Best of: why men’s fashion is skimpier and more queer
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Hi, listeners. It's Laila. Today, we are bringing you an episode from our archives, one of our favorites about men's fashion. It aired in July in summer season, but it's full of insights about men's clothes and even masculinity that go far beyond just summer clothing. Rob and Eric are so insightful about this stuff, and we hope you enjoy it. We'll find each other again on Friday. Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Laila Raptopoulos. ♪

Today we are talking about men's fashion. It seems we have found ourselves in a season where boys just want to have fun. We're seeing short shorts, bare midriffs, bright prints. Men are showing off their bodies and having a chaotic time sartorially. Just recently, a photo emerged from Milan Fashion Week that really put a definitive point on this trend. It was the Irish heartthrob actor Paul Mezcal wearing a dress shirt outfit

unbuttoned at the bottom with a pair of striped boxer shorts, tall white dress socks, and black horsebit Gucci loafers. It was a little preppy, a little oops I forgot my pants, and it quickly made its rounds on the internet.

The first person I texted when I saw that photo was my colleague, Eric Platt. He writes about corporate finance for the FT, but is also a fashion expert. So we have invited him on today to talk about it. Eric, welcome. Thank you so much. I'm also so happy that I was the, that you thought of me when you saw that picture. That's beautiful. It's very important. I have also invited in the FT's true renaissance man, Rob Armstrong. He writes financial commentary in the Unhedged newsletter and hosts this podcast. But he also writes a men's fashion column for FT Weekend.

Hi, Rob. I'm a little hurt. I wasn't the first person you emailed, but that's okay. We're not on personal... One day. One day at a time. After this, we're all in a group chat. Thank you both for being here. So this is actually our first chat on the podcast specifically about men's fashion. And my first question for you both is just what you think about this trend big picture.

Eric, what do you think? I am so happy to see this. Last year or earlier this year when I was on the podcast, I said I wanted to see more crop tops. I wanted to see shorter shorts. Yes. You know, we've talked about this idea of like we're all working on ourselves constantly and we want to be showing it off now. I also think there's so much else going on in the world that like...

I don't know, you want to be a little feral, you want to be a little chaotic right now. And so that's why it's kind of fun to see this actually filtering into the mainstream. Yeah, you did predict that this would happen. Yes, and I'm normally late to a trend, so this is really nice to see. Rob, what about you? Well, on a personal level, I like the short short. I think five or four inches of inseam in your shorts is plenty. The reason for this, I'm going to turn 53 this summer, and

decrepitude has really arrived in my physical self. But one part of my body I can still look on with pleasure is my thigh and my calf. Good. So let them be shown to the world. And I think more broadly, the big thing that's going on here is that it feels like we are shifting from a world in which men dress in a very

And men are becoming more interested in display. And I think that is good. I think it's good to show off your physical self and take pleasure in your physical self and your clothes. It has downsides, but I think this is a welcome change. Okay. So just to get into what we're talking about here, this, may I call it skimpy man trend. That's right.

Yes. Is on the runway. There were a lot of man crop tops at the Paris Fashion Week in June for the House's Spring 2025 collections. But on the street, we're seeing it too. What are the outfits? Who's wearing them? Where are these people going? Are they going to work? Are they going out at night?

I'm mostly seeing it's people kind of living their lives after work, right? I haven't really seen the crop top making it into the office yet. Not quite. But I am seeing, like— Only a matter of time, Eric. Oh, we're already pushing the short shorts in the office on Fridays. But right now when people—when you're seeing men running on the West Side Highway, you're seeing the crop top, right? You're seeing they're no longer in, like, a baggy—

tank top. They're showing off their arms, they're showing off their abs. When you go to parties now or if you're out at a bar, very likely to see very skimpy shorts or the crop top with kind of over-exaggerated sized shorts. Because I think men are playing with proportions now in a way that they weren't 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

Very true about proportions. Very interesting point that mixing of tight and baggy is a much bigger thing and can be really powerful. As women have long known, that can be a really powerful combination. And I think there's a lot going on here. There's men borrowing from women and there are straight men borrowing from gay men, which is, of course, a very long tradition. And then a third aspect I would mention is

Or and a fourth, the influence of Instagram and social media generally. It's like we're trying to capture moments of visual excellence and freeze them and hold them. And I also wonder, another internet thing is I wonder how much the shadow of pornography falls over all of this. We live in a bit of a pornographied culture.

