In 2022, we compiled a list of the 25 most influential postwar women’s wear collections. To do the same for men’s wear, we first had to assemble a group of esteemed jurors: the Colombian-born French fashion designer Haider Ackermann; Emily Adams Bode Aujla, the American founder of Bode, a brand known for its vintage-inspired men’s wear; T’s men’s style director, David Farber; the New York-based stylist, creative consultant and T contributor Carlos Nazario; and the New York-based Canadian photographer and creative director Tommy Ton. This past April, on a video call that lasted almost three hours, the group debated the merits of 50 collections, with each panelist making the case for the 10 or so that they’d been asked to nominate beforehand. Although there were favorites (four jurors picked at least one Giorgio Armani and Comme des Garçons collection), there were also some upsets (the inclusion of Helmut Lang over his minimalist peers Calvin Klein and Jil Sander) and a few difficult conversations. Could the group, for example, justify putting Abercrombie & Fitch, a mall retailer with a checkered past, on the same list as Junya Watanabe and Dries Van Noten?
As we worked to cut the list by half, the goal was to identify a collection’s impact — whether that was reinventing the shape of the suit or challenging what it means to “dress like a man” in the first place. That the outcome would be somewhat subjective was a given; but as always, there were rules: Similar to the women’s wear list, which took Christian Dior’s postwar New Look as its rough starting point, anything before 1945 was disqualified. Nor did a collection need to have been shown on a runway. Everyone agreed not to include the designs of fellow panelists, which was difficult: Bode Aujla, whose garments mix workwear with traditionally female-driven crafts such as quilting and appliqué, has been named men’s wear designer of the year twice, in 2021 and 2022, by the Council of Fashion Designers of America; Ackermann, who’s known for his romantic draping and sharp tailoring, just became the new creative director of Tom Ford.
In the end, this list, which appears in roughly the order it was discussed — rather than in any kind of ranking — is weighted toward more recent offerings, but for good reason. For much of contemporary history, male dress codes reflected a rigid and increasingly outdated notion of masculinity. In 1950, John C. Wood, the president of Brooks Brothers, one of America’s oldest apparel companies, said to a reporter, “They call us conservative, but we think that our styles are simply lacking the bizarre.” Even into the 1960s, it seemed like men had two basic style options: Savile Row-style tailoring or a pair of jeans. But as the definition of manhood expanded, men’s wear became less predictable and more complex: In the 1970s, Vivienne Westwood’s tattered shirts and spiky leather jackets epitomized the nonconformity of the punk movement; the following decade, Jean Paul Gaultier put men in skirts when such a thing raised eyebrows. But it wasn’t until 2001 that the French couturier, who noticed his male clients getting pickier and more provocative about how they dressed, said, “The fashion world is now claiming that men are becoming more like women when it comes to clothes. … I like that idea.” For the most part, so did the panelists. — Nick Haramis
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
1. Giorgio Armani, Spring 1989
In the 1980s, bigger was better — a logic that applied to everything from hair to free-market economics. When it came to men’s fashion, that meant voluminous silhouettes, which nobody did quite like Giorgio Armani. The Italian designer began making suits in the 1960s, but his clothing catapulted into American closets in 1980 when he created the wardrobe for Richard Gere’s character in the Paul Schrader film “American Gigolo.” (The message was clear: wearing a suit as good as that could excuse almost any bad behavior.) Over the following decade, Armani’s clothes, which started out as exquisite interpretations of the classics, got progressively looser and more innovative, culminating in his spring 1989 collection, which featured double pleats, floor-skimming cuffs, wide lapels and big pockets. The lighter fabrics of the season (including wool crepe and linen) further enhanced the lack of structure and, when models wore the long double-breasted jackets — not a shoulder pad in sight — the slouch of the cloth recalled the hang of a pocket watch’s chain. The advertising campaigns were photographed by Aldo Fallai, a frequent collaborator of Armani’s, with some of the models instructed to look directly into the camera. “Giorgio developed the men’s waistline, which is something nobody was doing before,” Fallai said in a 2014 interview. “The waistline became wider by going higher.” At 90, Armani still oversees his brand, but that 1989 collection remains the most enduring articulation of his signature style. — Rose Courteau
David Farber: For me, there are three designers — Giorgio Armani, Hedi Slimane and Thom Browne — who changed the way men dressed through the silhouettes they introduced. And in all three cases, it came down to a staple: the suit. First and foremost, there’s Mr. Armani, who threw everything we’d come to know about men’s tailoring — particularly from brands like Brooks Brothers, which weren’t as much about comfort or ease — out the window. Gone was the idea of a sharp crease. He introduced a kind of rumpled chic, and a ton of gray and beige.
Emily Adams Bode Aujla: The campaigns by Aldo Fallai are burned in my head; the clothes speak for themselves in those pictures. If you think about what was happening in America at that time — “The Godfather” (1972) had come out in theaters the previous decade — Armani’s clothes were a complete rejection of what we thought of as elevated Italian fashion.
Carlos Nazario: He changed the way men presented themselves in the street. In terms of influence, he’s at the top of the list.
Nick Haramis: Haider, you’re the only one who didn’t nominate an Armani collection.
Haider Ackermann: It crossed my mind.
2. Dior Homme by Hedi Slimane, Fall 2001
It’s not an overstatement to say that Hedi Slimane altered the shape of men’s wear. Before the French-born Tunisian Italian designer’s first show as creative director of Dior Homme in 2001, the dominant silhouette had been looser and less constructed — thanks in large part to the influence of Armani. Slimane raised armholes, made the silhouette slimmer, cinched waists and sent a mix of boyish professional and street-cast models down the runway. He caused such a seismic style shift that Karl Lagerfeld would later say that Slimane’s clothes were the reason he felt compelled to go on a diet. In 1996, Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent’s longtime partner in business and life, hired Slimane, who had no formal academic design training, to be the director of the men’s collections at Saint Laurent. (He would return 16 years later as the house’s artistic director.) It was there that he first introduced the world to his sexy, mysterious underground club kid look — which also reflected his personal style. At Dior Homme, he leaned even further into his own point of view. Following his debut there, which felt more like a rock concert — with models in sequined pants, shimmering fabrics and unbuttoned shirts — Saint Laurent himself, who sat front row with Bergé, led a standing ovation. — Emilia Petrarca
Farber: It was all there from the beginning — that razor-sharp, superslim silhouette.
