At the Spring/Summer 2027 menswear shows, the male body seemed to be pulled in opposite directions. Some of the season’s narrowest tailoring appeared on exceptionally lean frames, while elsewhere exposed skin and abbreviated silhouettes drew attention to bodies shaped by muscle. One ideal was elongated and almost weightless, the other visibly built. Between them, surprisingly little space remained for the bodies most men actually have.
The contrast arrives at an interesting moment for menswear. Designers have spent recent seasons loosening many of the conventions once attached to masculinity, allowing tailoring, sexuality and gender expression to become considerably more fluid. Yet the physical ideal presented on the runway has proved much harder to broaden.
The figures make that imbalance difficult to dismiss as a matter of perception alone. Vogue Business examined 2,741 looks across 64 Spring/Summer 2027 menswear shows and presentations in Milan and Paris and found that only 0.2 per cent were shown on plus-size models. After seven seasons of tracking menswear, plus-size representation has remained between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent since Fall/Winter 2025.
The conversation surrounding men’s body image is therefore not simply about the return of skinny tailoring or the growing visibility of muscular physiques. It concerns the increasingly narrow territory between them, and what fashion communicates when such a limited range of bodies continues to carry an otherwise expanding vision of menswear.
Skinny is back
Bodies and clothes have always shaped one another. The broad construction associated with parts of 1980s menswear gave way to very different ideals in the decades that followed, from the lean minimalism of the 1990s to the skinny tailoring that became inseparable from Hedi Slimane’s influence in the 2000s.
Spring/Summer 2027 does not simply repeat those periods, though something familiar can be found in the changing proportions. After several years in which oversized clothing allowed the body to recede beneath generous volumes, tailoring is moving closer again. Lower rises, narrower trousers and second-skin pieces place considerably more emphasis on the physique beneath them.
At Prada, the effect was particularly pronounced. Vogue Business described the season as the emergence of an ultra-slim silhouette, while British GQ style editor Mahalia Chang noted that the return of skinny fits was accompanied by models who were themselves notably slim. Harrods buying manager Yasmin Mehmet similarly identified a move away from oversized silhouettes towards more tailored shapes and a renewed emphasis on the body.
Designing around a narrow silhouette is not inherently problematic, any more than an oversized silhouette is inherently progressive. But when similar proportions appear repeatedly across collections, the distinction between a design choice and a broader physical ideal becomes less clear. Fashion does not simply determine how clothing should fit. Through repetition, it inevitably contributes to ideas about the body expected to wear it.
At the other extreme
It would be easy to interpret the return of very slim models as another revival of an older fashion ideal, but the SS27 season presented a more complicated picture. Alongside increasingly narrow silhouettes, another body was becoming more visible, highly muscular, lean and frequently emphasised through exposed skin or close-fitting clothes.
Vogue Business observed more muscular models across the season and connected the development to the growing cultural visibility of looksmaxxing, an online movement centred on intensive physical self-optimisation. The influence extends beyond muscle itself, encompassing a much wider preoccupation with facial structure, body composition, grooming and the possibility of continually improving one’s appearance.
Menswear therefore appears to be moving between two very different physical ideals. One is elongated and exceptionally thin. The other is built, defined and meticulously conditioned. Neither represents most male bodies, yet both occupy increasingly prominent positions within contemporary visual culture.
Social media intensifies that coexistence by placing runway imagery alongside fitness content, celebrity transformations and communities devoted to physical optimisation. The body becomes part of the fashion proposition itself, something to dress but increasingly something to shape, monitor and refine.
Jack Sunnucks, executive editor of Dazed, described the SS27 season in terms of a relentless encounter with idealised male forms, whether muscular or skinny. His observation points towards a broader change in the way masculinity is being represented. Clothing remains part of that construction, but physical appearance is taking on a more explicit role within it.
Missing from the picture
Between those two ideals sits a far broader range of male bodies, very few of which are regularly represented on luxury runways.
The imbalance predates the current season. In early 2025, nss magazine examined 131 menswear collections and recorded only ten appearances by plus-size male models. Half involved recognised artists rather than conventional models, complicating the extent to which those appearances reflected a sustained change in casting practices.
More comprehensive data points in the same direction. For Spring/Summer 2026, Vogue Business found that 98.5 per cent of menswear looks in Milan and Paris were presented on straight-size models, while plus-size representation accounted for just 0.3 per cent. By Spring/Summer 2027, that figure had fallen to 0.2 per cent.
Designers including Louis Gabriel Nouchi, Willy Chavarria and Doublet have repeatedly cast bodies outside conventional menswear standards, proving that a broader approach is possible without requiring collections to surrender a distinct visual identity. Yet such casting remains unusual enough to attract attention whenever it appears.
That rarity says something about the bodies fashion considers neutral. Larger models are frequently discussed through the language of diversity or representation, while thin bodies are allowed to appear without their size becoming part of the story. A genuinely broader approach to casting would perhaps be reached when seeing different bodies on a runway no longer requires explanation.
Bodies in the feed
Earlier generations generally encountered runway and campaign imagery through a relatively limited number of channels, whether magazines, billboards, advertising or stores. Social media has radically changed the context in which those images are consumed, placing fashion inside an almost continuous flow of visual information.
