Men's lace



Pop magazine's 80's Excess Issue featuring Prada lace on its iconoclastic covers is out this September.



Only realized recently that the main pattern the collection uses is paisley.



Of all the patterns usually used for lace, I think this is the most masculine.



It gives designers and fabric manufacturers license to employ thicker embroidery for outlines. Flower appliques with the same fabric do not seem amiss. The webbing appears almost like pentagons.



The embroidery is as prominent as the lace. This fusion allows the fabric to be transposed from its traditions.



Surprisingly, the lace that Yohji Yamamoto used for his Spring 2009 collection was finer than Prada's.

Strong, revitalized lace for women and delicate fabric for men: the same medium to show female strength and male vulnerability.

I wonder how we'll see Yamamoto's lace in editorials.



These are two images from "New Big Prinz", an editorial from Arena Homme Plus #25: Post Pop, 2006.



Strangely, this type of finery lends an additional shadow to masculinity.



Now Givenchy. What I noticed more than the leather was the sheer fabrics, printed lace (or is it embroidered), the lace shirts, and the tattoos.





The rendering of lace in fuchsia, the hue of next season, seems to be another reversal: taking the fabric out of context to serve another purpose.

Admittedly, it looks good with cream.



Monochromatic statements aside, the collection presents a keen juxtaposition: tattoos under lace. As if to allay worries and assert that it is still a man under the fine weaving. But both are quite similar, though apparently opposite.



Both are forms of writing: one delicate and the other garish. Both are worn: one indelible on bare skin and the other a naked layer.



Can we all don both, just one, neither? Whichever, it depends how comfortable we are in our own skin.

Photos from The Fashion Spot, The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, and men.style.com