And so the body has this new relevance, this new importance, maybe in ways that we need to regret, but there it is. Usually that's, or historically that's been mostly fallen onto women. Yeah, but not anymore. I think men's body images are probably affected by what they see in that area too. Yeah. Alongside that, in mainstream culture, women,

The brand director of Bonobos said the five-inch inseam, which is the shortest short they offer, is just the interest is growing year over year. That bro-y brand Chubbies? Yes. They've got a real classic short at four-inch inseam. I remember in the 90s, short shorts were like a straight-up...

thing to be made fun of. I remember betting a friend of mine that one day short shorts would come back. And he was like, no. And this reminds me, I've got to track Dave down because they're back. He owes you money. Right? There's been incredible change in that department. Yeah. Well, I think of like on college campuses, right? Like a

the prototypical frat boy would be in these longer shorts below the knee. And now it's really shifted to like, it's a shorter hemline. And maybe it's, again, to the proportion game. It's like with a baggy oversized sweater. And so you're seeing some of the look. You're seeing this like, I put work into myself. And I'm attractive. But I'm also not trying too hard. There's also a long, very long history here of casualization of clothes that

that most people date back to the Second World War. And, you know, we ended up in a kind of jeans and T-shirts world even 20 or 30 years ago. And I wonder if we're kind of bouncing back a little bit where there's a trend towards, I don't want to say formality, but clothing mattering again in a new way. Yeah. Did we kind of reach the end of casualization history again?

Got to where we're all just dressed as men, just dressing like slobs. What are we going to do now? Like this seems bad. We have dressed down as much as we can dress down without actually being naked. And now we have to do something. Let's talk a bit more about men getting more comfortable with clothes that are more queer.

I was listening to these two sort of academics in men's fashion history and

talk about how for a long time in recent history, dressing badly was a sign of masculinity in America because a lot of men had this offensive idea that dressing well was considered gay. And now people aren't afraid of being gay. I mean, especially Gen Z. 30% of Gen Z adults say they identify as LGBTQ on that spectrum. So Eric, you brought up before we came in this idea that short shorts and crop tops are sort of the queering of men's fashion.

Right. Can you talk a little more about that? Yeah, I think when I think back over the last five years, like crop tops were already very much in kind of queer culture, right? It was what you were wearing if you're going out to a party in Brooklyn or if you were on Fire Island. And there's so much more acceptance of that, right? And so you're starting to see that push from kind of the fringe much more into the mainstream. You are seeing people really comfortable actually like

Not just being an ally, right? Like that's not the word. But like kind of like leaning into or being a little bit more playful with how they're dressing. And also to your point, like maybe they also identify as queer or bi or they're somewhere on that spectrum. And so these outfits that used to be, you know, if you were spotted wearing a crop top, if you weren't like at a wrestling meet, right? Like you were gay and that was problematic. Very much not the case anymore. Now it's like...

oh, that person's probably pretty cool and has something going on in their life. Didn't this already happen? Yeah. I should know the history of this more, but...

didn't gay men make skinny jeans okay to wear 15 years ago? And then they, like, reverted back to, like, oversized baggy clothes. But it's not like crop tops is the first example of this, of something that first became prevalent with gay men moving to straight men. So this has happened before where queer culture has sort of, like, pushed us in a direction. It happened with skinny jeans, as you were saying. But I'm also seeing, like...

you know, men wearing just women's clothes more. I have a very close friend who's a straight man, kind of traditionally handsome, and he wears skirts and he wears like big linen loose things that are kind of dresses.

I see a lot of men painting their nails. Yeah, I think of one artist who's having a lot of influence right now. I think of Tom Brown. And he's really made the kilt and the skirt a core part of the brand. And when I look at other collections, many people are bringing in... I think of what Gucci was doing under Alessandra Micheli. It was a lot of more feminized looks. And so I think a lot of this has really...

just filtered out. Brands have become more comfortable showing it because men are wearing it. And because it looks cool and because you're seeing kind of top men in Hollywood wearing short shorts or crop tops or dresses. Suddenly, you can too. You can be kind of pushing the edge a bit. I wonder the degree to which this is a New York, L.A., Miami phenomenon that we're talking about. And we are, you know, we're New Yorkers. We live in one of those worlds where

I sort of stalk around clothing shops and look around what's going a lot. And there is still...

