FALL / WINTER 2024 TRENDS
ELEGANCY LORE
“The suit is on Ozempic” was the go-to morning text for all fashion week goers bearing their souls city to city as FW24 heralded in the new age of the razor-sharp gentleman that was giving “my father is a lawyer.” Fashion critics love to press on “amid turbulent times” and “in a time of uncertainty” left and right, but what we’re dancing around is a plain, simple fact: the world is always going to be low-key f*cked, but fashion will always respond because that’s what it is: a reflection of cultural and subcultural tone. Recent seasons have relied heavily on the narrative that we’re making the elegant male casual. Loose tailoring, bed-to-office suiting, and intentional decomposition left an opportunity gap for tasteful luxury. Perhaps not tasteful, actually, but historic, which is an interesting determinant in FW24 menswear. Not only did we see the meticulous reemergence of the full-suited, tightly tailored look, but we also saw slick cuts drawing inspiration from the 70s, 80s, and 20s. Okay, cleaned up Jack a la Titanic car scene? Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino restored the archetypal elegant man down the runway, with slim, elongated silhouettes drawing defined lines head to floor atop sleek-fitted satin shirts, precise tuxedo jackets, and the elevated loafer. The prominence of black across the runway was outstated, but there was room for key colors Sustained Gray and White Swan to compete. Of note, Dior Homme also tapped into historic coding, but did so with a play-on of ballet-inspired footwear that merged the refinement of textbook masculinity with our androgynous zeitgeist. We’ve now entered baroque, so call up your great grandpa and get that charming heirloom, vintage brooch, and poplin-ass shirt out. Time for full class.
WE ARE SO BACK
The tie is sooo back. Our season-defining sartorial component was found nearly on every single runway, long-neglected, never sought out, but finally back in our grasp. The tie has animated the strict tone of FW24 into a playful pawn any designer can project on: smart and nostalgic at Prada, kinky at De Sarno, lackadaisical at JW Anderson, retro at Marine Serre, and elegant at Dolce & Gabbana. Long debated as being a prefix of conformism, the tie has been given nearly the most hate across each season and has been on the precipice of a conversion for the last few years. Someone just had to pull the trigger and f*ck with it, which FW24 did. The tie will evolve to be noteworthy this season, so be prepared to love it and live it, but mostly redefine the essence of it.
MAN BUILD FIRE FOOD SHELTER
Men love the outdoors. They love it. Interestingly enough, this is the one thematic residence that womenswear runway doesn’t mirror from season to season but instead integrates subtly. Men and nature’s love affair hit peak heights in the last four years with the seismic pull of gorpcore that impaired the forefront of the male brain for anything outside of explorer intuition. This season’s wave of refinement has pulled that crazy train back down to earth (nature pun) with strong pillars of versatility and adaptability on a canvas of smart fashion. Prada and Emporia Armani weaved in nods of subversion to traditional wear with comfort-driven functionality, while Fendi, Kenzo, and Todd Snyder nodded towards more overtly practical sportswear wardrobes that adhere to seasonality. Key colors Raw Umber, Baritone Blue, natural pigments, and universal greens, possessed an inherent richness and earthiness that transcended daily wear and compounded fashion’s connection to nature. It would be remiss not to mention the shearling coat’s prominence out there, making moves and taking names as the hero for outdoor-inspired, tactile performance wear in FW24.
