Flashback: Look Back At Men's Fashion In 2015 (Part 4)

WORLD WORE ‘15
Look back in wonder at the year in men’s fashion trends and themes in this flashback. By Daniel Goh

Givenchy look embodies the new untraditonal suit

Dandy No More

Tailoring has finally gone over the pedantic Mad Men phase when everyone who wore a qiuff wanted a suit with all its period trimming (pocket square anyone?); entire streets crawled with what looked like heavily-sweating, badly-dressed extras in some poorly-researched period drama. We are glad to see the “sartorial” period RIP. Men’s tailoring has gone more innovative with surprising new twists to the suitings genre, with classics kicked up, mould broken, taken-apart, reconsidered, re-decorated into an entirely new beast.

Riches are piled on riches in a wealth of technique (intarsia, slashes), a riot of prints (lace, glitter) and ideas.

(FALL/WINTER: Burberry FW 17 18 19 24; Dolce FW 21 27; Comme FW 30 31 32 33; Dries FW 16; McQueen FW 7 8 9; Dior FW 37)

Raf Simons mashup of office and kindergarten

Everyone Needs a Hobo

The defining style of this era is the miss-match and contrast of genres, a post-modern mashup we had a first inkling of when street went luxe (the embellished sweatshirt is a key example, or the hybrid brogue/trainer, or pin-striped jogging pants). The more extreme the mashup the better: Think academic tweedy mashed up with slouchy denims, or grandpa mashed-up with jock, to become the new royalty of the coolly rumpled.

(FALL/WINTER: BV FW 35 15 2; Comme FW 3 4 8 16; Dunhill 4 24)

Dries Van Noten's East/West mix

The New Silk Road

The New Silk Road isn’t just China’s infrastructure investment (USD 200 billion) in trade and diplomacy projects across the globe through Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Asia – and neither is it a new hotpot restaurant. Fashion has simply opened up its notions of beauty to embrace Asian forms and decorations – and not in a simplistic or shallow way. Traditional East Asian shapes, colours that pack heat, ethnic minority embellishments and a certain unbuttoned, wrapped over volume is proposed in modern, surprisingly elegant new ways of dress, a (literally) seamless hybrid of East and West.

(FALL/WINTER: Burberry FW 10 11 12 13 15; Comme FW 6; Dries FW 14 8 18 27 28 40 30 35; Etro FW 2 6 9 40; Givenchy FW 25 26 27 36 41 48 55)

Punk Grunge Love

Gucci grunge

And just when you thought everything was going swimmingly rich and fatly irrelevant in this world of constant chaos and natural disasters, a spike of aggression and anger is both expression of and antidote against the tough new world in which we live. Think seedy and rough leathers, vests and a violent attitude.

(FALL/WINTER: Gucci FW 2 6 13 31; Etro FW 14; Givenchy FW 5 35 37) 

Part 4 of 4 - End