Patrick Mason: wild at heart

Paris Fashion Week 2025. Tuesday bleeds into the ghost of Saturday. Patrick Mason is at FVTVR in the French capital, an industrial warehouse space where he had his party at the weekend. “It was pure and utter debauchery,” he enthuses, the words echoing in the cavernous space. “I arrived at 1am and it was already packed, sweat dripping from the ceiling. The heat from bodies dancing got the place steaming like a fucking sauna.”

He’s clearly proud of the polysexual make-up of his party crowd (“everyone felt part of a community”), and starts posing for photos in a metallic alcove wearing a black headscarf, black suit and long leopard-print gloves.

Bits of jewellery, discarded at FKA twigs’s party the night before, litter the floor like fallen stars on cold concrete. “She activated the entire queer-trans-blah community, there was no one dressed ‘normal’, I was amongst my freaks,” he beams, radiantly. He quickly changes into a billowing, full-length, light-blue chemise, topped off with a black wig and zebra-print knee-high boots. He sits astride a chair in a Christine Keeler pose before grabbing his long orange leather coat to stand on said chair, like a ship’s figurehead lost at sea. The photographer’s flash is a strobe slicing through reality.

Clearly in his element, Patrick whizzes sporadically back to his rail of outfits — a portal to some other selves. Black leather chaps with an orange and black patterned jacket, rubber boots and a tweed waistcoat; a dark furry jumpsuit with a wig and zebra boots; a long cream silk shirt; the orange leather coat again. He scales a green structure outside the venue like a superhero, posing like he’s in The Matrix. Then we head off to the banks of the nearby River Seine, the water a dark mirror for the city’s secrets. Patrick clings to lampposts and quayside bollards, channeling the last scenes of the Titanic movie. He’s flailing around, teetering close to the edge. The water whispers and laps at his heels. The river police come to investigate. Patrick heads back inside. Back to the rail. Back to the transformations. Back to the dream. It begins again.