Hedi Slimane and the reinvention of menswear

This article analyses the role of designer Hedi Slimane in shaping the development of menswear in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Slimane’s collections for Dior Homme in the early 2000s caught the imagination of the fashion press with their combination of a radically slim silhouette, precise tailoring and androgynous flourishes. Along with the commercial success he brought to Dior, Slimane catalyzed a renewed interest in menswear, the aesthetic he proposed acting as a prototype for men’s fashion throughout the decade. By contrasting Slimane’s slender, ambiguous and self-consciously elegant look with the sporty muscularity of the 1990s catwalk, the article explores the shifting nature of male identity in the new millennium as fashionable men found new ways of consuming their masculinity.

This article was reprinted as a book chapter in 2019, as McCauley Bowstead, Jay (2019) Hedi Slimane and the Reinvention of Menswear. In: The Meanings of Dress. Fairchild Books, New York, pp. 34-38. ISBN 9781501323942