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