Jun 4, 2020
Updated: May 17, 2021
By Priya Elna
Men’s short shorts, an item of clothing forever caught in the crosshairs of a sartorial culture war between subversive and suggestive and retroactively rugged (think Wham! in the Wake Me Up Before You Go Go video vs Bjorn Bjorg), are enjoying a renaissance.
Does the ubiquity of the short speak to something darker? Could a menline index be at play here: a masculine, inverted version of the hemline index which states that as times get worse, shorts get shorter?
“For me they evoke memories of the Men’s Dress Reform party before the onslaught of world war two, or the last days of disco before the shadow of Aids fell across San Francisco,” says Groves. “They are both optimistic, yet hopelessly pessimistic.”