SS18 Fashion Week: Men’s Street Style
Streetwear is booming. From Stüssy to Supreme, from Off-White to A Bathing Ape, brands whose clothes take their cue from the sidewalks are front and center in a fashion industry where traditional show formats are falling out of favor.
Which is all the more reason to pay as much mind to what’s going on outside show venues, as within them. Sure, what designers send down the runway merits attention, but as long as it’s buyers, editors and A-list Instagrammers that make trends stick, then front row and street style looks are as much an indication of what men will be wearing next season as what’s lining the racks backstage.
Hawaiian or floral, abstract or figurative, printed shirts were staple fare this season. Most were shortsleeved and cut oversized – partly as a nod to the trend Kim Jones pioneered at Louis Vuitton a couple of years ago. The popularity of this type of shirt isn’t surprising. Worn buttoned up with a pair of chinos, or open over a white T-shirt, a printed short-sleeved shirt is pretty much an instant outfit that’s eye-catching and mercifully low on effort. All of which means less time
dressing, more time swanning around looking suave.
Once the preserve of Eurotrash, stag parties and every dad’s holiday wardrobe, slogan and boldly branded T-shirts are no longer anathema to fashion. Thanks to Russian designer Gosha Rubchinskiy, design collective Vetements and a raft of cult streetwear labels, wearing one’s political affiliations or sense of humor or brand loyalty on the chest is not only acceptable, it’s de rigueur.
The massive number of white T-shirts, shirts, shorts and trousers spotted over the last few weeks was down to the color’s ability to keep one cool but, since summer is pretty much over already, we’ll chalk white’s prevalence up to its ability to bring the most disparate pieces together in perfect color harmony. It shows off very well the caramel tan that one has worked so hard on after hours lying on a sunb-, er, the beach – lying on the beach.
There is every chance that, a few years from now, socks, as they are known, will be ‘vintage’. If that sounds alarmist, ridiculous even, consider that – like everything else in fashion – socks are subject to trends, and if previous sock trends included multicolored argyle socks (mid-Noughties) and chunky marl boot socks (2010 onwards), then today’s leaning is to wear none at all. Well, not quite none, but only, like, a fraction of a pair.
Invisible socks – those handy cotton-elastane foot wraps that prevent sweat from your naked feet ruining your handmade Italian brogues – are proving to be catnip to the menswear cognoscenti. Teaming it with a pair of cropped trousers all the better show off one’s ‘socklessness’.
Up until now, the month-long international fashion week circuit has been a sticky-fingered sneakerhead’s dream: all those rare drops and limited editions just waiting to be liberated midshow from the back seat of an unmanned Mercedes-Benz.
This season, however, menswear’s main players stepped back in time, swapping just-dropped kicks for old-school classics – from Vans Old Skools to Converse All Stars, Adidas Stan Smiths to the Nike Cortez.
Damir Doma – or, depending on your reference points, every Jedi knight from “Star Wars” – has a lot to answer for. From kimono blazers to belted shawl cardigans, wraparound outerwear is taking menswear by storm.
Why a jacket that closely resemble a dressing gown? Supreme comfort and a look that’s both insouciant and elegant (not to mention that instant shoulder-defining, waist-cinching silhouette), that’s why.
How can a few men with undone shirt collars constitute a trend? Because as much as this might seem like a trivial coincidence, it is actually a tectonic shift. Just a few years ago, men spent hours, maybe days, scouring the web for the perfect tie pin or watching YouTube tutorials on how to create a flawless half Windsor. Now, however, it’s all about the air tie (and a little exposed chest). Time to stow away the throat-choking knots and hit the bench press instead.
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