“If you can’t dress well cheaply, then you can’t dress well at all.” That’s the pithy one-liner that menswear creator Elliot Duprey’s followers will sometimes parrot back to him on the streets of New York, after recognizing him from his videos. The 25-year-old menswear influencer produces content rooted in educational style advice that often focuses on timeless brands like Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani, and has rapidly amassed over 500,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram since 2022. “When people see that intro, they’re like, ‘OK, now I want to pay attention,’” he says.
Duprey is part of a wider shift in the menswear-influencer sphere, as more men seek out content that equips them with fashion and styling knowledge from relatable personalities with credibility. While the space used to be dominated by fit pics, now the ecosystem is richer and deeper, with tailoring obsessives, archive bros and Ivy League-style disciples all battling for attention alongside plugged-in menswear podcasters like Throwing Fits and Pair of Kings.
But with more content than ever to sift through, and what feels like a new brand launch every day, the current menswear space can be overwhelming (even for me, and I write about it for a living). Advice that tells consumers which brands to buy and how to wear them, all while being entertaining, is the current holy grail of menswear content. Doing a good job of that, however, requires some priming.
Here’s what creators and brands need to know to cut through the noise in 2026.
No longer a niche
Today, more men are taking an open interest in fashion, but they’re unsure of how to participate, particularly as styles shift away from streetwear into more sophisticated, unique looks, experts agree. “There’s a growing fashion-consciousness among men,” Katie Devlin, fashion trends editor at Stylus, told Vogue Business earlier this year. “But as styles mature, it’s become trickier to know where to begin.” This has led scores of men to seek style advice on anonymous forums like Reddit. But a new wave of influencers, like Duprey, are well-positioned to step in and fill the knowledge gap, with explainer content that keeps their audience informed on what to wear and how to wear it.
It follows that Duprey’s aforementioned “If you can’t dress cheaply” series — which focuses on building stylish outfits for under $100 — was a key engagement driver over the last year. Menswear customers often feel underqualified or lack confidence when getting into fashion, and appreciate the kind of advice that prevents them from making embarrassing mistakes. “Men want to have a formula or a rule book that limits the complexity of getting dressed every day,” Duprey says.
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“The [menswear influencer] space has undergone a real transformation. It’s broader, more self-assured and far more community-driven,” says Thomas Walters, chief innovation officer at London-based digital marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy. “Where womenswear thrives on reinvention, expression and rapid trend rotation, menswear centers more on confidence-building. Guys are no longer looking to creators solely for aspiration; they want guidance and cultural context.”
As men increasingly seek advice, attention is shifting from traditional influencers to people whose careers lend them authority. Stylists, in particular, are primed to capitalize on the blurred lines of what it means to be a creator in 2026, says Tal Chesed, director of management agency The Wall Group, which signed Troye Sivan’s stylist Marc Forné in September 2025. “The days of paying a stylist to post a new bag or pant are long gone,” he says. “Now, a stylist can curate a story with a brand, for example, working on-set to generate content for how to style the piece, posting that content, and showing it in their daily life or even on their clients.”
The expansion of the playing field has also brought much more opportunity for non-traditional collaborations, from NFL players dressing up for tunnel walks to menswear podcasters posing in campaigns or partnering on capsule collections. “There’s space for newness to really emerge. Where it was the traditional blogger before, we are now seeing new influential voices,” says Sofia Corti Maderna, senior digital director at communications agency KCD.
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KCD recently worked on a linen suiting campaign for menswear brand Bonobos that featured Joe Santagato and Frank Alvarez, hosts of The Basement Yard podcast. This translates to hard sales: the campaign drove the most new customers the brand had seen to date, up 43% on the same month a year prior.
The reason it worked, says Maderna, is because it was timely. “I want to emphasize that the bread and butter of this is timing. It’s not just any [talent], it’s who’s trending right now, and why? What is the cultural conversation? You want to strike while the iron is hot,” she says.
Death of the OOTD
While the menswear influencers of yesteryear could coast along by just being handsome and getting dressed, today’s menswear consumers have much deeper expectations. Brands, too, now expect visual storytelling, saveable content and a clear path to purchase, all delivered with charm and charisma. “OOTDs and dressing well aren’t enough anymore, [menswear] creators need to integrate fashion into a broader narrative. Creators need a recognizable voice, a community and a clear cultural lane,” says Billion Dollar Boy’s Walters, adding that longer-form reviews and behind-the-scenes content drive trust in a way short-form can’t compete with.
