Men Are Back!—With Suits and Ties, the Fall 2024 Season Heralded a Return of Traditional Masculinity

January 25, 2024

The official start to the men’s fall 2024 collections came with Sabato De Sarno’s debut menswear show for Gucci, with an addition to his spring women’s soundtrack created by Mark Ronson and titled “Masculinity.” We should’ve known then and there that the season would unfold as an examination of contemporary masculinity starting from its core sartorial tenet: the suit.

Gone are the days of the genderless and the gender-bending taking center stage on the runways. Menswear has moved on from both the streetwear phenomenon that questioned its rules and formality, and the irreverent flamboyance of skirts and frilly blouses. Even the Princess Anne-inspired pleated skorts at Fendi gave no way to gender ambiguity; a man in a skirt on the runways just isn’t the grand statement it was two years ago. The radicalism is gone and the message is clear: Fall was a season about safe, by-the-book masculine codes.

Gucci and Prada made the case for elongated coats and slimmed-down tailoring. De Sarno dressed his men for dates, evenings out, and an urban life, while Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons gave their models an office-ready look, bar the swim caps. Both collections relied heavily on the tie—Mrs. Prada and Simons kept theirs traditional, while De Sarno went kinkier, turning his into leash-like necklaces.

At Dior Men, Kim Jones’s ballet-inspired lineup offered a new take on male sophistication, one that merged refinement with pragmatism. His leather tunics, pooling wool slacks, and knit separates—all accompanied by ballet flats—tied nicely into the current fascination with mid-century glamour spurred by TikTok micro-trends and Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Feud: Capote vs The Swans. Jones launched men’s couture and offered some glitz and sparkle, but the overall message came across as a commitment to the elegance of yore, albeit with the anti-macho, but still masculine, playfulness of today.

Is there anything that spells “man” more than a cowboy? This season we saw plenty of American West iconography—fringe, single-point pockets, boots—but nowhere as literally as at Louis Vuitton. Pharrell Williams has said he designs not menswear but “clothes for humans,” but his collection toyed with the clichés of masculinity; his dudes wore jeans, workwear jackets, and sturdy Timberland work boots.

The season’s primary focus seemed to be wearability. Even Jonathan Anderson and his examination of masculinity in the age of the Internet—with its thirst traps, “baby girl” men, and Internet boyfriends—offered everyday garments like proper suits, nice cardigans, and track pants. Even if those pieces were often collaged together, the result was the instantly recognizable look of the alternative ’90s heartthrob—think Keanu Reeves or Kurt Cobain. Boys will be boys.

The shift we’re witnessing comes down partly to the swing of the fashion pendulum, but the season’s conservatism is linked to the crunching of numbers, i.e. an instinctual reaction to a reported downturn in the luxury market.

Unsurprisingly, it was Rick Owens who turned the season on its head. Rather than classic masculine formality, his message was one of tender but forceful defiance: “I want to be a haven. A force of anti-intolerance,” Owens told Vogue Runway’s Luke Leitch. Owens designs for queers, freaks, and outcasts, all of whom will all appreciate his clothes more than ever in a season of safe bets. As Owens put it, we are living in “barbaric times.” Fashion’s instinctual reaction to moments like this one is to retract and revert to the tried-and-true, and few of Owens’s peers have his instincts for iconoclasm.

Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli said to Vogue Runway’s Sarah Mower that his role as a designer who makes men’s clothes is to help “dismantle toxic masculinity.” His tool to do so, perhaps paradoxically, was the suit. There was a gentleness and ease to his cuts, though the look, not unlike everywhere else this season, was the one we’ve always known for men—a dark suit and tie.

Scroll through to see the fall 2024 menswear trends.