The SS27 conversation therefore unfolds within a digital culture already preoccupied with physical optimisation. Looksmaxxing communities dissect facial proportions and appearance, while fitness imagery, celebrity bodies, runway photographs and fashion campaigns increasingly occupy the same feeds. GQ has documented the movement’s migration from internet subculture into fashion itself, including the appearance of figures associated with extreme self-optimisation within runway contexts.
An exceptionally thin runway model might now appear immediately beside a muscular fitness influencer, followed by a celebrity transformation or an advertisement shaped by another physical ideal. Images that once belonged to relatively separate cultural spaces are experienced together, often without much distinction between editorial fantasy, commercial aspiration and ordinary life.
Fashion cannot be held responsible for the wider culture surrounding body image, nor does it operate independently from it. Its casting and styling choices emerge within the same visual environment as these changing ideas about masculinity, absorbing some of its preoccupations before returning them through the polished language of campaigns and runway imagery.
More ways to dress, fewer ways to look
Over recent seasons, designers have considerably expanded the vocabulary of menswear. Conventions surrounding tailoring, sexuality and gender expression have become less rigid, while clothes once clearly divided between men’s and women’s wardrobes increasingly move between them. Contemporary menswear can be romantic, exposed, delicate, severe or deliberately ambiguous without demanding one fixed performance of masculinity.
Body diversity has developed at a different pace. Many of those possibilities continue to be presented through a relatively consistent range of physiques, creating an unusual disconnect between the freedom proposed by the clothes and the physical parameters surrounding the people chosen to wear them.
The contrast is particularly relevant because individuality has become such a persistent idea within contemporary fashion. Designers encourage increasingly personal interpretations of masculinity, yet the visual framework through which those interpretations are presented remains comparatively uniform.
Representation in this context is not simply a matter of reaching a numerical target. It concerns whether the expanding definition of menswear is reflected not only in what men are invited to wear, but in the bodies fashion allows to inhabit those clothes.
The sample-size problem
Runway casting cannot be separated from the practical realities of producing a collection. Garments are developed around samples, proportions matter to construction and a fashion show is not expected to reproduce the demographic composition of the population.
Yet samples and casting reinforce one another. When collections are consistently produced around a narrow range of measurements, the available casting pool inevitably follows those proportions. If those bodies then remain the established runway standard, there is little structural incentive to develop samples differently.
The consequences extend into retail. Sophie Jordan, menswear buying director at Mytheresa, told Vogue Business that slimmer silhouettes, lower rises and the gym aesthetic had proved challenging for customers, with some brands seeing a direct negative effect on return rates. She also pointed to continued conversations with brands about extending their larger sizes.
These practical considerations complicate the familiar opposition between creative freedom and representation. A wider range of bodies does not necessarily require designers to compromise the construction or identity of a collection. In some cases, it can reveal more about the clothes, showing how cut, proportion and fabric behave beyond the single physique around which the sample was originally developed.
Who is luxury actually dressing?
Luxury fashion has never promised to reproduce everyday life. Distance, aspiration and idealisation remain part of its visual language, and a runway serves a different purpose from a catalogue of clothes designed to represent every potential customer.
Yet the people buying menswear exist across ages, proportions and sizes that remain largely absent from the imagery surrounding the products they are invited to desire. As luxury places greater emphasis on craftsmanship, personal expression and the relationship between a wearer and a garment, that absence becomes increasingly difficult to separate from the commercial reality of dressing customers.
A person can want fantasy from fashion without expecting a runway to resemble the street. But there is a difference between fantasy and exclusion through sizing, particularly when the clothes themselves are unavailable to a substantial part of the audience attracted to them.
Tomo Koizumi told Vogue Business that oversized silhouettes had allowed him to find garments that fit, while expressing concern that a return to smaller proportions could make that more difficult. Mytheresa has similarly identified opportunities in extending menswear sizing at European and Japanese brands.
The question is therefore not whether luxury should abandon aspiration in favour of literal representation. It is whether the image of elegance it constructs needs to remain attached to such a narrow range of bodies, especially when the customers sustaining the industry have never looked quite so uniform.
Neither thin nor muscular bodies become problematic simply through their presence on a runway. The concern is the limited space left for almost everything between them, particularly after several seasons in which measurable progress in menswear size representation has remained minimal.
Spring/Summer 2027 brought the male physique closer to the centre of the clothes through narrow tailoring, exposed skin and increasingly polarised proportions. Against that backdrop, Vogue Business’s finding that only 0.2 per cent of the looks it examined were shown on plus-size models becomes particularly significant. It suggests that while the fashionable male body may be changing, its boundaries remain exceptionally tight.
Menswear has spent much of the past decade reconsidering how masculinity can be expressed. Designers have dismantled traditional tailoring, crossed established gender divisions and challenged conventions that once determined what a man was expected to wear. Extending that same curiosity towards the bodies inside those clothes would not require abandoning aspiration or creative direction.
Fashion has already opened the question of how many ways a man can dress. The discussion now developing around body image asks whether the same breadth of possibility can apply to the men themselves.
May