A checkered suit fashioned in chick yellow, embellished with cherry motifs, a green and pink knit vest, a pair of white ankle boots with a red heart… The collection designed by Gucci and English pop star Harry Styles, called “Gucci HA HA HA”, in stores since November 3, sets the tone for the revival of men’s fashion that has blossomed on the catwalks in recent seasons.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has just devoted an exhibition to the evolution of men’s clothing through the ages, called “Fashioning Masculinities: the Art of Menswear”. “Men’s fashion is experiencing a period of unprecedented creativity”, say Claire Wilcox and Rosalind McKever, the curators of the exhibition. If creators are having fun today with the codes of masculinity, what about in “real life”? Is it just a fashion week and red carpet fantasy?
On a daily basis, the man still seems quite constrained in his appearance, at least in the context of work, where, outside of creative circles, we come across very few suits with cherries or boots with a heart. However, the very functional – a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a well-tailored suit… – today gives way to a touch of assumed eccentricity in the street and the shops. And it’s no coincidence that Alessandro Michele, head of style at Gucci since 2015, teamed up with Harry Styles. At 28, the singer and actor is part of a new generation of artists who express themselves both through their art and their looks, like David Bowie in the 1970s.
Timothée Chalamet’s blood-red bare back
Clashes of colors, combinations of prints, pieces questioning the genre: Harry Styles has a serious competitor in the person of Timothée Chalamet. At 26, the Franco-American actor, revealed by the film Call Me by Your Name, in 2017, does not hesitate to regularly shake up the idea that we have of the men’s wardrobe. His appearance in September on the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival, where he came to defend the film Bones and Allby Lucas Guadagnino, left no one indifferent: he indeed wore a blood red jumpsuit, completely bare back, and held by a link closing on the neck, imagined by the French designer Haider Ackermann.
Timothée Chalamet, who does not use the services of a personal stylist, as is often the case with celebrities, likes to play with clothing, even if it means heckling people’s minds. We saw him, during the 2019 Golden Globes, wearing a black pants-shirt set embellished with an amazing harness completely covered in shiny sequins. A piece signed Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton. Disappeared in November 2021, Virgil Abloh, who, since his appointment at Vuitton in 2018, mixed streetwear and luxurious elements in his wardrobe, has largely contributed to redefining the look of men in recent years. An evolution that we see in a handful of designers working both for established houses – Alessandro Michele at Gucci, Kim Jones at Dior Men… – as well as independently.
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