Men abandon sloppy styles in favor of elegance, quality

NEW YORK -- Men are taking a long overdue look in the mirror, and many don't like what they see. How could they have thought that wrinkled pleated chinos and shapeless shirts ever counted as fashion -- or were even attractive?

Clothes don't quite make the man, but some men -- especially 20- and 30-somethings -- are realizing they can help, especially in the confidence and self-esteem departments.

Tom Ford, the former Gucci designer, is making his return to the fashion world first with a self-branded line of beauty products that he says will include some specifically made for men, and it's likely that when he does return to ready-to-wear it'll be with a men's collection.

His own suits, almost always black and worn with a crisp white shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, are custom-made by a tailor in London.

"We [men] are ready for elegance, quality and luxury," says Ford, who's noticed teenagers wearing pinstripe suits trying to emulate the glamour of the 1920s and '30s. "Men want their turn. I love getting dressed up. You hear people say, 'I wish I lived in the 1950s when everyone got dressed up.' You know, you can do it today."

"Guys need direction, but they are cleaning up," agrees Todd Snyder, J.Crew's vice president of men's design. "That messy look of five years ago is finally going away."

Maybe men realized that tailored clothes are more flattering, adds Bruce Pask, style director at Cargo, a men's shopping magazine.

Thanks to increased attention from the fashion industry and the media, men have access to more ideas about wardrobe, Pask says, and men do like to be armed with information before they embark on a shopping expedition.

Men are reluctant to ask for guidance from salespeople in the same way they are reluctant to ask for driving directions, says Pask: They either think they know better or they are embarrassed to admit that they don't.

Gap hopes to solve that problem with a collection called FundaMENtals that suggests complementary and interchangeable combinations of pants, jeans, shorts, blazers, shirts and Ts for different occasions.

Men's clothing also evolves at a much slower pace than women's, so when men do find pants they love, they often can go back the next season and it'll still be there, just in a different fabric or color.

Wearing that one favorite piece encourages men to be a little more experimental with the rest of their outfit, Snyder says. "Guys need something they know -- jeans, chinos, oxfords -- that grounds the outfit."

For example, at J.Crew, pink and lavender T-shirts are best-sellers -- ahead of blue ones. Snyder thinks it happened because the colors are fashion-forward, but the shirt itself is quite familiar.

Meanwhile, two "classics" from a bygone era -- the madras print and seersucker fabric -- are making comebacks.

Speaking about madras, a colorful patchwork plaid, Paul Wasserman, director of merchandising for Haspel, says, "I think once it starts, it's just going to take off. It's colorful, you can wear it with T-shirts, jeans, khakis. It crosses over to many occasions, and it's very fresh. It hasn't been around since the '50s and '60s, so it's 'new' to this generation."

He also expects men to embrace seersucker because it's a lightweight, relaxed fabric that is now being used in slimmer silhouettes. "Seersucker has a little more attitude to go with it now," he says, which is appealing especially to younger men who take their fashion cues from music stars.

Haspel has been making seersucker suits since 1909, and it was one of the first manufacturers to do a semiconstructed suit, which is again a trend almost a century later. Cargo's Pask indeed does name an unconstructed cotton blazer as a must-have for this season.

Pask says a man's fashion identity really comes across in his "third wardrobe," the one he wears to dinner, on a date or to a club.

Cargo magazine regularly surveys a group of 4,000 readers and found in a recent poll that 85 percent of them feel that how they look is important to them, and they're willing to spend time and money to make sure they look their best. The same number of men also said they spend more money on themselves now than they did five years ago.

Practicality is what loses out when men become more concerned with aesthetics. Cotton Inc. reports that over the past decade the number of men who say "looking good" is their top concern when buying jeans increased to 33 percent from 26 percent, while "being practical" dropped to 61 percent from 70.

"[The fashion industry] used to think casual Fridays would be a whole new category, but it proved to be confusing. It was a marketing vehicle that didn't really work -- men aren't willing victims of marketing plans," Pask says. "But there is a lot of interest in clothes for any social activity. ... It's just more fun to buy this kind of clothes. And it's when men want to look good, look sexy and be attractive to others."