Nazario: I remember suddenly wanting to be really skinny.
Farber: You and Karl.
Haramis: That look had such a chokehold on anyone who lived in New York at the time.
Farber: It wasn’t just special-occasion dressing; it was about who you wanted to be.
Tommy Ton: That skinny silhouette had also been attributed to Raf [Simons]. But it wasn’t until Hedi took the helm at Dior Homme that the idea trickled down throughout the entire industry. It felt like there were these techno surges coming through that collection, as if it were a popular song.
3. Thom Browne, Fall 2007
In 2003, Thom Browne opened a by-appointment made-to-measure suiting business in Manhattan’s West Village. Two years later, the American designer from Allentown, Pa. — who got his start as an account executive at Giorgio Armani’s New York showroom and then worked as the men’s creative director of Club Monaco — made his New York Fashion Week debut. From the start, the hallmarks of Browne’s now instantly recognizable style were in evidence: shrunken proportions, a gray color palette, Pee-wee Herman-esque whimsy. But it took a few years to fully realize the Thom Browne universe as we know it today. For fall 2007, as the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony no. 5” played, he sent out a parade of muscular models in dramatically undersize suits and extra-long, Scrooge-like sleeping caps. There were plaid jackets and skirts, voluminous capes and even a bridal train for the finale. As the critic Tim Blanks wrote of the collection, “It’s simply not possible for men’s wear to ever be the same again.” — E.P.
Farber: People were very confused by those shrunken suits. Thom’s publicist brought him around to meet the men’s wear editors in New York. I remember her saying something like, “This guy has this new way of dressing — a new uniform. I want you all to see it and understand it.”
Ton: The number of men I’ve come across in every nightclub or restaurant in the past 15 years with this unflattering silhouette — he really did change the way the everyday man dresses.
Farber: From 2007 to 2015, he also designed for Brooks Brothers Black Fleece Collection. Although it wasn’t quite as exaggerated as his own line, it entered mainstream America.
Bode Aujla: I’ve talked to Thom about Brooks Brothers, and he told me that most people didn’t know the difference between his own brand and Black Fleece. The revival of Brooks Brothers as high fashion was extremely influential; I think we must include a Thom Browne collection.
Ackermann: Too-short trousers with a too-narrow jacket is a Japanese silhouette. Thom’s very influential, but this silhouette? It’s Asian.
4. Comme des Garçons Homme Plus by Rei Kawakubo, Spring 1985
Comme des Garçons translates to “like the boys” but, when the designer Rei Kawakubo founded the brand in Tokyo in 1969, her focus was on women’s wear. Kawakubo, who had been attracting attention beyond her native Japan for her unstructured silhouettes, ripped fabrics and dark colors, debuted a line of men’s basics, Comme des Garçons Homme, in 1978. It wasn’t until her spring 1985 collection, though, that she added high-end men’s wear, launching her Homme Plus collection in the alleyway behind Comme des Garçons’ Paris headquarters. Less gothic than her earlier creations, the clothes were modeled by artists and other creative people who walked the runway in loose, ankle-skimming trousers that alluded to traditional Japanese hakama pants. On top, she played with the silhouette of jackets, incorporating extra lining in some areas and leaving other parts unlined. Much of it was made from dyed cotton and linen in a limited palette of blue, white, black and gray. Though Kawakubo has famously rejected conventional ideas of wearability — a women’s collection from 1997, for instance, used fabric stuffing to create giant protrusions on various parts of the body — her slouchy, nonchalant vision remains quite relevant. This 1985 collection also drew the attention of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would walk in the spring Homme Plus show two years later. — R.C.
Farber: There’ve been so many amazing Comme des Garçons shows, so I went back to the beginning. I can’t help wondering how it must’ve felt to be a buyer sitting in that audience. It was like nothing people had seen before. Poetically unkempt guys everywhere found a home in those rumpled suits, untucked shirts and cropped trousers. The natural fabrics were often dyed with indigo and mud to look worn in and faded. Models were bumping into each other on the runway. Some were almost running, others seemed to be in a daydream state. It added to the mystery of the whole thing.
Ackermann: It was difficult to decide on a single collection; they’re all so poetic and avant-garde. I chose spring 1999, with the ruffles and color blocking, just because it’s a favorite.
Nazario: I chose spring 1987; Basquiat walked in that show, signaling the convergence of culture and fashion on the runway.
Ton: I went with fall 1993 because I’m interested in the bleached and dip-dyed treatment of the fabric. The casting of such diverse men was radical, too, particularly in the early 1990s. But I agree with David: Everything was there from the beginning.
5. Louis Vuitton by Virgil Abloh, Spring 2019
In June 2018, Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton’s newly appointed artistic director of men’s wear — and the first Black artistic director in the house’s 164-year history — staged his first show. With the sun beating down on Paris’s Palais-Royal, the American designer, a trained architect and founder of the streetwear brand Off-White, sent a cast of ethnically diverse models (and a few musician friends like Kid Cudi, Steve Lacy and Playboi Carti) down an ombré rainbow runway in sharply tailored suits with puffer jackets and hoodies. He turned bags, wallets and card holders into apparel, merging them with holsters, vests and harnesses. And in titling the show We Are the World — a reference to the 1985 charity single written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie — and inviting 1,500 students of all ages to sit alongside front-row regulars like Rihanna and ASAP Rocky, he made a powerful statement about the future of the industry. “There are people [here] who look like me,” he told the Times. “You never saw that before in fashion.” Abloh’s own story ended abruptly in 2021 when he died of cancer at age 41. — Kin Woo
Farber: I have a fond memory of being there. But looking at it again, I didn’t realize how it sort of lives on from that moment to the present day. The mix of tailoring and sportswear and even accessories — it seemed organic. Now I feel like accessories are being pushed down our throats, even if they don’t always feel connected to the clothes. But here, the guy who wore that suit also had that bag. There was so much hype around that show. But when I look at it now, it’s not about hype. It was about things like inclusivity. There were even touches of whimsy in the set, which had a “Wizard of Oz” theme.
