EVERY ACTION HAS A REACTION

If you examine menswear and its key trends from a pop cultural point of view, you’ll find that reaction is a key driving force for fashion. As humans, we constantly react to events, people, newness and fatigue, it’s part of everyday life and it shapes our world view. How a creative mind works is unique to each individual, and that’s also why we have such a healthy plethora of brands out there today, all with their own viewpoint and philosophy. But outside of their personal style preference a designer will inadvertently be influenced by the time and place in which they live: their work will reflect a reaction to those times, everything that is happening around them – both positive and negative.

For example, if we take the shape of clothing and dissect it throughout fashion as we know it in the 21st century, for every major menswear movement, we can see that silhouettes and structure are pivotal when aesthetically defining those periods. You can look at the trouser silhouette over the last few decades, remembering how baggy and loose it was in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, defined by rave and skate culture, and effectively fed by hip hop and Britpop as a continued source of musical inspiration for its silhouette. Brands such as Maharishi and their famous Snopants, brought this further into menswear's zeitgeist and made it part of the 90s uniform.

But whenever a prominent trend goes beyond the boundaries of sub-culture and pushes into the mainstream, most designers almost instinctively react to this with a pendulum move to seek the opposite. To lay waste to what is now and look to what they see as the future. Look at how the trouser width drastically shrunk in the early 00s when Hedi Slimane took over at Dior Homme, fuelled by his obsession with post punk. The skinny jean had arrived and as an overriding silhouette it prevailed for the better part of that decade, influencing the high street as well as fellow catwalk designers before it became mundane.

And while this pendulum continues to swing back and forth over what is usually the course of a decade or so before major fatigue kicks in, current trends now show that fashion in the 2020s is constantly evolving, as opposed to being just cyclic and repetitive. Mixing and matching from previous decades, trends and silhouettes and thus creating new hybrid shapes that are a large part of this reaction, as seen in Martine Rose and Robyn Lynch’s recent SS23 shows in London. In the bigger picture they might be micro trends, but these reactions to silhouettes, shape and form, will continue to change the goal posts of how we dress today. So, on the topic of silhouette, shape and form we wanted to explore how designers react to these elements. How the physical form and its restrictions can also liberate a creative idea. And how fatigue with the now can actually enable a designer to think and work freely toward Tomorrow.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Photography and artworks : George William Vicary Direction and styling : Graeme Gaughan Text and interviews : David Hellqvist

With silhouette at the core of any movement in menswear and fashion overall, for the ‘Every Action has a Reaction’ story, we point our lens at a handful of designers from within the Tomorrow stable to understand their interpretation of where shape, form and structure is heading. We investigate how they see menswear evolving, and how important fabrication is within this modern eco-system of design. The text also looks at how the silhouette is key to all trends and how the Tomorrow designers react to them by developing their own unique form and structure.

CHARLES JEFFREY LOVERBOY

I always tend to start with the styling aspect when I’m designing. I discovered this was the best approach for me when I was doing my MA at Central Saint Martins, utilising my own clothes and sketching the collection from there. I then moved that way of working into my own business practice. Styling becomes the primary research resource by playing around with existing Loverboy pieces, vintage garments and toiles that my studio produces as we go along. And then we start trying these pieces on models and working from there, it’s very instinctive and immediate. The 3D shape is my starting point and then we colour that in with fabrics as we go along.

I’d say my silhouette is based on alternative music like punk, indie and rock n roll, so you get slim legs with an oversized jacket, or a slim torso and wide-legged trousers, with a David Bowie ‘Thin White Duke’-era kind of feeling to it. I’ve always been attracted to alternative guitar music and the kind of icons that come with that scene. That look is quite gender fluid, and always has been, even before that became part of the kind of conversations we are having today about androgynous gender identities.

Looking around at the current crop of brands and the silhouettes that prevail, it still seems to be a lot of focus on oversized garments, and obviously Balenciaga is a key player there. But that makes sense in a way, as even from the start Cristóbal Balenciaga was known for mastering silhouettes, and Demna is kind of doing the same thing but looking at it through his sub-cultural streetwear perspective. And even though we don’t do anything like what Balenciaga does, in a trickle-down sort of way, they’re changing the public perception of what sizing in silhouettes can look like, whether that’s for trainers or clothes.

KUSIKOHC BY CHO GISEOK

After deciding on the theme of the season, we borrow and develop forms that can help express the subject. Following our brand DNA, ‘Right to Fail’, we try to express the shape, decomposition and fantasy of the explosion. The basic frame comes from a simple and minimal structure, but it’s then developed in a detailed way. We don't make a difference between men's and women's clothes, the emphasis is on genderless design. I want to break down the stereotypes we’re stuck with, both socially and culturally, and develop them without distinction.

When I design, I try not to follow the current trend of form. I like to structurally dismantle everyday items. We are more influenced by the theme of the season than by any trend. We are interested in re-interpreting the different silhouettes around us. Kusikohc is all about ready-to-wear pieces with an experimental silhouette. Every season, each item is created and developed to implement graphic sources and details through my own personal work. In the process, ready-to-wear and jewellery are made based on fantasy elements and objects. We tend to create characteristics in the form of alteration, explosion and breakage.

ROBYN LYNCH

Most brands have a silhouette that sort of defines them and when I was working at Cottweiler, before setting up my own brand, they had a form-fitted and slim, almost sexual fit. I started to develop the Robyn Lynch shape for AW19 and I wanted mine to be more of boxier crop fit. It’s not oversized because the sleeves aren’t too long, it was more of an ill-fitted form – almost like a hand me down. Like when your mum made you wear your sibling’s clothes and did a quick alteration so that it would fit.

I do a lot of archive research and look at news clippings from Ireland back in the day to study the form and fit. I like looking at how people walked and how they wore clothes, and that’s where I got that slouchy fit from, that 90s oversized fit that I have re-worked into my own aesthetic. Another favourite silhouette of mine is short shorts which I think comes from the GAA, the Irish football organisation. The shorts worn in the GAA are lot of shorter than the shorts worn in other football leagues.

Looking around myself both physically but also on social media, there seems to a movement where guys are more and more comfortable with riskier silhouettes. They just seem a bit more comfortable with feminine forms and skimpier tops, like you see worn by ASAP Rocky and Harry Styles. The lines seem a bit more blurred. Men just seem a bit more comfortable with wearing stuff outside the traditional realm of streetwear. That seeps into my practice as well – we are currently working on a cardigan, a new shape we’ve never done before, it comes down to just below the thigh – almost a bit like a minidress, but it’s a cardi for guys. I think that’s really exciting.

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