If you thought that menswear consisted only of conservative suits paired with understated ties, you would be easily forgiven. Each season menswear essentially rehashes the same basic pants, shirt and jacket combination, with only subtle changes to the details. Such strong limitations of convention mean that men’s fashion is an utterly boring affair. What is more interesting: a perfectly cut Brooks Brother suit or Marc Jacobs in a see-through lace dress? But once in a lifetime there comes a style icon that is so committed to their vision, they defy all sets of convention to create a look that is beyond your wildest dreams. In men’s fashion, that style icon is Andrew Logan.
Logan is a British sculptor and multimedia artist whose body of work is like a pop culture daydream. He makes sculptures of important people, from his parents to Divine, the drag queen in John Water’s movies, looking like a “slimmer Elizabeth Taylor.” His studio is filled with mirrored glass sculptures that shine to the high heavens; stunning examples of art-meets-craft. Logan’s versatility extends to the performance art world, where he is best known for creating Alternative Miss World, a pageant that celebrates costumes and creativity over narrow standards of beauty. The pageant is a cacophony of silly categories and outrageous costumes worn by the likes of Leigh Bowery; a confluence of the London club scene with the absurdity of contemporary performance art.
Logan’s sculpture ‘Love Ellie’The qualities in Logan’s art are directly reflected in his fashion sense: colourful, almost childlike, with a wicked sense of humour. Logan himself dresses like a bright, manly rainbow, in short pants, tailored jackets and velvet loafers. He has truly mastered the art of the ‘signature look,’ matching all the way from his hat down to his loafers. He has a wardrobe full of suits, custom made by a tailor in India. They are all made of richly coloured, sumptuous fabrics and are measured to fit Logan’s tall frame like a glove.
“This particular suit, I’ve got it in every colour of the rainbow,” he says in his Stylelikeu interview.
Logan’s matching style brings to mind images of wealthy Edwardian-era British men, who retired to their ‘smoking room’ at the end of the night. These men wore comfy velvet smoking jackets with matching hats and slippers. Logan just adds his own Willy Wonka-approved colour scheme to the mix, and wears the outfit not just in the privacy of his own home but anywhere he damn well pleases.
Logan accessorizes each outfit with an exquisite bejeweled pendant: from a cosmic egg, to a happy face to a peacock perched jauntily below his neck. The peacock brooch is almost symbolic of his status in the world, as a man who isn’t afraid to be flashy or beautiful. Social norms once dictated that only women could be flashy peacocks – pretty counterintuitive, seeing as peacocks are male and it’s the peahens that are female.
Social norms that suggest women are the peacocks of society and men shouldn’t try to be flashy. In 1930, some dude named J. C. Flügel wrote that “at present moment, the female sex is far more decorative than the male” in his book called The Psychology of Clothes. Flügel goes on to say that , “man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful,” suggesting that only women can possess beauty and magnificence in appearance.
Though the outdated assumptions of J.C. Flügel would crumble under feminist evaluation today, his assertion that men are not allowed to be beautiful still holds some weight in popular culture today, judging by the current yawn-inducing state of men’s fashion. Logan completely turns subtlety in menswear on its head; with a fashion sense that shouts, instead of whispers. his style may be over-the-top but is never tacky; he pulls it all off, as much a result of his refined British accent and mannerisms as it is his good taste. Logan is just being himself, which is truly something to behold.
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Isabel Slone is a Toronto-based fashion blogger and writer. Follow her on Twitter at @isabelslone.
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