OPINION
In a year when the conservative pendulum swung, so too did a legion of emboldened men trying to reassert their (fragile) masculinity one button-down shirt and navy blazer at a time, writes Dan Ahwa.
Fashion has always provided something of a barometer of the times.
The hemline index is
In 2024 we had both Y2K skirt belts contest with ankle-grazing skirts that looked like they were plucked from Florence Nightingale’s closet, confirmation then that we do in fact live in chaotic times where the knife that separates progressive values and conservatism has plunged deeper.
But if it feels like conformity is trending right now, then the fashion industry should have seen it coming.
According to Vogue Business, Ralph Lauren, the arbiter of preppy, all-American WASP style, reported a 3% increase from 2% in sales to $6.6 billion, with revenue expected to grow 2 to 3% on a constant currency basis in 2025.
Fashion terms such as “quiet luxury” and “trad wives” have steeped into our reality this year, small examples of how the industry has generally been inching towards these more traditional forms of dressing for the past year.
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Advertise with NZME.Just this week, internet sleuths were quick to clock trad wife and content creator Nara Aziza Smith’s Mormon husband, model Lucky Blue, as a possible Donald Trump supporter, adding further fuel to the idea they’ve covertly been using social media as a way to reinforce hetero-normative values and Mormon propaganda.
If Aziza Smith’s display of serving her husband hand and foot in a full face of makeup and a gown was one example of regression in 2024 (some might see this differently), so too was the return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show after a six-year hiatus.
Despite its checkered history (the brand’s former marketing executive Ed Razek explained they’d never hire “transexual” models), this year’s showcase did its best to commit to the body-inclusive pivot it tried to install during those interim years via its campaigns and branding.
But it wasn’t enough. Plus size supermodel Ashley Graham’s inclusion, who made her debut for the show, still felt like a token afterthought to a cast made up mostly of the stereotypical Victoria’s Secret model of the past: impossibly tall, thin, and buxom.
Another step back in time was Trump’s election last week for a second non-consecutive term as President of the United States. The polarising results offer a sobering reality too: a larger share of black and Latino voters, most of them men, all turned up to vote for Trump, a significantly bigger number compared to 2020 when he lost to Joe Biden.
While it’s easy to be reductive in these instances, the majority of men in leadership with conservative leanings do look at ease in a navy, single-breasted suit.
Navy in general is widely recognised as the symbol of loyalty and wisdom, but a suit rendered in navy conveys something else. Slick vanity that provides an easy shortcut to trust. Unsurprisingly it’s a default for white men in power, like Trump or Christopher Luxon.
But the navy suit has become another symbol of conservatism – and in cases such as Nick Fuentes, the American antisemitic white nationalist provocateur and live streamer, a navy suit has been employed to offer a sober front to radical ideology.
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Advertise with NZME.Wearing his navy suit with a red tie and an “America First” cap in a recent video, Fuentes felt emboldened to declare that “men win again” further saying to women “Your body, our choice”, the dangerous anti-abortion catchphrase went viral this week.
Close to home, Act leader David Seymour’s controversial Treaty Principles Bill, is another example of a man using the mundanity of a single-breasted navy suit to help steer his agenda of a divisive proposal. Yesterday, during the first reading of the Treaty Principles there was Seymour wearing a single-breasted navy blazer, with too short cuffs, blue shirt and a red polka dot tie.
If the past four or five years have been centred on ensuring the “Brat generation” are understood and represented after losing much of their formative years to the pandemic, with high-profile figures such as Harry Styles, Colman Domingo, Timothy Chalamet and Paul Mescal offering a more sensitive, new age evolution of that early 2000s term metrosexual, the US elections proved that machismo – whether white, black or Latino – has presented its modus operandi of not only “taking back America” but also their unwillingness for equality.
The image of a clean-cut “virtuous” man in a shirt, tie, chinos and brown boots is a Western construct of piety that offers a soothing balm for men who are deeply unsure of their place in the world and who feel the need to assert their authority.
But progressive, experimental menswear isn’t entirely at a standstill – as we have already witnessed by the sports beloved by many alpha men; NFL football and its tunnel fashion along with Formula One style on the grid. Sports stars are able to cut through the noise of male fragility with a sharp talent for personal style and self-expression, whether it’s Lewis Hamilton in a Dior Homme boiler suit or NFL star Travis Travis Kelce in a glittering custom Amiri suit.
It’s easy to see parallels between conservative fashion and a return to conservative values, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the death knell of true, personal style. It simply means that now is the time for individuality to shine even brighter.
While smearing beef tallow on your face and investing in a pair of ironed chinos might be superficial indicators of a pendulum swing to a conservative bygone era, they are small details to the wider conversation about our identity in a critical time of change.
Individuality and authentic forms of self-expression through fashion are worn much easier on raging liberals who are adept at challenging the status quo. It’s territory that conservatives generally avoid because for them, fashion as a form of expression is void.
Because ultimately, a straightlaced suit is a symbol of conforming - not rebelling.
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