Men’s fashion trends are speeding up to a cracking pace not seen since the 1960s, 70s and 80s, writes Janice Breen Burns.
Photographs, Paris Menswear Spring/Summer 2014: www.style.com
Bless them all. Blokes are changing the world, one checked jacket, one floral flocked trouser, one platform creeper and flappy open car coat at a time. What a spectacle they are now! Snappy corporates, elegant aesthetes, slavish classicists, egoists tuned like forks to the fashion zeitgeist. Making an EFFORT. A feast for eyes. I adore them all. All but the dulldull majority that is, the hoodie-n-blue-jeans bore-undums. No joy there. But even they are fewer every year. In droves, everyday brothers and boyfriends are twigging the social rewards for a sharp dressed man can be vast and marvellous. Yes!
Dior Homme
Which brings me neatly around to the recently ended spring/summer 2014 menswear runway series. Milan, Paris and London and Berlin too, if you count the newbies in. In my decades as a fashion editor, I can’t recall a richer harvest of appealing ensembles: for the sharp-dresser, the aesthete, the hipster, the doggedly caz-u-al chappie, the unwavering traditionalist. It takes me back to those gorgeous, flambouyant decades, the 1960s, 70s and 80s when every bloke had a “style” and cut a fair chunk of his pay packet to finance it. Glory days for men.
John Galliano
Then, what happened? (There’s a Phd in the answer to that.) After years of lion hair, patterned shirts, platform shoes and lunchy pants, men’s fashion was suddenly – what? – an oxymoron. In the 90s and 00s, Milan and Paris menswear weeks were a bore of glacial corporate-esque trends, or a desperate, headline-grabbing circus of Hercules loin-cloths and full-body condom onesies. Et bloody al.
Ann Demeulemeester
One June in particular, after pleading with an editor for permission to fill a whole (daily metro newspaper) page with menswear trend shots, it dawned on me just how bland our bloke-ajority had become. (Jot “Fear of looking gay”as a powerful sub-text worth exploration in that Phd thesis mentioned earlier.) I couldn’t muster enough runway shots from the hundreds wired to fill half a tabloid, let alone a broadsheet page with fashions likely to appeal to average chaps at the time. I gave up. “Let’s get some lingerie on there,” was my editor’s solution. “Or some swimwear; let’s get some bikini shots on there.”
What can you do.
It was from this sad, sartorial drought that blokes in droves emerged; are still emerging. The pace of their change is still painfully slow in pockets, but no longer glacial in most. Resistance to colour, pattern, texture, risky silhouettes and overtly expressive details and even the odd nod to effeminism, is lightening among men. Yes indeedy doody folks, we have lift off in a new age of masculine sartorial expression and visual appeal. Amen.
Balmain
Last week, Voxfrock thrashed out a skim-wrap of the spring/summer 2014 menswear runways from London and Milan. Click http://voxfrock.com.au/stick-book-4/ to re-cap a season likely to be remembered for its voluminous tailored knee shorts, salt-white and vibrantly floral or graphic-patterned shirts and suits, boxy and broad-shouldered spring coats, platform-soled creeper shoes and the resounding return of navy.
Damir Doma
This week we reviewed, re-hashed and added Paris, specifically the definitive looks we think have appeal across several sartoriagraphs: from Lanvin (with Alber Elbaz and Lucas Ossendrijver ), Balmain (Serge Gainsbourg), Damir Doma, Dior Homme (Kris Van Assche), to John Galliano (Bill Gaytten), Commes des Garcons (Rei Kawakubo), Ann Demeulemeester and Louis Vuitton (Marc Jacobs with Kim Jones). The key Post-Paris trends are listed below as Spanking New (meaning this is their first or, at most, second season outing), Hardening (out for two or more seasons but not gripping the Zeitgeist or bloke-ajority imagination – yet) and Hardened (trends already popular and entrenched at street level, now being modified to freshen and extend their appeal.)
Lanvin
Spanking New
Tailored jackets (single, double breasted and edge-to-edge waiter style) cut to skim the body as close as a knit; overalls and other manifestations of the onesy; effeminite and childish detailing (lace trims, short-shorts and short socks with bare, hairless legs, oversized jackets and coats for a shrunken “little boy” look); incongruous layers ie: short sleeves over long sleeves; creepers and narrow platform-soled snub-toe lace-up shoes; navy.
Commes des Garcons
Hardening
Oversize raglan-sleeve spring coats; long-fly pleated trousers; voluminous tailored knee shorts; short-shorts to high and mid-thigh often worn with short dark socks to emphasise expanse of bare leg; white-on-white tailored sets; navy-on-navy tailored sets; untucked long knits and shirts.; tailored denim; extravagant layering (oversized spring coat over tailored sports or waiter jacket over gilet over shirt over shorts or trousers…).
Lanvin
Hardened
Graphic and floral patterned shirts and trousers; buttoned shirts; fly jackets; leather and laminated fabrics used to freshen classic items such as tailored jackets; double breasted jackets and car coats cut loose and elegantly or tightening toward from-skimming (see Spanking New), shirts and long knits worn untucked to hipbone; the white shirt; slim platform loafers and lace-ups.
Louis Vuitton
With Candice Burke and Terry Carruthers, intern@voxfrock.com.au, Morgan Devitt and Tim Whiteman, info@voxfrock.com.au
