Jaden Smith Was the Ultimate Shapeshifter at Paris Fashion Week

Skirts are all the rage in the world of menswear. Chopova Lowena, Miu Miu, Peter Do, and other top brands recently sent out male models rocking the trending piece. But Jaden Smith has been a fan of the garment since at least 2016, when he sparked quite the buzz when he wore a fringed skirt for a Louis Vuitton women’s ad campaign.

And Smith’s love for skirts has, seemingly, not diminished. The multi-hyphenate talent attended Thome Browne’s spring 2023 show wearing a skirt over pants, a bubbling trend. The fun twist on Thom Browne’s signature prep tailoring and tweed felt like a masterfully modern interpretation of punk aesthetics. “The resurgence of punk fashion [and] inspiration in the world has been really powerful,” Smith tells Vogue. He gives a special shoutout to his younger sister Willow, who has consistently delivered strong, punk-flavored looks and music.

Despite being remarkably on-trend, Smith, who runs his own brand, MsftsRep, says he tries his best to ignore them and create his own style pillars. “I don’t really pay attention to trends as I’m constantly trying to make my own path,” he says. “Setting trends can be difficult and people should really try to follow their own morals and beliefs instead of other ideas.”

A remarkable shape-shifter, Smith later wore a gold-heavy look at the Louis Vuitton spring 2023 women’s wear show. Smith wore a formidable sculptural top, almost resembling a footballer’s uniform, with a winding piece of gold fabric that transitions from scarf to chest harness to side pouch to belt.

The 24-year-old talent says creative director Nicolas Ghesquière—who has designed a number of outfits for Smith over the years—is a continual source of inspiration and a joy to work with. “I felt like a warrior wearing that,” Smith says of the skin-baring look. “And I feel like sometimes I can be a warrior in the fashion world and for what is [and] is not accepted, what people think is manly or not, etc.”

Smith says he was a particular fan of one piece featured in Louis Vuitton’s breathtaking show: “The house trunk Nicholas made,” he says. “It was a remake of the original Louis Vuitton fashion house, and was really poetry in every sense. I can’t help but also mention the car that was put together at the Thom Browne show when talking about poetry. It was equally amazing.”

He also gleaned inspiration from the streets of Paris. “I see people in Paris wearing a lot of the cool, low-key brands you only ever really see on the internet.”

But Smith is not only an inspiring leader in the world of fashion. Smith, who co-founded the sustainable packaged water brand Just Water, recently provided help to residents of Jackson, Mississippi, who have been grappling with a months-long water crisis. Smith explains, “[Just Water co-founder Drew Fitzgerald and I] built these filtration systems that could be assembled with the technology available at places like Home Depot. So we make sure to try to send down water boxes to places that need relief so that we can not only make a difference, but try to bring light to the places that need it.”

This kind of free-flowing, big-picture, and remarkably mature approach to projects seem to be innate to Smith. Every idea is in conversation with another one. When asked to describe his visual aesthetic, he responds, “Pink, hills, rainbows.”

Below, get a behind the scenes look at Smith’s Paris Fashion Week.