Flashback: Look Back At Men's Fashion In 2015 (Part 3)

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

Prada went dopey for denim in an almost-all denim collection

Dopey For Denim

Very much of this new Youthquake is the importance of denim. Jeans are here to stay. Perhaps it recalls the time when fashion was still young and innocent (1950s), perhaps it is nostalgia for a time when work was physical and visceral rather than taking a selfie and posting to Facebook or pretending to be a celeb with a slyly-plotted OOTD. Prada, which is as avant-garde and thinking as they come, and always social commentary, devoted its entire collection to denim.

(Spring/Summer 2015 examples: Prada SS 1 4 24 25 etc; SL SS 52; Gucci SS 28)

Talk Nerdy To Me

Did you notice the trend for nerdy/studious glasses this year? It replaced the hipster Ray-Bans as the de rigueur frames, and celebrate the perks of being a wallflower: Standing out in a We-fie. When everyone around you is being a total glamazon-influencer, you need to be a total nerd, just, you know, to stand out?

(Spring/Summer 2015 examples: JW Anderson SS 29; Prada SS 35 36 44 47 8 12; LV SS 5 7 18 33 35 37; Gucci SS 6)

Part 3 of 4 - Part 4 will be posted up later

Flashback: Look Back At Men's Fashion In 2015

WORLD WORE ‘15

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

This has been a big, dramatic year in fashion; Not only did men’s fashion thrust forward decisively in looks that completely broke from the past, it zoomed ahead without nostalgia or sentimentality for eras past, and menswear is finally freed to move into the 21 Century. 

Doherty, whom no fashion can now save, looking very much like Stephen Fry.

If Only Pete Doherty Was Slim

There was a sense of déjà vu when Pete Doherty, now a pudgy uncle at 36, appeared at Saint Laurent’s show in Paris last October. The former rake thin Rimbaud of rock (and former squeeze of Kate Moss), who was the “thin-spiration” behind Saint Laurent’s seminal Spring 2015 collection, appeared to be twice the size (and age!) of his former self (albeit still sweaty, unwashed and clutching a pack of cigarettes like a ball of used tissue). Nonetheless, the skinnier than thou models, squashed into frayed jeans and stovepipe leather leggings, a flail of beaded chiffon or a shrug of shrunken jacket recalled the poet/punk of The Libertines in his fey days. If only he were thin again.

In this hit collection for Saint Laurent, Hedi Slimane seemed also to be citing his own gloriously slim self, and by the way celebrating the marginalized, the freak, the fragile, the queen, the poet, making a case of relevance for the disagreeable, disgruntled, and preternaturally sour. That such a stance actually strikes at the heart of, and is a comment on, the happy, shiny hordes of Instagram, the hordes that have clicked their approval in waves of “Likes”, seems to be lost on the Social Media generation. This can only prove that the Social Media generation is dumb and lost and that Slimane is beyond cynical.

(Spring/Summer 2015 examples: Saint Laurent SS 1 8 16 17 38 46 53 61 65; Lanvin SS 8 10 14 23 38 43)

Part 1 of 4 - Part 2 will be posted up later

HAZY DAYS PREDICTED FOR FASHION

FIFTY SHADES OF BLEAK

If the on-going Spring collections are anything to go by, the future of fashion is looking decidedly bleak, vapid and yes, heading nowhere fast. By Daniel Goh

As fashion becomes increasingly democratic (with every click of the mouse, a new fashion star is born), with the unstoppable tsunami of digital media, the traditional top-down fashion pyramid is being turned on its couture head. Now, fashion trends are filtering up from the new media to the labels, rather than the other way around. This is detrimental to fashion and style, isn’t it? Designers don’t dictate trends, or create fashion anymore, the masses do, with mouse in one hand, and camera phone in the other.

The visionary Fashion God is dead, long live the Influencer. The fashion industry has always been deeply rooted in the cult of the personality, for isn’t fashion about individuality and taste? Now it is all about digital technology, and the information it generates about what people want – crowd-sourced trends, anyone? Every aspect of the industry used to be reliant on people rather than machines — everything from hand-sketched designs to a stylist’s touch, where an individual fashion god’s subjective tastes can dictate an entire era’s aesthetics. Now, we’re seeing all aspects of the industry affected by new technology and providing data analysis and ‘tracking’. The effect is predictable, lowest common denominator fashion – merchandise cynically produced to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, which is ultimately more about money than it is about style.

