We’ve brought you nothing but the hits in anticipation of the menswear shows, which kicked off in London today with Topman—the models, the trends, the people who matter most. We even went to the maestro of menswear shopping himself, Style.com resident street-style snapper Tommy Ton, for the inside scoop on his clothes obsession.
Today we’ve reached the apex of this unofficial week of menswear mania: Style.com editor at large Tim Blanks picks the most important men’s fashion runway moments of the decade, from Helmut Lang’s last hurrah to Craig Green’s breakout tour de force. See the looks that defined the last 10 years of men’s fashion below.
Photo: FirstView.com1/19Spring 2005 Helmut Lang Look 9
Our hello to a decade of menswear begins with a good-bye: Helmut Lang's last menswear show before he walked out of his own label. No one knew at the time. There was certainly no premonition in the collectsion, which had a lightness, a lyricism, that felt new for Lang—or maybe he was just feeling good about the freedom he had in mind for himself. Boyd Holbrook in transparent plastic jeans or rococo florals were images for the ages. And even with this, his sign-off, Lang buried some treasure, like the nautical knots and the goat-fur clogs, for designers who came after to unearth.
Photo: FirstView.com2/19Spring 2005 Raf Simons Look 41
As Helmut Lang exited stage left, Raf Simons moved front and center to assume the minimalist mantle. Except that such a label was as reductive with Simons as it was with Lang. This collectsion consolidated a shift for him. "History of the World," he called it, with an invitation that listed "people, places, and things that have made a difference." So the picture was bigger than the angsty youth cults that absorbed Simons earlier in his career. And if the picture was bigger, so were the proportions of the clothes, expanding from gymnast streamlines to huge white coats that floated like angel's wings. With such visionary images, Simons was making his own difference to the world of menswear.
Photo: FirstView.com3/19Fall 2005 Kim Jones Look 1
The sartorial-sporty hybrid has changed the shape of menswear. One of its pioneers was Kim Jones. He's now ensconced at Louis Vuitton, but a decade ago, alongside his consultancies for sportswear companies like Umbro, he was telling extraordinary stories with his own collectsions. Like this one, a mash-up, he claimed, of a Russian prison camp and the sensual art of Antonio Lopez. Surreal that may sound, but prison-uniform items like sweats and trackpants were elevated in combination with sophisticated tailoring. It felt like a way that The Modern Man—this one, at least—might actually want to dress.
Photo: FirstView.com4/19Fall 2006 Junya Watanabe Look 1
Junya Watanabe's fascination with Americana was never sharper than with this collectsion, which appropriated Taxi Driver, lock, stock, and soundtrack. The models sported Travis Bickle's mohawk and army fatigues, reconfigured in precise, patchworked tailoring. And their glazed psycho glares guaranteed they were almost as disturbings as Bickle. With any other designer, there would have been something supremely ironic about such a presentation, but irony is not in Watanabe's vocabulary. For him, Bickle represented "motivation"—and an irresistible example of the way his outsider's eye recasts reality.
Photo: FirstView.com5/19Fall 2006 Valentino Look 15
Valentino claimed inspiration from a time when airports weren't quite the obstacle course they've become, and the collectsion itself offered a perfect soup-to-nuts wardrobe for the well-heeled traveler. Luxe, calme et volupté, indeed. But it was the presentation that made this show such a standout. The invitation was a first-class plane ticket, the soundtrack by Frédéric Sanchez a dreamy mix of Brian Eno and airport announcements, the models an all-ages microcosm of the one percent. And all styles were served here, too, from the aging heiress with the kept boy to the cowboys walking hand in hand, Brokeback Mountain with a happy ending.
Photo: FirstView.com6/19Spring 2007 Number (N)ine Look 24
The label is no more, so the world that Takahiro Miyashita created lives only in the rearview mirror. Which is fine, because lonesome cowboys rolling into legend down long, empty highways were his favorite characters—outlaws like Kurt Cobain and Johnny Cash, who were the presiding spirits of this collectsion. The clothes were faded and worn, as if they'd spent years on the frontier, and they were laden with the kind of evocative details that make Japanese fashion a thing of permanent wonder, from trailing rosaries and pearl fringes and macramé belts to jacket linings printed with sheet music for Nirvana songs.
Photo: FirstView.com7/19Fall 2007 Dior Homme (Hedi Slimane) Look 1
One of Hedi Slimane's greatest assets is his mania for detail. It's peaking at Saint Laurent, but he didn't do badly at Dior Homme, either. His last collectsion for the label was soundtracked by These New Puritans, his latest recruits from the cutting edge of English music. The band comes from Southend, one of the spiritual homes of English mod, and though TNP's sound had almost nothing to do with mod, Slimane's Crombies, trenchcoats, striped mohair sweaters, and cropped peacoats would have gone down a storm with the Vespa-riding hordes who used to descend on Southend in the early '60s. Elevating the historicism was a new, looser silhouette and some utterly gorgeous jackets, which meant Slimane went out on a high. Five years later, he picked up at SL just where he'd left off at CD.
