Even if you scarcely know French, the title underscores the obvious: “Le Grande Maitre de la Frisure a la Mode.” Yep.
Despite all the evidence from the Minnesota State Fair, men are supposedly dressing better. GQ recently offered that the newish term “metrosexual,” meaning a modern man who looks after his appearance, is already all but extinct as such habits have become mainstream. We’re all metrosexuals now.
Right. One look at the fellows in the “Fancy Pants” exhibition at the MIA suggests we have a ways to go to equal the bold looks of the past. In recent times, only M.C. Hammer (top right) has come close to equaling the majestically fancy pants of the Burgundian Nobleman (top left) featured in the exhibition.
Ready to do business with this guy, the city fixer? No, you aren’t.
And although beards may be back, no one has given much thought to the top of the head. Wigs, for example. Imagine the possibilities, like the admittedly caricatured Marge Simpson style disrupting bird traffic in the drawing at right. A noggin ripe for the guillotine, perhaps, but the point can’t be argued: Only Donald Trump comes close to bringing such battiness back to the belfry. The male pate remains open for business.
How Minnesota men stay warm, with award-winning craftsmanship.
There is hope, however. One fashion making a pseudo-comeback is perhaps the most unlikely: the codpiece. Google it and be terrified. Which is probably the reaction men were going for a few hundred years ago when they clamped these metal jockstraps over their family jewels and let them hang out. As curator Tom Rassieur says of the imperious consul at left (“George von Roggenbach at age 38”), “No need for ostentatious display of gold chains when you’re endowed with potency like this. Just a glint will do.”
So where else has the codpiece been spotted, aside from venues we aren’t allowed to mention? The Minnesota State Fair (right), where a Scandinavian sweater take on the short-lived tradition won over the judge and perhaps a new generation of boldly attired men.