I live alone, but visitors to my flat would be forgiven for thinking I’d settled down with a man. In my wardrobe, an oversized men’s smoking jacket, Raf Simons flares from AW15, a variety of navy Craig Green coats, vintage menswear Prada shirts, and trainers from Adidas’s men’s Spezial range jostle for space alongside the more usual silk shirts and skirts.
I am a menswear devotee, a modern-day Radclyffe Hall. The benefits are endless — designer men’s clothes are cheaper, fabrics are thicker and sturdier and, right now, with the growing success of London Collections Men and the booming luxury menswear market, the whole scene seems somehow more exciting than womenswear.
It’s telling that most of fashion’s current star designers started their careers in menswear. Hedi Slimane redefined and reduced the masculine aesthetic at Dior Homme before putting women in babydoll dresses and bikers at Saint Laurent. Loewe’s creative director JW Anderson put men in lace and frills after graduating with a menswear degree. And before his stint as creative director of Dior, Raf Simons was known as a cult menswear designer with a penchant for youth culture. The pattern shows no signs of abating: Balenciaga appointed Demna Gvasalia of Vetements as its artistic director last October, a designer known for pushing anti-fit, gender-neutral clothing. Today, everyone is borrowing from the boys.