The recent Paris fashion shows for men revealed a quiet revolution in menswear.
At Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams sent models down the runway in Western-fringed leather, delicate lace shirts, and sun-kissed pastels — a cowboy dream softened by romance.
Over at Dior, Jonathan Anderson debuted his first men’s wear collection as creative director, which espoused what L’Officiel has termed a “soft rebellion”— reimagining the masculine silhouette with cravat-inspired collars, embroidered waistcoats, and fluid suiting.
Drawing from 18th-century dandyism, the result was an offering of almost devotional delicacy. And Celine, now under creative lead Michael Rider, revived the preppy wardrobe with a tender, youthful restraint.
In a world where the manosphere thrives on hardness, control and emotional denial, the runways offer a soft power: a vision of masculinity that is expressive, romantic and defiantly vulnerable.
These are aesthetics that go beyond “men in skirts” surface-level gender play familiar to fashion week. It’s an embrace of sensual textures, draping, lace, pastels and softness that resists the need to perform masculinity at all.
In direct contrast to the aggressive discourse igniting gender wars online and the rise of “the loneliness epidemic”.
It was barely eight months ago that Donald Trump delivered an upset, defeating Kamala Harris in the US presidential election, in a campaign Associated Press described as “dominated by masculine appeal.”
Meanwhile, a UK Netflix series titled Adolescence sparked a global conversation by tackling how young men can be drawn into toxic masculinity, and “incel” ideology perpetuated by online radicalisation. It exposed a culture-wide crisis of masculinity that few seem to have solutions for.
Here in SA, the crisis is evident in a stubborn trend of femicide that has received global attention. Fashion’s response has not been to meet this aggression with a harder edge, but rather to propose softness as strength, beauty as resistance.
While politicians posture and influencers peddle alpha-male archetypes, fashion imagines an alternative: that tenderness, nuance and vulnerability can coexist with power. The flowing blouses, pastel palettes and satin suiting seen on Paris runways are not mere decoration, they are acts of cultural defiance. They remind us that masculinity can, and must, evolve.
This evolution is not without friction. Much of the reactionary energy found in the manosphere is precisely that — reactionary. It is, in part, a backlash to shifting gender norms, a refusal to accept that the old archetypes of dominance, stoicism and brute strength are no longer the only scripts available to men.
Online, entire communities have formed around a sense of loss and confusion, leading many young men to seek identity in regressive forms of masculinity. But if fashion is often ahead of the cultural curve, it may also offer one of the few tangible blueprints for reimagining what masculinity looks and feels like in the 21st century.
By romanticising softness and embracing vulnerability, men’s wear designers are not simply staging an aesthetic intervention, they are participating in a broader cultural conversation. Their garments challenge the presumed weakness of emotion, refusing to accept that care, beauty and introspection are traits to be mocked or suppressed. A lace shirt or a draped coat becomes not just a fashion statement, but a subtle confrontation of societal expectations.
Moreover, this shift is not limited to high fashion. On red carpets, in editorials and increasingly in streetwear, we are seeing silhouettes loosen, colour palettes soften, and self-expression expand.
This shift is also reflected in the rise of Hollywood figures like Pedro Pascal and Colman Domingo, both of whom have embraced fashion as a form of emotional and aesthetic expression.
Pascal, with his fondness for soft knits, pastels, and gender-fluid silhouettes, has become something of a heart-throb not just for his acting but for his unapologetic tenderness. Domingo, often clad in bold tailoring and luxurious fabrics, brings a sense of theatricality and grace to men’s wear that challenges rigid ideas of black masculinity in particular.
Beyond the red carpet, perhaps even more powerfully, are the public figures, especially fathers, who are rejecting the script of traditional masculinity by standing beside their transgender children.
Dwayne Wade, the former basketball player and spouse to actress Gabrielle Union, has been vocal and visibly present in affirming his daughter Zaya’s gender identity. He has used his platform to model a new form of fatherhood grounded in empathy, openness and protection.
Marlon Wayans has spoken openly, often exposing himself to online ridicule, over his journey to accepting his transgender son, Kai. These examples suggest that the cultural conversation around masculinity is shifting not only in the realm of aesthetics but in the realm of values: what it means to be a man, a father, a public figure.
Fashion, as ever, is both a mirror and a map. It reflects the contradictions of the moment but also gestures towards what could be.
This embrace of softness, fluidity, and emotional honesty may seem small, but it matters. It suggests a growing appetite, among some men, at least, for release from the pressures of performance masculinity.
In this moment of global cultural anxiety, fashion reminds us that softness is not a synonym for weakness.
