There was a time - or so I’m told - when some reasonably 'fashion-forward' men were referred to as 'metrosexuals'. Quite what this term was supposed to indicate is lost to the annals of time but from what I can gather, it involved a lot of bad hats, vests and wet-look gel. It was not a particularly stylish time.
I guess what was supposedly seen then as a backlash to the 'WE ARE MEN AND WE BURP AND FART AND ALSO WEAR OUR SHIRTS INSIDE OUT TO SAVE WASHING' attitudes of the mid-to-late nineties, soon became lost to a putrid fog of lame-ass trend chasing and acrid Kenzo cologne. The cycle was reset and blokes went back to not caring about how they looked once more.
Except for, well me. With grits teeth Generation Selfie in full-effect, I find myself not only taking care of my appearance and my wardrobe but actively flaunting it online. More than once I’ve found myself trawling sale sections of MR PORTER, Oi Polloi and End at 2am on a workday, worrying if that mustard yellow Norse Projects 'Thor' mac will look as nice on my Instagram as it may very well do IRL. If I buy a jacket and nobody likes it on Instagram, I’ll probably think about taking it back.
Menswear - or #menswear, if I’m trawling for likes - is the fastest growing market in fashion. Dozens of websites devoted to announcing the latest Oliver Spencer twill shirt, BWGH trainer or Boglioli summer jacket seem to spring up every hour with each fighting to upload the most tastefully composed flat-pack picture of their inventory, battling to lay claim to extra sartorial bandwidth like the armies of old eating up enemy territory. Tens of thousands of us, hungry hypebeasts, creating Twitter lists, stalking blogs, writers and 'tastemakers' like a horny barman of a grubby SU with baited breath and a raging debit-card erection.
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For a long time, high-ish menswear fashion was out of bounds for many normal men. I, as a nineteen year old clutching his first decent paycheck, was laughed out of a Bond Street boutique by a toothpaste-moustached mug dressed like an Old West snake oil salesman for daring to try on a jacket at the front of store. My face burned with white-hot embarrassment as my sweating palms soaked holes through fine fabric under the watchful gaze of a shop assistant with eyes like two pretentious lazerbeams. After that I swore off fashion, headed to the safe havens of high-street tat merchants, defending their shoddy quality and questionable aesthetic to the hilt simply because the alternative felt so emasculatingly daunting.
But now, with the advent of online shopping and the bookmark-bursting barrage of blogs packed with smart, accessible menswear writing it all feels so simple. So I started showing off. Why wouldn’t I?
Men still aren’t allowed to selfie without risk of well-hurled abuse (no matter my protestations at the dire need for a new Tinder profile pic) so #OOTD and #WIWT was born, borrowing from the cult-like street-style diaries of the fairer sex. It’s my way of showing that I’m doing alright for myself; expressing my contentment at my comfortable situation via the accessible medium of a tastefully Sutro-filtered shot of my adidas Rod Laver Tournament Edition trainers. It’s lifestyle porn. Bags and tags, coats and merino jumpers splayed across bed linen like a sartorial After-Sex Selfie.
In my mind, my right as a straight male addicted to photo-journalising outfits is just as justifiable as that of a female counterpart and it’s not through vainness that I stop mid-way down the road, at a particularly pleasing cracked section of tarmac, to photograph my outfit in a top-down, POV stylee. It’s a way to make myself feel better and it’s a way to identify kindred spirits online.
At a time when music and subcultures are so blurred and transient, you can’t resonate with someone simply because they’re into the same bands as you, so it’s with brands and aesthetics that I align. It’s the same story as has been happening with men for decades, centuries, only this time we’re split by hashtags and blog-identification rather football clubs and whether or not you really, really fucking love Paul Weller. 'Oh, so you like Four Pins? Cool, well I like Cork Grips. We can probably get along.'
It’s not even a question of sexuality, this search for male camaraderie through online fashion. There has been no 'haha lol thats well gay' when I’m posting up my trainers or a new jacket; there’s an underlying sense of what modern masculinity is, with sexuality completely removed from fashion, that’s instantly recognisable for even those who couldn’t give a fuck whether or not Folk’s stitch-quality has gone downhill. It feels freeing.
With male identity so fraught in an internet age, this is my chance as a discerning male to showcase my masculinity in a palatable way. There’s none of the misogynist undertones of those into their cars, shooting their soapy rides in Dutch tilts, talking of 'agging the shit out of it'. There’s only me, on my mobile, diarising something basic and everyday, items that literally just stop me walking around with my cock/nipples out, that everyone can relate to. It transcends class and region and country and race; white guys adopting traditionally black sportswear brands, black guys lining up for product drops from established old English labels like the ever-present Barbour.
It’s just what I wore today and what you wore today.
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Picture: Jason Lloyd-Evans
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.