Nazario: It was cheesy. We arrived onto the yellow brick road. It had all the tools to not be good. And yet it was.
Ackermann: The thing with Virgil is that it went so much further than fashion. When I analyze the clothes, then no. But was he influential? For sure.
Bode Aujla: You can’t deny the influence he’s had on everybody. But the prompt for this debate was the clothes, and that’s why I didn’t put him on my list. If someone said, “Name a figure in the world who had an influence on our culture,” then I would’ve said Virgil for sure.
Nazario: I think he was more influential than we gave him credit for at the time. Thanks to Virgil, the type of man who really wanted to look like a man — big and rich — was right back in the conversation. And then there’s the obvious impact of that show: the casting; the emotion in the room, which I’d never felt before and haven’t felt again; and what Vuitton meant for the wearer from that moment on. It forever changed the way fashion houses choose who gets those jobs.
6. Prada by Miuccia Prada, Spring 1999
Miuccia Prada’s Milan-based empire has dominated the industry since its first women’s collection in 1988. But it took almost a decade for the brand to present runway shows solely dedicated to men’s wear, which it did in 1997, under the direction of Mrs. Prada, as she’s known, and the English designer Neil Barrett, who worked under her as design director. For the spring 1999 season, Prada’s men’s runway presentation included the debut of the Linea Rossa collection, which would become hugely successful. Though Prada wasn’t the first luxury house to make sportswear, what it was proposing — a quieter style that straddled the line between business casual and activewear, with none of the loud branding and logos of most athletic gear — was wholly new. In short, this was the birth of athleisure. The collection included traditional suiting in Prada’s now-signature silhouette — a relaxed, slightly wide shoulder with shortened lapels — as well as weekend staples like windbreakers, anoraks and ergonomic sling bags. “Our idea is to mix technology with normal dressing,” Mrs. Prada said around that time. “In the long term, I see formal dressing for special occasions and an increasing number of people wearing sportswear almost all day long.” — Jameson Montgomery
Ton: It was athleisure before we knew the term. I don’t think any other Italian house was showing technical sportswear like that. And when you look at the rest of the collection, all the suiting and tailoring is made using technical fabrics and paired with utilitarian bags or harnesses. It was probably Prada at its most Prada.
Nazario: So many of her clothes in the late 1990s and early 2000s were peak hot nerd, which is exactly my aesthetic.
7. Raf Simons, Fall 2001
Presented on a set of scaffolding at a warehouse in a Parisian suburb, Raf Simons’s fall 2001 show marked the brand’s comeback after a one-year break, during which the Belgian designer taught at a design school in Vienna. When he returned, it was clear that he’d learned a few things himself. In place of his usual tailored jackets and vests and pleated trousers, there were bulky scarves and kaffiyehs worn over layers of oversize trench coats, bomber jackets and hooded sweatshirts. Titled Riot Riot Riot, the collection was a departure from Simons’s earlier attempts to make more conventional men’s wear feel cool. Instead he refined the dingy uniforms of youth, creating a type of streetwear well before the term was talked about in fashion circles. To make his inspirations extra clear, Simons put patches of stills from horror movies and posters for post-punk bands on his distressed sweaters. — J.M.
Farber: This collection was a pivot for Raf. Until then, he’d been known for slim silhouettes. But in 2001, he did a 180, going from kind of gangly to oversize everything and the idea of an urban radical. I just love that in one person, there’s room for all these visions.
Nazario: Not only was it a departure for Raf — it was a departure from what was going on in fashion.
Ackermann: Raf’s great, but we should acknowledge that the oversize clothes came from youth culture. He made fashion out of it, but it came from the streets.
Nazario: Therein lies his influence. After that, we saw a lot of designers who were like, “My mom wears it like this, so that’s what I’m going to do.” He changed the way people approach inspiration.
8. Gucci by Tom Ford, Spring 1997
Gucci hit a rough patch in the 1980s, when a series of questionable business decisions and family infighting led to a cheapening of the brand’s products and reputation. But in 1990, the Florentine fashion house found an unlikely savior: a relatively untested Texan named Tom Ford, who, at age 29, was hired to lead the women’s ready-to-wear division. A success from the start, he took over men’s wear soon after and was appointed creative director in 1994. Ford reimagined Gucci’s runway shows, doing away with the industry-standard white cube venue and plunging audiences into darkness to ensure that all eyes were on the individually spotlighted models. For spring 1997, he presented a largely black collection for men and women that made a statement, intentional or not, about gender equality: For the most part, it was the guys who were nearly naked. Though the lineup did include high-sheen overcoats and plenty of knitwear, nearly every man with a shirt on had it unbuttoned to his navel or completely open. Sweaters were of a loose enough gauge to be almost transparent, and one was paired with only boxer briefs. Near the show’s end, two models — a man and a woman, one after the other — came out in matching thongs each held together by the house’s intersecting monogram. — J.M.
Bode Aujla: I picked this collection largely because of that girl and guy in the G-strings. It really defined that moment in fashion advertising. Tom Ford’s era at Gucci is embodied by a very specific guy we can all picture in our head. I remember him in that G-string.
Farber: I chose Tom Ford’s last men’s collection for Gucci in 2004. It’d been sort of a slow build for the designer, to take the Gucci guy from the collection Emily mentions — that man in a G-string on the runway — to someone who’s sophisticated as hell. It’s almost like he’d grown up just in time to say goodbye.
Nazario: The earlier collections are certainly more influential, and the one you listed, Emily, is the one that’s etched in everyone’s brain. How many people have redone that thong?
Ackermann: It was very sexual, that whole period. It’s also something you can’t do anymore.
