Everyone knows boyfriend dressing – baggy jeans, longer line T-shirts, mannish brogues. But girlfriend dressing – men borrowing from womenswear? That’s new, and it’s on the menswear catwalk. Here are five examples of how men will be pilfering from their girlfriends’ closets come autumn.
1. Heels
For the Saint Laurent show on Sunday night, a male model opened the show, followed by a female one. Standard for fashion right now – lots of the men’s shows have had both genders on the catwalk. But Hedi Slimane upped the game by having said models wear the same heeled boots. Thanks to him, heels for men are a thing. Prince’s secret fashion influence – seen on the JW Anderson catwalk in side-split flares – continues.
2. Pink
The controversial colour so associated with femininity is coming out of little girls’ bedrooms and worn on the menswear catwalk. See beefy models on the Astrid Andersen and Sibling catwalk with lace hoodies and tattoos, and pink coats worthy of that sell-out M&S number at Saint Laurent and Lou Dalton. We give this an emoji thumbs up. It’s an excellent way to reposition poor old pink as a colour for everyone.
3. Blouses
Gucci’s first post-Frida Giannini collection was a bit of a shock – all about androgynous, lanky boys with a louche 1970s vibe, hardly the jetset grownup that we’re used to from this brand. Key to this look was the pussybow blouse for boys – the first model, with long, blond tresses, wore a red floppy blouse and high-waisted flares. Lace and chiffon followed. It all felt quite bohemian, like misfits streaming out of an underground nightclub in the early hours. Blouses on boys on the dancefloor – think Marc Bolan meets Brett Anderson.
4. Skirts
Sure, the clothes the models wore on the Rick Owens catwalk weren’t the talking point. The prize goes to the full frontal nudity of four models. But, look again, and you’ll find that skirts for men were a suggestion from Owens for autumn. A bit sculptural and sometimes with genital-flashing peepholes, they’re just the thing for men who want to wear skirts but to keep their gender 100% clear. Givenchy and Dries Van Noten, meanwhile, had a more IRL appropriate option – with skirts over trousers.
5. Brooches and buttons
The jewellery box is fair game for men this autumn too – with brooches, a Miss Marple favourite, a strong contender as accessory. JW Anderson had oversized brooch-like chrome buttons on blazers, and Kim Jones’ Louis Vuitton collection featured brooches made of clusters of safety pins. Kind of like a punky charm bracelet but worn on a lapel, that’s a look that works across genders.