You go into, whether it's a cool shop downtown or a Sid Mashburn uptown or whatever, you walk into one of these stores and there are men in these stores that need help. You know what I mean? And they're looking to their wife or their girlfriend for help. They're looking to the salesperson for help. They're terribly uncomfortable. They don't know how to buy a suit. They don't know what words to talk about buying suits and ties and shoes. Men sense that expectations have changed, at least at the margin.

And they're like, whoa, what happens now? Right, right, right. Maybe I'll just wear a little bit shorter of a short, but it's still going to be a chino. Yeah, maybe like a suit with peak lapels or something. Okay, so we've all been circling around this bigger question, which is men's...

Changing relationships with their bodies, it seems inextricably linked with men's clothing. There was a GQ story that made the rounds called Why Is Everyone on Steroids Now? that argued that someone in your life is using performance-enhancing drugs, if you ask. Its abuse is flourishing in an age where

So basically, you're promised that you can have any body you want. You can use Ozempic. You can get preventative Botox. There are online doctors prescribing whatever you want. You know, you're seeing bodies that you want on the Internet and you can almost buy them. What's up with that? What are the parts to the...

Yeah, I think men are staring at themselves so much more and staring at whether it's colleagues or people at the gym or just people, everyday people on the street. They're seeing them more and because they're seeing themselves more, they want to look attractive, right? To your point, they can take Ozempic to lose weight. Why can't they take steroids if they want to bulk up, right? Right.

That raises some real concerns because these drugs will impact you for the rest of your life. And so there's a real question about kind of like what's prompting people instead of going to therapy and working out why, you know, they want to have this unattainable body. But again, to your point, like they're seeing with...

a few shots a day, or whether it's Ozempic or steroid, that they can have the body that they dreamed of. And they want to show that off and they want to show it off for other men, particularly now. Eric, I've heard you use the term the male gaze in reference to this phenomenon, but you mean it for men. Can you talk a little bit what you mean by that?

Yeah, completely. The amount of time we're all spending on Instagram or TikTok and seeing each other's bodies constantly, looking at our own body constantly, whether that's in photos or videos that are going to get posted, we're much more aware and attuned to how we look. And

I think men, whether they're straight or gay, they are admiring each other's bodies. They are very keen to attain, you know, slightly bigger biceps or triceps. They want their quads to look great. They want abs, right? Who are they seeing it? They're seeing it in other men, right? They want the respect of other men. Respect may not be the right word, right? They want...

to look big and healthy and like they care about themselves. Yeah. I'm all in favor of vanity, but there's clearly good vanity and bad vanity. And I don't know how to make that distinction sharply, but it has something to do with moderation and proportion. It is good to care about how you look.

Some. Right. But why are we at a cultural moment when so many people are crossing the line? And I think it has to do with the Internet, along with, as I mentioned before, the prevalence of pornography. And I wonder if having an extremely healthy looking body that has received a lot of obvious attention is not a success and wealth signifier. And so it's a way of showing that.

I am successful in the world. I have not only the will, but the leisure time to devote to doing a lot of sit-ups. And it's like having a fancy car. And it's really hard to say. I'm older than Eric and, you know, my friends are dealing with

middle-aged issues, you know, you're coming up against health and your kids are getting older and all the normal garbage that comes along with middle age. But Ozempic is part of the conversation. Who's on it? Who's not on it? Who should be on it? Right. Who shouldn't be? Right. Who has enough money to pay for it? To link it again to class issues, depending on how lucky you are in your insurance, you

Being able to take a Zempik means that you're rich. Right. And that, again, the body becomes a signifier of your position in society as well as your kind of sexual ranking. It's like your economic ranking. Yeah. It's really interesting. You talk about the male gaze and the male gaze was like a term that was always just used for women. Like I never even thought about it in terms of men. Yeah.

It feels different for these questions to be asked of men than of women. Women have been asking themselves these questions for a long time. How do I stay a certain age? How do I look a certain age? How do I, you know, maintain youth? Yeah. These are great. Yeah. This is a really interesting point. Yeah. Do you, I mean, yeah. Do you think this is new? Do you feel that pressure? To me, it feels new. Yeah. I mean, when I think about the movies I love most, right, I think about something's got to give or something like that. Right. Yeah.

the protagonist, Jack Nicholson, is fine that he looks like he's in his 60s, right? It's okay that he looks that way. Right. Now when I think of myself when I get to my 40s, 50s, 60s, I'm going to still want to have this, you know, spry athletic body, whatever it is, right? I have some bad news for you from the side of 50. But I think...

