Who Needs Color

Who needs color?

I’ve been talking a lot recently about how color is one of the big trends right now in mens fashion. Well, it’s not just me – everyone has been talking about colour. -Crayon bright- color is what I heard someone describe it as recently, which is cool way of describing exactly how vivid and eye-catching the use of color is on the runways and catwalks of the world as well as in our favorite high street stores. This season is all about colour. But then there’s white. It’s a bit of an interesting dichotomy and I’m not going to pretend to really understand it, but at a time when we’re seeing a lot of colour and contrast in mens fashion, we’re also seeing a lot of designers devote their collections on outfits that are just monochrome visions of white. This is not just a summer separates thing, this is white upon white in different textures and fabrics. White as the opposite of all things colour. What confuses me a little bit is that sometimes we are getting it in the same collection – a string of crayon bright colour vibrancy and then boom, this is how we do it in white. In this article we take a look at how you can make bold statements in white.

Getting spiritual?

V magazine (which I love) recently ran an editorial looking at the white trend in mens fashion and concluded that it reflected a nod to -spiritualisation- in menswear. I’m not totally sure that I get the soulful feel from an all white ensemble, but check out this amazing jacket from Air that was featured in the shoot by Ben Lamberty and modeled by German model Bastian Thiery who is featuring in a lot of editorial work at the moment.

Snow leopard camouflage

I really love Ksenia Shnaider’s white on white camouflage effect used in the FW14 collection. This is a label from the Ukrainian husband and wife team of Ksenia Marchenko and Anton Schnaider – she’s a fashion designer and he is a graphic designer. Their current collection is kind of a blend of military uniforms, sportswear, camouflage, and white. All bang-on trend right now. Genius.

White can be wrong

An all white outfit can be a bit of a challenge to wear – any time that I’ve attempted it I seem to spill coffee or red wine, sit somewhere without first checking that it’s spotlessly clean, or order spaghetti bolognese. Apart from those practicalities, there is also the risk that you look like you have just escaped from some sort of psychiatric facility or a science fiction movie from the 1970s. All of these problems seem to have been embraced by new label MER (a collaboration from Federico Frotto Scuttie (an Italian from Uruguay) and Attila Lajos (from Hungary) – their connection is that they both studied in Vienna. Their SS15 collection is beautifully conceptual and features a lot of white on white, but somehow it screams science-fiction psycho more than street-smart swagger.

Celebrity Styling

You don’t have to look too far beyond the gossip magazines to see a lot of our favourite male celebrities effortlessly rocking the all white look. From Soulja Boy to Kanye – everybody is doing it.

Embrace your summer style god and step out set to dazzle in an all white ensemble. Just don’t order the spaghetti bolognese.