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By now, your feed has been flooded with photos from the 2025 Met Gala. You might have seen that Diana Ross walked the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time since 2003, and that Zendaya, who walked right behind her, looked fabulous in a white three-piece Louis Vuitton suit inspired by Bianca Jagger’s tailored wedding style. What you might have missed was that it was designed by Pharrell Williams, a co-chair at this year’s festivities, under his post as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton. He also designed the looks seen on Sabrina Carpenter and Lisa as well as Jeremy Allen White? Chanel, too, reached across the aisle to dress some very stylish… men.
So what? You may be wondering. It’s true that this was not the first time that a Louis Vuitton designer blurs the lines between its binary gender product structure — the late Virgil Abloh did it once or twice, and womenswear designer Nicolas Ghesquière has certainly outfitted men from Cody Fern to Jaden Smith in the past. But what makes this moment significant is the bigger industry shift that this year’s Met Gala has shone a spotlight on. During a troubling time for the industry, fashion has found new, fresh potential in menswear. From starry ambassadors to viral looks and an increasingly more adventurous customer base, menswear seems to be where brands can look at for growth right now. The question is, what will this mean for the category?
‘Superfine’ men and those who dressed them
This year’s Met Gala celebrated the latest Costume Institute exhibition ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’. The show, co-curated by Andrew Bolton and guest curator Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, offers a cultural and historical study of Black style from the 18th century to today through the lens of dandyism.
Stars and their teams leaned into the nuance and histories of the Superfine exhibition by working closely with Black creatives behind the scenes.
It is the first exhibition at the Costume Institute to focus exclusively on menswear in over 20 years (the last one, in 2003, was ‘Bravehearts: Men in Skirts’). It is also the first show to examine fashion in the context of race. Bolton said at the press preview on Monday morning that the impetus behind the show was the passing of André Leon Talley, a wildly beloved and unabashed modern dandy. ‘Superfine’ also comes in the wake of the Black Lives Matters movement. The Costume Institute has acquired roughly 150 pieces by BIPOC designers since 2020, some of which feature in the new exhibition.
‘Superfine’ is a product of the times. It should be no surprise then that it is focused on menswear — the shocker, really, was that for the first time in years it was the men who dominated best-dressed lists. It feels like we have never paid as much attention to the way men dress, both in popular culture and in politics. Earlier this year, I wrote about the way labels are taking advantage of this newly found collective interest, related to the ‘internet boyfriend’ phenomenon. To summarise, people online can’t stop talking about attractive men, and brands are making sure they’re part of the conversation when the internet is feeling the thirst.
Celebrities are doing away with the boring black suit in favour of more playful styles, as the red carpet steps up to fill the men’s runway void.
Think of Wales Bonner, the insider-favourite menswear label known for, well, its subtlety. Grace Wales Bonner, its designer, is cerebral and mostly press-shy, yet the brand made a statement at the Met, dressing co-chair and Vogue May cover star Sir Lewis Hamilton, photographer Tyler Mitchell, FKA Twigs, Jeff Goldblum, Omar Apollo and more. The investment return of a Met Gala outfit is not always easy to determine past its media impact value, but Wales Bonner, who has built a robust business primarily with menswear, certainly made a splash, her designs heading up most best-dressed lists. Her clothes are worn by many insiders, but by dressing Hamilton et al she might have found herself a broader base. Does what men wear on the red carpet today have the potential to translate into business, more than ever before?
See also Marc Jacobs, who stopped designing menswear collections almost a decade ago but had a big night on the red carpet with J Balvin wearing his first men’s look since, and joining a line-up that included Rihanna, Tracee Ellis Ross and Doja Cat. I would not be surprised if Jacobs decided to include menswear in his next collection, given the reception. Jacobs was never quite the menswear favourite, but, like celebrities, the men’s luxury consumer is now more adventurous than it once was. Could he go there now?
And while it dressed female attendees in what’s technically menswear, Chanel did the opposite by outfitting model and photographer Malick Bodian as well as stylist Ib Kamara for the evening.
The Chanel menswear question
The fashion corner of the internet has been busy speculating about whether or not Matthieu Blazy will launch menswear. Chalk that up to the recent announcement of Kendrick Lamar as brand ambassador, who modelled a selection of eyewear in a campaign, or to the way Jacob Elordi, a Blazy muse, and Timothée Chalamet have been spotted carrying sweet little Chanel bags as of late.
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If this were to happen, the strongest indicator would be Bodian and Kamara’s Met Gala appearances. All of that should be revealed soon enough, but here’s my take: what makes men in Chanel cool and such a tantalising concept, whether they are celebrities or not, is that they’re wearing a historic label that revolutionised womenswear and reinterpreting and recontextualising it. It works because it’s not menswear. It is a subtle distinction, but an important one. If anything, this is the strategy — it’s not menswear, it’s Chanel. (That would also be my submission for a campaign tagline.)
Karl Lagerfeld certainly toyed with the concept of menswear throughout his tenure, outfitting Williams both on and off the runway. He would often include male models on his runways, too, most famously Brad Kroenig and his son, Hudson. Chanel has also launched Boy de Chanel, its male-centric beauty line, and began offering the Chanel Boy bag in 2011. (The bag is named after Boy Chapel, a Coco Chanel muse and boyfriend of nine years, though it hasn’t stopped men, particularly LGBTQ+ men, from adopting it as a dedicated menswear style.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if Blazy includes men on his runways or decides to dress some of his usual male muses (A$AP Rocky and Elordi among them). But launching a menswear line is a different undertaking altogether, one that, as of now, does not need to be a priority.
Six months after Virginie Viard’s abrupt exit, Chanel has announced Matthieu Blazy as its artistic director.
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The bottom line
The key insight here is that Chanel does not need to sell menswear to dress, target, or sell to men. See the way Miu Miu has inserted itself in the menswear landscape by being more expansive in terms of casting on its runways, which has, in turn, inspired retailers like Ssense to merchandise some of the label’s knitwear as menswear. (The same products exist under the ready-to-wear category on Miu Miu’s website, which does not have a dedicated menswear dropdown.)
A few years back, labels including Simone Rocha and Peter Do launched menswear lines in response to a consumer landscape that was becoming progressively more gender agnostic. It’s safe to say now that the genderless retail experiment did not stick — retailers are still traditional in the ways they merchandise products, and so are shoppers. (Do told me at the time that his menswear launch was a response to the way buyers would stock womenswear as menswear, prompting consumer frustration for improper fit and sizing, something that does not happen with knits.) Those of us who do shop across aisles have learnt to translate sizing and recognise which fits are adaptable from those which are not. For Autumn/Winter 2025, Rocha decided to fully commit to the menswear thing with a dedicated collection.
The learning from this genderbending game of fashion ping pong is that consumers will do as they please, and brands should be nimble enough to adapt. Such is the message from the 2025 Met Gala. That men’s fashion is becoming as crucial to a brand’s bottom line as womenswear, if not in terms of numbers then certainly in regards to exposure, and that what makes this work is when we collectively think expansively about gender rather than rigidly. Menswear used to be in autopilot, but that is the case no more — it’s been awakened by a few adventurous men and some very playful women.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
How menswear learnt to embrace the internet’s thirst
An impossible hire: Why Matthieu Blazy is the man for the Chanel job
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