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Move over, denim. The fashion forecast from Milan says leggings for men will take the globe by storm this fall. This month male models showcased cotton and wool leggings in violet, forest green and fog gray on a runway in Milan, one of the world's leading fashion capitols. Marni, an Italian clothing design company, debuted the collection. "Unconventional but sophisticated," said Consuelo Castiglioni, Marni's creative director, to Fashion Wire Daily backstage after the show. Arguably, Castiglioni draws more devoted followers among card-carrying fashionistas, editors, critics and stylists than any other designer, Fashion Wire Daily reported. Marni, founded in 1994 by the Castiglioni family, holds a reputation for creating clothes for markets receptive to cutting edge, innovative design. Men and women have voiced their skepticism about Marni's new menswear collection, saying leggings are only suitable for athletics, lounging around the house or as thermal underwear beneath a pair of jeans not wearing them out to a bar. But Rick McMahan, founder of RSM Distributors in Barre, Vt., has been wearing and marketing leggings for years. 50 percent of his customers are men, he said. "I've worn them as casual wear for years - out to dinner with my wife, hiking, shopping, to the dentist, to the barber shop - and a friend of mine said, 'Let's sell these things,'" McMahan said. "When I decided to market leggings in 2001, I coined the name UnJeans." Men wearing form-fitting legwear goes back before the middle ages when men and women wore similarly tailored clothing. As men's shorts became increasingly shorter, stockings that were generally worn underneath grew longer and more visible. These leggings reached to the hips and were attached to undergarments with ribbon. Tights became a fashion statement among men during the Renaissance. Men wore them to show off their well-toned legs. And European men popularly wore tights as a casual accessory during the 16th and 17th centuries. McMahan said he is confident the style will persist even though leggings have lain dormant as a trend in American men's clothing for centuries. "It's the 21st century," McMahan said. "[It's time to] ditch the denims, bag the baggies and leave the body image constraints behind." McMahan posts leggings success stories on his Web site, www.unjeans.com. "My husband and I received our UnJeans-medium for me, large for him. We followed the instructions to wear them without any underwear, [and] both said at the same time - 'YESSSS!!'" a customer wrote. "Plus my husband looks so hot [in leggings]." Courtney Spring, textiles, apparel design and merchandising senior, said that since leggings were a success among women's accessories, she is not surprised the style has trickled over to Italian menswear. Spring said men's leggings will take off across seas, but "LSU's campus is pretty conservative - actually very conservative." "While some guys [on campus] do the whole tapered-leg thing, I don't really see them [wearing leggings] unless they're gay or hipster," Spring said. But self-proclaimed hipster Jeremy Baptiste, music education junior, said he is wary the trend will stick even in the hipster community. "I wear the fitted jeans on a regular basis but never tights," Baptiste said. "I just couldn't see myself being comfortable in them [because] they show a little much. Leggings have never been as unisex as much as tight jeans." Osahon Abbe, electrical engineering sophomore, said American men rarely change their dress. "When was the last time guys had a change in fashion?" Abbe said. Abbe said the trend will probably only spread to Europe. And James Richardson, electrical engineering junior, said that if leggings do catch on in America, they will only survive in the nation's fashion capitals. "I could see it in California and stuff, New York - they try anything up there," Richardson said. "But not here in the South." McMahan said that if form-fitting legwear for men does not become the big trend that Marni has predicted, his customers will still stay loyal to leggings. "We'll continue to wear them," McMahan said. "I'm aware of people's comments both negative and very positive. [But] if more people, women and men, wear leggings, then it will just be another apparel choice."
----- Contact Leah Square at lsquare@lsureveille.com
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