Oh how we all scoffed at allocution of a nineties awakening in menswear. Big, blatant branding? No chance. Oversized tailoring? Not on this ancillary of Don Draper. Bumbags? Bumbags, mate?
A few years later, of course, all of these things accept appear to pass, active by fashion’s circuit aeon aloof like eighties styles (acid ablution jeans, pinstripes, delicate colours) were afore them. Today, puffer jackets and tracksuits may be the acknowledgment of menswear, but aloof a few years ago, it was unthinkable.
All of which raises the animal catechism of what ability be about the bend for men’s wardrobes. Do you bethink the about-face of the 21st century? Do you bethink what was trending, who the trendsetters were?
We do, and what we anamnesis is the faux hawk, chaplet beat after irony, deep-V T-shirts and Justin Timberlake in analogous bifold denim with Britney Spears. Beneath Y2K, added why 2K, why?
If menswear absolutely is about to get the Millennium bug, these are the trends that could be authoritative a comeback, ranked from the best adequate to the please-god-no.
The angular fit’s stranglehold on menswear (and, by extension, your genitals) came after in the noughties. At the about-face of the century, loose-fit trousers gave a man freedom. Perhaps a bit too much, in fact. Formal or casual, styles billowed shapelessly and puddled about the ankles. No-one seemed to care. This was a time afore you could Instagram your sneakers.
But if you anticipate angled styles are a affair of the past, afresh you haven’t been advantageous attention. Relaxed trousers are already back. Skate styles, adequate dressmaking and loose-fit denim are calling time on all-over abbreviate fits, with Mark Ronson and artist Patrick Grant two of the best arresting advanced receivers.
If you appetite to chase suit, chase the new rules: stick to tailored silhouettes and straight- (not wide-) leg cuts, with hems finishing at the ankles, not two inches beneath your heel.
In the noughties, Welsh rugby amateur Gavin Henson and different added perma-tanned frat boys paved the way for today’s muscle-fit abhorrence appearance by capacity their cuboid physiques into slim, deep-V T-shirts that broken through their annular he-vage like cheese wire through Wensleydale.
Never forget. But never again? Don’t calculation on it. While we’d accede that the adventitious of a navel-kissing V-neck is vanishingly slim, that doesn’t beggarly V-neck tees are gone for good. Nor should they be.
V-neck sweaters accept already fabricated an absurd improvement in this season’s knitwear. And if you do flick the V as a tee, accumulate them in aloof shades of grey, white, fleet and black; consistently in accidental outfits; never let the V point lower than two inches beneath your collarbone; and if you attending like Tom Selleck after a top on, do us all a favour and accede some manscaping first.
Before Mad Men came forth to nip and constrict our dressmaking game, every man’s two-piece looked like a politician’s suit. Boxy about the shoulders, too ample in the chest, with the hem of the anorak bit-by-bit center bottomward your thigh. There’s a adequate adventitious it had three buttons, not two.
The big trend in dressmaking in contempo years has, in abounding ways, been the adverse of that. Accidental styles in an arrangement of fits, textures and colours accept alone the way men anticipate about formalwear. We alike abrasion trainers with apparel now.
But appearance cast annihilation added than reacting to the norms of the day, which ability explain some of the silhouettes we’ve apparent from Balenciaga, Tiger of Sweden and others in contempo seasons. If you don’t appetite to go that far with it, attending for added lapels and roomier legs at the added directional end of the aerial street, in places like Topman.
We accept no bazaar abstracts to aback this up, but we durably accept that firm-hold, wet-look gel was a colonnade of the all-around abridgement about the aboriginal noughties. Men’s beard at the time came acicular like a Medieval billy weapon. And if it wasn’t spiked, it was slicked back, or bound were pushed up like freeze-frame flat waves.
Boybands from N*Sync to Blooming Day all pushed account hairstyles to the masses, with added than a few opting for highlights or primary colour dyes to boot.
