This was published 14 years ago
Men's fashion: big business
Men's fashion has become seriously big business in Australia, but that doesn't mean the boys aren't having fun with it.
By Peter Munro
Lunch time in the city and a lean man walks by wearing grey tights and Jesus sandals. Posing nearby is a posse of young men in jeans dangling halfway down their designer briefs. Another guy's dressed in pants he's made out of a checked shirt, by turning it upside down and squeezing his legs into the sleeves.
Raven Jones, 32, guitarist, is rocking a long , lean monochrome look.
Men were once as ill-suited to fashion labels as a fat man in skinny jeans. Now men's wear is big business ? worth some $2.7 billion a year in Australia, according to IBISWorld.
"I think it's no longer uncool to be fashionable," says Karen Webster, director of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. "In fact, the opposite is now de rigeur: to be stylish, to take pride in your appearance. It's not just boys doing it for girls, boys are doing it for themselves.
"You've got footballers now looking cool with hairstyles that change every week. In the music scene you are seeing almost a return to the glam or new romantic era. Boys are really making an effort to dress up and in more extreme circumstances are looking quite fanciful ? almost dandyish."
Once men could get away with looking like slobs. Now they have to clean up their act, says body image specialist Marita McCabe, professor of psychology at Deakin University. "Males previously just needed to earn money and be in powerful positions, and as long as they had those things they were attractive to women," she says.
"Women now are much more financially independent and they're not as reliant on men to support them and also they are demanding more. The whole balance has changed ? previously women were the compliant ones, now they are saying power and money is not enough, you have also got to look good."
The increasingly familiar sight of sportsmen in designer clothes ? or starting their own labels ? has helped propel men's fashion into the mainstream, she says.
A whole industry has been built on telling men what's hot and what's not. GQ Australia's style section spruiks cropped pants, double-breasted suits and "manscaped" pubic hair. Test cricketer Michael Clarke poses topless on one page and on the next wears a $1085 cotton vest and $350 suede belt.
Men's Style proffers knitwear, Armani "skin minerals" and low-rise, slick R.M. Williams ? once a farm worker's staple ? for $430. Glossy pages bustle with sculpted young men. The rare sighting of a scantily-dressed woman seems almost an afterthought.
Shopping on Chapel Street, South Yarra, last week was Caulfield chef Jason Herrington, 38, sporting grey track pants and a white tank top emblazoned with the promise of paradise. "I don't go down the street without looking good ? but today's an off day," he says. "I am pretty self absorbed with looking good."
Sartorial splendour for him equates to about $200 a week on clothes, five days a week at the gym, fake tan and regular laser treatments to stop hair growth on his back and face.
In the city, Brisbane guitarist Raven Jones, 32, is rocking a long, lean monochrome look: skin-tight black jeans, white shirt, black velvet jacket and matching winkle-pickers. "Fashion is very important to me, I think it's self expression," he says. "Every time I do a gig it takes me 20 minutes to make my hair look like I put in no effort ? I probably put in as much product as most girls."
But Vega radio host Dave O'Neil is having none of it, saying men shopping for clothes "makes me a little bit sick".
"Spending more time shopping and in the bathroom should be a pain in the arse, it shouldn't be a lifestyle. The only time you should be on Bridge Road or Chapel Street is standing out front of the stores, waiting for your girlfriend to come out."
O'Neil describes his look as "functional". ("Someone once said I look like a welder."). "The only time you should be wearing tights is when you are forced into a school production," he says.
Melbourne designer Dom Bagnato expects the leggings look to fade quickly. "If it works for you I'm big on that. But in general, it has more of a Robin Hood feel than a masculine impact."
And he warns that not all trends should be followed. "If you've got weight around your waist, skinny jeans will magnify it, so you don't want to go there. That, sadly, happens from time to time."