9. Rick Owens, Fall 2009
By January 2009, when Rick Owens debuted men’s wear at Paris Fashion Week, he’d already leaned into his subversive, goth aesthetic — which falls somewhere between a Philip K. Dick novel and a desert cult. Reportedly inspired by the performance artist and singer Klaus Nomi, who had been known for his space-age style, the California-born designer cast severe-looking models, several with shaved heads, to wear the nearly all-black collection of elongated tops and drop-crotch bottoms. The clothes were much looser, more casual and, in a sense, sportier than what other designers were showing, with garments layered in the way an athlete might style shorts over leggings. Some of the shoulders were tailored to point slightly upward — perhaps a nod to one of Owens’s favorite musicians, Gene Simmons from the band Kiss. It was the opposite of Ford’s glamour and Browne’s uniform, and there was really nothing else like it. — E.P.
Farber: This wasn’t the one I nominated. The last number of years, Rick’s shows have been so dark and moody and futuristic and gothic, which I love, but I really responded to the fall 2006 collection he showed at Pitti Uomo [in Florence, Italy]. It’s this sort of merger of glamour and grunge —
Haramis: He calls it “glunge.”
Farber: The sports influence that season was huge, but with beautiful tailoring and coats. He doesn’t seem — I don’t want to say “bogged down by the darkness,” because it’s still Rick, but it’s not the takeaway.
Ton: This is where I disagree with David. I think that first Paris collection solidified the statement he’s made on men’s wear. Starting with fall 2009, Rick has been very consistent with an elongated top, drop-crotch pants or long linear gown and stomping boots. The Pitti Uomo collection that David mentioned felt a bit more rock ’n’ roll. In fall 2009, he’s exploring that gothic or monastic silhouette that would go on to permeate his later collections. That’s when he really started having fun.
Bode Aujla: I think Tommy’s right. The clothes in that other collection just aren’t as Rick defining. They’re much tamer.
10. Sean John by Sean Combs, Fall 2003
In 1999, Sean Combs, who has also been known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, among other names, got the fashion world’s stamp of approval in the form of a 21-page Vogue feature. With the headline “Puffy Takes Paris,” the story centers the American rapper and producer — who settled a lawsuit with his former girlfriend last year that included allegations of physical abuse and rape, and who has since been accused in multiple lawsuits of sexual abuse and other offenses, all of which he has denied — alongside the model Kate Moss and the designers Oscar de la Renta, Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld. The year before, he’d founded his own sportswear label, Sean John, one of the first of his many entrepreneurial ventures beyond music. The brand became a beacon for the convergence of fashion, hip-hop and Hollywood. Nowhere was that mix more apparent than at the fall 2003 Sean John runway show. Celebrities weren’t only in the audience but also on the runway, and the then-unknown actor Channing Tatum modeled a fur-collared coat over a pair of white long underwear. The looks offered a New York rap fantasy: sunglasses-inside swagger, puffer coats and suits with silk ties. In the following months, a Sean John store opened on Fifth Avenue and Combs became the first Black person to win best men’s wear designer from the CFDA. — E.P.
Nazario: Around the time this [collection] came out, a lot of the young people I was hanging out with in downtown New York were trying to figure out what to do [with their lives]. There was this interesting convergence of art and fashion and music and culture, and Sean John was a representation of that. Before its launch, Puffy had been an arbiter of culture who could sell anything. But this was the moment when people started taking him seriously as a designer, which, for better or worse, cemented him as a presence in the fashion industry. The look — glamorous, ostentatious and sort of tacky — was everywhere. And I thought it was done well this season. I don’t know if we can include Puffy on any list right now, but a lot of people working today, certainly from my generation [Nazario is 36], have been very influenced by Sean John — not only by what it represented but by the aesthetic.
Bode Aujla: I agree.
Ton: You can’t deny the influence of the work, regardless of the person.
Ackermann: From my part of the world, it hasn’t had such a big influence. But I see where Carlos is coming from, and we’re judging what the brand represented back then.
Nazario: It legitimized rap and pop culture’s relationship to fashion. If I’m not mistaken, it coincided with Karl [Lagerfeld]’s hip-hop moment. Around that time, [Jennifer Lopez launched a clothing line called] Sweetface. And years later, Lindsay Lohan became an artistic adviser at Ungaro.
11. Jean Paul Gaultier, Spring 1985
Jean Paul Gaultier is best known for his corsets and conical bras, which were immortalized by Madonna on her 1990 “Blonde Ambition” tour. But while the French designer was amplifying a burlesque ideal of femininity, he was also queering gendered ideas of fashion with his spring 1985 men’s collection, titled Et Dieu Créa l’Homme (And God Created Man), which included sarongs and wide-leg trousers with wrapped front panels that made them look like skirts. The year before, Gaultier had incorporated the sailor stripe into his Boy Toy collection for men, citing Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s homoerotic 1982 film “Querelle” (based on the 1947 Jean Genet novel) as inspiration. Promotional images for the collection showed a tall, muscular man in a short plaid skirt standing on a dock next to a woman in a longer pant-skirt combo, their stomachs peeking out from nearly identical cropped sweaters. Although mainstream fashion didn’t adopt Gaultier’s then-radical concept, he was able to expand the outermost boundary of men’s wear, creating space for other designers to explore and, more distantly, for the likes of Harry Styles and ASAP Rocky to experiment. — R.C.
Farber: It can be a bit of an eye roll now to hear about skirts on the runway. But this wasn’t “[RuPaul’s] Drag Race”; Gaultier designed trousers with a front panel to give them the illusion of a skirt.
Ton: That collection was a predecessor to all the gender-fluid clothes we see today. It wasn’t done for the sake of putting a man in a skirt. It was about removing the idea of gender identity altogether, and it precedes Thom Browne showing his suits with skirts, or Hood by Air. It set the tone for what we see today as modern men’s fashion.
Haramis: Haider, you designed a couture collection last year for Jean Paul Gaultier, but this wasn’t on your list.
Ackermann: Perhaps that’s because I’m not as attracted to things that are gender fluid. I grew up in Africa, and my whole childhood I saw many men in skirts. So for me, there was nothing new about it.
