16h ago
Since at least the end of the Second World War, much of men's fashion has revolved around a simple dichotomy: the Establishment vs the underclass. In his book Rebel Style, Bruce Boyer frames the 1950s culture wars in terms of clothes — Man in the Gray Flannel Suit vs The Wild One
In the 1980s, it was the power suit and prep revival vs streetwear (e.g., punk and hip hop).
In the early-2000s, it was the European metrosexual vs urban lumberjack.
In the 2010s, it was Mad Men and Italian tailoring vs. Hedi Slimane's rockers and streetwear (again).
Etc.
It's questionable whether there's really a trending Establishment look at the moment. If there is, perhaps it's another prep revival (often written about, rarely seen) and Armani style tailoring.
However, the countercultural, anti-Establishment, underclass trend is clear.
To understand it, we must first go back to the early 2000s, when designers like Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane, and Thom Browne shrank men's clothing to counter signal the "macho" oversized clothes of the 80s and 90s. They wanted a thinner, more adolescent Euro look.
That involved tearing the structure out of suits — less shoulder padding, no domette, softer canvas, minimal haircloth, etc. This went perfectly with the idea that we live in a more casual world, so people want to look more relaxed. A padded suit can be formal; soft is informal.
But over time, that look became mainstream and distorted. The sexy, edgy, deliberately subversive approach to tailoring became increasing normal and even business casual. Seeing bad slim tailoring on athletic, muscular figures doesn't help.
So much of menswear has swung in the opposite direction: fuller silhouettes, heavier shoulder pads, pleats. Here are some images from the FW25 Saint Laurent show earlier this year. Rocky often wears the line and gets a lot of praise for it in the fashion press.
What do those silhouettes remind you of? The fabulous 1970s and swaggering 80s. Look at the strong, square shoulders, longer jackets, lower buttoning points, fuller pants, etc. The looks are sexy
In fact, one can say that a lot of men's fashion right now is just a rehash of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s — the patchwork 1970s bohemian look (a la Bode), the padded 70s and 80s suit (a la Husbands Paris and Armani), and a lot of 90s "streetwear" (*gestures towards Instagram*)
Of course, it's not just about those decades. As Cathy Horyn correctly observed in a 2015 NYT Magazine piece titled "The Post Trend Universe," we no longer live in a world with one single trend but many diffuse ones. Influences come from all over the place.
And so, you can't talk about this trend without also talking about the Sopranos, a widely popular show in the early 2000s that became something of a meme around 2019 to 2021. Lots of New Jersey Italian-Americans wearing undershirts, giving the style cultural meaning.
A lot of things are popular at the moment: wider pants, chunkier sunglasses, rayon shirts, boxy outerwear, long flowing overcoats, etc. Thus, it's natural for the undershirt to reappear bc it fits neatly with those things, even if it was once considered verboten for it to show.
The visible undershirt, of course, was historically coded as "not in good taste" purely because it was a mark of the lower working classes. Elites wore button-up shirts with ties. If they went tieless, there still wouldn't be a visible undershirt bc it just wasn't done.
Instead, think of fashion as a form of social language and go back to the sources. A visible undershirt peeking out from the top of a button-front shirt is a mark of the underclass, particularly in the post-war period through the early 2000s. That look can still be worn well.
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