What is a 'masculine' silhouette?

It seems that, at the basis of the word silhouette, there is an etymological concoction of history and classism made edible by the taxes imposed by Etienne de Silhouette, the Comptroller General of Finances under the reign of Louis XV. His cuts to the detriment of the people and the wealth of the nobility and clergy ended up shaping a style à la Silhouette, a portrait in vogue in the 18th century that reduced people's outlines to barely noticeable black shadows. A Silhouette was also called trousers without pockets, which ended up straight in the mental encyclopaedia of us moderns to designate a figure or structure outlined to the bone. Throughout history, women have been the subjects most manipulated in terms of silhouette: Coco Chanel had endowed them with a dose of contemptuous pragmatism by constructing high-waisted suits and shifting chains on bags, while Monsieur Dior, a few years later, had jammed them into waspish waists on which to lay bar jackets and floral-printed full skirts. On men's bodies, on the other hand, there have never been any major interventions: it was enough, in modernity in particular, to focus on the work uniform and its component units to bring about major revolutions. Things, however, seem to have changed just now, at a time in history when the economic crisis and the fear of exposing oneself on a narrative level has been compounded by the sharp differentiation between fashion and luxury. Tangible and recognisable forms are sought after, areas of the body typically associated with the sensuality of the female sphere are discovered, the ideal of elegance is pursued, or, bypassing the mainstream, everything is deformed, going beyond any anatomical taxonomy.

Slim vs over

Raf Simons FW2001

Dior Homme SS02

Dior Homme SS02

Raf Simons' work in the early 2000s moved in a visual field of radical rejection of the slim silhouette: the FW 2001 collection used oversized military bomber jackets, striped tees and scarves tangled up to the face to construct volumes surrendered in the face of gravity. In the same years, and with an aesthetic imagery not so far removed from Simons, Hedi Slimane's obsession with emaciated bodies and punk tufts came to life at Dior Homme: Boys Don't Cry, the name of Dior's SS02 collection, reproduced gunshot wounds printed at ribcage level on shirts accompanied by two-button jackets, trousers and slim ties. Having put on hold the era of low waists, thongs in full view and the sexualisation of bodies on display on catwalks and magazines, something more complex aesthetic and social was taking place: streetwear was moving out of the confines of street subcultures and onto the catwalks of fashion capitals. In the course of the 2000s, it was the luxury brands that declined the linguistic codes of streetwear: Alessandro Michele at Gucci constructed the genderless possibilist universe, Demna Gvasalia deconstructed the rules of a system anchored to the rules of a good taste that was difficult to question. The Georgian designer himself told System Magazine in 2022 that he had been bounced in a well-known French restaurant because of his silhouette: black, oversized and with heeled boots - the wardrobe of the grumpy teenager who moves freely from impeccably constructed tailored jackets to cynically hyper-realistic XXL hoodies. What changed?

Contemporary male silhouettes

Saint Laurent FW23

Saint Laurent FW23

Dolce&Gabbana SS23

Dolce&Gabbana SS23

Dolce&Gabbana FW23

Dolce&Gabbana FW23

When Anthony Vaccarello announced more than a year ago that he wanted to tell the story of the Saint Laurent man at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, the bond with Monsieur Yves seemed to have been broken. The FW23 collection was nevertheless interpreted as the most coherently structured reaction to the stylistic elements to which the recovery of y2k and the rise of quiet luxury had accustomed us - «I didn't want a story that mentioned the cool kids in the city, but a continuation of elements I'm using. The silhouettes seen in women. Masculine and feminine. With a cinematic touch inspired by Fassbinder,» the French brand's creative director told MFF. Black satin coats, shirts with perfectly fitted bows at the shoulder and slim-cut trousers have inaugurated a 'new' chapter in men's fashion - creating and researching a silhouette, in other words, has become the real obsession on the menswear front. The same aesthetic codes, albeit brought back to the matrix of the archive, have been re-proposed by Dolce&Gabbana starting from the SS23 and FW23 collections: the creative duo, with the aim of returning to the origins, has recovered single-breasted screwed jackets, capes worn like cloaks, lace shirts, blouses with a nude look effect, long and wide coats, sublimating everything with the FW24, Sleek - the translation of the word implies its applicability on the aesthetic side - are the words most likely to resonate in the brainstorming of the style offices of many relevant luxury brands. If until recently we have witnessed an abuse of the term luxury, the desire to set aside oversized silhouettes as well as the more pronounced elements of sportswear has put an end to the mythology of streetwear. Coco Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent, to name but a few, created shapes and reinvented pockets that conditioned the way men and women walked.

Loewe SS24

Loewe SS24

Rick Owens FW24

Rick Owens FW24

«It was a silhouette,» explained Jonathan Anderson in an interview in The Washington Post. «And for me, the fantasy of being a designer when I was younger was really the idea of creating a silhouette.» According to journalist Rachel Tashjian, the author of the interview, Anderson came very close with Loewe's SS24 collection by proposing «something we hadn't seen before: an ambivalent shape, rigid and baggy at the same time, that made the spontaneous and casual gesture of stuffing your hands in your pockets disarming, at times threatening». Very high-waisted trousers, in denim and with all-over rhinestone decorations, which even attracted the attention of the Financial Times, which was surprised to have spotted them on the Sanremo 2024 stage. The incriminated are singer Ghali (in full Loewe look) and his stylist Ramona Tabita, according to whom it is «an evolution, with a man who has shaken off toxic masculinity and proposes another model, not necessarily gender fluid, but virile in a contemporary sense». Liberation which, in the case of Rick Owens, becomes deformation in its purest state - a masculine silhouette supported by inflatable rubber boots, blankets knotted together to form winter tops and "bombastically sculptural" coats in the FW24 collection. A reflection, perhaps, on how primitive the gesture of continually creating forms to inhabit is. A silhouette, in short. An old story that fashion likes to tell as always new.