Creators are feeling the shift. “The more unique and informative your content is, the better chance the algorithm will pick it up,” says Loren Fizer, who posts styling advice and product recommendations to his 43,000 Instagram followers. His most popular content includes outfit videos with long, thoughtfully written captions that detail what he’s wearing. “Reels have been more of a go-to instead of static images, but there’s no promise of consistent reach. You just have to work around it and keep posting content that’s reflective of your personal voice.”
Nolan Daniel White, a Montreal-based creator who has built his audience on content that spans everything from gift guides and product recommendations to vintage store tours and interiors, is planning to do more longer-form videos. “I’m finding that audiences want longer, more meaningful content,” he says. “Simple inspiration or aesthetic isn’t enough anymore, folks are looking for nuanced opinion, storytelling, education and meaning.”
Showcasing your own outfits to the audience hasn’t died, but it does require more imagination than before. Mark Boutilier, a New York influencer who mixes wardrobe tours, showroom visits and brand guides with comedy, likes to poke fun at his profession. One of the influencer’s recent videos featured him shooting his “summer shoe rotation” in a performance of influencer-ception, exposing the absurdity of influencing while inviting us to laugh with him.
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Albert Muzquiz, a mustachioed, millennial Tom Selleck lookalike with 402,000 Instagram followers, wrote across one of his most successful videos of 2025: “Clocking in at the brainless GRWM influencer factory to pay for my fashion history YouTube series.” The reason these videos resonate isn’t because the style in the videos is aspirational (though that helps), but because they build relatability and trust by bringing the audience in on the joke. “I have to put a twist on it to stay sane and also to maybe prove to internet strangers that I have more than one brain cell,” says Muzquiz, who is also planning to do more long-form content. “You can only generate ‘hot takes’ for so long on short-form before you get exhausted. I’d rather meet cool people and read weird articles on JStor and then turn that into a mini-doc about workwear or something.”
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From the attention economy to the trust economy
For many brands, follower count is of declining interest; they now want guys who can embody their brand in a way that feels true to life. Brands are increasingly interested in ‘real’ guys who have a full life outside of their social media presence — especially when their work or expertise aligns with the brand’s core values.
This tracks with a broader move away from household luxury names in menswear, toward brands like Auralee and Evan Kinori that are gaining cult status for their thoughtful design, meticulous fabrication and rejection of influencers.
“The look or the following is like way down the list in terms of the priority of who we’re collaborating with,” says Nicholas Ragosta, who co-founded slow fashion brand Stoffa with Agyesh Mandan. “More often than not, it’s someone we’ve come across because there’s a value alignment with what we do. They happen to look good in the clothes, but I think that shines much more because of who they are and what they do than just a physical appearance thing.” The brand recently collaborated with Louis Easton, a Los Angeles-based gardener who operates plant delivery service The Plant Mon. “If we can center the work of some other people and celebrate our clothing at the same time, it’s a joint win,” adds Mandan.
New York-based brand 3Sixteen has a similarly community-focused approach, and avoids paid posts entirely. “On occasion, we have gifted products to content creators, but it’s honestly quite rare. The relationship always came about organically when they were already customers and speaking passionately about the brand,” says founder Andrew Chen. “Overall, I like to think that the people we choose to work with have depth and reach that help our brand get in front of people who would appreciate it.”
There’s also an opportunity for creators to build more tangibility and trust by doing things offline: in 2026, Boutilier is planning hosting more IRL events in New York and beyond, as well as collaborating with brands on products. A recent belt he made in partnership with leather goods brand Maximum Henry sold over 120 units at $200 a pop on a pre-order basis. “Content is great, but doing things in real life can be refreshing,” he says.
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A real-life feel is important in content, too. With the rise of AI, it’s easier than ever to produce ‘good’ content, “which means originality matters more than polish”, says Walters. Reuben Larkin, a London-based musician who has garnered over half a million followers across Instagram and TikTok for his nostalgic tailored looks, says that brands he has partnered with in the past have requested that he photoshop creases from his suits in posts. He finds this approach out of touch. “I think having the imperfections is very important because then it means people can imagine themselves wearing the clothes rather than it being all pristine and stuff,” Larkin says. “That’s why they come to someone like me.”
That originality, however, often comes through in the creator themselves, and the knowledge, credibility and relatability that they have built over time. As menswear audiences evolve and mature, the creators that thrive will be the ones who take content that is serviceable and accessible without being patronising. One of Duprey’s most-watched videos was simply about how he ties his tie (in a four-in-hand knot, in case you were wondering). “It feels silly, but at the end of the day, almost 500,000 people watched it,” he says. “So what do I know?”
