Modernity is a dead easy for boys and blokes. The glacial forward progress of men’s fashion sees to that. “Nowness” for chaps happens in minuscule, easily adapted, sartorial increments: cuff last year’s trousers, swap to slightly narrower and lower slung jeans, tuck in your shirt, pull your shirt out, pick a shorter sports jacket with or a wider lapel, or narrower lapel, or button-down collar instead of a cutaway. Etcetera. Etcetera. The subtleties and simplicity of most men’s wear can seem maddeningly unfair to the average girl, drowning as she is in a tsunami of seasonal sartorial choices that demand freakish intuition to divine and cobble into an acceptable vision of rightness and nowness. (Or, is that just me?) It’s just soooo easy for chaps to look smashingly spot-on. Like this winter. Blokes in the market for a blindingly 2013 fashion statement need only purchase a pair of printed trousers or jeans. Or, even easier, a bulky-ish jumper or cardigan to pop on over the skinniest pants they can wriggle into. Voila.
“The subtleties and simplicity of most men’s wear can seem maddeningly unfair to the average girl…”
A couple of months ago, the Milan and Paris menswear weeks were all tailored slim suits, flappy open car coats and trenches, pointy laced up shoes and layers and layers of shirts and vests and wraps over trousers slim as cigars. The usual. But one memorable combination, with variations in almost every collection, was that jumper or cardigan or hoodie worn over skinny trousers or jeans. It’s a bit mod, a bit 60s, a bit like the “pumpkin” silhouette of fat little frocklets over tights and platform shoes that has re-emerged in women’s fashion. Plug a jumper into your wardrobe. It’s right. It’s now. And it’s maddeningly dead easy.
Pictured: jumper, hoodie and cardie combos from Christopher Kane and Burberry Prorsum, www.style.com.
For the full menswear AW 13/14 RTW programme: http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2013MEN/
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
