hit that SS15, at least in London and Paris, has been a very good season, with lots to wear and shoot. The collaged, sequinned nude bodysuits at MMM fulfilled the latter, just as the half-jean, half-tailored trousers did. Recycled parachute trenchcoats were both. The house was on top form, offering clothes with the slightly unhinged idiosyncrasy it is best known for – without trying too hard.

Maison Martin Margiela SS15: Look 26

The was also the purity of the new. Jonathan Anderson, on the heels of a stellar London show under his own name, presented his vision of Spanish leather house Loewe. Looking out over Saint Sulpice in the 6th, he offered classics defamiliarised. Coin pouches came triangular in exotic skins, shirts were twisted through cut and collar and a motorcycle jacket was covered in red, yellow and blue leather Meccano. Emerging from its chrysalis, it might be early days but he’s doing things in an interesting, intimate way.

Kris Van Assche’s invitation this season was gilded with the word Illusion, as models walked through a backdrop that looked like it had been plonked from Versailles into the industrial Halle Freyssinet space. Knees were sliced open on trousers and shorts and ties finished halfway down a shirt, cut away and hemmed in. A taste for rave and sending the models out in quick succession kept the energy up.

At Place Vendôme for Cerruti, where two days earlier Raf Simons had shown his collection, Aldo Maria Camillo riffed on a car journey from Palm Springs to LA, where direct routes are spurned. His clothes mixed tailoring, sportswear and silk foulard details – and his line-up reflected the trip, evolving from first looks to last.

At Berluti, in an impressive garden rive gauche, Alessandro Sartori offered his blend of sports couture combining craft with technology. The haute bootmaker offered something for everyone, as long as they’ve got money and taste, on a superb casting mixing men of all ages and stories. Closing the show, Alexander Beck got the audience chatting, carrying a red dachshund down the catwalk. In that exit at least, you couldn’t have it all.

Check out our roundups of Paris days one, two, four and five plus London and Milan.