Sunlit Reverie

There is something happening to menswear that is difficult to miss. Pearls hang from men’s necks. Sheer shirts expose torsos beneath delicate fabrics. Handbags appear routinely in men’s collections, while painted nails, skirts, lace, elaborate jewelry and increasingly delicate silhouettes occupy a fashion vocabulary that, not particularly long ago, would have been understood almost exclusively as feminine.

None of these developments is especially consequential by itself. An earring does not erase masculinity, a pink shirt does not disqualify it, and an interest in skincare should not require a man to defend his identity. Much of the anxiety once surrounding these choices deserved to disappear. Men have spent generations operating within an unusually narrow aesthetic range, and greater expressive freedom is not only defensible but overdue.

The more interesting question begins after that freedom has been granted. Contemporary fashion is no longer merely asking whether men may borrow individual objects from the feminine wardrobe. Increasingly, it combines the silhouettes, materials, grooming conventions, ornamentation and theatricality historically used to construct feminine presentation itself. The discussion therefore moves beyond whether a particular object belongs to men or women and toward a more difficult question: how much can the visual language of masculinity change before the category itself begins to communicate something different?