(Photo: Chris Altorf and Jessica Hayes, istoica.com)
To explain the state of male style in Toronto, can I paraphrase Tolstoy? All well-dressed men are alike, but each badly-dressed man is badly-dressed in his own way. There are multitudinous “wrong” choices you can make when clothing yourself, regardless of gender, but for men there are few “right” ones; fewer, it seems, the more interested a man is in how he looks.
The downtown working male today, today being almost Saturday, is 89 percent likely to be wearing at least three of the following: heritage plaid flannel; raw denim; chambray; desert boots or geek-certified sneakers; interesting socks; vintage-“inspired” eyeglasses; a t-shirt handcrafted from sustainable cotton; a tech-y, but refined, bag that says “I could work with my hands if I wanted to.” From Monday to Friday, depending on the rigors of his occupation, some tailoring is whisked into the mix; perhaps a bowtie or two; natty oxfords.
And guys, I love you. I love your old-school tattoos and your scruff and your crisp, unpopped collars, and oh god, your mildly coloured khakis cuffed just so! (I’m basically Amish in that I think ankles suuuper-erogenous. When I tweeted this, an unholy number of people-who-like-boys agreed, so put that in your double-stitched pocket and take it with you.) I also thoroughly enjoy that you no longer wear stained tank tops and Converse in weird colours or think swim trunks are a great spontaneous look for a dinner date. I think it’s great you’re starting to understand how much we, as women, have always paid for shoes.
But, being the never-happy sort, I’m beginning also to worry. Recently I was at the Hoxton for a Bad Day party and straight-up kissed a blond-ish, handsome, heritage-branded dude who turned out to be not be my boyfriend. Every time I’m in Little Williamsburg (I’m no realtor, but are Dundas and Queen west of Bellwoods anything but?) I wave to someone on a Dutch-made fixie who then is not the bartender or the baristo I know. So. I’m telling you this gently, but firmly: You. All. Look. The. Same.
Briony Smith wrote something to this effect in The Grid a few weeks ago—I actually think she was talking about my boyfriend looking like yet another guy in the opener—but I disagree a little on the subject of girls. I couldn’t buy identikit outfits for all my girlfriends, but had I a million boy-lovers I would buy a million A.P.C. button-downs and a million pairs of Wings & Horns trousers and never have to Xmas-shop again.
“I imagined that, since we have access to so many outlets for ‘inspiration,’ especially via the internet, this would spawn more unique outfits,” says Kevin Naulls, the 26-year-old bearded blogger-turned-online style editor at Toronto Life. “But the fact of the matter is, most people (who don’t, or don’t want to, work in fashion) don’t seek to thrill people with their ensembles. They just want to look decent. I think that’s why menswear trends become stagnant so quickly, and why people find even the most mundane Fair Isle sweater to be an exciting men’s fashion choice.”
At the time of his email-reply, Naulls says he’s wearing Pointer saddle shoes, Happy Socks, a plaid shirt from Club Monaco and Spurr jeans: “I am a statistic.”
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I’m writing this from East London, which girls of my acquaintance (and taste) call Bizarro Toronto. At home, I guesstimate three lovely, smart, cool, girlfriend-able females for every one such male. Nobody knows why the ratio is so, only that it makes dudes spoiled all out of proportion. In London it’s the inverse, they say (I say “they” lest I personally get a Cambridge Satchel in the head on Redchurch Street).
I’m not in that “market” (gross), but my eye wanders everywhere, marvelling over the fierce male-style tribalism in some places, and the simple fact of three college dudes not all wearing Toms in others. London is a massive city, for one, and East London has long prided itself on looking socially unacceptable, for another. But I think the menswear made and sold here is becoming sophisticated without getting boring, and that’s because there is equal emphasis on quality and variety.
For girls, I think, there’s a shift as we grow up from craving variety to seeking quality, from impulse-buying trend-bits to investing in contemporary classics. (Once when I told the man a Jeremy Laing dress was an “investment piece,” he asked how? Does it turn into four of them?) But for boys it’s always been about quality—or durability, or long-wearability, or some kind of technical qualification that makes it okay to spend rent on a jacket—and so what men could use now is a little variety. You know, colours. Bright ones. Layers. Prints. Things your girlfriend wears; she wears your clothes, no? North American males are so bloody precious about masculinity now, as though if y’all don’t dress like Don Draper chopping wood 24/7, we won’t be sure you have penises. Dude, we know. You can put down the straight razor. “If ‘return to masculinity’ has any fashion definition,” says Naulls, thinking of its prevalence in mags like Fantastic Man and Monocle, “it should be a ‘return to stuffiness.’ Masculinity has become the Charlotte York of fashion trends—I’m surprised men can walk with their boar bristle brushes shoved so far up their asses.”
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(Photo: Chris Altorf and Jessica Hayes, istoica.com)
A few weeks ago I met this guy Adam Krawesky—34-year-old software developer by day, photographer and club dancer by night—and we sat on the curb and talked about menswear. He has specific taste and loves Sydney’s (everyone loves Sydney’s, no?) but also swaps style ideas, plus actual clothes, with other fashion-liking men on Superfuture and Style Zeitgeist. He explained it’s easier online, because straight men still feel awkward about liking to shop IRL. Plus, he understated, you can’t find a lot of Japanese and Belgian menswear in Toronto.
