The new menswear collections will be unveiled from tomorrow on - starting in London, continuing in Florence with the Pitti trade fair and closing with Milan and Paris. Yet there is something still genuinely missing in the ever-expanding menswear market – a proper technical magazine.
Menswear magazines are currently collages of naked/semi-naked women, mobile phones and other assorted tech gadgets such as uselessly huge headphones, grooming products, sex tips, and street pictures of men with beards and handlebar moustaches clad in retro clothes pretending of happily living in a tweed world. What I mean with technical magazine is a publication with cutting patterns. You think it wouldn't sell? Well, there was a time when such a publication was popular, and to prove it, I'm posting here the cover of the May/June 1952 issue of bi-monthly Italian magazine La moda maschile (Men's Fashion).
This magazine published in Milan was aimed at tailors and included therefore news relating to the European menswear markets, patterns, tips about textiles and materials and illustrations about the new collections.
The magazine mainly had an educational purpose and quite often launched competitions inspired by specific themes that were open to national and international tailors. The competitions were organised to prompt tailors to showcase their cutting skills and allow them to introduce innovation in their techniques and experimental details. Despite its title, the magazine also featured a few pages dedicated to women's fashion.
Maybe the time has come to sit down and ponder a bit about what kind of publications would genuinely stimulate the readers, rather than producing the next pile of useless trash.
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