Chris Cotonou

During my first job at an advertising firm, there was a palpable disdain for suits amongst my colleagues. For a newly appointed copywriter, fresh out of university and hooked on Mad Men, wearing a suit seemed like the sensible thing to do in the office. But to the Generation-X creative director I was now working for – perhaps having been forced to wear a suit for most of his earlier career – it was an unwelcome relic of the past. He set me straight in my first client meeting. I bought a cheap two-piece from the high street, hoping to make a good impression. Ten minutes before we sat down, he pulled me to the side, wanting to know if I could find anything more ‘relaxed’ for next time: 'the suit is a bit… pompous,' he added.

There’s a movie scene forever etched into the minds of young adults. It’s probably as vivid as our parents’ recollection of the moon landing, or Maxwell House ads. In American Pie, hopeless high-schooler Jim decides to copulate with an apple tart. You don’t think he’s going to do it, but he does. And then, because the filmmakers know we’re on the ropes, they show us the mangled remains in the dog bowl. It’s also a moment that truly embodies the ‘gross-out Teen Comedy’, Hollywood’s fleeting junk food binge that began with the release of American Pie in 1999 to Road Trip, 10 Things I Hate About You, all the way up to 2007’s Superbad. More in the bawdy tradition of Animal House or Porky’s than Breakfast Club.

If you are on social media, you have probably scrolled past a hundred photographs of Harry Styles’ Grammys performance last week. It was eccentric, quirky. And Styles donned his much-touted androgynous swagger.  The media and menswear magazines keep insisting that Styles’ fashion choices are groundbreaking and are setting the tone for a new generation of men. Following the performance, tweets and articles have been shared celebrating Harry’s modish liberation from a sea of monotonous Don Drapers. All because he wore a furry green scarf.  What Harry is doing, said one commentator for a large men’s magazine, is redefining. Redefine. I hate that word… Once you’ve defined something, hopefully you already got it right.