12. Hood by Air by Shayne Oliver, Fall 2014
In 2006, Shayne Oliver co-founded Hood by Air with Raul Lopez (who later branched out with his own brand, Luar) to dress their own community of cool, androgynous New York club kids. But the Hood by Air shows transcended their network: They made New York runways feel vitally connected to the city itself. Oliver’s gender-fluid fall 2014 show at Pier 60 ended with several dancers paying tribute to the modern ballroom scene, an influential community of queer Black and Latino drag performers, with roots in America dating back to the 19th century. The dancers wore jeans that were covered in zippers and the brand’s logo; bondage-like straps flung around the models’ legs and wigs whipped around their heads. The performance complemented the electric day-to-night feeling of the collection, with its leather jackets, oversize graphic tees and sweatsuits spliced with laces. “I went to high school with all these guys out there vogueing today,” Oliver told Vogue after the show. “The way I view design comes from the aesthetic of being at a ball.” — Jessica Testa
Nazario: This was the moment when everyone was like, “What is this?” It was so charged and messy, borderline vulgar. The vision was fully realized, but the budgets were just so small. And that was its charm. I think it really influenced the way that fashion used communities, the way that clothes were presented and who was allowed to have an opinion. Shayne was influenced by what was happening in Europe; it’s probably valid to say there was a conversation going on between Shayne, Rick [Owens] and Riccardo [Tisci]. But I don’t think Hood by Air was referencing them. Maybe it was referencing the things they were referencing.
Ton: It was a teaser for what was to come in the New York landscape. He was a decade early. Streetwear had been popularized by luxury fashion, but what Shayne did was steeped in ball culture and queer culture.
Nazario: He added to the conversation about gender fluidity, or whatever the correct marketing term for it is. Nowadays it can feel like a revelation when Miu Miu has clothes that look good on a man and a woman, or when its shows use a trans model. Shayne arrived a bit early.
Ackermann: It’s interesting to listen to you because I come from such a different background. I mean, of course we’re different generations, but it’s also very American. Vogueing is very attractive and interesting to me. But I don’t know if this had as much of an impact on fashion as it had on the moment.
13. Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, Fall 2011
Givenchy’s fall 2011 men’s show was plagued by technical difficulties — including a power outage that caused a 90-minute delay — but few remember that now. Instead, the collection endures for its introduction of one of Riccardo Tisci’s signatures: the Rottweiler. Splashy, menacing images of the dog appeared on sweatshirts, scarves and shorts — though the Italian designer later played down the breed’s ferocity, saying that Rottweilers represent “power and sweetness.” The black jersey shirts were particularly favored by Rihanna, Usher and several members of the Kardashian-Jenner family, who wore them in numerous paparazzi photos. It’s now a requirement for designers to have street credibility and a crew of famous friends, but that started with Tisci’s 12-year reign at Givenchy. (He began by overseeing the couture and women’s lines in 2005 and added men’s wear in 2008.) Dark and seductive, his Givenchy was also slyly witty: That 2011 collection included fuzzy hats with dog ears. — J.T.
Ton: It was a pivotal moment to see a luxury house like Givenchy tackling streetwear. And you could feel its impact right away: Suddenly, everyone was wearing the hoodies and T-shirts.
Farber: And they were well made. Tisci set the bar for what luxury streetwear should be.
Nazario: It was deceptively simple, but it wasn’t really athleisure. Whether or not you love Riccardo’s aesthetic, he’s a true designer. If it’s a pair of basketball shorts on the runway, it’s not just a pair of basketball shorts. It’s made with the best fabrics. As for the Rottweiler, it became a ubiquitous status symbol.
14. Adam Kimmel, Spring 2010
Adam Kimmel’s fashion career was brief — he took a one-year hiatus in 2012 to pursue other projects, and never returned — but he left a lasting impression. After graduating from New York University in 2001, the American designer traveled to Italy to work with tailors and patternmakers and returned home with a small collection of thoughtfully constructed essentials. Three weeks later, he threw his latest collection in a duffel bag and flew to Paris to try to sell it. (The store Colette bought almost everything; eventually, the brand was carried at Bergdorf Goodman and then Dover Street Market, following a studio visit from Rei Kawakubo herself.) Kimmel made clothes that evoked larger-than-life characters. For his early look books, he and his half brother, the photographer Alexei Hay, played dress up with their friends: the actor Dennis Hopper and the artists Ryan McGinley, John Baldessari and Dan Colen. In later seasons, his presentations were increasingly cinematic, demonstrating his showmanship and range. Spring 2010, one of the brand’s last collections, channeled a Western aesthetic with suede chaps and denim coveralls. Jim Krantz, who photographed original Marlboro Man ads, shot the collection on real cowboys on a ranch in New Mexico; in an accompanying video by the director Meredith Danluck, the bull rider Rocky McDonald mounted a bucking bronco in a Kimmel tuxedo. — E.P.
Ackermann: These days, there’re so many collections based on outerwear. But Adam took a U-turn by using the same photographer [Jim Krantz] who shot some of the advertising for Marlboro. Consistently, he elevated these very quiet outerwear collections into something elegant and beautiful.
Bode Aujla: The unfussy apparel aspect of men’s wear is why I put him on my list. If you look at the clothes, it’s all made in Italy, some of it out of cashmere, but it’s cool. Even the way he presented his collections, it looked like he picked these people off the street. That way of casting had been done before with Comme des Garçons, but this was a new iteration because it was clothes you’d find people wearing.
Haramis: When I first moved to New York, I had the pictures from this campaign on the walls of my bedroom.
Bode Aujla: It was a strong vision of luxury for this new downtown guy. I almost added a third collection of his, but I was like, “I can’t have only Ralph Lauren and Adam Kimmel on my list.”
15. Polo Ralph Lauren by Ralph Lauren, 1974 (the Costumes for “The Great Gatsby”)
Over the past half-century, Ralph Lauren has contributed more to the iconography of American fashion than perhaps any other designer, delivering season after season of sporty, luxurious clothing that manages to conjure both East Coast aristocracy and the Western frontier. In 1968, Lauren, who was born Ralph Lipschitz in the Bronx, came out with his first Polo label collection. (Despite never having played the sport, he loved its style.) He quickly became known for textured fabrics — tweed, silk, corduroy — and relaxed tailoring, as epitomized by his unstructured Easy Suit, introduced in 1970. “The coat feels like a shirt and looks like a jacket,” he said. In 1974, he released a collection of double-breasted waistcoats, suits with big lapels and wide ties that Robert Redford wore in that year’s film adaptation of the 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald novel “The Great Gatsby.” “My clothes are all about a mood and style I like,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2002. “It’s all about creating a dream I’d want for myself.” — R.C.
