Why you ought to be chomping on the bit for a ‘chewing gum high’

Solid your thoughts again ten years in the past: London Vogue Week Males’s was naught however a twinkle within the BFC’s eye, road type was nonetheless in its infancy and the pin-sharp three-piece fits worn by Donald Draper and his military of dapper Mad Males have been thought of the bleeding fringe of masculine vogue. 

Quick ahead a decade and, my, what a manner we’ve come. The temporary, jersey-clad, pandemic-induced interlude apart, final 12 months Harry Kinds wore a Gucci frock on the duvet of American Vogue, this 12 months A$AP Rocky rocked a kilt on the duvet of American GQ and, extra lately, the world’s menswear designers have begun throwing gender-normative warning to the wind, with even the straightest-laced manufacturers sending freewheeling appears and clothes down their respective runways: silken blouses slipped out at Giorgio Armani’s SS22 present, whereas thigh-grazing mini skorts slunk down the shiny pink catwalk at Prada. 

However removed from being a fad, this motion in the direction of complete flexibility, whether or not within the wider realms of gender or, certainly, the best way wherein a garment merely works or is worn, appears to have taken maintain on the very coronary heart of the style trade and, suffice to say, it’s thrilling. 

Probably the most intriguing clothes to be spawned by this new period of playfulness on the a part of the designers is a chunk we’re dubbing “the chewing gum high”. Outlined as a vest, T-shirt or long-sleeved underlayer that includes a number of cut-out holes, designed to evoke a popped Hubba Bubba bubble-cum-stretched spider’s internet impact throughout the torso, it was troublesome to maneuver for all of the chewing gum tops parading up and down the runways through the SS22 menswear reveals again in June. 

The look was at its most mouthwatering at Y/Mission, the place Belgian designer Glenn Martens (who additionally oversees all issues inventive at Italian denim model Diesel) stretched an array of stringy cut-out vests throughout the torsos of his fashions as a part of the model’s wider collaboration with Fila. 

Certainly, Martens is spearheading the cost for the brand new menswear temper, eschewing the “tops and bottoms” strategy of so many designers earlier than him in favour of a uniquely versatile strategy to silhouette. The designer’s trademark items embody outsized origami shirts and blazers completed with expansive wraparound panels and a couture sensibility.

At Rick Owens, the aesthetic was equally stringy, however this time the look was infused with a witchiness all Owens’ personal. The American designer has lengthy propounded the notion of genderless vogue and his takes on chewing gum vests might simply as simply be worn by males or girls as they may by the extraterrestrial-esque fashions who walked in his Venice present. 

At GMBH, Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby confirmed traditional trench and greatcoats completed with waspy “revenge gown” wraparound toppings, which revealed the ultra-masculine fashions’ shoulders and acted, within the phrases of the designers, as “an exploration of whiteness”. 

At Burberry Ricardo Tisci took the butch-fem cosplay in a distinct path, with beefcake fashions strolling the runway carrying the type of sculpted halterneck that wouldn’t have seemed misplaced within the wardrobes of Regina George et al within the 2004 teen flick Imply Women.

Essentially the most thrilling factor concerning the chewing gum high – in addition to all the opposite radical clothes that are being spawned alongside it, from revenge gown coats to celebration frocks for blokes – is that viable, wearable, flattering alternate options to primary shirts, fits, trousers, T-shirts and sweaters are lastly coming to the fore. They usually’ve arrived not a second too quickly, as a result of, right here at GQ, we’ve by no means been extra bored of our wardrobes, HBU? 

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