Title Hedi Slimane and the reinvention of menswear Type Article URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/15657/ Dat e 2 0 1 5 Citation McCauley Bowstead, Jay (2015) Hedi Slimane and the reinvention of menswear. Critical Studies in Men's Fashion, 2 (1). pp. 23-42. ISSN 2050-070X Cr e a to rs McCauley Bowstead, Jay Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact
[email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author 1 1 Hedi Slimane & the reinvention of menswear 2 3 Jay McCauley Bowstead 4 5 Abstract 6 7 This article analyzes the role of designer Hedi Slimane in shaping the development of 8 menswear in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Slimane’s collections for 9 Dior Homme in the early 2000s caught the imagination of the fashion press with their 10 combination of a radically slim silhouette, precise tailoring and androgynous 11 flourishes. Along with the commercial success he brought to Dior, Slimane catalyzed 12 a renewed interest in menswear, the aesthetic he proposed acting as a prototype for 13 men’s fashion throughout the decade. By contrasting Slimane’s slender, ambiguous 14 and self-consciously elegant look with the sporty muscularity of the 1990s catwalk, 15 the article explores the shifting nature of male identity in the new millennium as 16 fashionable men found new ways of consuming their masculinity. 17 18 Keywords: masculinity, menswear, Hedi Slimane, slim silhouette, androgyny, 19 20 21 Foreword 22 23 In 2001 I spent six months in Paris working in a health-food shop and living in a 24 small, un-plumbed bedsit in the eaves of a nineteenth century apartment block.