The Sunday Times

Watch out men! Bare chests are back.

By Priya Elan

Attention, guys: breasts are back! Yes, the era of Succession-style turtlenecks is over and it’s time to get your bare chest out for the lad(s)ies. Leading the pack? Timothée Chalamet, who broke the internet when he accessorised a cropped Louis Vuitton jacket with a bare chest (plus a smirk and a necklace) on the recent Oscars red carpet (#freethetimotitties briefly trended). A week later Lenny Kravitz and Jared Leto got theirs out at the Grammys. This, it would appear, was the moment “he-vage” officially made its way back into public consciousness.

If cock-xic masculinity was on the mood board then, their sartorial ancestors from the Sixties, such as Keith Richards, Serge Gainsbourg and Burt Reynolds, would have seen their open shirts as rakish expressions of rock’n’rolled masculinity.

“It sent a postcoital message: ‘Why would I get dressed when I might have sex at any given moment?’ ” Groves says.

In the Seventies the look reached its peak with lizardy lotharios like the actor Peter Wyngarde, plus of course, he-vage poster boy Tony Manero (John Travolta) from Saturday Night Fever. Everything was on 11 with Manero’s look: long collars, budgie smugglers, Farrah Fawcett’s blow-dry and a V that went as deep as the Bee Gees’ falsettos went high. The subtext was glaring and enough was enough.

“By 1977 Travolta’s open shirt and bare chest looked incredibly tacky,” Groves says. “Punk had happened and the only bare chest that was cool was Iggy Pop’s. Tortured, whipped and self-mutilated, it felt much more contemporary than Tony Manero’s pumped-up machismo chest.” Pop (joined by Sid Vicious and the Germs’ Darby Crash) was a semi-ironic expression of a masculinity that was antiestablishment and divided the younger generation from the older one.

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WWD

Military-inspired Fashions Take on New Meaning Amid Ukraine War

By Miles Socha

Might Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sparked global condemnation, a humanitarian crisis and a rash of sanctions, put any damper on fashion’s recent enthusiasm for such Army-inspired styles as bomber jackets, cargo pants and combat boots?

Not necessarily, say fashion historians, retailers and other observers, arguing that military-inspired styles have become deeply entrenched in contemporary wardrobes, prized for their clean lines, functionality and — possibly fanned during the pandemic — for bolstering the wearer’s confidence.

“It‘s been quite painful to witness some of the brands’ clumsy attempts to either ignore the war or to align their collections meaningfully,” commented Andrew Groves, a professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster in London.

Groves noted that “fashion was able to exist in its own bubble during previous wars that were only covered by traditional media. This is the first major conflict to emerge and be mediated via TikTok and Instagram, and because fashion is increasingly consumed digitally rather than physically, the industry has struggled to navigate this shared space and strike the appropriate tone.”

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Financial Times

Think big — there’s a lot to like about oversized jackets

by Mark C O’Flaherty

When David Byrne danced on stage with his band Talking Heads in a vastly oversized suit in the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, he was making a bold New Wave art-pop statement. “You know what theatre is — everything has to be bigger,” he proclaimed.

Nearly 40 years later, designers are taking that gargantuan shoulder shape and generous cut off stage and onto the runway. For several seasons, we have seen it at Balenciaga, Rick Owens, Maison Margiela, Raf Simons and Vetements, sized for both men and women. Emerging Israeli designer Hed Mayner’s recent autumn/winter 2022 show supersized the jackets on double-breasted men’s suits to clownlike proportions.

“When Balenciaga showed [big jackets] for spring 2020, it was prescient,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster and director of the Westminster Menswear Archive. He sees a socio-cultural explanation for the persistence of oversized tailoring. “It was before the pandemic. Now, after two years of working at home and wearing sweatpants, men want to return to the formality of tailoring, but in a way that is ultra-comfortable and consoling.”

Some of the change in tailoring is also about playfulness. “The oversized jacket is about men wanting to dress in a naive manner,” says Groves. “It’s about the rejection of the suit as the symbol of masculine aggression and potency that it was in the 1980s.”

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