Haramis: Emily, you alone nominated four Ralph Lauren collections.
Bode Aujla: I think 1974 is the most interesting because of what was happening in America. A year or so earlier, the U.S. military had left Vietnam. Meanwhile, Ralph offered an escapist collection that appeared in “The Great Gatsby.” He shifted the way men dressed, instead of leaning toward what was happening in the world at the time.
Ackermann: I’ve always secretly dreamed of working for him — that’s how much I admire him. You enter a Ralph Lauren shop and it’s like entering his entire universe. He’s stayed very truthful to himself, and he continues, almost stubbornly, down his own path.
Nazario: There’s nothing to say about Ralph that hasn’t been said. We can’t do a list like this without including him on it.
16. Seditionaries by Vivienne Westwood, 1976
Today, it’s common for designers to collaborate with musicians, but that wasn’t the case in the 1970s, when Vivienne Westwood and her romantic partner at the time, the musician and band promoter Malcolm McLaren, opened a shop in London’s Chelsea neighborhood for young people who had tired of flower power. They changed the store’s name several times before landing, in 1976, on Seditionaries. By then, the Sex Pistols, whom McLaren managed, were wearing clothes from the shop. In 1977, the group’s song “God Save the Queen,” which was banned from the BBC, inspired an iconic Seditionaries shirt featuring an image of Queen Elizabeth II with a safety pin piercing her lips. More intricately detailed pieces included the famous bondage suit from the 1976 collection, a unisex ensemble with an abundance of zippers and buckles. It’s hard to overstate the enduring influence of the Seditionaries look — defined by metal spikes, exposed seams and intentionally distressed fabrics — not just on the aesthetics of 20th-century music but on high fashion, too. — R.C.
Ton: Thinking about the ’70s, I’m surprised none of us nominated Vivienne Westwood’s 1976 Seditionaries collection because she practically invented punk. A lot of the designers on our list wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for her.
Bode Aujla: I think that’s why the Raf one was confusing to me, because he’s riffing on the culture she helped create.
Nazario: I agree about that collection.
Haramis: Let’s add it, then.
17. Abercrombie & Fitch, Fall 1996
In the 1990s and early aughts, Abercrombie & Fitch was the official outfitter of the suburban American teen. Two decades earlier, though, in 1976, the company had filed for bankruptcy. It found its footing again in 1992, when a new chief executive, Mike Jeffries, was hired following the brand’s purchase a few years earlier by the Limited, Inc. His plan: to attract adolescent customers with a sexy take on collegiate Americana involving rugby polos, cargo shorts and a lot of plaid. The company commissioned the photographer Bruce Weber to shoot black-and-white, often homoerotic pictures that were printed on shopping bags and lined the walls of Abercrombie’s cologne-scented, wood-paneled stores, where customers were usually met by shirtless male greeters. The company was later criticized for its exclusionary marketing and hiring practices, which favored slim, white models and employees and, earlier this year, the F.B.I. launched an investigation into claims that Jeffries sexually abused several men between 2009 and 2015; Jeffries has denied these claims. (A lawsuit against Weber accusing him of misconduct toward several male models was settled in 2021.) Recently, Abercrombie has undergone yet another successful rebrand with more sophisticated clothes for a slightly older clientele: In the first quarter of 2024, sales were up 31 percent over the year before. And yet, as cargo shorts return to the runway once more, the influence that Abercrombie had on young millennials — and on men’s style — is hard to deny. — J.M.
Bode Aujla: This collection, and the campaign Bruce orchestrated, was so brilliant, although problematic. This was the year that Mike Jeffries took A&F public, which is totally wild. The company was hemorrhaging millions and millions of dollars, and then it was on its way to making billions. Just this one campaign provided an identity for so many American and international kids.
Farber: It’s a collection, but it’s also a spirit.
Nazario: These were some of the first fashion pictures I remember making an impression on me. But I don’t know what its inclusion says about fashion.
Haramis: I don’t know what it says about high fashion, but I do think it was emblematic of how a lot of people dressed for a time.
Nazario: And maybe it trickled up. I remember one Dsquared2 show in Milan with extremely low-rise jeans paired with a bikini top, a plaid shirt and a trucker hat, which was an Abercrombie uniform.
18. Gucci by Alessandro Michele, Fall 2015
According to legend, in January 2015 — following the surprise departure of Frida Giannini, Gucci’s creative director since 2006 — Alessandro Michele, who had previously served as Giannini’s associate, scrapped the men’s wear collection that she’d been working on and pulled together an entirely new one in just five days. From the moment the first model came out in Milan wearing a red silk pussy-bow blouse with loose cotton pants and fur-lined sandals, it was clear that the Italian designer had cast aside Giannini’s jet-set aesthetic in favor of his own vintage-inspired vision. Romantic and exuberantly androgynous, the collection featured wool berets, skinny scarves and lace tops, all worn by willowy models. Two days after his first men’s show, Michele was appointed creative director of the brand, a position he would hold for nearly eight years before stepping down in 2022. As Frank Bruni wrote for T in 2018, “He isn’t just selling robes, slippers, handbags, things, though he certainly wants customers to buy those, which they’ve done in numbers that have returned Gucci to peak cultural relevance and extraordinary financial success. He’s selling a sensibility: eccentric, eclectic, inclusive.” (And one that was exuberantly bizarre: he’d sometimes send out models with their identical twins or carrying silicone heads that looked just like theirs.) Only two months after being announced as the creative director of Valentino this past March, Michele unexpectedly dropped a resort collection of 171 ready-to-wear looks. — K.W.
Farber: I never thought this would be on my list. I’ll admit it: I didn’t get how these thrift-store pussy-bow blouses were going to work for men’s wear moving forward. But I included it because of how many other designers it influenced.
Haramis: If I’m not mistaken, lots of people walked out of that show feeling confused.
Farber: As I talked to other fashion editors, the consensus seemed to be, “Wait, what?”
