Legs certainly got their time in the sun during the spring 2024 menswear season with shorts proving the most popular bottoms, but up top, it’s the guns that were blazing.
Sleeves have apparently gone the way of the dodo as designers embraced male sensuality through novel shirting.
Anthony Vaccarello has been championing the look for three seasons now, pilfering ideas from his women’s collection to bring to Saint Laurent‘s menswear universe. Vaccarello’s Berlin show saw pin-thin models dressed in wispy, scarf-like chiffon tops that revealed bony shoulders and rib cages that, “sometimes resembled vampires — or perhaps just party animals who stayed on at the club a little too long,” observed WWD’s international editor Miles Socha.
Draped versions of the male “going-out top” were also seen at Rick Owens, Wooyoungmi, Burç Akyol and Ludovic de Saint Sernin who wrapped pieces of metal mesh around the torso as part of his “wardrobe imbued with a libidinal elegance.”
For the Fendi show held at the Italian house’s factory in Capannuccia, Silvia Venturini Fendi reworked the apron silhouette into halterneck shirts, which Milan correspondent Martino Carrera observed, “added a dash of unexpected sensuality” to her utilitarian garb.
Halters were equally prominent at Egon Lab with collars cleverly constructed to resemble traditional neckties. The collection, “tapped into the season’s new minimalism where transparency is king, shirts are no longer essential, and toned flesh is the hot new accessory,” wrote London Bureau Chief Samantha Conti in her review.
On the quirkier side, Charles Jeffrey fashioned sleeveless suits of armor from Wedgwood Jasperware (teasing a future collaboration), while JW Anderson offered lopsided tabard dresses. Martine Rose added lace insets to underbust corsets, putting pecs, as well as arms, on full display.
“I love playing with gender lines,” she told general assignments editor Hikmat Mohammed. “I think it’s a real proposition, it’s not a gimmick. I find men in women’s clothes sexy.”