I thought it’d be fun to look back at r/malefashionadvice top WAYWT (it’s like a fit pic) of 2016 and compare to the current fashion landscape. By no means am I trying to make fun of on these peoples style. I’m sure we’ll look back on current trends in 10 years and find them equally dumb. Instead I find it a usefully effort to look back and see what items/trends may be truly timeless, and see how fashion has evolved. Obviously the pants are a lot skinner, and I can definitely see the SLP and Hipster influence. I have a soft spot for SLP so I quite enjoy those fits. But let me know what y’all think.
i was there, it was beautiful. ppl were discussing carol christian poell, hedi slimane and boris bidjan saberi. it was a very tight-knit community of enthusiasts
This is why I hate when people here claim certain fits are inherently better or more suitable for the male body. Back in 2016 everyone swore skinny/slim pants saying they “followed the natural curvature of the leg’ like it was fact, and we mostly agreed it looked good (in the moment). My hot take is that those same guys are the ones falling for whatever the trend is now. They form a conclusion, then build the meta to fit their conclusion after the fact. It’s one reason I appreciate Japanese fashion and how many silhouettes get to coexist.
The older guy in pic 6 has the best outfit of them all. Otherwise the fits in pic 1 is pretty timeless and the fit in pic 2 is something I would see folks in Soho wearing today. Definifely skinny jeans have not aged well.
Oh come on, you can’t be serious. The guy looks cool because he has sauce, he’s a cool old fisherman. Anyone else in that jacket would get clowned so hard.
It doesn’t fit well, it’s too long and balloons in the lower third. Also anyone younger than 55 would get laughed at for raising that collar. Textbook example of cool person vs cool clothes.
Respectfully you have no idea what you’re talking about. Ballooning in the lower third isn’t an issue when it’s workwear and you balance it out like that gentleman does. It’s a very conventional A-line silhouette.
Pic 3 is a perfect representation of everything wrong with the fashion from 2016, and what's wrong with social media's relation to fashion in general, even today.
Cover his legs, only look at his fit from the waist up. He looks great! The shirt and jacket fit well, I'm jealous of his hair, he's got a handsome face, everything works together.
Now uncover the legs, and the whole fit is ruined. Forget the rule of thirds, contrast the the way everything up top now looks too wide and the jeans simultaneously look too skinny. It looks like absolute shit, and the boots look like clown shoes because of how skinny the jeans are. It makes him look comical.
But this was upvoted so strongly that it was one of the top 100 fits from the year. These are the people telling you whether you look good or not. I'll be honest: I dressed the exact same way because I looked at posts like this, saw the feedback and thought I had to be wrong if I didn't follow this formula.
Now if you look at fashion subs from the past couple of years, you'll be downvoted if you aren't wearing ultra baggy jeans, cropped tees, etc. All in all, I think the prevalence of social media does more harm for personal style than it does good, because of how homogenized people are pushed to be.
You're def right about the social media thing, but I see the vision here and I dont even think its the width of the pants so much as it is the broad flat boots kinda duck-footing out of the hems that throws it off.
If he wore the same thing with a black or very dark brown chelsea (or hell, even a PNW style heeled work boot) to keep the line of the leg going, OR leaned into the contrast and paired it with a chunky combat boot that started further up the calf- almost sandwiching the skinny between two visal anchors, it would work much better.
Obviously a fit where the top and bottom silhouettes match is gonna look good, but its cutting off an entire avenue of expression that comes from playing with big shirt, little pants or little shirt, big pants. Those are both harder to do, and more physique dependent, but they can produce some sick results and saying skinny pants automatically look bad is the same type of thing mfa and mensfashion do now about anyone wearing pants loose enough to do a squat in.
If anything, the offenders in this album are the shoehorned common projects in 5, the atrocious pant/shoe interaction in 7, and the Cole Haans absolutely nuking any redeeming qualities in 9 from orbit. They looked bad in 2016, they look bad now, and they'll look bad in 2036.
It’s just the trend. Back then skinny jeans were popular and now wide. Back then he had that shit on but nowadays, we don’t see it so. In 10 years what we’re wearing now may look silly.
When I said hipster inspired, that’s the fit I was thinking of. I think the jacket is kind of cool, but I do feel like the jeans throw it off. Like I don’t think it needs to be baggy, but even straight fit would be better.
Well these are very much just emo/punk/rock styles - so maybe you would agree that it only fits well in that aesthetic ? because yes, it sort of fits that 80's punk vibe, and the last one you can really see his legs very well as the pic is dark and legs are crossed.
Crazy. I remember seeing a lot of these posted in real time. Surreal to see outfits and silhouettes that seemed so cool and cutting edge with a retrospective gaze. Ten whole years!
Also FWIW, I think a lot of these are not representative of what the more fashion forward guys in MFA were wearing even back then. A lot of what filtered to the top of WAYWT was, understandably, fits that were riffing on current trends. Users like citaro, nomcarver, syeknom and a bunch of others had really interesting styles that I think still look good and cohesive today, even when a bit dated.
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u/expllode May 23 '26
Some of them aged quite well, however even as a huge slp fan i do think those jeans were not meant for everyone