Women who dress up men, or rather, when the designer is a woman. They would like to see us sensitive but not soppy. Elegant but not affected and masculine without showing any sign of machismo. Donatella Versace is an exception, she has been preserving the sensuality of his brother’s collections and she has been respecting not only the way he has imprinted on them but also the public’s expectations. Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons)and Miuccia Prada instead, would like to see man changing their wardrobes every season: they are eclectic, intellectuals, futurists, they are also willing to change their idea of fashion however maintaining their personal style. To make ourselves understood, a piece of Prada is highly recognizable, even if colors and shapes keep changing through the years. Silvia Venturini Fendi really prefers an unconventional man, who’s bold enough to wear fur and who’s not afraid of considering frivolous undertones when he chooses his fabrics. Also Veronique Nichanian, creative director of Hermès’ menswear line since 1998, opts for traditional style coupled with dandy influences: silken shirts, silken scarves with peculiar patterns and shades like the sienna, mustard yellow and bluette. Brilliant references and innuendos which through the years built a kind of menswear designed by women that is most assuredly timeless. Picture by Marcus Gaab from M 2007. The model is wearing a Fendi Blazer and an Hermès shirt.

Layers, weights and patterns, they’re nice but dangerous. A men who is gifted with personality and taste, can make an attempt mixing and matching unusual combinations without neglecting composure and sense of measure. Printed and elaborated fabrics can coexist, especially during the winter time when we can get layered. There’s a wide variety of choices but that could also be confusing, so if you feel like pushing the boundaries with an unconventional look my impartial advice would be to follow your instinct being careful not to overdo it: if it doesn’t feel comfortable it’s just better to give up. There are knitted blazers with removable linings which are as worm as a paletot, it is possible to wear them on top of a suit which should be in worsted wool and not in tweed or any other “thick” fabric, because having two similar kind of wool rubbing against each other is not flattering as it makes you look bigger. However there are some tight-fitting, sleek designed fabrics (almost optical as the twill in the picture) to wear in contrast with the jacket-coat thickness. To conclude, a small geometric patterned shirt to match the micro-windowpane check fabric of the outerwear in the same nuances would work. In this cases, to soften up such an original ensamble, one should keep the accessories classic and simple in order not to pointlessly force it. Yes, very fashionable, but with balance and common sense. Picture: knitted wool blazer by Giorgio Armani; Herringbone wool suit by Zegna.

The invention of a new stilistic project and the conception of the way it communicates have to be grounded on three main foundations: experience, culture and intuition. Designers are often elaborating concepts that have been originated by chance: they get the idea from a picture, a color, a sentence from a book, a song…it’s hard to say why they would choose one thing instead of the other. Nobody knows the reason why, through all the audio-visual information baggage we built through the years (or even recently) something stands out compared to the rest. Although a fashion designer committs himself to a perception which he does adjust and stransform along with the stylistic developement of the collection. Some designers always get it right, others may loose their way getting distracted by commercial strategies. Normally, those who never listen to anyone but themselves make it. Hedi Slimane, after dedicating a few years to photography, is now the new creative director of Saint Laurent Paris: an air of mystery always surrounds each new project he has, nobody ever knows anything about the fashion show till the very last minute, not even the location. Slimane is a free agent, reluctant regarding attending social events, shy, quite solitary and he always seemed to go beyond all expectations: the photographs that he took for the current advertising campaing are amazing. He has detected a kind of aesthetic which is very different from the present one and has identified the image into an atemporal dimension, avoiding falling into the same old retro- rhetoric. Singer and songwriter Christopher Owens, original picture by Hedi Slimane.