Photo: FirstView.com8/19Fall 2007 John Galliano Look 1
You could probably make a case for the objective significance of some of the 18, but these choices are first and foremost personal, which is why John Galliano's Road Warrior-meets-Kagemusha show is here. As a lapsed Slipknot fan, how could I not surrender to Galliano's trawl through the wreckage of Western civilization? Fall 2007 had a dystopian spin to start with, so Galliano simply scented the air and ran wild with it. You have to wonder what fashion historians of the future will make of a show like this. And what on earth happened to all the clothes afterward?
Photo: FirstView.com9/19Fall 2008 Duckie Brown Look 1
The menswear scene seemed to expand exponentially in Manhattan over the past decade, with every species of designer—from punk to prep—plying his trade. But the most consistent contribution came from the odd men out, Steven Cox and Daniel Silver of Duckie Brown. Their name continues to be an obtuse advertisement for their originality, and the puns they concoct from the titles of Barbra Streisand movies to name their collectsions are equally arch (this time round, "Up the Duckie"), but Cox's radical revisions of menswear precepts, combined with his peerless skills as a tailor, have guaranteed a string of provocative presentations, none more so than Fall 2008, where an initial earsplitting blast of techno faded to the complete silence in which the rest of the show took place. In that stimulus-free context, the cut, the quality, and the fierce classicism of the 21 looks gleamed like black diamonds. Couture for men? No one in New York has ever come closer.
Photo: FirstView.com10/19Fall 2008 Comme des Garçons Look 2
A Comme des Garçons collectsion is generally so rich with allusion that you can read it like a good book. Fall 2008 was ripe with punk: the tartan; the rips and zips; the red of anarchy; the dystopian sloganeering, like the timeless battle cry "No Future." Rei Kawakubo and Vivienne Westwood have enjoyed a fruitful kindred-spirithood over the years, and here the dialogue felt playfully energized. Classic menswear pieces cut from classic menswear fabrics were appliquéd or over-printed or violently brutalized by plaid inserts, a perfect visual metaphor for the unhinging of the orthodox, something Kawakubo excels at. But the overwhelming impression was actually elegance, with the peculiar Edwardian propriety of Japanese fashion given added emphasis by Stephen Jones' beautiful top hats. "Elegance is refusal": That was Coco Chanel's edict. But, with this collectsion, it felt like Rei Kawakubo was saying "yes" rather than "no."
Photo: FirstView.com11/19Fall 2008 Bottega Veneta Look 9
Reflect on the 18 shows/collectsions that make up this list, and it's obvious how fundamental the concept of the uniform is to menswear. Tomas Maier built his Fall 2008 collectsion around its extremes: utilitywear and eveningwear, both equally elegant in his eyes. A housepainter's white coveralls paired with a tailored navy topcoat was an accessible rendition of the notion. Maier trades in male archetypes, which can lend his collectsions a cinematic quality. With its fitted jacket and baggy trouser anchored by heavy shoes, he labeled his key proportion "Charlie Chaplin." The very idea of such a character attached to "the world's premier luxury fashion brand" had the slightly surreal, even subversive tang that subtly infects a lot of what Maier does for BV. Truly a reconceptualization of luxury as we understand the term.
Photo: FirstView.com12/19Fall 2009 Alexander McQueen Look 1
Alexander McQueen never dominated men's fashion the way he ruled womenswear for a while, but something about the way he presented masculinity as a theatrical performance resonates more and more as the years pass. And this was the collectsion that sealed that deal. On a catwalk as shadowy as a side street in a Dickens novel, menacing males—some of them actual pugilists—paraded by in outfits that also had a 19th-century feel. The window dressing had a lot to do with that: Top hats, walking sticks, capes, even the odd codpiece and twirl-able moustache could have turned the models into pantomime villains, but they had an edge of genuine threat with their butcher's aprons of leather and chain mail. Quite what McQueen, with his instinct for the dark side, would have done with menswear in the future can only be conjecture, but at least he left us with these indelible images.
