In the past, women have occupied a more significant place than men in the world of fashion and haute couture.
But this has changed recently with the arrival of superstar artistic directors such as Virgil Abloh, Kim Jones or Hedi Slimane, respectively named as the heads of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Céline’s men’s collections.
Men have always existed in fashion, but with one previously overrepresented style: the Italian dandy. It was predominant at Pitti Uomo, the famous men’s fashion fair in Florence.
Artistic Directors are redefining masculinity
But what is the male client looking for today? And above all, who is he? Men, like women, have multiple personas. There is not just one, but many.
It seems that the debate around femininity, which has animated the fashion world in previous seasons, is expanding to the notion of masculinity.
Indeed, the gender issue is a very important topic among designers, and while some have adopted genderfluid trends in recent seasons, such as Gucci, Vêtements or Andrea Crews, who offer unisex collections and have co-ed runway shows, others are redefining men in their own way.
Palomo Spain, for example, envisions his men with sequined dresses and vaporous blouses. He saw his popularity explode the day Beyoncé posted a picture of herself introducing her newborn twins to the world while wearing a Palomo Spain dress. He also designed the costumes for Ivan Perez’s queer ballet, The Male Dancer, this year.
But at a time where men’s fashion is increasingly moving in unison towards the non-gender trend, some, like Jacquemus, are going in the opposite direction. The one of virility.
These multiple masculinities are especially evident on Instagram, which acts as a sounding board for previously unseen micro-communities. Instagram helps boost true, minor, aesthetic trends, such as London’s non-binary, queer label, Art School London, which influenced true fashion week trends later on, as was evident in Margiela’s SS 2019 men’s fashion show, where models proudly wore light dresses and nylon corsets.
2019 Men’s Fashion Week on Instagram: an attractive edition
On Instagram, Men’s Fashion Week, which long remained in the shadow of its female counterpart, just ended and made a lot of noise.
Indeed, several shows were highly anticipated such as Kim Jones’ first show for Dior, Jacquemus’ for his own brand and Virgil Abloh’s for Louis Vuitton.
The attractiveness of the men’s show offerings was also felt on social media. Our artificial intelligence detected increased influencer participation during Men’s Fashion Week.
The prize for media coverage goes to Virgil Abloh, who presented his first Louis Vuitton Homme collection.
A huge success as always for Kanye West’s friend, who was also one of the first to rethink the wardrobe of the modern man.
He gave new meaning to the concept of the urban man, who is no longer simply an executive with a neat look and waxed moccasins but a slasher (just like Virgil Abloh himself who is a designer, architect, DJ and artist), who prefers to be comfortable in sneakers to jump from one subway to another.
Note also the many reposts of the mini shorts from the Prada and Fendi shows and the message bag “IT’S VERSACE, NOT VERSACHEE” clarifying the pronunciation of the brand Versace.
Now, we eagerly await Hedi Slimane’s proposal at Céline at the next men’s fashion week.
All eyes are on him to discover what his definition of the Céline man will be, a positioning that we will be following closely at Heuritech through our social media analysis.
Heuritech empowers fashion brands by monitoring both products and trends in real time through cutting-edge image recognition technology applied to millions of social media images each day. To know more, contact us at info@heuritech.com
