Paris Fashion Week says ‘Loosen up man’!

Time and time again while covering the men’s components of Milan and Paris fashion weeks we touched on it: that dominant, relaxed aesthetic that men who are tired of the crotch hugging, thigh squishing feel of the overt skinny cut have to look forwards to amongst autumn / fall 2011 fashions. And beyond. Men’s fashion simply doesn’t move so fast that one can peg these forthcoming emergence of relaxed tailoring to a sole season, nor even a year, and while we already know we’ll see it amongst spring 2012′s fashions it’s highly likely that we’ll also see this interpretation of men’s fashion feature amongst throughout all of 2012.

 relaxed fit for men is, of course, nothing new and we’ve spoken on it before and given a physiological understanding of why it’s still a chosen look as well as a fashionable look. Loose layering, drop crotches and baggy jeans have been with us for some time now. But a line has to be drawn in the sand. The relaxed cuts of past years are distinctly different from the relaxed tailoring we’re about the encounter. One could rightly argue that this new men’s trend evolves from the old, but they are certainly not one in the same.

While the seamless shoulder is one of the hallmarks of the relaxed men’s tailoring trend, the deep shoulder seam / dropped shoulder works equally as well. Sitting somewhere between the sack shoulder and a seamless shoulder, the deep shoulder seam features a stitch line that sits off of the shoulder, with the overall appearance given that the jacket or coat’s shoulder is oversized. Sometimes the effect is subtle, as is the case with the double breasted Ermanno Scervino overcoat, at other times the seam sits much closer to the bicep, as is the case with the half sleeved sweater / jumper from Raf Simons.