For Boy Doll, Celine’s latest men’s collection revealed by a video shot at the Olympia and posted online on March 3, Hedi Slimane paraded men in black leggings covered in rhinestones. Very molded men’s legs? The same Slimane had already used this recipe by popularizing slim jeans at Dior Homme between 2000 and 2007, lastingly upsetting the men’s wardrobe well beyond the walls of the Parisian luxury label.
Today, he is not the only one in fashion to give his interpretation of the men’s leggings that Americans call “meggings”, contraction of “men” and of “leggings”. Sage versions coexist, black or navy at Boss or Maison Margiela, with bohemian motifs at Etro or with messages at Walter Van Beirendonck.
Since the invention of Lycra in 1958, leggings have been mostly a matter of dancers, yoga enthusiasts or aerobics fanatics. During the 2010s, the systematic injunction to a healthy lifestyle and the development of sporting activity (75% of French people complied with it in 2018 compared to 69% in 2008, according to a study by the Ministry of Sports and of the National Institute of Youth and Popular Education), began to bring out the megging in the street, worn on the way to the gym. Often concealed under loose shorts, as this piece hugs the crotch.
Because, if the legs seem elongated and the muscles of the thighs bulging, it is at another level of the anatomy that the megging inhibits. Online, boys debate it among themselves on hundreds of forum pages. To the skeptics (“are we validating or not, guys? ») retort the categorical: “it molds the cock too much”, “too gay”, when he is not “decadent”.
“Yoga pants should be illegal in public spaces”, even went so far as to strike, across the Atlantic, a certain David Moore. Elected Republican of Montana, he tried, in February 2015, to pass a text of law to prohibit in the streets of his state the wearing of “any device, costume or covering piece that reveals or enhances the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks or pubis”. In vain.
Since then, luxury brands like Balenciaga have had fun upgrading the meggings. Has he gained in decency? Not really. On the catwalks, it is often worn under loose shirts (Dolce & Gabbana) or long jackets (Gucci, MSGM). More accessible, specialized brands have also rushed into the breach. Thus Matador Meggings, founded in Miami by a yoga teacher, who imagines models equipped with kinds of flexible shells, borrowed from the pants of bullfighters, which expose intimacy less frontally. And, to push professionalism to its limits, the label stresses that it is a “proprietary technology”. Her name ? “No VPL”, a prudish acronym for “no visible penis line”.