Nazario: It was so bold and confident — and such a middle finger to what [Gucci] had been. I remember leading up to that moment, there was a minimal, dry “I’m rich and I have no opinion” thing starting to happen. And then Michele arrived, and everything changed. Suddenly, everything felt a bit bohemian and homemade. It wasn’t a look that I loved or could get behind, but the impact was immediate.
19. Lanvin by Lucas Ossendrijver, Spring 2011
In 2001, when Alber Elbaz joined Lanvin, he transformed what was then a troubled 112-year-old French brand into a purveyor of highly coveted women’s wear. A few years later, the label hired the Dutch designer Lucas Ossendrijver, hoping that he’d do the same for men’s wear. While Elbaz was best known for his festive, formal attire, Ossendrijver, who had previously worked under Slimane at Dior Homme, was interested in “lived-in” clothes, he told T in 2008; he found traditional suits “boring.” By the summer of 2010, when he showed his spring 2011 collection in Paris, he’d refined a casual yet elegant aesthetic inspired by activewear and aerodynamic design. Semi-sheer tops twisted around torsos. Hems and seams were left raw. Fabrics were tactile, some of them stiff and ridged and others imprinted with swirls and stripes. The athletic sandals combined lizard skin with sporty straps. Long sleeveless jackets were worn over bare chests, accessorized with metallic studded necklaces. Commercial success followed, pushing Lanvin further toward cultural relevance. In 2010, H&M released a very popular men’s and women’s collaboration with the brand and, in 2013, Lanvin became the official tailor of England’s Arsenal Football Club. After 14 years at the brand, Ossendrijver left the company in 2018 amid restructuring. Lanvin, which hasn’t staged a designated men’s show since then, recently appointed Peter Copping as its new artistic director. — J.T.
Ackermann: Lucas’s work was so innovative. The fabrics were modern, the cuts were very sharp, and the shapes and colors were amazing. Everything was very technical, even if it didn’t look like it.
Nazario: There was the brand’s impact on the street, as well. The Lanvin sneaker was such a huge status symbol in New York. Lucas’s fashion — that technical, sporty, Belgian-meets-Japanese thing that he did — was being replicated everywhere.
20. Ann Demeulemeester, Spring 2014
Isn’t it a delight when a designer goes off-script? Ann Demeulemeester was a member of the Antwerp Six, the experimental group of Belgian fashion designers that included Walter Van Beirendonck and Dries Van Noten. She held her first Paris runway show in 1991, adding men’s wear in 1996, and through it all delivered goth nobility: Her clothing was moody, sophisticated and often black. But for her spring 2014 men’s wear collection, the designer surprised her audience with florals. Though the blooms were ebony-hued, the wisteria appliqués creeping down the tongues of white shoes and swirling around the chests of blush pink vests were also distinctly pretty. The collection evoked Edwardian tea parties, with domed hats, three-piece suits and vertical stripes — some barely visible beneath buttoned tailcoats and others blaring from trousers. It was unexpectedly whimsical, even Tim Burton-esque. (One journalist used the description “Beetlejuice stripes.”) “This is private Ann, on Sundays,” Demeulemeester told Vogue at the time. “People don’t know, but I love my garden.” It was her last men’s collection before stepping away from the brand. — J.T.
Ackermann: It’s clothes with a soul, and maybe I’ve been missing that. Of course, there are good collections nowadays, but one that really moves you — I have old Ann Demeulemeester pieces that I’ll never throw away. The construction, the patterns, the attitude of the hanging shoulders: You felt like PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, embracing masculinity but being feminine at the same time
Nazario: Ann is an unsung hero. She’s beloved in the design community, but not as well regarded on a global or commercial level as I think she should be. I keep coming back to that word “influential.” And my question is, “Influential to whom?” She really changed what people wanted to look like.
Ackermann: I need to make it clear that I’m talking about Ann Demeulemeester by Ann Demeulemeester. After she left, it was a different story.
21. Junya Watanabe, Fall 2014
The expression “business in the front, party in the back” was coined to describe mullets — which were on full display at Junya Watanabe’s fall 2014 men’s wear show in Paris. Some models wore Ziggy Stardust hairstyles; others had mod moptops. A few wore wigs that looked intentionally halfhearted, as if they’d been sourced from a cheap costume store. A tweed jacket, worn over a polka-dot tie, was fastened with a safety pin. Punkish snagged sweaters were layered over sensible shirts. A top hat and brogues complemented jeans covered in plaid patches. It was a city kid remix of Ralph Lauren’s Anglophilia, and the dichotomy was irresistible. Over two decades since Watanabe had shown his first women’s wear collection in Paris, the private Japanese designer was still doing what he did best: turning everyday garments into surprising pieces that lit up his audience’s imagination. — J.T.
Ackermann: I could have chosen any Junya Watanabe collection. He’s got a certain rock attitude, although it’s very different from Demeulemeester’s. He made outerwear fashionable with those beautiful collaborations with the North Face and Canada Goose. I’m impressed by whatever he does.
Farber: I feel the same way. The one I chose, fall 2015, was probably his most upbeat. I think I smiled throughout that entire show, which was basically celebrating formal wear. But as brilliant as fall 2015 was, I think there’s a greater arc to fall 2014 — more of the world of Junya.
Ackermann: What’s interesting about Watanabe is that you can wear his clothes 20 years later. You have this with a lot of Japanese designers: They remain in time.
Nazario: It’s one of the few labels I don’t get rid of, and I get rid of everything.
22. Dries Van Noten, Fall 2016
Over the course of his 38-year career, the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten created a colorful, poetic style that pulled inspiration from different cultures and eras. At his fall 2016 men’s wear show, that rich-bohemian romanticism found its ideal habitat: the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, a venue that he’d been trying to book for 15 years. He told Vogue at the time that he wanted to create a collection that matched its grandeur. “For me it was really good to be able to show here onstage and not in a room,” he said. “It turns your world a little bit upside down.” According to the show notes, Van Noten based the clothes on a central character that he referred to as a “Peacock Peacenik,” and looked to the psychedelic imagery of the 1960s to inform many of his designs. Some coats were covered with swirly, hallucinogenic graphics by the artist Wes Wilson, who designed fliers for Ken Kesey’s original acid tests, others with military ribbons and symbols. Van Noten’s spring 2025 men’s wear show this past June was his last one. In a letter posted to his fans, he wrote, “My dream was to have a voice in fashion. That dream came true.” — K.W.
