Recent victims of shrinkflation have included butter, mouthwash and teabags. The next casualty? Men’s shorts.
In-seams are rising with retailers reporting a surge in interest for short shorts featuring a 5in and even 3in inside leg measurement. Now the trend is having a knock-on effect on swimwear. This week, GQ magazine posed the question: “Are Straight Guys Ready for Speedo Summer?”
Google searches for Speedos are up 41% year on year in the UK, while the swim brief category is up 17% globally.
The fashion stylist Luke Day, who owns more than 50 pairs of swimming briefs, isn’t surprised. “Shorts have become so short it’s like: what is next? The answer has to be swimwear.”
It’s not even June but already a so-called thigh guy summer is well under way in Europe. Earlier this week, the actor Alexander Skarsgård appeared on the British breakfast TV show Lorraine in a pair of checked shorts with a 5in in-seam from the designer S.S. Daley. Curtseying before host Ranvir Singh, Skarsgard said: “I wanted to be sexy today.”
Elsewhere, the latest edition of the art and design magazine Cultured, stars the 53-year-old White Lotus star Walton Goggins on its cover, manspreading in a pair of canary yellow Speedos.
Some are calling it the Mescal effect. Five years ago, the Irish actor Paul Mescal became a household name after his role in the TV drama series Normal People. But it was a photograph of Mescal wearing a pair of micro shorts, snapped when leaving a supermarket in east London, that really thrust him into the spotlight. Overnight, shorts were shortened.
This season’s catwalks were dominated by short shorts with versions appearing at Gucci, Hermès and Dior. Celebrities including Harry Styles, Pharrell Williams, Jeremy Allen White and Donald Glover have all channelled John Travolta in Pulp Fiction with maximum leg-bearing short shorts. Now the trend is going mainstream.
On Thursday, Marks & Spencer launched its summer campaign, which positions a pair of banana-printed swim shorts with a 3in in-seam as a wardrobe staple. At John Lewis, bestsellers in its short category include 5in in-seams from Under Armour, while it is micro shorts from Paul Smith and Lacoste are trending in swimwear.
Day’s preference for short shorts predates Mescal and Gucci by a decade. “As a gay man I feel we are often pioneers of trends. I’ve been wearing short shorts for 10 years. But now straight men are wearing them. They want to show off their thighs.” He credits the boom in popularity to a wider interest in health and wellbeing. “The biggest flex at the moment isn’t a designer item. It is your body. People want to show how hard they have been working out.”
Orlebar Brown, a British resort wear brand whose swim shorts have been worn by everyone from Hugh Jackman to David Cameron, offers four different in-seam lengths ranging from 6in that hits just above the knee to 3in that grazes the upper quads. Its chief marketing officer, Trevor Hardy, says the shortest style, called the Springer, is “already becoming more prevalent this year” among its customers. “Men are becoming more adventurous. Even the most non-fashion conscious man is dressing with more confidence.”
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Brief styles are mandatory at French swimming pools and commonplace on Italian beaches but a rise in cold swimming and sauna culture is also fuelling interest in the UK. Traditional trunks cannot be worn under wetsuits. Briefs and tighter fitting swim shorts also absorb less water making them more suitable for moving between plunge pools. In Australia, yellow and pink styles from AussieBum are a go-to.
Speedo’s new Jetstream collection takes inspiration from the 1980s with drawcord briefs measuring 3.5in, compared with the 13.5in fit of its standard training briefs.
For first-timers taking the plunge with briefs, Day recommends choosing a thicker fabric and sizing up. “You want a bit of room. It’s not about compression.” But his biggest tip is not to make a big deal about them. “I hate when someone walks out and everyone is like ‘Oh he’s got budgie smugglers on.’ It’s like: what year are we living in?”
