Couched so often in irony and camp, the idea of 'genuine chic' has been absent from menswear for quite some time. Tom Notte and Bart Vandebosch of Les Hommes felt the time was ripe for a revival. They picked the right moment, given the surge in the urge to dress-up that has already become a dominant feature of the winter menswear collections.
Dress up for Les Hommes this time evoked a multitude of masculine reference-points. There was a Deco echo to the wide torso and narrow hips, an air of Pulpish thirties and forties masculinity, via Antony Price's seventies retro-futurism. Price of course referenced the fifties heavily - where else could the pumped and preened Kari-Ann have come from, the postmodern reincarnation of a Vargas showgirl splayed across their eponymous debut in ruffled pastel acetate-satin? Notte and Vandebosch couched their look in the seventies reclamation of that era, with more than a touch of Montana and Antonio Lopez to their boys. Montana's heyday was revisited in slim leather trousers with a touch of volume at the hip, and in tonal hues - head-to-toe camel and deep burgundy were particular hits. Lopez would have loved their oversized berets - sharp and stiff like a stylised sketch already rather than an actual garment, tilted at a jaunty angle atop carefully coiffed locks.
This wasn't an exercise in retro, however. In fact, what Montana, Lopez, Price and the postwar years all have in common is an unashamedly masculine silhouette, that timeless, triangular torso. Confidence was key for Notte and Vandebosch: not only in that emphatic silhouette, but in their treatment of fabrics. Knitwear resembled snakeskin or piled-up around the neck like oversized cabled cravats, Perfecto jackets were reconfigured in shearling, bombers cut in python. It'll take a confident man to pull it off with quite the dash and swagger of the models on the catwalk, but the luxury of these pieces can find a home with any discerning homme. Those berets, meanwhile, should be gracing every other editorial come September.