Everyone is always writing about how men are getting more into fashion. See, the fashion industry would love that; if men could be persuaded to double their spend on fashion – to something like the same level as women – the fashion industry would be a third bigger and a lot richer. Anyway, it’s kinda true, men are slowly shaking whatever happened to the Victorians that made them so afraid of showing off. Normally the men’s shows in Milan and Paris happen a couple of months before the women’s, but London’s fashion week has grown a MAN day. When gayed-out fashion people, who grew up spending too much time with their mum’s magazines, try and put a masculine spin on the female-dominated fashion industry’s products it doesn’t work that well in the real world. Winning over the men’s style press is easy and too much like preaching to the converted.

The MAN show, MAN day’s highlight, was preceded by the MAN presentations. The best were David Lindwall’s everyday items (which were branded by him and painted black because consumerism or the world is a dark place or something), Sibling’s jumpers and New Power Studio’s insane film that involved a black Orville the duck and a woman dancing around and pointing at boys’ crotches. The show saw Christopher Shannon make the stuff men like anyway – Reebok and Eastpak – way more fashion. This seems to be a better, easier, more profitable thing to do than constantly hoping that guys come over all chic and in need of a man bag. JW Anderson, whose whole super lux, complicated, loads-of-different-textures-and-loads-of-stuff-going-on thing was basically annoying, went 400,000 miles the other way, and put guys in Lycra skirts and halter necks. Whatever it was, it was fresh or perverted (maybe both), but it wasn’t predictable, which is exciting.

JW Anderson’s minimalist, post-androgynous north African fashion from the future.

Fake t-shirt tans look funny and maybe make Christopher Shannon’s thing even more laddish.

MAN day also saw a show from Child of the Jago, a store run by Vivienne Westwood’s son, the founder of Agent Provocateur and a guy called Barnzley, who, according to some, pioneered the smiley face as rave wear in the eighties. They also have a magazine called the Daily Terror and their logo is a wasp, “because that’s the original terrorist”.

Sometimes Barnzley isn’t so ace; when he co-founded Acupuncture he helped make the platform trainer cool. Seventeen-year-old club kids wanting to be totally not got by the mainstream should check them out. The mix of pirate clothes, tailoring and tartan mined that same weird, gay conservative rebel seam that Westwood does. Westwood read from her Active Resistance manifesto, the one that implies materialism is nonsense. Maybe she knows most people won’t listen and will buy her clothes anyway but at least she feels she’s doing her bit. Or maybe she really doesn’t care about selling clothes anymore, but just doesn’t know what to do next? Or maybe she’s just as confused as I am? Isn’t that called a cop out? People had so much fun at the MAN party they swung from the pipes; being underground, there were no rafters.

WORDS: DARYOUSH HAJ-NAJAFI
PHOTOS: JAMIE TAETE