Menswear Doing OK?

Boxers are the new shorts. Skirts are the new pants. And other things we learned trying on the Spring/Summer 2025 collections in Europe.

They say that only boring people get bored. So when the peanut gallery started opining about SS25 being a dull menswear season, I began enjoying the ride through the Parisian shows even more. Here’s the thing: At its best menswear isn’t supposed to be entertaining. Ideally, menswear doesn’t even have a POV. Menswear hits hardest when it’s communing with universal concepts such as uniform, sex appeal, and, of course, my favorite yet often forgotten ingredient: frivolity.

For this season’s menswear market, we went to Paris’s real market, a place 45 minutes from the center of town called Rungis. Before it becomes a croque madame, a charcuterie board, or a pavlova, practically all food in Paris comes through this labyrinthine industrial compound. Rungis comes alive at 2 AM, and by noon, all of its 2,400 mongers and merchants are either on their way home or hammering vin blanc at the depot’s on-site bistrot. That’s when we stepped onto the premises, ready to shoot 17 noteworthy looks fresh off the international runways.

In 2014, I visited my beloved New York tailor Mr. Ned with an idea: I wanted an undyed linen suit, but instead of pants, I wanted the bottoms to be shorts made in the shape of my beloved 5-inch Patagonia Baggies. This request was met with incredulity. At this time, the only weirdo popularizing shorts with suits was the other Thom, but his were longer and tight to the leg. “It’s gonna look like a pair of boxers,” my tailor told me. “Exactly,” I said. He was so freaked that he also made me pants as a backup.Fast-forward a decade, and the boxer-short-with-blazer pairing is not only within the boundaries of polite society; it’s a dominant trend. These two garments have a great symbiosis: The blazer validates wearing something that looks like underwear in public, and the boxer ejects things immediately out of the fussy boardroom-suit-jacket zone. Indie darlings like Edward Cuming, Commission, and Ranra all had outdoor boxer options perfect for airing out the gams on their own, but thoughtfully constructed enough to stand up alongside tailoring.Even the maestro Dries Van Noten himself had something to say about this silhouette during his final bow, except his shorts sit somewhere in shape between a Bermuda and a basketball trunk. What fascinates me about his incarnation of the look is how Dries’s choice of material takes the bottoms somewhere different. The Dries shortsman isn’t tossing on a blazer over his Baggies to look presentable at brunch. Rather, he’s the king of his own exotic environs, glowing metallic in the night as he stirs his affogato after a four-hour dinner. His shorts aren’t a convenience, they’re an end in themselves.

If you’re getting bored during the men’s shows, I’d suggest tuning your ears more delicately to the wonderful entity that is the two-piece suit and its ability to evolve with the values of our present time. Take the tailoring put forth by the IYKYK menswear brand du jour mfpen. Rather than the peak Armani vibes put forth by the outpouring of slouchy suits in recent years, the brand’s finds romance in the now-vintage figure of the white-collar urbanite—think Edward Norton in Fight Club, or Keanu Reeves before he learns what the Matrix is. Which brings to mind: But what is the suit these days if not an opportunity for corporate cosplay?In perhaps my favorite collection of the season, Junya Watanabe played a xylophone solo with the template of the tuxedo, hitting scales from black tie to white tie to denim tie, and somehow managing to serve up a couple heavy metal tees in the process. Even more joyous than what SSENSE’s Steff Yotka dubbed the “juxedo” (powered by Levi’s, of course) was the discovery that the two-tone shoes were in fact a collaboration with staple London shoemaker (and bearer of maybe the world’s best brand name) Trickers. Sister brand Comme des Garçons Homme Plus then took the idea of futuristic eveningwear even further, unleashing a procession of otherworldly courtiers in both black and Pepto Bismol pink.LEMAIRE for its part continues its quiet contributions to the suiting canon by allowing for the two-piece to make sense in real life again. The brand’s two-pieces are boxy enough to layer both under and over, and are made from structured materials that withstand life without getting wrinkled or mushy. They also often contain little surprises, be it a handy patch pocket or a sturdy fabric that seems like denim but is in fact gabardine. This season, some of LEMAIRE’s tailoring veered away from their classic browns and grays and into a milky palette. Playing with a mix of off-whites in one outfit can seem scary to beginners, but when done right it’s heavenly.

Almost every year I wonder whether we’re about to be at a tipping point for men’s skirts. The garment is inherently practical, flattering, and well-ventilated. Traditionally, they also happen to be a go-to bottom for many cultures, from Scotland to Polynesia. And yet year after year the skirt remains in the experts-only terrain of menswear. Is the anxiety of pantslessness (see below) so strong that it keeps us from wearing a garment that looks (and feels) good? I can’t even answer this question—because by the way, I don’t wear skirts yet either.However, when the men of the world are ready, SS25 has quite a few skirts of note waiting for them. UNDERCOVER closed its dreamy menswear show with this pleated number befit for a demigod, while Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY served up a preppy little mini with built-in ruffles, as though to offer added protection for newbies to the genre. But the most fascinating yet wearable example of the season was this raffia hula skirt by Adrian Appiolaza at Moschino. Paired with shades, chunky Wallabees, and a faded hoodie, it feels camp and believable all at once. Maybe this will be the skirt’s year?

At a time when few things feel radical, we must take a moment to acknowledge Jonathan Anderson’s commitment to pantslessness and its radicality. The male form without any bottoms is somehow even more transgressive than full nudity. To be naked is to be innocent. To be pantsless is to boldly violate norms you know exist. May we all get there someday.

If you’ve spoken to me about clothes sometime in the last ten years, then you’ve probably heard my rant about sportswear and how I think it shouldn’t exist. Why wear something that dresses you down and makes you look sporty, when you can wear actual performance clothing that looks better and actually works to play sports in?The SS25 collections have forced me to do a complete 180 on this position. Marvels like Demna’s überplatformed trainers at Balenciaga and masterpieces of cinema like the new Netflix series America’s Sweethearts have convinced me that sportiness is a way of being that exists much more vividly in the realm of symbolism. Whether you’re lounging in charmed-up Chopova Lowena sweats, swooshing in layered HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE, or strutting around like a prizefighter in a kaftan by Craig Green or Kiko Kostadinov, the mode of always either being on the way to or on the way from the gym contains a potency that stretches being action. Heck, it might not even matter if you work out at all.

The return of prep and Americana as fashion staples is strangely optimistic, especially at a time when America itself seems like a bit of a dumpster fire. But there’s a fluidity to what these codes now mean that successfully shreds the baggage of the past. Take the buzzy new collection by AURALEE, which takes as its core a Good Old Boy wardrobe staple: the pleated khaki chino. The Japanese brand’s take on the garment is—from its not-quite-low-rise perch on the hip bone, to its wide leg, to its ample length for breaking onto a boat shoe—essentially the platonic ideal of a chino. And in that precision and formalism it loses the milieu of exclusion that comes with the old ways of prep. There’s no country club membership here, just guys who love pants.A wizard who resides on the spectrum between pop and fashion, Eli Russell Linnetz has taken this season to remake the energy of 2000s mall culture in his own image. But unlike the chiseled abs and red-state energy of the Abercrombies and Hollisters before it, ERL presides over this look with a more blissed-out message. Even the brand’s slogan “Be Nice” (a play on its HQ in Venice Beach) seems to eschew the alpha-male roots of some of its references. Rather, the Good New Boy comes in peace.