By: Deidra Barton
From Alexander Wang to Kanye West, men taking on the role of designer in the fashion industry is a lot more common than we think. Today, men are putting more effort and creativity into their outfits and are going beyond the social norm. It’s more than just the suit and tie with perfectly gelled hair: Prints, colours and how the fit works on their own bodies has allowed men to elevate their fashion and it’s got the world noticing. This new found fashion peak has paved the way for male fashion designers to immerse themselves in the world of designing for not only themselves, but for women as well.
Men designing for women is now known today as a fashion norm and almost expected. It’s hard to find women who specialize in menswear but once the roles are switched, the list of designers are endless. But when you really look into it, maybe the choice of designing for women goes beyond preference.
“I started focusing on womenswear because that was what people were gravitating towards and that’
s what stores started to pick up and buy,” says Sid Neigum, designer of a womenswear line that bears the same name. “When you do men’s and women’s it’s divided up market wise and I would have to go to Paris, twice per season, New York twice per season and it was way too much to do.” Neigum’s earlier collection included both men’s and women’s wear but he thought sticking to one was a smarter move.
“It was more of an economical decision than a preference because I really like to design both and I will at one point again,” he says. “It will take maybe a few more seasons to reintroduce men’s but it’s something that I think about a lot.”
Womenswear being more popular than menswear is something that is seem to be obvious–even though menswear is growing. As a designer, it would be a hard choice to pick who you want as a customer to keep your line alive. What some designers are doing instead of picking what sex to focus on is to blend the genders together to create unisex fashions.
“It was kind of a challenge to myself to bring that idea to life,” says Spencer Badu, designer for his unisex line S.P Badu. “It’s way easier when it’s strictly one gender you design for.”
Badu is currently attending fashion school in Alberta, Canada, and says men are more interested in fashion because it’s today’s pop culture. “When I had the idea of starting my own brand the whole concept of fashion wasn’t really embraced by men,” he says. “It was something that was happening. A couple men were into it but not that many and I feel like now it’s popularized-it’s the thing that’s in.”
Looking back five years, the typical style for men were the baggy clothes and the ‘I don’t care’ attitude. Badu thanks social media for the exposure of fashion saying men now care about how they look in clothes and have more of a fashion aesthetic since it’s being presented through technology. “I think men should care about how they look either way, I don’t know why they waited so long,” he jokes.
Being the only man in his fashion class, Badu does sometimes feel like the odd one out. Still fresh in the industry, he hasn’t received any real discrimination for being a male fashion designer. It all goes back to the male designer growing in popularity and doesn’t seem the strange thing to do anymore.
“Time changes everything and this is the right timing now where everything in the world and everything in the fashion world is becoming more genderless,” says Godfrey Mensah Co-designer of the menswear line Keniya-X label. “And guys now are starting to realise they can wear whatever they want-they were feeling a certain way before in the past.”
Mensah does find it interesting that men are leaning more towards womenswear but feels like it’s not a conflict in this industry. “There shouldn’t be any labeling to who designs what,” he says. “To me the gender theme doesn’t really matter if you’re a guy or a girl. If you’re a designer, you’re a designer-you’re an artist.”
THE ROGUE 