Pink is not new, and has cycled in and out of masculine dress from 18th-century aristocrats to Miami Vice detectives. Irene Kim, Vogue Runway’s production and editorial associate, recently covered the J.Crew story for Vogue, digging into pink on menswear runways past and present. “Since the early 2000s, you can find plenty of hunky men wearing hot pink in our archive,” she says.
Even so, hangups have remained. “There is still a residual feeling for some that pink is more closely associated with women,” says Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute. This naturally influences brand behavior. Cristopher Nying, co-founder of Swedish brand Our Legacy, recalls a pink sweater the brand sold in 2009. To the creative director’s surprise, Oi Polloi, a well-known menswear retailer in Manchester, rebranded the color ‘men’s pink’. “They thought it would sell better to men that way,” he says. That kind of gendered marketing has become less common in recent years, and Nying isn’t drawn into the discourse surrounding it: “I just think it’s a beautiful color.”
Because of its nonconformist reputation, wearing pink can also take on a rebellious feel, signaling confidence in your own masculinity. “Younger male consumers are embracing pink as a kind of ‘confidence flex’,” says Frida Tordhag, fashion analyst at Heuritech. “Modern masculinity sometimes involves showing nonchalance toward gender expectations. It signals individuality and openness, and that’s becoming a style statement on its own, especially on TikTok and in streetwear communities.”
Pink has become a common sight on the red carpet for the same reason, with suits in shades of salmon to fluoro pink worn by everyone from Colman Domingo to Jason Momoa. Timothée Chalamet is another prolific pink-wearer, most recently rocking a vibrant pink cable knit underneath a baby pink Marty Supreme windbreaker from Nahmias, for the press tour of his film. “A good washed pink can help bridge this kind of balance between playfulness, but also feel clean and refined. It wears really well on skin and actually looks tough and cool,” says founder Doni Nahmias, who designed the collection with Chalamet.
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