Bode Aujla: I think it’s important to include him. He’s a designer’s designer.
Farber: I loved Dries’s shows, but I also thought about shopping when I was at them. And there’s not a ton of that on this list. I aspire to wear his clothes. The experience of seeing this collection is ingrained in my mind. We walked up to this massive, gorgeous structure and were escorted around the back. We then went up a creaky staircase and through a little door, which is when we realized that we were on the stage of this amazing architectural gem. The collection was in part military inspired, so there’s an officer’s coat and lots of olive. Eventually, we started to see some embellishment — maybe an embroidered snake down one arm. The crescendo was just magnificent. It went from zero to 100 in 15 minutes.
23. Helmut Lang, Spring 1998
Helmut Lang grew up in Austria at a time when Europe, still rebuilding after World War II, was obsessed with American cultural exports like rock music, cowboy movies and denim. Tired of wearing hand-me-down suits to school, he learned to sew his own jeans. When he founded his own line in Paris in 1986, he focused on the clean-lined, workwear-like silhouettes that defined his youth. America was an enduring creative touchstone for the designer; in 1997, he moved his business to New York and, that summer, he showed the spring 1998 collection, his first dedicated to men’s wear. The lineup of largely black-and-white tailoring included vests that resembled bulletproof tactical gear, utilitarian belts worn like cummerbunds and lots of denim, most notably in the form of Lang’s famous paint-splattered carpenter jeans, which inspired countless imitations. In promoting garments of humble American origin, Lang challenged the supremacy of European fashion; the following year, he even pushed the date of his women’s show up a month to precede the ones in Milan and Paris. Other designers soon followed his lead and New York has been first on the official fashion calendar ever since. — J.M.
Farber: Jil Sander and Calvin Klein’s influence on men’s wear was huge, but I chose Helmut because he took that minimalism and built on it. Over the years, he played with punk and New Wave influences. There’s so much in this spring 1998 collection: sharp tailoring and monochrome dressing, but also the idea of modern armor with the inclusion of a padded bulletproof vest and suiting with a distressed denim jacket and paint-splattered jeans.
Nazario: It felt like the convergence of a lot of things that were happening in fashion, but in a very concise way. And I love the introduction of a lot of urban styling cues like wearing a tank top underneath a white shirt. From that time forward, I don’t think there’s been a moment when Helmut wasn’t a part of the conversation.
Ton: To me, 1998 was the year of Helmut. The unfussiness of a simple suit contrasted with utilitarian garments like a worker vest was such an interesting proposition. This collection also merged high fashion with streetwear.
Ackermann: I’ve gone to a few of his shows; the models seemed to walk straight at you. There was no gimmick. You either liked him or you didn’t, but you couldn’t ignore him.
24. Grace Wales Bonner, Fall 2015
Since launching her brand a decade ago, the British Jamaican designer Grace Wales Bonner has approached her work as an exploration of ancestry and identity. In January 2015, when she was 24, she debuted her clothes, which bring together indigenous craft techniques, including Indian quilting, Ghanaian beading and Burkinabe weaving with Savile Row-like tailoring, as part of the emerging designer showcase Fashion East at London Fashion Week. Wales Bonner — who has since curated exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Serpentine North Gallery — sought inspiration for the collection, titled Ebonics, in the work of Black writers and artists like Langston Hughes and Marlon Riggs. She subverted expectations about gender and class with combinations such as a silk cummerbund with a pinstriped-denim suit and a halter top with high-waisted trousers or a mushroom-colored, crushed velvet suit embellished with cowrie shells and Swarovski crystals. — K.W.
Farber: I remember being in London with a colleague who said, “We should go see this new designer Grace Wales Bonner.” I didn’t know anything about her. I walked in and was instantly transported somewhere else. Some of the men were wearing pieces of crushed velvet; others had embroidered jewels and shells, which I later discovered were once a form of African currency. In the show notes, Grace wrote, “This collection was quite historical, going further into the history of how Black people were represented in paintings in the 19th century, and how that manifests itself today. It’s about looking back and then looking forward.” To be so young and to carry that kind of weight — I’m not surprised by how successful a career she’s had.
Nazario: I’m a big Grace fan, and I think the way she makes work inspires a lot of designers.
25. Craig Green, Spring 2015
In 2012, when the British designer Craig Green founded his label after graduating from Central Saint Martins in London, he attracted attention with provocative elements like face masks made from wooden planks, which the press ridiculed. But for his spring 2015 show, Green stripped back the conceptual statements and focused instead on the construction, telling Dazed magazine that he wanted the clothes “to feel beautiful, in a way.” The core of the collection was a utilitarian workwear jacket made of cotton, nylon and tarpaulin that he interpreted in a limited palette of white, black and a supersaturated cornflower blue. Worn by barefoot models who emerged to a melancholic soundtrack that included the Irish New Age singer Enya, the garment looked almost delicate, with strings that tied at the front. Elsewhere, it was reimagined as padded armor and paired with loose, karate-style trousers that evoked the work of Yohji Yamamoto. Several members of the audience were seen in tears. — K.W.
Farber: I didn’t know what to expect. Then these barefoot boys came out, and there was something so pure and poetic about this collection — it spoke its own language. It wasn’t sportswear or tailoring as I’d known it. It was fabric that wrapped around the body with no zippers — just little ties to hold it together. I remember having this image of young warriors returning from, or heading off to, battle.
Ton: Like David was saying, it’s almost art in motion. It didn’t necessarily feel like clothes.
Farber: And I do think there was something about being in the room, because when you just look at images of the clothes, I don’t know if it carries the same weight. In photos, you might ask yourself, “Where, how and when would I put that on my body?” But that wasn’t part of the dialogue in that room. It was like, “Bring the beauty. We want this. We need this.”
The post The 25 Men’s Fashion Collections That Changed the Way We Dress appeared first on New York Times.
