“We didn’t want to be a womenswear brand designing some menswear on the side to sell to their customers’ boyfriends,” Karl Lindman, TOTEME’s cofounder, recently told us about his brand’s leap into menswear (12 years on from the launch of its womenswear). “It’s really about going down and getting very precise and nerdy about how we can bring something new to the table.” That something new is distinctively sharp cuts, lean silhouettes and a very Swedish sensibility combined with considered materials and a restrained palette. There are echoes of cult pieces that made the women’s line so coveted, reimagined as strong and timeless staples for every man’s wardrobe.

One of the ways Parisian brand Casey Casey describes its work is to state that “it’s about the means of production and how we can use it to make something beautiful.” This is not surprising, considering its founder Gareth Casey is a trained painter, sculptor and textile maker. Today, the British-French designer uses his skills to develop his own fabrics to create tactile cotton-corduroy jackets, chunky wool knits and garment-dyed T-shirts that are “about craftsmanship born of a honed and mastered technique.”

You could say that the output of Graphpaper begins with a reverence for workwear and military classics, but that wouldn’t be quite right. In fact, it began originally as a uniform for a gallery-like concept store, before evolving into its own clothing line. Established in 2015 by the stylist and entrepreneur Takayuki Minami, the brand takes standard menswear touchpoints and introduces architectural silhouettes, tied down in surprisingly wearable pieces.

“When you’re blessed with a name as cool as ‘Sage Nation’, you surely have no choice but to start a brand,” the fashion journalist Ashley Ogawa Clarke says. Based in London, the label’s founder Sage Toda-Nation leans into his dual Japanese-British heritage, combining utilitarian pieces with architectural designs and premium fabrics. “His clothes are gaining a lot of momentum in the menswear community for good reason,” Ogawa Clarke says. “He somehow manages to combine these big, bold silhouettes, textured fabrics and a range of colours into pieces that toe that impossible line between interesting and wearable. They can fly under the radar, but if you know you know.”

Robert Pattinson, Timothée Chalamet and Travis Scott don’t usually go for the same look, so when they all back one under-the-radar label, it’s worth knowing about. Founded in London by Anthony Princi and Ahmed Alramly, ADON offers utilitarian pieces made from raw leather and suede, cashmere and silk. Its AW26 collection is inspired by a journey to one of the coldest regions on Earth, where the brand’s design elements converge into garments built to endure.

A brand that’s not new, more returning to the fold. Launched by the legendary designer and entrepreneur Rei Kawakubo in 1978, her mainline menswear line has, for the past two decades, been left in the very capable hands of her protégé Junya Watanabe (more on the latter later). Tokyo-based Ogawa Clarke calls it “pieces you can fill your wardrobe with and be safe in the knowledge that you will be reliably better dressed that the next guy”. Expect the brand’s signature patchwork construction and innovative dye treatments brought to wardrobe staples.

When it comes to that wardrobe workhorse, the shirt, the feeling might be that you’ve been there, seen that, bought the T-shirt. Or rather, you know, shirt. Only, this COMME DES GARÇONS sub-line was forged with the express purpose of dreaming up new ways of configuring the most essential of menswear pieces. That can mean materials or construction – in short, pressing a lot of different buttons to get a button-up. “The result is shirts that are often smart and office-appropriate, but at the same time are never overly conservative,” Ogawa Clarke says. Although it’s worth noting that SHIRT’s remit now extends beyond shirts, too.

As well as heading up COMME DES GARÇON HOMME, Junya Watanabe runs his own eponymous menswear line. Decidedly more avant-garde than the core brand itself, this offshoot of the COMME DES GARÇONS multiverse hinges on the deployment of cutting-edge fabrics and techniques. Much of the high-tech materials you now see in high fashion is down to his early adoption. “Working a lot with classic workwear and menswear, he’s a master at twisting things just enough to make them interesting while still keeping them realistic,” Ogawa Clarke says. “Also, these are the kind of clothes that will look incredible whether you’re 17 or 70.”

“It’s like taking a blank sheet of paper and writing your story on it,” is how Alessandro Squarzi describes his brand, Fortela. So, while every piece stems from classic piece drawn from his personal archive (we got a sneaky peek here), lovingly reworked, there is an autobiographical quality to it. “It’s not just a brand, it’s the product of my life,” as he puts it. The Milanese street-style fixture places the Japanese denim, gilets and deck jackets as the standout items in the collection, but he promises that each is destined to “become part of the wearer”.

While launched after Issey Miyake officially retired from the day-to-day running of his fashion empire, the handprint of the designer behind Steve Jobs’ trademark turtleneck is all over this inventive line. It was set up as the menswear counterpart to his Pleats Please womenswear line, tailoring Miyake’s signature pleating techniques and fluid shapes to men. The result is a collection of lightweight, crease-resistant and quick-drying pieces that are engineered for movement. (Available in the US only.)