Menswear is taking fashion to extremes, bringing all the dry-mouthed tension of extreme sports to what has been an ultra-polite (read : catatonically boring) men’s wardrobe.At John Galliano, the knits were so thick and hairy the models looked like bison on the rampage. These primeval coverings must be what Adam wore when Eve got out her knitting needles.
Then there were those fluffy garments in screaming colors from Prada. Like a cross between an Easter chick and a fake lawn. Could these hairy creations really have come from the queen of geek chic and mistress of the plain v-neck sweater ?
The extremities of style also included the ultimate in retro : Vivienne Westwood looking back on all fours in a cave. She mesmerized her audience with a prehistoric figure wearing a furry loin cloth and brandishing what looked like an axe –it turned out to be perennial club entrepreneur Philip Sallon.
Its dramatic opposite embraces a new space age, as though the cyber world has inspired a fresh look at the future. Our superhero now wears an astronaut’s all-in one outfit (even over his business suit at Dolce & Gabbana) as though Mr Dynamic can’t sit any longer at his desk with his eyes on his laptop but has to shoot off to unexplored lunar territory.
The kernel of this change from the familiar to out-there is fabric invention – just as it was when the space age hit the catwalk running in the man-on-the-moon era. That was back in the 1960s, when André Courrèges took his bow in astronaut overalls and (shock horror !) white canvas running shoes (who then would have taken a bet that they would catch on ?). And when Pierre Cardin stripped away all the heavy, worthy, status-ridden tailoring with its lapels and collar-cum-tie shirts. He drew shoulders pagoda sharp, torsos with an armorial outline and let thighs ripple through narrow, sexually explicit pants that were the most extreme look at the masculine body.
What is extreme fashion for the first decade of the new millennium ? Galliano plays to the underlying beat of tribal identity with menswear that was mean street urban for the winter collection and military for next summer. Does it make his label the new ring-leader in menswear ?
That doesn’t quite explain the forceful weirdness of knits matted like African tribal locks or the cross-cultural meld of quilted Edwardian fencing leathers with medieval knight-in-armour chain mail. The only thread that seemed to link these crusaders, ninjas, samurai warlords, ritualistic beasts and oriental gangsters was a wild, untamed energy.
Galliano says they were not just about gangs vying for an urban identity but also about hand-crafting and finishing.
For other designers, extreme sartorial skills are the foundation for the male whose shoulders are 80s out-there, whose waist is whittled. Seeing Margiela’s ultra-tailored silhouette, with its upturned triangle of a jacket apparently drawn with a set square, one knew the male body shape was being taken to newer extremes.
When you look back at forward-thinking 20th-century menswear (not that world-weary landscape of dreaming spires, tea on the lawn and crested blazers), it is always about pushing fashion to its very limits. Way back Miyake shows had oiled bodies flailed across a greased gym floor in a balletic vision of clothes in movement.
Miyake is now devoting himself entirely to his experimental explorations of fabric and its relationship to the body. His one goal is to experiment with technologies and materials that can be used to make things in a manner that will establish traditions for the future. Of course, such experiments usually take aeons before they really catch on.
Miyake’s holy grail is literally seamless design, created from the single piece of cloth that inspired his signature pleats and has been developed, with his current designer Fujiwara, as “APOC” (short for ‘a piece of cloth’). The concept came from Miyake’s experience living through the youth quake revolution in Paris in 1968, which made him determined to create clothing as universal as jeans & tees. This prophetic vision in the mind’s eye was only fully realized when technology had it possible to design garments to order according to e-mailed measurements.
At the same time, Miyake wanted to draw on traditional craft, creating a ‘permanent’ menswear line through the 80s of more or less indestructible but not traditionally classical clothing. He wanted men’s clothing to be something that was not merely a fashion item, but rather something that would make its wearer feel better. At that time, there was none that gave one any sense of spatial relations within its confines.
The relation of body to clothing is the essence of extreme fashion – just as it was when articulated armour allowed the limbs to move freely under its rigid surface. The power male is one whose suit is cut with that nonchalant exhibitionism of broad shoulders above muscly torsos, the fabric in tandem with the flesh beneath.
There is a hint of the rebel in all this male power fashion. Taking the conventional to its outer limits (and then beyond) is the essential element, just as extreme sports put both physical strength and psychological character to the test.
But there is more to dandyism than wearing clothes, than being a man of fashion, demanding to be recognized, objectified. There is a melancholic distance from the rest of the (possibly lost) world, a passionate yet somehow cynical elevation of aesthetics to a state of being – or, as Baudelaire wrote, to a living religion. And, in addition to fashion, or even above fashion, this metaphysical fop might find himself concerned with the melancholic, pensive state that is Charles Baudelaire’s figurative “spleen”. This is a clin d’œil at contradictions, an exercise in extremes, a study of opposites : a heavy YSL winter peacoat looks paradoxically more masculine over a vintage pink silk piece of lingerie, as does a Fedora hat with a detailed camisole and embroidered knickers. A thick knit sweater, taupe dress socks and canvas sneakers look all the more romantic juxtaposed with black lace. Just as the dandy’s utter nostalgia only emphasizes the fact that he is , always, a step ahead.