LIFE UPDATE: GOING BORING
You can’t have fashion month without at least one fashion head standing next to you post-show in the uber queue, scanning the scene, scrunching their face, and unveiling a heartfelt “I just feel like this season is so... boring.” FW24 is simply that—snore fest. The every-day person is undoubtedly the largest inspiration on the runway this season, with each designer dropping a quote on finding their meditation in the every-day life of a city or suburban dweller. Basically, we’re getting lame as hell. The essence of this focus is to unearth the integration of what it’s like to be quote-on-quote normal in fashion, which is both wildly ironic and intimately thought-provoking. What is it like to wake up and sprint to your 9–5 half-dressed? How does one navigate the ebb and flow of a chaotic city while also mentally being a chaotic person themselves? How do we define shifting landscapes between finite subcultures in a world so interconnected by media? Impulse and desire run rampant through FW24 collections as Prada navigates the sleep paralysis of the white collar worker, Auralee and WOOYOUNGMI try to understand rapid dressing (I left the house and forgot to put a shirt on core), and LOEWE romanticizes old people that live next to each other. There’s an overarching sense of hurriedness, mundaneness, and repetitiveness in a display that is grasping for monotony yet showcasing the contemporary social divide between the people who actually do live day to day like this and those who use it as art on the runway. Untethered by ideals and rooted in reality, we desperately try to navigate our zeitgeist in an era so fueled by confusing dispositions. Boring can be magnificent, but the magnificent is rarely boring.
I WAS BORN IN THE RIGHT GENERATION
The fallout brother to FW24’s eleganza is the more hip, timeless tapestry of retro refiltering. Subcultural references have a grip on fashion that signature the obscurity, translating from streetwear to sportswear and all the bits in-between. Martine Rose is a strong leader in narrating this phenomenon, showcasing to FW24 the fluidity between city bankers, sports blokes, downtown skaters, and dodgy, dive-bar punks. The people’s people, full stop. Color-rich jewel tones, furs, and heavy print motifs at Louis Vuitton, Rhode, and Drôle de Monsieur are the essence of the heightened suburban male in city life that’s vibrant, nostalgic, and honestly, just f*cking cool. You’re bumming a cig off him, you’re listening to his podcast, and you’re layering (on top of layering) your bomber jackets with him.
SWEET BABYGIRL
The man of the moment is babygirl, our androgynously coded it-boy. Eschewing the soft masculine formula cross-media, babygirl prompts us to question the cis-female hottie archetype in favor of the genderless, sensitive, quirky, Wes-Anderson-Luca-Guadagnino-built man who has a fandom in a chokehold. Who is the babygirl on the runway? Well, we created this monster. They are the etymology of a genderless radicalism in fashion that has matured into a generic understanding that it’s not a jumpscare that menswear can be feminine anymore—it just is. Propositions have turned into an intentional foundation as Fendi throws in a pleated skirt, and round and rounder silhouettes with frill fill Stefan Cooke and Willy Chavarria’s runway. Mary Jane at Dior Homme is a staple, and we go so far as to make our babygirl sexy at Burberry, YSL, and Ludovic de Saint Sernin, where every look contains a sheer or low-cut moment. Further, Mugler, Marni, Vestments, Simone Rocha, and Collina Strada—it’s just not funny nor notable anymore how fluidity has melded into fashion. It is, however, important to indoctrinate going forward, especially when it goes hand in hand with a traditionalist redux found elsewhere in FW24.
THE PREP YOUR PARENTS WANT TO SEE
The timeline of prep as a thematic core is barred from any commentary on evolving runway trends because it’s not a conversation of if but a conversation of how. To be honest, it’s more consistent than any Joshy-type man you’ll ever date. In step with an overarching mood of refinement, FW24’s prep exchange introduced the prep male, whose tropes were showcased as clean, tailored, and mature. It was attitude that fluctuated, as a deeper interest in the cultural layers of prep was what defined this year’s tone. Outside of obvious references to core campus silhouettes, the runway experimented with lacing art, design, film, and music typology in unexpected shapes such as the parka, blouson, and reedited cap. Take Kiko Kostadinov and Wales Bonner in Paris, for example, literally projecting both on screen and on the runway a day-in-the-life overview of what it’s like to be at school, as if our pre-adult trauma couldn’t grasp it readily. Dior Homme playfully finessed the prep man in a world of elegancy, effortlessly dictating the uniformity of each subject. At Fendi, the pleated skirt flirted with androgyny, while Gucci and BOTTER cemented the rise of the stripe in outerwear in key colors: Pinecone, Intense Rust, and Cherry Lacquer. For fashion, school will always be a reliable source of compatibility.