9.30pm on the Saturday night of New York Fashion Week and there’s a rowdy crowd outside the Hammerstein Ballroom waiting to be let into Philipp Plein’s spring/summer 2018 show (and show is most definitely
the right word here, as Plein’s spectacle will include a Dita Von Teese striptease, plus performances by Nicki Minaj and Future – the clothes are almost incidental). This isn’t your usual fashion pack feigning effortlessness; rather, the dressed-up-to-the-nines throng are in metallics and prints, sequins and diamonds. Oh, and that’s just the guys.
We’re living in the age of the Alpha Peacock, ultra-manly men’s men who aren’t afraid to embrace flamboyance and femininity, ostentation and opulence in their clothes. Plein, a consummate showman, is a poster boy for the movement. ‘[Plein] is hyper-masculine in person and as a designer, but unapologetically excessive in his work and that status-symbol style of dressing appeals to a particular clientele,’ explains menswear authority Luke Day, editor of British GQ Style.
As if by way of example, boxer Floyd Mayweather wore a custom-made
Plein gold and black crocodile robe for his boxing showdown with Conor
McGregor last month. Indeed, during the build-up to the fight, both men exhibited wardrobes as obnoxious as their behaviour. Lairy prints, white fur coats and plenty of bling were de rigueur – and did nothing to distract from their hyperbolic, cartoonish masculinity. This was sartorial sparring at its most unashamed.
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The Alpha Peacock isn’t always a brawler, however, he’s also a lover.
This more romantic side of menswear’s flamboyance was in action at NYFW. Take Jared Leto: a serial peacock, he turned to his favourite label, Gucci, for two appearances during the week: a checked and embroidered velvet suit with foppish geometric silk shirt for the
Business of Fashion 500 Gala, and a wild floral-print suit with embroidered lapels earlier in the week. With a full beard, his look was equal parts hunter-gatherer and dandy. Elsewhere, Lewis Hamilton and Ansel Elgort – both men who’ve made their names driving cars very, very fast – were spotted in confetti-print trousers and a brocade jacket respectively.
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This ostentation continued on to the catwalks. Ahead of a menswear capsule this November, at Sies Marjan, designer Sander Lak interspersed the fluid dresses he made his name with, with menswear
in equally delicious shades, like the candyfloss pink silk pyjama set worn with a fluffy lilac coat. And at Calvin Klein, Raf Simons’ vision of Americana included satin shirts, rubberised trousers, a lurid purple suit and colourful cowboy boots. Rodeo-meets-beauty pageant,
the result was deliciously twisted – and bang on for now.
Alpha Peacocking isn’t just at play in the fashion sphere. Day, who credits musicians like Harry Styles and Wiz Khalifa with giving this movement momentum, says you can see the trickle-down to the real world. ‘You only have to walk down Oxford Street and see that all the items in the window of Topman are ablaze with embroidered floral motifs, which apparently are flying off the shelves, to see that men are open to a more opulent style of dressing,’ he says. ‘I think even seeing a super club awash with Louboutin studded trainers shows the modern man is braver than ever with a little flamboyance. Suddenly, pink – and not just any pink, but millennial pink – is the top colour for lads to wear, preferably in a full jersey head-to-toe combination. A pinktracksuit is suddenly very butch.’
Butch is the key word here – it certainly takes balls to peacock properly. In an age when even the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is not afraid to partake in a dash of glitter
daubing for Wilderness and French President Emmanuel Macron spends
€26,000 on make-up in three months, where does that leave the brawn-overbrains guys? They go big or go home. What’s butch now is to be bolder, brighter, braver and, ironically, more feminine. To wear these clothes signifies supreme confidence – and what could be more masculine than that?
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