The Future of American Menswear? It’s Up For Grabs

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the spring and fall fashion weeks. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Last Monday evening, a few hundred fashion industry shot-callers, plus enough celebrities to fill the belly of a blue whale, were sipping champagne in a wing of the American Museum of Natural History. It was fashion’s second biggest night, also known as the CFDA Awards, the annual Oscars of clothing organized by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Show Notes scored an invite to the cocktail reception before the Anne Hathaway-hosted ceremony got underway. There, I found Thom Browne fresh off the red carpet, in a tuxedo jacket and matching pleated skirt. It was apparently the first time he had ever donned one of his famous kilts. Browne is currently serving a two-year term as CFDA chairman, making him, officially, the top dog of American fashion. He’s got the hardware to prove it, too. In his twenty years in business, Browne has been nominated for umpteen CFDAs across the major categories (best designer in womenswear, menswear, and accessories), and he was up for menswear that night, which he has taken home on three previous occasions, the most of any designer.

Browne demurred when I asked about his skirt (he and Lil Yachty were matching). But he gamely sized up his competition, which included Colm Dillane of KidSuper, Mike Amiri of Amiri, Willy Chavarria, and Teddy Von Ranson. “Well, there’s definitely a new generation happening,” said the 58-year-old industry veteran, in pure Browne deadpan.

It’s not an age thing, exactly. Chavarria, the Chicano designer whose exaggerated tailoring is making waves, is only one year younger than Browne. What Browne meant is there’s a new guard knocking on the door. A group of upstarts with independent streaks and new-ish brands that are climbing the menswear ranks.

But as I looked around at the editors, designers, executives, and soon-to-be-off-strike actors mixing under the watchful gaze of a bunch of taxidermied elephants, I couldn’t help but think that we’d been here before.

America has tons of menswear talent. But there’s basically only one Thom Browne. Historically, all the energy in NYC and LA and elsewhere doesn’t translate to very many important, global luxury success stories. For every Thom Browne, Rick Owens, or even Supreme (CFDA winner, 2018), dozens of lauded indie labels flame out before they can become profitable, lasting businesses.

Will this generation finally buck the trend?

Colm Dillane thinks so. I caught the artist-turned-fashion designer walking through the crowd, mom on his arm. “I think right now those are the brands that are the most energized,” he said, of KidSuper and his rising peers, “and you have to be energized to compete.” One sign of that energy was draped over his other arm: an enormous overcoat from KidSuper’s single-season dalliance with Louis Vuitton, destined for the shoulders of Westside Gunn, running late.

But energy is not everything. One issue that has long bedeviled the NYC fashion scene is that it’s way easier to get hype in the press and on social media than it is to run a sustainable business.

“A lot of men’s brands in America in particular that have a lot of buzz, they fizzle out,” said Nordstrom Men’s fashion director Jian Deleon, swizzling a cocktail. “You’re wearing the exception,” noted Dirk Standen, the former Style.com editor and current dean of SCAD’s fashion school, pointing at my tuxedo by Emily Adams Bode Aujla of Bode (CFDA menswear winner 2021, 2022). But the exceptions are few and far between. You could almost sense the ghosts in CFDA brands past in the room. Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders was a CFDA star, as was Robert Geller. Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne of the now-defunct Public School hauled in awards for years. As brands, Tim Coppens, Orley, and Pyer Moss, winners all, now exist mostly as memories.

I asked DeLeon if he thought American menswear got a bad rap internationally, looked down upon by the snooty French and Italians. Could that hurt these brands? “I think there’s a difference between American fashion and American fashion shows,” he said. It’s very difficult for American labels to compete on the level of spectacle with the prize ponies in the LVMH and Kering stables. But, as DeLeon noted, it’s forced American brands to get really good at engineering other unmissable moments. “KidSuper and Amiri are mainstays when it comes to the NBA tunnel walk,” he said. “What those brands have built, their codes are dialed in, and they have a clear universe they want to present. Now it’s about, how do they keep it going?”

Mike Amiri is by far the strongest name in the new American establishment. His brand, founded ten years ago in Los Angeles, reportedly did $250 million in sales last year, and Amiri has a coveted official spot on the Paris Fashion Week calendar. This was his fourth nomination; so far he’s winless. But earlier in the evening, he let me in on a not-so-secret to his success: “For me, my metric is longevity, the marathon,” he said. Not how full his trophy case is.

Amiri instead modeled his business, which has risen meteorically on the wave of celebrity endorsements and a genuine commitment to showcasing Euro-style luxury through a West Coast sensibility, on Thom Browne, Tom Ford, and Rick Owens, he told me. “Those designers are consistently good, and they have consistently evolved,” he told me. In other words, it’s not about chasing buzz but about knowing exactly what you want to say, and not being afraid to change tack as the winds shift.

I suggested to Amiri that, all that being said, he must still really want to take home the silver CFDA statuette. He told me he didn’t write an acceptance speech. “My kids are like, You’re going up with KidSuper!” Mike laughed. “They have their own fashion heroes.” (He and Dillane are good friends.)

Around the room, Dillane was a popular prediction to win that night. “Now, you’re rewarded for new ideas. I don’t know if you always were,” said the former aspiring soccer pro, who has staged fashion shows in the guise of art auctions, comedy shows, and plays, and whose KidSuper designs recently found their way onto the avatar of American maleness, Travis Kelce. The French establishment certainly didn’t know what to do with Dillane when he first crashed Paris Fashion Week last year, and they still don’t. But in New York he was the life to the party. “I wasn’t expecting them to like my new ideas,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t. But sometimes they do!”

“They” could have referred to just about anybody in the house. One such power player, CFDA CEO Steven Kolb, explained that he’s fought to elevate new American talent at the helm of his post. “This is my 17th CFDA Awards,” he said, “and at the beginning of my career, it was always the same names. People would go—Oh, it’s always Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, but that has really shifted.” He stopped to take a photo with a third member of that American fashion Mount Rushmore, Tom Ford. Ford was the CFDA chairman during the covid era, and one of his main initiatives was to make the organization more diverse, and to support equity and inclusion in the industry. “When you look at the diversity of the nominees, it's much greater than it ever has been because of the programs we’ve done,” Kolb added, citing the CFDA’s work to get Chavarria on the New York Fashion Week calendar. “We’ve been there along the way for him.”

Chavarria, for his part, was both extremely gracious and totally unbothered when he arrived toward the end of the cocktail. “We’re gonna have fun tonight, and the simple nomination alone is really all I need,” he said, a massive satin boutonniere strapped to his bouclé coat. I asked him about his fellow nominees. “Honestly, I’ve been so busy that I don’t even know who the other candidates are, to tell you the truth. Don’t tell me—I’ll find out.”

Chavarria might not have ended up finding out at all, because he won.

The Calvin Klein alum deserved it, after a year where he staged two of NYFW’s most compelling and personal shows. But Willy Chavarria is still a small brand, with just a handful of stockists. Fellow nominee Teddy Von Ranson, who spent 15 years at Ralph Lauren, has less than 30K followers on Instagram. How will they end up at the CFDAs in another 10, 20 years?

I asked the man who would know. I expected Thom Browne to plug the CFDA’s programs or network, but then again, the designer understands what it actually takes to make it America. “There’s only so much that we can offer, and really try and support,” he said. “In the end, it really comes down to the designer to really do it. And do the work and know themselves well enough to make it happen. Because nobody can really make it happen for you. You have to do it yourself.”

See all of our newsletters, including Show Notes, here.

Originally Appeared on GQ