The beginning of the essential male muse

by Elsa de Berker

Although often reluctant to declare their muse, the evolution of male fashion has unveiled the sartorial choices long underpinning menswear and its inspirations.

From Yohji Yamamoto musing Bob Dylan to Paul Smith quoting Daniel Day-Lewis, and Thom Browne with the architect David Biscaye, boy inspired Birkins, and all of their trimmings, are fast pushing past the romantic ideals of the archetypal female fashion Goddess and muse.

Furthermore, with gender rapidly becoming irrelevant (think the androgyny of Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens and unisex YSL collections), the prominent, omnipotent and unsuppressed Adonis’ of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Caravaggio are making a clear and hardened comeback.

Take, for example, Baptiste Giabiconi who was first seen closing Chanel’s Spring 2010 highly publicized barnyard romp with Freja Beha and Lara Stone all that time ago, and has since clearly cemented his place as the hottest male muse - being crowned season after season as ‘the new Gisele’ by none other than Mr. Karl Lagerfeld himself.

The ultimate abstraction of man

Alongside David Gandy, Sean O’Pry, Chuck Bass and Jamie Dornan – to name but a few, Giabiconi embodies the ultimate abstraction of man - marking the end of masculine style stagnation and the beginning of the essential male muse.

However, all is not as it seems, for running alongside this ‘essence of man’ is an altogether different, albeit confusing, trend in males who act as muses, and at times even models, for female fashion collections.

With his rosebud lips and high cheekbones, Andrej Pejic is one such model. Closing for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Couture show in Paris earlier this year, to the unknowing front row spy, Pejic was the epitome of a fresh-faced supermodel – tall, lithe and with flowing long locks – sashaying gracefully down the catwalk in a meticulously embroidered bridal gown.

Rewind a couple a days and one could barely recognize him strutting his stuff down the runway for menswear.

So with all this gender confusion, one can only ponder the question, where does this muse-ful muddle leave body-conscious men and women?

With 30 year-old women already attempting to ‘Dukan’ their way to a pre-pubescent body, and a noted increase in male anorexia sufferers citing the pressures of fashion and the media as causes, isn’t it time, as artistic as it may be, that there was a concerted effort to stop promoting such unrealistic, and quite frankly bewildering, body ideals?