Business of Fashion just dropped its latest installment of “Breakfast Club,” an ongoing series in which industry experts discuss the top news in fashion. This week’s episode features Eugene Tong, style director of Details magazine, as well as Josh Peskowitz, men’s fashion director at Bloomingdale’s. And, as most of you probably expected, the new episode is all about menswear.
While sitting around a table covered with breakfast grub, Tong, Peskowitz, and host Imran Amed begin exploring the current state of men’s fashion. The first subject at hand is the recent surge in men’s style, which has come in the form of more brands, more blogs, and more fashion weeks.
“Men, in general, care more about the way they look now,” Tong explained. “They realize that they make thousands of other decisions in their lives, and they want to start making better decisions about their appearance. I think that’s why this generation—of young men, especially—are just consuming fashion at exponential rates.”
But, as the panel points out, there are many other factors that contribute to the increased interest in menswear. Amed suggests that the most exciting young talent within the current industry happens to be designers who initially started out in menswear, such as Shayne Oliver, J.W. Anderson, and Craig Green. But why is that?
According to Tong and Peskowitz, most of that can be attributed to the small size of the men’s realm when compared to the women’s. You see, the smaller a market is, the easier it is for talent to stick out. The bigger the market is, the more saturated it becomes and the harder it is for someone to really make his/her mark.
But the primary thrust of the episode is the outlook for the 2016 menswear season, which just kicked off in London last week. The three discuss which designers and brands they’re excited about most and what they’re expecting from the inaugural New York Fashion Week: Men’s.
Though there are some concerns about timing (New York’s fashion week is six weeks after the kick-off), the panel is confident in the event’s success—mostly because of the big-name brands who have jumped on board.
“[The CFDA] definitely took their time [...] I’m glad they took their time to make it right,” Tong said. “But I think, again with LC:M and London, just like it took a few seasons to get it really going, I think it will take a few seasons to get [New York Fashion Week: Men’s] going. But I think what the CFDA is doing, is, they’re going in the right direction at least. They have good brands. It’s in a centralized location […] It’s great for New York and I think it’s great for men’s in general.”
You can check out the full “Breakfast Club” episode above.