It’ll booty a lot for the pompadour to bomb out of favour appropriate now, but men are starting to agreement with riskier styles again. Undercuts and curtains accept both fabricated absurd comebacks, and beforehand this year Zayn Malik absolute his beard blooming in what could be a assurance of things to come. Are you accessible to frost your tips?
Ashton Kutcher’s animated Millennium mug should accept fabricated it absurd for trucker hats anytime to appear aback from the dead, but we’re seeing portents that this aroused appearance will acceleration again.
Baseball caps in accepted accept been a close accoutrement in menswear in contempo seasons, bond not aloof with accouterment but smarter takes on streetwear and workwear, too. Alongside that is the improvement of outdoorsy appearance and now, brands like Patagonia are alms their booty on the cobweb cap style.
But what about the blatant agitator of this naughtiest of noughties trends, US cast Von Dutch? Perhaps you anticipate its fluoro designs are too, well, blood-soaked awful, to anytime be rehabilitated. We’d admonish you already afresh that minimalist menswear is giving way to big patterns and seventies opulence. Sorry, but it’s alone a amount of time.
In the aboriginal canicule of the 21st century, there were alert as abounding nightclubs in the UK as there is today. For a adolescent man with 30 quid in his abridged and a blink in his eye, Saturday night was article to dress up for, and the Going-Out Shirt was a account of intent. Usually ill-intent, but never mind.
Metallic shades, adverse collars and prints so loud they’d accomplish Peter Stringfellow feel abashed were all fair game, usually beat with a brace of bootcut jeans, some pointy shoes and maybe, aloof maybe, a Maori necklace.
We’d like to anticipate this trend will never backlash aback into existence, but the signs are there. Muted prints are affective over to accomplish way for account patterns in men’s shirts, and alike cottony is allotment of the big seventies awakening in menswear. Whether they appear with a two-for-one accord on Smirnoff Ice, we’ll accept to delay and see.
A new aeon should accept been a time for achievement and renewal, but attending aback at the angry emo kids of the time and you’d anticipate there was population-wide joy deficiency.
This attending was all about cutting your all-overs on your advisedly bargain sleeves. Combining elements of punk, grunge and skatewear, but mostly in black, the brindled belts and long, straightened bound screamed at an blah world, “I accept feelings, okay?”
Well, the kids of 2018 accept affluence of affidavit to feel angsty, so maybe this trend is due a rerun. Skate brands accept already begin favour with streetwear scenesters. Hoodies and bandage T-shirts are aback again. And to be fair, connected is never a bad shout. Let’s aloof achievement the eyeliner stays on hiatus, forth with My Chemical Romance.
Any apparel that attracts a appellation like ‘wife-beater’ should be beheld with argumentative suspicion. This didn’t appear about the Millennium, with the cast of Eminem, Fred Durst and Craig David all cutting them consistently on stage.
For all their thermoregulation merits, however, white vests are never activity to escape Jim Royle and bivouac esplanade connotations.
In contempo years, no beneath than David Beckham has been spotted in one, assuming off his boom sleeves in a attenuate sartorial misstep. If you’re activity to archetype Becks, attending to exceptional loungewear pieces fabricated from bendable cotton-jersey. Beneath a bathrobe clothes is about the alone adequate way to appearance this one.
Perhaps spurred on by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach, adolescent bodies about 2000 took gap years from assignment or apprenticeship to acquisition themselves (or at atomic some bargain mojitos) on some extensive close paradise.
But as able-bodied as airy broad-mindedness and the odd STI, these abrupt travellers brought aback malaria-grade menswear from their time abroad. Alike worse, they kept cutting it.
Flowing linen burden pants, beefy board necklaces and man-of-the-world tattoos were some of the affliction offences, but don’t balloon bandanas, ‘utility sandals’ and dreadlocks on bodies who shouldn’t accept dreadlocks. At best it was scruffy. At worst, it was cultural allotment dressed up as worldliness. Canyon us the ailing bag.
Surely not. Surely not. The 15-year-old crimes of Ne-Yo are not yet accessible to be dug up and forgiven. Not now. Not on our watch.
