Ignore These Menswear Trends

Words: Danni Diana | Illustration: Sabrina Scott

Haha. Look at you. Still wearing hessian sacks and using a fax machine like it’s the 1600s or some shit. Listen pal, you gotta move with the times. It's 2015. It’s spring. It’s a new season. Health Goth is over. Little-90s-Tumblr-Sprite-In-A-Yin-Yang-Shirt is over. Which means it is now time to take literally every item of clothing you own and burn it in a fire, because who even wears that stuff anymore? Clowns and losers and people who want to die alone, that's who. But don’t worry, a whole new season of ways for you to be stylin’ as heck is here! 

Forget the five panel. Forget the condom beanie. Tiny baseball caps is where you gotta be. How tiny, dawg? Tiiiiiiiny. Like, think of the tiniest baseball cap you can. You visualising it? Yeah? Um sorry but no STILL NOT TINY ENOUGH. C’mawn G! How else do you expect your head to look so giant and cool? With what other seasonable fashion item shall you accentuate that totally ripped cranial bulge you been putting in the gym hours for all winter?

REKT is no longer what u say on a FB post when u want everyone 2 know how totally lit u got at that party. It is not merely a slang to describe how four hundred and twenty you were, or how massively dank the vapes became. It is now this season’s best new look, for the man who likes to party, even when he is not. GET REKT. BE REKT. REK UR SNEAKS. REK UR JEAN. REK URSELF LIKE A REKKING BOL, ASTRIDE WHICH MILEY CYRUS TOPLESS GRINDS.

Thank the babylordt! Finally a trend to bring back some decorum to this trash-filled world of emojis, white girls rapping, and telling a chick she looks nice getting you locked up in feminist jail forever! Have us no self respect? Have we forgotten the ways of our fathers, step-fathers and father figures? Enter the Silken Robe. No, not the kind you get in the nightie section at Truworths. That shit’s for women. We talking about the kind that now costs R7000 because it’s dapper as heck and f**k you for even thinking about taking it off your body. Business meeting? SILKEN ROBE. Date night? SILKEN ROBE. Sitting in a hotel jacuzzi filled with white powder and backup dancers? SILKEN ROBE. Run up Lion’s Head? SLIGHTLY SHORTER SILKEN ROBE, FOR EASE OF MOVEMENT. See what I’m saying? Get this classy man an expensive wine, already!

Aren’t you sick of how women get to culturally appropriate the jackets and pants of their mothers and boyfriends while you’re just stuck wearing young guys' clothes for young guys? Well, my friends, equality is here! Men’s rights whooo! Because hot on the heels of the mom jean, is the uncle pant. You know the kind. All straight-legged and boxy and pleaty all at once. Just that little bit too small, wide and long all at the same time. Perfect for showing up drunk at a wedding and making a casually racist speech, or guffawing heartily into a microwave soup while watching The Big Bang Theory.  Where jeans say “I’m a rebel, I don’t care”, unclepants say “I have so little f**ks left in me that I have literally given up on life and presently reside at a halfway house for christian men.” COOLE AF.

It’s spring. It’s warm. The flowers are in full bloom. How about some nice, bright cheerful scarves in a lite material to express yourself with? Would you fancy that? INDEED YOU WOULD! Red, yellow, blue and green! Magenta and cerise and rust! Wrap them around your head, fling them over your shoulder, tie them in a sprightly knot pattern you learned at the Boy Scouts! Think of it like a big ol’ smile for your neck! The only limit is your own creativity!

Before you say that lying can’t possibly be a fashion trend that will make you look instantly cooler, and is instead a biblical sin or whatever, may I present you with this scenario:

“Uhhh… what the heck are you wearing?”

“Oh this, yeah, it’s from PARIS*”

“Oh right. Cool.”

*Actually it is not from Paris. Actually it is from Ackermanns. See? Basically just lie about everything all the time. Print off ACNE labels from the internet and stick them on all those clothes you didn’t burn like I told you. Flip through Dazed and loudly lament about how you’re so bored with all the editorials seeing as you have bought every single item in there already. Think of whatever cool, filthy lies you can, and use them always. If people accuse you of lying, just tell them that they're the real liar and that's super uncool. 

Whiteness has taken a bit of a knock, lately. All the cool and relevant people in the world are now brown and black, and there isn’t even a news24 comments section anymore. It’s like there’s just no room in this world for the mayonnaise boys no more. But there can be!!! Through the power of fashion. There are, of course, many ways to achieve whiteness. Top knots, those vests that show your nipples, using the term “sneaker porn”. But the best way no doubt is to dress like a creative director at a popular advertising agency. A nice designer jean because you’re rich and casual. A nice blazer because you’re rich and a boss. A nice chic skate shoe because just because you’re rich and 35 and have a kid, doesn’t have to mean you’re some dad or something. Just pretend it’s ironic so that the reverse racists don’t make fun of you.

So there you have it. Spring trends for men, for you, a man, all up in your browser. Now please, take you and your embarrassingly oversized baseball cap and go get yourself something nice.