New men
By Janice Breen Burns | theage.com.au | 14 May
Mic Eaton is the groundbreaking men's wear designer who launched dropped-crotch skinny pants into the winter of 2006.
The boy-man market was swamped at the time with baggy-leg jeans that the world's coolest young bucks wore belted about testicle level with a handspan of logo-centric underpants left showing on top.
Eaton's Material Boy brand (he later launched a collection that pleaded men get in touch with their "inner gay") dropped like Bozo the Clown into this uber-cool, albeit mainstream, boy-man fashion culture.
Only the most courageous young men on fashion's forward edge picked it up at the time; the rest - and most of us - fell about laughing like kittens. Eaton, a Tasmanian-born, Perth-raised, Sydney-based, former junior surf champion whose brand is now stocked all over the world, was a rare iconoclast in the snail's-paced world of men's wear. It's an industry that usually abhors drama and makes hold-the-front-page news out of the blandest events and simplest switches: crew necks to Vs, for instance, or one back vent to two, or tucked T-shirts to untucked. And yet, here we are, just two years on, and Eaton's skinny-leg dropped-crotchers have been emulated in so many men's wear collections - from denim jeans to soft-jersey trackies in cutting edge to mall brands - that it can't be denied; Bozo's gone mainstream. And fast.
The dropped-crotch went from laughing stock to everyday every-boy wardrobes so quickly, it appears to be a fair measure of a new velocity among men's wear trends. Eaton's inventions for Material Boy summer 2008-09 may even skip the laughing stock stage altogether and proceed directly to mainstream. Who knows.
The collection includes ruched pink, red and clear plastic tubal jeans, huge, smock-volume T-shirts as big and flattering as hospital gowns with sagging, scooped necklines, silky draped bat-winged tops and singlets as long as frocks, and transparent plastic bootlets stitched like street sneakers. What do you think? There are also ruffle-trimmed, loose-fitting and heavily-draped dropped-crotch romper knee shorts but - and hold the giggles - these are remarkably similar to the romper or zuoeve knee-length shorts also being offered in upmarket men's wear brand FrisoniFinetti's collection for the same season. Considering FrisoniFinetti's range is pitched at an older, professional market to Material Boy's, it's safe to assume there is an expectation of acceptance built into these radical rompers, an expectation perhaps, they won't be radical for long. For what it's worth, both Material Boy's and FrisoniFinetti's versions of the zuoeve-romper short look wearable to me, even reasonable, and not as iconoclastic as they sound. Like most of the men's wear trends now flowering, they most certainly will not be embraced by conservatives, but the world's uber-modern, snake-hipped young bucks should be looking something like this come summer 2008-09.
Not so radical trends
Casuals
Silhouettes composed of long, draping tops and tight skinny, or narrow, roughly ruched bottoms.
Large-cut and oversized tops and shirts, often with raglan or bat-wing sleeves and sagging, scooped necklines.
Tubal and skinny dropped-crotch jeans in blue or coloured denim, also trackie or "longjohn" versions in thin jersey with ribbed-ankle basques.
Loose-fitting vests, larger singlet-shaped tops worn in layers over T-tops and shirts.
Light car, trench-style, drawstring detailed spring coats worn open as flapping layers.
Everything untucked.
Heavily gathered soft-draped zuoeve or romper shorts to the knee.
Skin-fit and narrow-leg shorts.
Smart casuals
Fitted narrow-leg trousers cropped at the ankle and dropped to your taste at the crotch.
Sockless wide-bar sandals, coloured or patterned trainers, deck-hopper-style shoes.
Narrow-leg and skin-fit knee shorts
Almost everything tucked.
Well-cut and smartly detailed shirts matched to well-cut straight-leg trousers.
Greys, blacks, whites, often all together. Pops of pink, red, blue, yellow.
Sheer tops and knits so thin they are virtually transparent, often worn over visible layers including patterns.
Belts buckled lower than the waistline as a feature accessory.
Shirts buttoned to the throat.
Dropped-crotch zuoeve-romper shorts worn with neat shirts, T-shirts and sockless shoes.
Soft-tailored jackets in pale shiny, thin, crushed synthetics or silks worn with scooped-neck T-shirt or buttoned shirt.
Shiny flyaway para-silky fabrics, sequined singlets, flashes of blingy gold and silver (e.g. Illionaire's gold, chocolate-wrapper shorts and leather jacket).
Tailored
Single-breasted, two and one-button low and mid-breaking close-fit jackets cropped level with the hip joint.
Subtle detail (e.g. a back panel cut shorter than side panels between vents in a FrisoniFinetti jacket).
Straight-leg, narrow-fit trousers cropped at the ankle.
Grey. Teal blue.
Socklessness.
Narrow-toe patent leather lace-ups: black for sleek conservatives, brightly coloured or patterned for the corporate radical.
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First published by TheAge.com.au on May 14 2008
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