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Getting Street Smart

If women this season can look forward to frills, flounces and flowers, and given that the lines that divide the sexes when it comes to fashion appear to have blurred, where does that leave style-seeking men this summer? Pretty well-dressed, if the evidence is anything to go by.

Textile manufacturers are now making the same fabrics for designers of menswear as for women's collections: textures like shantung silk, chiffon and the lightest wool crepe - previously considered too feminine for men's dressing - are beginning to appear in masculine collections.

It is much the same with prints, colours - even shapes. The computer-graphic motifs so beloved of the jersey-wearing set are showing up on casual men's shirts; the egg-yolk yellow denim that might once have been unthinkable for men is now surfacing on store shelves.

Menswear designers maintain that the current state-of-play in their field is not so much an adherence to androgynous influences as a statement of individuality.

Certainly, as corporate rules in some quarters relax and more men work in 'virtual' offices, members of the male species are beginning to shed the dogmas associated with the way they dress.

By now all Armani-ed out, sartorial self-expression is a component of being a Renaissance man.

But even the most stylish men maintain that the line has to be drawn somewhere.

A delicate ruffle on the edge of a woman's neckline is perfectly apt this season; put the same on a man's shirt - no matter how subtle the effect - and images of Liberace are promptly conjured up.

Body-consciousness and an almost overt sense of sexuality are strong elements in menswear this season.

Shirts are made of the airiest fabrics to cling to the body, jackets are nipped in at the waist for an edgier and more street-wise look, trousers are flat-fronted and often slung low on the hips.

For most men, however, a particularly graphic tie is about as experimental as they are prepared to get.

The fact that international menswear collections are now being given the same prestige and media attention - and are starting to generate almost as much hype - as the women's high-fashion shows is proof enough that men's fashion is being seen as much as a premier style scene as an industry.

A new hybrid, the male supermodel, has started strutting on catwalks in fashion capitals. And everyday, an increasing number of up-market salons are offering 'beauty' treatments for men - although these therapies are usually billed as 'anti-stress' remedies: put that down to a fragile thing called male pride.

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