Dressed to kill

SOMETHING curious has happened to menswear. At the men's shows for spring/summer 2009 the mood has been one of bullish flamboyance.

The shows have effervesced with ideas and often shocks.

Each night there were parties, sometimes two competing, with the brands spending huge budgets just to give a show of confidence.

Then there were the prices. You want a fairly average-looking bag rendered in blue crocodile? It's there, at Gucci, with a starting price of BD23,928.53.

A by-product of this is the feeling that you're looking at the upcoming wardrobe of a different financial bracket. Often at the collections the question is less 'what am I going to wear?' than 'what are they going to wear?'

Dolce and Gabbana's show of polka-dot scarves and silk pyjama trousers seemed aimed at the man who'd got out at the top of the market, and is now biding his time on permanent vacation until the economy gets so bad he'll start buying low and be on his way to his next billion.

With this collection, the designers defined a new point of aspiration: no longer just celebrity, but also the man who can ride out a financial storm.

It is this market that obsesses the ex-Gucci designer Tom Ford. Now working under his own name, last week he reported sales budgets 100 per cent ahead of forecast for his first year in business.

He refuses to hold a catwalk show, relying instead on his clients as a marketing tool. These clients happen to include Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig.

The latter was already wearing the suits in public before it was announced that Ford would dress him as James Bond in the forthcoming movie Quantum of Solace.

These statuesque men in their double-breasted suits have been behind a return to grown-up tailoring away from the more boyish silhouette of recent times.

What annoys the fashion industry most about Ford is that they didn't think of the idea before. He only needs to kit the wardrobes of a few men to make profit, luring them to his store with displays of extraordinary excess.

Ford held a wild party during the Milan shows, on the same night that his old label Gucci hosted its own fragrance-launching affair. Many snipe at the work of that label's designer, Frida Giannini, whose collection went all tropical with an overall sense of pale blue, but Giannini knows her market is the luxury consumer, not those curious about fashion.

Miuccia Prada prefers to intrigue rather than go for the easy sell. For the first time in recent memory, she sent out a collection for men as fully rounded as her work for women.

The show, which most thought the best of the week, had all the challenges and complications she likes, while also being a pleasure for men to wear rather than a humiliation. Last season she sent out models in peplum belts over trousers that were essentially tiny strips of flaring-out skirt.

At Burberry, British designer Christopher Bailey made a strong and fresh stab at the menswear market, recently overshadowed by the success of his women's bags and shoes. He consolidated his menswear by offering the sort of clothing that pushes men's buttons, like the simple coats that took the flattering tones of the house trench and rendered them in shortened, unlined and often purposefully crumpled shapes.

In Paris the biggest buzz has come from the Japanese. Junya Watanabe sent out reversible jackets, the best of which were rendered in gingham. At Comme des Garcons, Rei Kawakubo had large, black polka dots printed on sellable hoodies, while down below most of the male models wore some form of kilt or skirt over trousers. The latter is fashion to mull over, if not necessarily to wear. But if you don't have the money to afford it, mulling is all you'll be able to do.