13/19Spring 2011 Prada Look 28
With her men's collectsions as much as her women's, Miuccia Prada has covered the waterfront: cerebral to sensual, drab to opulent, conservative to unhinged. Her collectsion for Spring 2011 was more obvious than most. The uniform defines men's dressing, so here there were straightforward salutes to a whole lot of hardworking clothes, starting with the wage slave's traditional three-button jacket. Miuccia wanted the simplest shapes (surgical scrubs, sailor boatnecks) and fabrics (denim and heavy cotton). There were postman blues and hospital greens, and an onset of colored stripes that she hoped would suggest uniforms in other countries. They looked a little like a sports kit. It was left to the shoes to carry the collectsion's conceptual weight, their superthick soles created by sandwiching together other soles: trainers, espadrilles, wing-tips. One shoe that could be all things to all men, uniformity in excelsis—except for the fact it was so darn perverse. In other words, Prada to a T.
Photo: Filippo Fior / GoRunway.com14/19Fall 2011 Dries Van Noten Look 2
David Bowie is one of menswear's most inescapable influences because he offers designers so many different options to explore. Dries Van Noten chose Bowie's mid-'70s incarnation as the Thin White Duke, borrowing the monochrome color palette; the peak-shouldered, full-pleated silhouette; the hairstyle; and the thoroughly narcotized languor. The collectsion was also a master class in the way an influence can act as a springboard to something less literal but just as mesmerizing. Bowie got Van Noten thinking about reconciling opposites: He layered an evening jacket over a T-shirt, paired a camel blazer and huge white cargo pants, combined antique gold bullion embroidery and chunky hand-knit in the same outfit. His fusion of the traditional and the technical in fashion was ultimately as adept as Bowie's similar achievement in music.
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com15/19Fall 2012 Umit Benan Look 1
Fashion loves a man in uniform. The suit, staple of a contemporary wardrobe, evolved from military garb, and Umit Benan spotlit the connection with a show set in soldiers' barracks. It was the kind of audacious, theatrical presentation that Benan specializes in, so accomplished that it left you wondering, as usual, why he isn't a household name. Especially because all the showmanship—full-frontal nudity, onstage tattooing, and all—couldn't distract from Benan's precise, ingenious revision of male classics. Starting, naturally, with the suit, recut paratrooper-style in a cashmere plaid.
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com16/19Spring 2013 Dolce & Gabbana Look 4
Sicily is where it all started for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, so when they needed to goose their business, that's the well they went back to. Their Fall 2012 collectsion choked on its own artifice. What better antidote in Spring 2013 than authenticity? The men and boys who modeled in the show were bussed in from Sicilian villages. So was the set, by the looks of that old stone wall. The clothes had the well-worn look of treasured hand-me-downs, and the villagers paraded them with a charming sense of occasion. Of course it was artificial (the fabrics might have looked worn, but they were actually exquisite wools and linens), but the emotion generated by the show was genuine. And it effortlessly transported the designers back to the glory days of their international debut. Way to get real!
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com17/19Fall 2014 Thom Browne Look 16
How could you review a decade's worth of menswear and not include the Great Obsessive, Thom Browne? His collectsions have often been alienating and fascinating in equal degree, and their increasingly elaborate scenarios color Browne as fashion's surrealist maestro. Here, for instance, the set was a woodland tableau whose flora and fauna were stitched from classic menswear fabrics, and the two-act presentation told a tale of the hunted and the hunter, the former dressed in desirable raw-seamed tailoring topped with Stephen Jones' brilliant animal hats, the latter encumbered by stiff, oakleaf-patterned Pierrot suits. Browne insisted this passage was his celebration of camo, about as classically male as a pattern gets. But celebration equals subversion in Thomlandia. That's Browne's singular achievement. He makes you question everything, your own sanity included.
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com18/19Spring 2015 Craig Green Look 8
It's reassuring to close a review of the past decade with an inspiring glimpse of what the future might hold—or at least a reminder of how broad and generous the definition of "menswear" now is. "Zen" was a reference point for Craig Green, and there was definitely a meditative purity in his designs. But there was also the fearlessness of the warrior, the poetry of the artist, the melancholy of the idealist. The show and the collectsion were testaments to fashion's emotional tug. Imagine a world where men actually dressed like this. At the very least, it would be a more peaceful place.
Photo: Gianni Pucci / Indigitalimages.com; FirstVIEW.com; Indigitalimages.com (2); Marcus Tondo / Indigitalimages.com19/19Bonus: The Faces of the Decade
What would a decade of menswear be without the men? Here are a few of the most memorable faces.
Tyson Ballou
Jeremy Dufour, Viktor & Rolf Spring 2013 (bottom center)
Will Chalker, Dolce & Gabbana Spring 2005 (top right)
Noah Mills
Evandro Soldati
Clement Chabernaud
George Barnett
Cole Mohr
Simon Nessman
Matthias Lauridsen, Bottega Veneta Spring 2014 (bottom right)
Vincent LaCrocq
Brad Kroenig, Chanel Métiers d'Art 2015 (top left)
David Gandy, Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2011 (bottom left)
Sean O'Pry