On Tuesday, which at London Fashion Week is Menswear Day and very exciting in terms of seeing real men in printed suits, feathered capes, and foot-high creepers, I went to LN-CC. This is the new Dover Street Market, the East East London ur-boutique where you can find Japanese and Belgian, and English and Peruvian, menswear. Eyeing a pair of extra-wide shorts with a greyscale American flag wrapped skirt-like around the back, I said, to one of the lovely salesboys, that menswear is more interesting than womenswear because it’s still catching up; so much less has been done.
“Yes,” he nodded, “but there’s much less you can do.” And there’s even less you can sell; demand for difference among fashion-aware men has yet to meet the recent, super-creative surge in supply. Some of the best designers working today—Raf Simons, Thom Browne, J.W. Anderson—began with rule-breaking menswear, then did womens’ clothes. Both-gendered boutiques, too, are focusing more on men. It’s just, the men aren’t quite there. When LN-CC opened last year, they stocked 85 menswear and 15 per cent womens; now, because they can’t get men to make up more than 30 percent of their walk-in customer base, they’ve lowered it to 65 percent. If they’d opened in Toronto it’d be, like, five.
Ruins is a good local example. When Josh Reichmann and then-partner Mikey Apples opened the store in summer 2010, they went ambitious with a mens’ buy that included the artisanal (and quite expensive) New York line Assembly. It didn’t quite sell. Reichmann still carries excellent, lightly inventive suiting by Patrik Ervell, and is collaborating with the Toronto-born, Berlin-based (and Berlin-looking) label Thomas. But for now, he makes sales on Alternative Apparel t-shirts and vintage army jackets.
“We do some colour,” says Reichmann, 34, “but guys look good in crisp or relaxed uniform dark shades or crisp whites/creams for sure. They’re a bit more into refined-casual looks in softer fabrics.” He notes he’s beginning to see a shift from all vintage, all heritage, to a focus on modern cut and feel. Still this is about quality, not variety; it’s just another way of looking “right,” and the same.
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But look, I’m not like the Andrea Dworkin of style here. If guys here dress interchangeably, it’s not all their fault. I’m looking at me here. Yes, me, the hypocritical fashion girl in complicated dresses and frankly insane shoes, telling my boyfriend to “just wear those old Levi’s I love with a nice shirt.” The other day Refinery29.com polled its mostly-girl readers to ask if they’d be down with dudes wearing crop tops. My heart said yes. Something further down said no.
So I am telling you after all of this not to listen to me, because do you know how much I hate Russell Smith’s Globe Style advice to women, which is like, “if I don’t think it’s sexy, don’t wear it?” A lot. Almost as much as I hate double standards. When my boyfriend doesn’t like long skirts and wedges, I say, whatever. And I’m saying y’all should try “whatever,” too. Including (deeeeeeeep breath) long skirts and wedges.
“My dream would be that every guy could dress however he wants (even in heels, without having to commit to being full-on drag), but my ideal man (my ideal, not everyone’s) would wear Jonathan Saunders sweaters when he isn’t wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants at home,” says Naulls. He adds that if you’re biologically a man, you’re masculine no matter what you wear. (I don’t really agree, though. Masculinity and femininity have little to do with your sex, or with sexiness. They’re constructs you put on in the morning and strip off when you wanna; sex is the negation of clothes, the opposite of pretense, and the great equalizer.)
Ryan Cheung, assistant online editor at Flare and dedicated Club Monaco shopper, points out that feminine influences have trickled into mens’ clothes, though not nearly to the degree that traditionally masculine tailoring dominates womenswear. “Once Zara and H&M landed with their European-style big-box brands, even J. Crew began to introduce slimmer lines,” says Cheung. “They were all influenced in part by that international, ‘metrosexual’ guy who was a bit femme.”
“I think we’ll start seeing more individuality as guys get comfortable with expressing themselves,” says Krawesky. “I’m seeing more local lines like Kin and Krane on guys in the streets, and it’s becoming more normal. At this early stage, it may result in a homogenous look, but I think the comfort it’s creating will make it easier for guys to start trying on more individual ideas for themselves. I find style inspiration at RAD, which carries no menswear. Stepping over to the women’s side helps me lose a bit of my self-consciousness about fashion and see the much wider vocabulary they have with clothing.”
If anything will get guys talking in a new language, it’s the arrival of Topman by Topshop at the Bay (you can buy some already at the Queen Street location, but Yorkdale gets the flagship in two weeks). Fashion guys like Cheung and Naulls, and NOW‘s Andrew Sardone, were righteously disappointed when J. Crew didn’t deem local dudes worthy of a men’s section at the new Yorkdale shop (it’s all women’s, for now). But, guys, we don’t need more khakis. We need the influx of colours and prints and layers and fads for men, all at mall prices, that London’s world-conquering chain brings so well. It’s not that I think men, or anyone, should be super-trendy all the time. It’s just that you need to play the fashion field a while before returning to a working uniform—one that isn’t every other dude’s uniform, too.
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Sarah Nicole Prickett is Toronto Standard’s Style Critic.
