For the men too young to embrace “dad style,” might we suggest Alexander Wang’s Fall 2018 collection? Wang has taken the CEO trope that populated his Fall 2018 womenswear collection and applied it to his menswear, only with a much younger spin. Here is a lineup of collegiate-bro, finance-major staples—the football jersey, the rugby polo, the flannel pajama pant–as-actual pant—remade with Wang’s own tongue-in-cheek eye for taste so bad it’s good. Images of classic cars splash across tees. Fraternity lettering, with its elongated Greco-Roman serifs, spells out “Alexander Wang.” A bright satin bomber jacket in rah-rah cobalt is layered over a drinking Buds topside white turtleneck with a nautical monogram.
Styled all together on a male model with the scruffy facial hair and knowing smolder of a Sunday morning college regret, the uniform could look a little costumey, like a parody of the bad-boy, white-dude masculinity that much of American culture is trying to run away from. But it’s hard to deny that some of summer 2018’s A-list schlubs are dressing almost exactly like this, from Justin Bieber to BDE poster boy Pete Davidson. As such, there’s a sort of Trojan horse appeal to Wang’s latest for men. Will those not crushing sixers with the guys pick up on it?
