Fashion often borrows from the linguistics and familiarities of architectural design. In an article published on Domus back in 1950 and titled Architecture and Fashion, James Laver’s 1928 text Style in costume is used to compare gothic arches to medieval headdresses. In the current cultural discourse, architecture’s assimilation in fashion has opened multiple avenues of inquiry.
What is also notable about much of architecture’s presence in this sphere is how it facilitates menswear’s inclination toward utilitarianism.
Menswear in this context is seen as a broader mentality or mode of design rather than a binary label, for it can be worn on all bodies by all people whilst retaining its distinctive attributes across contexts. Given the western fashion system’s reference point system, particularly in the late capitalist context, decoding the references within menswear is derivative of utilitarian design such as military or workwear.