And isn’t live-streaming killing fashion too? With an ever-wider reach, live-streams of runway shows, and other digital coverage and updates enable just about anybody to ‘attend’ the shows. The exclusive and elite nature of fashion is gone for good. The flattening of the fashion pyramid is now the landscape where those with an informed point of view, an educated vision are slugging it out online with the speediest clickers and illiterate, ignorant Instagram queens. And Instagram queens with legions of ghost followers are winning.

Although change is what makes fashion tick, the escalating speed of change in fashion is actually putting people off buying fashion. The constant demand for change and novelty leaves real consumers bewildered, and many have simply retreated into a world of casual Normcore basics - for good. Escalating change has also put an enormous strain on the creators of fashion who now put out eight or more collections a year, and quantity is surely detrimental to quality. Fashion cycles have become so short that a 1970s revival can repeat a towic in a mere couple of years! Add to that changes in trends wrought by celebrities and other influencers who reach millions and that’s a lot of fashion change in a nanosecond. Trends changing at a moment’s notice is making fashion an impossible, depleting race against time.

FASHION, STYLE, MONEY

Social Media may have given us more Fashion than we can swallow but does it bode well for style? By Daniel Goh

Social Media, in its exciting democracy, has thrown up all manner of “style influencers”, most self-proclaimed, many deluded. It certainly has expanded the vocabulary of style and what it means, because on social media, anything goes. Anything tacky, gimmicky, and vulgar, I might add. I’d like to think this fashion democracy good, but have to admit that oftentimes the ceaseless parade of people presenting themselves to be admired (with not a stitch of irony in their conceited expressions) is in fact bewildering, and makes one want to click off, block and delete.

This non-stop, revolutionary channel for expressing fashion, which upsets the traditional top-down model of rarefied tastemakers dictating trends, make it impossible to separate the man from the boys: the really stylish, who practice subtlety, nuance and refinement must lose out in a storm of likes for the flashy, brazen and bold. To click ‘like’ takes a fraction of a second, but style takes a lifetime to perfect, and may not be immediately recognizable in a quick scroll, as you’re watching that latest K-drama.  

Social media has made style into a game of competitive shopping with the influencers around the globe: It has become about who was seen wearing whatever first, regardless of the merit of the item or design. It’s about speed, grab, snap, post – fly there, eat that, eat up the scenery, edit the photo and post. And then the next gaudy item, postcard location, etc. This sort of race really isn’t what personal style is all about. It isn’t even about fashion anymore – forget about relevance, craftsmanship, technique. Fashion has become a circus for vulgar wealth: For isn’t this what it is all about? You can only afford to fly there, wear this, buy 1,000 handbags, multiple carats, lay your hands on the very latest shoe every other hour if you have Money. It isn’t about style or intrinsic value or integrity or beauty. It’s all about money, and only money.

I’m constantly surprised that people would enthusiastically shut themselves up in this prison of the material. There they are, in that gilded cell, reading labels on each other’s backs and bags and boots (and IG captions). Doesn’t this immediately remind you of some people you know? Can you think of anything more depressing? Style should be about not needing the constant approval of others, not needing the constant reassurance of the ‘in’ labels, startling hair colour and nail art, the ‘cool’, the ‘It’, the most expensive, the purportedly exclusive, the supposed one-of-a-kind, the chorus of likes. These are the manacles and padlocks and delusions that weigh these influencers down. Because being stylish is all about freedom. It’s about not having to conform; it’s about having that sense to make discerning and appropriate choices; it’s all about the freedom to fearlessly be who you are.

What has this generation of influencers really given us but a vapid and perverse fashion environment in which taste is nothing compared to the blind worship of the filthy rich? This worship makes the world a much smaller place, being a narrow and unimaginative creed; There’s nothing intrinsically creative about shopping – influencers famously do nothing, have no skills, ideas or craft. Some of them take a good picture, but that’s just dieting and apps. This focus on the material and the surface of things is the antithesis of style. In the end, the focus on money is just unimaginative, and terribly, terribly dull.