Above leading image: Models and the Paris Scoring Orchestra in the Dior Homme FW15 finale. Photography Adrien Dirand

With the new season at a wrap, we’re bringing you Fashion Week Takeaways – everything you need to know about FW15 menswear in our definitive take on the season…

Aural delights underscored the best of FW15 shows, designers giving the often slapdash soundtrack a thorough working over.

Not content with pumping out bog-standard über-cool melody mash ups, these designers embraced the idea that a fashion show can be a multi-sensory experience, and that audio can be a vital to communicate things that can only be felt, not explained for eyes alone.

Dries Van Noten sent the first few models down his catwalk to the sound of a slowly rotating LP, hissing and scratching, demanding complete attention. After a moment, the haunting wail of DM Stith’s Be My Baby began, played through, ended and then reverted back to record-hiss. Then, it all started again.

Repetition: it’s a recurring theme in Van Noten’s work, one that manifested on last season’s soundtrack, setting a psychological mood via an 80s dance piece written Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Today, the collection looked to tessellating patterns in and the traditional embroideries of the Chinese Miao tribe. Like a handwoven motif, repetitions on a theme naturally develop their own peculiarities. As perfect as the imperfections a record collects play by play.

Paul Smith, a week earlier in London, chose to show his new suiting range at an informal presentation in London. Gymnasts swapped lycra jumpsuits for navy blue real suits, and vaulted, thrusted and contorted themselves into all kinds of human pyramids. A pre-recorded soundtrack of heavy breathing accompanied the performance, instantly transforming the vibe into more of an art happening than a fashion event. Fitting that it took place at the Hauser & Wirth art gallery on Savile Row.

In London we also got JW Anderson’s dystopian landscape, set to Michel Gaubert’s choice of Big Hard Excellent Fish – Imperfect List, from the 1990 12″ by Pete Wylie. Featuring a emotionally drained vocal drone of Wylie’s then girlfriend and collaborator Josie Jones, the track is a recitation of pet hates on repeat – a disorientating match for a collection that displaced aesthetics from their historic context. Unsettling, a sharp effect.

Models at Comme des Garçons walked ominously to Masked Ball, the hypnotic and vividly unsettling backwards chant from Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. Anyone who’s seen the film will probably have the track (for want of a better word) indelibly branded in their memory, so an interesting question about authorship emerges: How possible is it to remove previous associations we have with music, especially something with such strong connotations, when viewed in a new context? For a collection based on ritual, perhaps the association wasn’t all together unwelcome.

In Paris, we finished the innovative sound stakes with a real showstopper. The audience at Dior Homme was greeted by a thick black curtain trailing the middle of the catwalk. Apparently with no room to drop or raise (we were wrong, it raised) a 31-strong orchestra was revealed, playing a specially arranged version of Koudlam’s The Landsc Apes.

The addition of real live music played by that number of real live people jet-propelled the experience, it was emotional, visceral. Audience, models and musicians came together for one unrepeatable moment. An unexpected and very welcome touch to a sometimes formulaic fashion week experience, human warmth surrounded the ‘techno-sartorial’ collection in perfect harmony.

Check out our entire FW15 coverage, featuring catwalk, backstage and collection reports