Is looking like your mother’s sister the next big thing for guys?

By Ray Zhang

Amid news that Big Bang has renewed their contract with YG Entertainment, I came across, for the second time, this photo of the band’s lead singer G Dragon. I look at his make-up and get-up, and I found myself wondering why.

Of late, in fact, I have been seeing some strange looks adopted by my fellow men. At first it was the handbags. These clearly refute the prefix that once made fashionable carryalls acceptable for guys to be seen with: man. From the Hermes Roulis to the Loewe Heel to the Jacquemus Le Petit Chiquito to the Dior Saddle, I’ve seen them strapped on male shoulders and bobbing on male hips. Sure, Dior now has saddle bags for men and, prior, Fendi has made masculine the Baguette, but these sacs can’t escape their handbag genesis.

Then came the clothes. I am not referring to unisex garb with strong feminine vibes or even skirts or fake skirts—skorts. These days, it appears that men are not only raiding their sisters’ closet, or their wives’ (which the observant could tell is so last decade—but early adopters do go back to the ’80s, such as Stanley Zbornak, Dorothy’s former husband in the Golden Girls), but also helping themselves to a wealthy aunt’s expensive, barely-visited  wardrobe.

When I came across this photo last month of G Dragon expressing his fashionable self, I thought the poor guy was suffering from some post-army traumatic-stress condition (he completed his national service last October). Then I saw it again recently, and I sensed he’s communicating something. He was at the Chanel couture show in late January, and was photographed wearing Chanel in a way old ladies of means in the ’70s might have. Call my thinking outmoded—and this is where I get incendiary—but this look is frumpy. I’m unsure of the silhouette too. Could you have guessed that a (presumably) trained soldier inhabited these matronly clothes？

G Dragon in Chanel is, of course, no longer news. By now a young man in clothes once associated with women of a certain age is as much a dichotomy as guys in make-up. Apparently joining all that is looking dowdy. Back in 2017, Big Bang’s lead singer was a model for the Gabrielle, a bag that was designed to be a ‘classic’ and breathed, in all honesty, moneyed matriarch. But I didn’t think he’d go this far. I can’t decide if this was a mimic of the entrants of Golden Age Talentime (黄金年华之斗歌竞艺) or just an embodiment of Chanel’s materteral aplomb in the springtime of life.

Photo: Getty Images