Ready to Wear Goes Ready to Work: Fashion Therapy with Symonne Torpy
Images by Joachim Touitou
In her new monthly column for LBB, Symonne Torpy, self-appointed Fashion Therapist in Residence deconstructs your sartorial frustrations, one season at a time.
Opinion writer, fashion journalist and associate creative director at BETC Etoile Rouge, Symonne lives and works in Paris, where she enjoys infiltrating every corner of the fashion world while wearing extravagant hats.
This month, stretch out on the Fashion Therapist’s chair and picture yourself in the front row for Men’s Fashion Week F/W 2024.
Ready to Wear Goes Ready to Work
Men's fashion week follows the runway back to the boardroom
As the lustre of Fall Menswear 2024 recedes behind the stomp of an ever-fantastical Paris Couture Week, what remains? This season, the big Houses’ eye on masculinity left us with an existential crisis. Weaving their way into the complicated zeitgeist around what work and manhood truly mean in an AI-threatened, post-covid, gen z-value-driven world, brands delivered the relative 'comfort' of corporate-core.
Prada riffed on 'Human Nature' via the dichotomy between the cliché office cubicle and the organic world, asking us to confront the cultural fishbowl of our existence, while making neckties desirable again. If offices are truly the human biome, may we inhabit them dressed in Miuccia and Raf’s joyful pops of colour. And with Prada swimming caps firmly on our heads, may we happily swim through the last age of human relevance before the ogre of Artificial Intelligence becomes powerful enough to sink humanity itself.
Prada Menswear F/W 2024, 'Human Nature', asked us to confront the cultural fishbowl
At Valentino, 'Le Ciel' was an albeit beautiful pretext for integrating blue into a sober ready-to-work offering. With Pantone snapping at Valentino’s heels every season, the signature color approach made absolute brand sense. And every suit will be happy to embrace the iconoclast styling pleasure of hoodies layered under Pierpaolo’s tailoring - an effective transitional wardrobe compromise between at-home slothfulness and in-office formality.
Valentino Menswear F/W 2024, 'Le Ciel', made its next Pantone play
At Louis Vuitton, Pharrell’s musings on the working cowboy brought us in touch with a blue-collar sensibility, dressing the complicated history of the Wild West in the even more complicated contemporary story of the white-collar behemoth that is LVMH.
Louis Vuitton Menswear F/W 2024, 'Virginia is for LVers', transported working cowboys to the City of Light
Sabato’s Gucci became Now Suitable for Work, with ties layered over bare chests and sexy tailoring. After all, Not Suitable for Work can’t possibly continue to exist, since we all gave up on pants last season. But what are the men going to carry in their oversized Jackie bags? Perhaps their continued desire for a work-life balance? Who cares? I want a giant Jackie too.
Gucci Menswear F/W 2024, 'Ancora', went Now Suitable for Work
Givenchy served up what can only be described as 'sad' - with models’ attitudes capturing the malaise of the last work-from-home stragglers forced back to the office. This collection was more ready-to-flee than ready-to-wear, maybe a mediation on the mood surrounding the recent departure of the divisive, yet visionary creative director, Matthew Williams.
Givenchy Menswear F/W 2024, served malaise wrapped in suits
Even JW Anderson could not escape the corp-core fervour, pairing an Eyes Wide Shut-inspired aesthetic with nylon stockings, a vestige of the traditional office that once purported to liberate women from the strictures of domestic life.
JW Anderson Menswear F/W 2024 brought stockings back to fashion
As we delve deeper, it's evident that contemporary fashion is echoing a profound societal introspection. Post-covid, our relationship with work has blurred significantly. There's a growing ambivalence – do we crave the office cliché, or are we mocking it? The return to the bureau and the revival of office-centric fashion underscore the performative nature of our lives. Marching in step, organisations have become obsessed with designing Instagram-worthy spaces to lure us back into our concrete cocoons. The act of working is starting to overshadow the work itself. Without the tropes of a modern workplace to structure our days and bring meaning to our lives, what are we really?
Perhaps too, the industry at large is responding to its own capitalist dependence on work. The fashion class is sending a not-so-veiled message to its audience: work, make coin, and please don’t stop spending it on workwear to make even more of those necessary euros. If this message is loudly trumpeted from every side of the industry, maybe the fashion world can deafen the commentary about overconsumption threating our existence too.
The runway has spoken: man will march back to the corporate citadel. Suit and tie are both armor against and emblem of an uncertain masculine future. But do clothes make the man, or do they unmake him?
