As sartorial standards and codes become increasingly fluid for men, the fashion world is beginning to court the male of our species and creating a unique space for luxury menswear. The men’s fashion shows at Milan and Paris recently proved just how serious the big brands and houses are when it comes to creating eye-catching attire for men. It helps that styles are loosening up, allowing designers to get creative with what they can put on their male models.
While supermodels like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid walked the ramp for Versace, Virgil Abloh’s debut collection with Louis Vuitton drew some of the biggest names in music and fashion with Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Naomi Campbell turning out to support the DJ-turned-designer.
“It’s more than a buzz. It’s a deeper trend,” Sidney Toledano, head of LVMH’s fashion group told Reuters. “There’s strong demand across the men’s fashion industry, in all its shapes and forms, and which comes in part from a younger clientele. We see it very clearly in the sales,” he added.
AFP reports that Maison Margiela’s creative director, John Galliano declared that the time had come to “liberate” men from their sartorial shackles and the collection on display at the Paris Men’s Fashion Week definitely seemed to do that.
A sneak-peek at Galliano’s thinking behind his first ‘Artisanal’ Men’s show: the new definitions of masculinity and femininity, his introduction of bias cut to menswear and the sensuality it brings to a tailored suit, and the current regeneration of menswear with new top designers at luxury houses.
Balenciaga openly admits, according to the Reuters report, that men are now among its biggest sales drivers, right up there with millennials. While womenswear still holds the biggest share in the 1.7 trillion dollar clothing and footwear market, market research firm, Euromonitor forecasts that with sales expanding by a compound annual growth rate of two per cent, men’s lines could just outpace womenswear between now and 2022.
“The men’s business has exploded in the last five years,” said Roopal Patel, fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue to Reuters. “We’ve gone from just category addressing to really designers looking at how they’re going to wardrobe a man’s lifestyle, everything from work to evening to weekend to sport,” he added.
(Header credits: Louis Vuitton on Twitter)
