Body Language

In An Age Where Thinness Often Feels Like The Only Fashionable Body Type, Jeffrey Yan Explores How A Man Can Be Both Stylish And Swole

- JEFFREY YAN

Menswear can often seem like the preserve of the skinny-certainly, the kind of menswear that gets the fashion buzz machine going can feel like it's made solely for the very lean. On the runways, the clothes are usually shown on boys barely out of their teens-the better to get that flat, hanger-like effect to showcase the latest trend, be it gender-fluid styles or voluminous layering. On the red carpets, the celebrities that get the most acclaim for the way they wear clothes tend to be of the twinky variety-see the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Jaden Smith and Troye Sivan. It wasn't too long ago that the masculine ideal, trickled down from Hollywood, looked like your Chrises (that would be Evans, Hemsworth, Pine, and Pratt) and Ryans (Gosling, Reynolds)-all bulging biceps and glistening 8-packs. While those rigid ideals have, thankfully, shifted and expanded, fashion's pendulum swing towards the twink has left stacked dudes in a bit of a sartorial conundrum.