A Future All Too Familiar

The impact of a massive and graphic silhouette embellished by technical sheen, color blocking, and glistening zippers became the desired effect by most European menswear designers in the early 90’s. It set the precedent for a kind of masculine chic which lingered far enough to become archaic and demand its own fashion victim classification. Abound in catalogs like International Male, the look (dated and outmoded) was left covetable by only the hopelessly out of touch and lacking in self-awareness. It’s a part of what we have come to identify as cheesy 90’s fashion.

For those older than 25 the era is so resolved in their memory making any aesthetic reference or hint of nostalgia deplorable. The embarrassment is still fresh. But in the same manner it only took the 80’s twenty years to find it’s own revival thus the early 90’s will find it’s way, as the cyclical nature of fashion demands, back into our awareness riding the undaunted swing of the pendulum.

What exactly can this too soon forgotten period add to our contemporary aesthetics that officer jackets, skinny jeans, American Apparel t-shirts, and fauxhawks cannot? The return to a masculine but sensual silhouette and a dose of humor presents an attitude that neither needs nor desires approval from a generation swamped with influence. The Details Magazines, Justin Timberlakes, Kanye Wests, Julian Red Jeans, APC’s, A/X’s, Chase Crawfords, Zaras all go mute. It’s a sensitivity that is resentful of the current establishment, it is anti-fashion, a deliberate display not of bad taste but a distinctly different one. And one of the key concepts needed to be grasped in order for assimilation to happen is of scale. The look of yesteryear was designed for a muscular and large figure meant to fill out the clothes and provide a structure, but the new idea is deflated. It’s as much about the space between the body and the fabric as it is around the whole figure. To be worn correctly you will want it to hang. Essentially, it’s still a “skinny” look but only now naturally lends itself to a matured physique.

It won’t be easy to figure out how to interpret such a stigmatized aesthetic for today but there will be those who will try and they will show the rest of us how it’s done. And as in most sensibilities that are so silly and new it demands confidence which is precisely why in these uncertain times its appeal is slowly (oh so slowly) beginning to wax.

From The Spring 2009 Men’s Collections:

1- Calvin Klein Collection, Jil Sander, Michael Kors, Jil Sander

2- Junn J, Givenchy, Calvin Klein Collection, Givenchy, Jil Sander

3- Gaspard Yurkeivich, Obedient Sons, Marni, 3.1 Philip Lim

4- Prada, Lanvin, Duckie Brown, Vivienne Westwood

5- Paul Smith, Z Zegna, Obedient Sons, Bottega Veneta