First New York Men’s Fashion Week is a nod to a growing industry

Big-name labels Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors and Polo Ralph Lauren will rub shoulders with up-and-coming designers such as Thom Browne and Michael Bastian at New York's first men’s fashion week, which begins on Monday.

Michael Kors is among the high-profile designers presenting in New York. Andrew Kelly / Reuters

New York plays catch up with Europe in launching its first men’s fashion week on Monday, a four-day showcase for American spring/summer 2016 collections in a rapidly expanding market.

Big-name labels Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors and Polo Ralph Lauren will rub shoulders with up-and-coming designers such as Public School, Thom Browne, Michael Bastian and Rag & Bone.

Designers will present more than 50 shows mainly at the Skylight Clarkson studio in trendy West Soho.

The menswear market is champing at the bit for recognition after being drowned out for years by the biannual fashion weeks in New York, which feature hundreds of womenswear shows.

“American menswear has never been stronger or more creative,” says Steven Kolb, chief executive of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

“New York Fashion Week: Men’s” will now be held twice a year, in July and January, following established events in London, Milan and Paris.

Kolb calls it “an opportunity to demonstrate the collective talent of an important segment of our industry”.

Patricia Mears, deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says interest has picked up in recent years for menswear.

Bloggers have led the way in driving interest, filling a void left by the fashion press and travelling to Europe to see the shows.

“With so much interest, a huge number of American retailers, bloggers and followers, it just made sense that that needed to happen here,” she says.

Menswear has seen phenomenal growth in the past six years. Sartorial tastes are more developed than a generation ago. And all sectors of the market – luxury, casual and discount – are buoyant, according to experts.

From 2009 to 2015, online sales of men’s clothing in the United States grew at an astonishing average annual rate of 17.3 per cent to US$9.6 billion (Dh32.2bn).

In-store sales in the US grew at an average annual rate of 4.1 per cent to $10.9 bn from 2010 to 2015.

“The women’s clothing market right now is really saturated,” says Will McKitterick, a senior analyst for the business intelligence firm IbisWorld. “The men’s market is actually growing.”

IbisWorld projects that online menswear sales will continue to grow at a rate of about 14.2 per cent a year in the next five years.

“The millennial generation is coming of age, the male population is a little more fashion-savvy than the previous generation, so that means there’s a whole new market that is untapped,” says McKitterick.

“It definitely signals that companies are paying attention to what’s going on in terms of style and there’s a much more rapid evolution of the industry than there has been in the past,” he says.

Beyond the glut of womenswear shows, American designers had another problem with the traditional fashion week. September was too late. Buyers order men’s collections in July, when the European shows are held.

Some American designers, therefore, shuttled across the Atlantic to get greater visibility and to fall in line with the buyers’ calendar. Calvin Klein, for example, has already shown its men’s collection in Milan.

Mears says men’s fashion week would particularly benefit talented designers such as Bastian, who would be otherwise overlooked in September.

“This is going to do more for him – the press will pay more attention, and summer time is kind of nice,” she says. “It generates a different kind of energy than September showing.”