This week on HERO, we’re bringing you Fashion Week Takeaways, everything you need to know about SS14 menswear in our definitive take on the season…

Our seven SS14 talking points over the next week, our definitive take on what to get excited about for the new season begins here, kicking off with something for the best part indescribable (no really, thank us later). You see a lot of stuff over weeks of shows, presentations, appointments and re-sees across London, Milan and Paris – and what feeds your passion in a way like no other are those rare shows that strap you into their passenger seat, hit the gas and take you on a merciless, wild joyride; an accelerated cocktail of danger and glamour. Like the original Driver movie below. GET IN.

Rick Owens set the bar high. His austere set at the Salle Marcel Cerdan, the 80s leisure centre-look arena where the designer regularly shows, held no clue as to what would happen until 30 seconds before kick-off. Out came a crew member to drop a white plinth and mic stand – and out came Estonian metallers Winny Puuh, the best Eurovision outcasts ever. The singer let rip behind a wall of hair (and gown) on that soapbox as two drummers bashed one kit on a horizontally spinning plate. Three werewolf-faced, leotarded musicians ended up dangling feet first from the ceiling, like a butcher’s window on The League of Gentlemen. A local show for local people! (Read: The Tribe of Rick Owens). The collection was great, sportier than usual with fringed goodness and the designer’s lauded stripeless Adidas sneaker collaboration. But the moment? That was its context. You’d never be able to put on those clothes and not feel like a demon runaway with that song on loop. The cosseted pot-of-foie-gras-to-myself editors were speechless and flapping even more than usual. That’s fashion firing on all cylinders: thank you Rick.

Rei Kawakubo worked a potent essence too this season, at a dilapidated building on the other side of the Place Vendôme from Comme des Garçons’ Paris HQ. There’s something Kawakubo would’ve enjoyed about one side of the world’s most beautiful square being massively under construction (blame it on The Ritz). The collection, set to Jon Hopkins’ record of the season and a slice of Andy Stott, took the theme of hatching. Here things were incubating that definitely weren’t spring ducklings – Ben Jarvis’ eyeliner (and more tellingly the pulsating vein in his neck during the opening spotlit performance) saw the model, one of the boys of the season who racked up serious catwalk miles, a world away from his predilection anywhere else. The clothes were as stifling as they were a window very slightly ajar. The visual-overload prints like when the throttle of the mind, a powerful engine, gets jammed open.

Raf Simons took us to an industrial estate by an airport outside Paris. It was the Gagosian gallery, but not one you’d casually visit – this was full of Jean Prouvés and Alexander Calders, ready for buyers to swoop in on their jets and ship home. Like an art Tesco Express or, in Paris, Monop’ (but obviously sexier). To be sat amongst (and in and under) those works – we were under a Calder mobile – was once-in-a-lifetime experience. The collection, set to a New Beat work out from Raf’s youth, was the Belgian on form, taking in pop art graphics, Haçienda stripes (Peter Saville was in attendance) and mad, acid yoof Adidas collaboration sneakers. It was the day before Rick Owens’ show and he and Michèle Lamy had interrupted fittings to come and see. Their mode of transport? Their own helicopter, which probably took 5 minutes, versus the 40 by car. It was that worth it.

Haider Ackermann sent handwritten letters to visit his happening off the rue de Turenne, featuring models shooting the breeze with rumbling, muffled soundtrack and wine chilled with ice cubes. Only Ackermann could’ve accomplished this non-event ease, there’s no separation between life and art for this designer, an emotional thread running through all.

In hot and sweaty Milan, Miuccia Prada put on a hot and sweaty show of the dark tropical, under a high-rise city by AMO; whilst for the season climax Hedi Slimane took the Grand Palais from arena to golden LED boulevard, the sophisticated next chapter of his Saint Laurent (West Coast) story. Spoiler alert: more on those collections later. We love them.

As the schedule fills up more and more each season, moments of performance art that make your hair stand up on the back of your neck are more and more crucial. Not everyone needs a catwalk: there’s nothing wrong with a rail in a showroom or a presentation: we’ve enjoyed many this season. It’s not all reliant on money either, so can the defeatism – you can do something exciting in a car park on a wing and a prayer if your spirit is strong enough.

We’re still buzzing from these moments. The best shows go hard or go home.

Don’t miss our other new season takeaways. Be informed with Sports Direct: Track Suits Tailoring; Agenda-Setting Collection: Prada; Agenda-Setting Collection: Saint Laurent; Hair Today: The Christopher Shannon Effect; Been Caught Stealing: Girls Take Boys’; The Best Looks of SS14.