Five Designers Radically Re-Defining Menswear

The most compelling new designers in Europe are reimagining what menswear means right now. We scoured the continent to meet them.

- Teo Van Den Broeke

In Alessandro Michele's first show for Florentine super-brand Gucci in winter 2015, the designer sent out an army of lithe men draped in pussy-bow shirts, tops made of vintage lace, and Sloane Ranger-worthy pie crust-collar shirts. It wasn't menswear as we knew it, but a moment when we witnessed where it could go. A place where the old rules didn't apply. Where gender was fluid. Where menswear was a wide open space, full of creativity and progressive thinking.

Since then, the boundaries of menswear have softened. Smaller brands were next to explore genderlessness and a rule-breaking mode has gained pace since, thanks to a flamboyance of fabulously dressed male stars (see Harry Styles and A$AP Rocky) and a surfeit of young designers who have broken through the veil of the fashion industry with the purpose of redefining what it means to dress like a man.

What does that mean for you and your wardrobe? Something very exciting, as it turns out. From the "skirt and platform shoe"-infused alt-Britishness of Stefan Cooke to the genderless neo-punk of French designer Egonlab, it's this continent's boldest young creatives who are leading the charge towards a more interesting, boundary-free future.

1 STEFAN COOKE

British classics subverted

BY TEO VAN DEN BROEKE

FEW DESIGNERS HAVE embraced menswear's bold new genderfluid mood with more wearable success than young British label Stefan Cooke. The creative brainchild of designer Cooke and his partner Jake Burt, the pair showed their first collection as part of MAN (London Fashion Week Men's designer incubator programme) in winter 2017 and have since made a name for themselves with uncompromisingly genderless collections that pay close attention to clever fabrication.