I think at least our generations, we're looking at ourselves so much more. And so when you're just seeing yourselves and that's how you're being judged constantly by strangers in other rooms, yeah, you're putting an effort in that maybe you weren't before. When you, as a professional, when you get to my age, um,

You are, if you are successful, you're reasonably well paid. You've, you know, risen reasonably well in your profession, but you realize that that is a double edged sword, that there's somebody out there who's probably smarter than you and 20 years younger at half the salary. And then once that thought is in your mind, you look at yourself in the mirror and you look at your gray beard and

And the question of your appearance becomes mixed up with your relevance as a worker. Especially we work in the media business. Like, am I relevant? You know, there's always this question like, oh, we need the voice of the young people.

And, you know, there's this little voice. It's like, we need the voice of the old people, too. You know, so the broad point I'm trying to make is that physical or even sexual vigor is associated with professional, intellectual, economic vigor in some deep way. And I think men always felt that pressure.

to be young and vigorous. But now it's not just what you do, it's how you look. Right. It's become a question of appearance as well as like, are you big and do you have broad shoulders and can you command the room and do you have a loud voice? It's also like, do you have a flat belly? Mm-hmm. You know, and so it's, I definitely think that the ante has been upped. It's so interesting that this has come for men. Yeah.

Yeah. I really do. I mean, you must be sitting there thinking, serves you smug bastards right. Kind of. Right? Like, your turn. Well, no, I'm almost thinking, like, it suddenly occurred, you know, like, to men that, like, this is the pressure. I mean, I'm thinking about...

women's trends right now. And I feel like I'm increasingly, I mean, I'm wearing a skirt today in solidarity with the boys, but I feel like I'm increasingly dressing like a little boy. Like I'm dressing kind of more androgynous. I feel like women are also trying to look strong and almost more masculine in certain ways. It's funny how they've flipped how people are playing with it. Not that women are not also still worrying about how they...

look and how they'll age. It is interesting to think about the fact that women over the past 50 years or more have asserted themselves in the professional domain and men have had to deal with that fact. And now men are confronted with the fact that they're going to be judged on their appearance in a way that only women were judged. Mm-hmm.

decades ago and it's like a double whammy. First you take my job and now I have to be pretty? Right, I have to worry about girl things. So I think for a lot of men that's a lot. Not that I'm sympathizing with this, you know, it's all just. But it's big. It's big. Been a big 50 years. For us men. Music

Eric, I want to give you the floor for the last thought. What did we miss? There's something really interesting about being playful now. And there's a playfulness in all of this and lightness, especially when everything else in the world is so heavy. Yeah. Wearing a crop top is just kind of fun. Yeah. It's just like, right? Like, I don't have abs, but going out, it's like, yeah, life's going to be okay today. Right? Like, there's something about that. Like, I'm putting on this shirt that's clearly not serious. Even though I take myself to be a serious person. Yeah.

And I'm going to put that into the world. I think there's a lot of that happening. Here, here, Eric. I'm so glad to hear you say that. The fact is we have more choices now than we did before. And that's good. That's great. Choices are good. It is good when people are not putting a figurative or literal straitjacket on you. You know, I don't wear a skirt, but I approve of the world in which that's...

Fine. This is something we should all celebrate. Yeah. It's good to be alive at this moment. It is. I feel that way, especially when I see the casual or short shorts on men with the work socks and the loafers. Like, it's kind of like a relax. Yeah, yeah. That's sort of what it's suggesting to you is like...

Take it easy. This can be fun. Yeah, it's like I know this is in style, right? I know I'm wearing like the high sock, which was inspired by Prada in the 2000s, right? Like with the chunky black shoe. But yeah, it's just not that serious. Yeah. It's just I'm having fun. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you both. Really. This has been fun. This has been really wonderful. Really fun. Thank you. Thank you.

That's the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I've put some links to pieces about trends mentioned in the show notes. Any link that brings you to the FT gets you past the paywall. Also in the show notes is a link to the survey, which I asked you about at the top of the show, and ways to stay in touch with me on email and on Instagram.

I'm Laila Raptopoulos, and here's my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Jovinko with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forges is our executive producer. We had help this week from Manuela Saragosa. Thanks, Manuela. And our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely week, and we'll find each other again on Friday.

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