JC Report: New Look for men

JC Report has dedicated its most recent bi-weekly issue to men's fashion where Angelo Flaccavento makes a compelling argument from the start.

Let's be honest: over the last couple of years, most of the really interesting developments in fashion have happened in menswear. Maybe it's because for women, everything (or almost everything) has been done and redone to death, while masculinity remains a vast, unexplored territory open to new sartorial definitions and formal experimentation. Maybe it's because the apparent limitations of the genre are a stimulus rather than an obstacle for truly creative minds.

This was not something that had occurred to me before -- but as I reflected upon it, it does seem one of the reasons behind men's fashion new burst of energy is simply because so much has yet to be explored.

The start of this movement might have been Hedi Slimane's much-trumpeted Dior Homme revival. Slimane not only reshaped Dior Homme but also questioned traditional notions of masculinity, and has opened up that avenue to countless other men's designers who are now emboldened in pushing boundaries themselves.

Maybe Mr. Slimane has done for men what Yves Saint Laurent did for women, starting at his own reign at Dior in 1957. Over the next few decades, Saint Laurent constantly challenged what was considered appropriate attire for a woman, and in doing so, redefined the way women dress. It was YSL, after all, who first sent women down the runway in trousers and developed the notion of ready-to-wear. In 1996, he was the first couturier to show his collection on the Internet.

Upon his retirement in 2002, Saint-Laurent railed against the new commercial focus of fashion, saying

I have nothing in common with this new world of fashion, which has been reduced to mere window-dressing...elegance and beauty have been banished."

However, he must have known that by pushing boundaries on how women could dress, he had played his own strong role in the creation of  a multi-billion dollar industry. Could we be seeing the start of something similar for men?

Photoclip courtesy of JC Report from Impasse 13 A/W 07/08 collection.