Louis Vuitton Follows Sports Trend in Men's Paris Show PARIS - With a sneaker on every foot, high-tech fabrics the norm and shorts more prevalent than pants, sports is no longer the subtext of men's wear. Streamlined, energy-filled clothes are the message for summer 2013. Louis Vuitton sailed away into a sea of sportswear - as a way to reconnect men's wear with the travel heritage of the brand. The digital swell of the sea on the backdrop and the practical, yet high-class clothes also were, according to the designer Kim Jones backstage, an homage to the outgoing Vuitton chief executive Yves Carcelle. He was leaving Paris for Newport, Rhode Island, and the America's Cup, which he has made part of the Vuitton universe. Whatever the origins of the featherlight parkas, the streamlined suits, the Damier check bags given a naval navy-blue touch and the giant backpacks with detachable leather wallets, this collection gave a whole new meaning to the word "wanderlust." Objects of desire included all the accessories, which had no exterior bling. Even with a tattoo image as a T-shirt print or a pair of neon-bright safety straps, Mr. Jones managed to produce luxury as deep as the ocean bed. A jolly sailing sweater turned out to be knitted from shredded cotton shirts; the wet suit had a top half fashioned out of cashmere. And the patchworks of denim were created with an ancient Japanese technique. "Digital and craft," said Mr Jones, who might have been summing up the two poles of a 2013 season that he is helping to define. Raf Simons went to the roots of his signature brand in a different way: With his debut at Christian Dior couture taking place on Monday, the designer seemed to want to prove - by his show site in a faded downtown gallery at the Bastille and by his return to the boys of his early fashion history - that haute couture was not going to modify his men's wear stand. Mr. Simons invented that boyish shorts look that is now an overwhelming trend. They were abundant in this powerful and playful collection, which looked back to when young boys, picked from the street by the Belgian designer, first marched out in the 1990s exuding teenage angst and a schoolboy sexuality. It would have been easy to attribute to Mr. Simons's immersion in women's couture the flowered fabrics that crept in stealthily. But the designer said that he was thinking back to the grunge years, when pulling on a dress was part of a music fan's clothing mix. A gathered floral back to a sober coat had a faint perfume of Comme des Garçons. The show was based on tailoring, with fine details on shirts like patches of fabric or subtle embroideries. Bright peach, orange and pink colors added another hint of a sexual merging of masculine and feminine. Mr. Simons has his own take on the men's world and this show was strong, fine and clean. In a few seasons in Paris, the Asian-American designer Philip Lim has upped his game, opening the 3.1 Philip Lim show with pulsating energy. "Ready for action," said the designer, in a neat summing-up of modern men's wear. Using martial arts as a base, Mr. Lim picked up intelligently on key trends: white square tops; baggy, low-crotch shorts; mesh, ink-splatter dyes; and reflected gilding. Listing the looks does not do justice to the designer's ease in putting all that together in a strong and dynamic way. Rick Owens marches to his own beat - and that drummed in a new lightness to gauzy coats, jackets and monkish robes. They might have been in organza or nylon, but any way, they looked noble. Powerful, too, were graphic prints - another major summer trend - here used with a 3-D box chevron effect. This fine show was significant for another reason: its clogs and wool socks. No sneakers, that are the footwear staple of the season? Viktor & Rolf defined their collection backstage as "spiritual elegance." Translated to the runway, that meant elegant tailoring in calm sand colors, spiced with a silver tie and sneakers; or an iridescent effect created with Indian mirror embroidery that was far from fashion's 1970s hippie trail. The design duo of Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren worked herringbone patterns into this season's ever-present runway geometry, giving stolid chevron shapes a new life. The spirit of Issey Miyake was present in the inventive, paper fabrics, the bold biker jackets and the Japanese splotches of tie dye at the brand's show. And the designer was there to meet and greet good friends - via Skype. The design guru Jean-Paul Goude was just one long-term admirer talking digitally to Mr. Miyake, who had worked with his fashion laboratory on the men's wear collection. The result was a new energy that manifested itself as soon as the models cycled into the showroom. The Miyake style was in the geometry, square shapes, cut big and bold; and in the fabric inventions. Jean Paul Gaultier was up to any sport you could do on the deck of a ship. His sailor theme was not shown as fashion life on the ocean wave, but as a quiet presentation - give or take a travel theme that embraced bearded-and-turbaned Indians and a French toile de Jouy with miniature drawings of distant tribes. The ability to see the work that goes into Gaultier men's wear was key: tattoo effects as sophisticated embroidery in a white-on-white shirt or the cut of low-crotch satin evening pants from a pleated waistline. Missing was the cheeky, witty way Mr. Gaultier could have rattled the sailor's hornpipe on stage. But his men's wear will be shown live during haute couture next week. Thierry Mugler was brought back to fashion life by Lady Gaga modeling on the runway. But now the brand, as Mugler , is developing with the imagination of the super stylist Nicola Formichetti and, for men's wear, the designer Roman Kremer. A focus on tailoring, with slices cut away to show flesh, was an interesting introduction, but ideas like shorts with a thigh flap looked fussy. Yet the future of Mugler seems more positive than at its start. At Christian Lacroix the designer Sacha Walckhoff goes on dutifully turning out pleasant collections, with a print on a T-shirt or a pattern on a coat giving a faint suggestion of the founder's imagination. But as the summer 2013 inspiration was Rio, it was hard to tell how this connected with the heritage of the brand.