No Pants, No Problem: How Menswear Is Embracing The Return Of Skin

It is perhaps the clearest and most direct through-line one can draw to show how the streets have inspired fashion designers in recent years.

In the summer of 2024, fashion content creators called it the season of the smutty little short. Here was a brief moment where the 5-inch in-seam was no longer the scandalous measurement of a man’s shorts, but a growing norm amongst male fashion insiders who dared to flash their pegs.

And the patron saint of it all? Paul Mescal. In a series of viral moments, the Gladiator actor cemented his status as the poster boy for short-shorts; never mind that actors like Chris Pine and Jacob Elordie have also donned similar shorts in the years before, and have set conservative Internet critics aflame with their boldness to show anything above their kneecaps.

For Mescal, the first moment came when he was papped on his way home from the gym. Here was an everyday-looking man, doing something so ordinary like picking up a salad after a good workout. The not-so-ordinary? His shorts. It was hiked up more than a palm’s length above the knees. Then, at the Gucci spring/summer 2025 show in Milan, he rocked up to the venue in yet another pair of short shorts. This time, it was a neat little white pair that sat in full view, thanks to his blue poplin shirt unbuttoned all the way up to the navel. One fashion critic on social media wrote that he looked like he had just gotten out of bed, whilst social media was alight over Mescal’s limby look.

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“I’m a big advocate for men wearing shorter shorts,” Mescal says with a knowing sense of cheekiness and wry humour in a TikTok video at the show. To date, the video has been viewed over a million times.

Now, nine months later, the trend—fully gestated across the major runway presentations—will undoubtedly reach you as they make their way into boutiques this month. This isn’t a wardrobe that is hiding its sexual nucleus as short shorts, sheer flimsy things and midriff-baring separates are all on the menu.

This predilection for sexiness in clothing is far from new. The earliest example was seen in 1871, and according to the standards of that time, when American tobacco companies started using scantily clad women to sell their cigarettes. We’ve seen Tom Ford’s infamous male g-string when he was designing for Gucci; Jeremy Allen White igniting thirsty tweets over lounging in his Calvin Kleins and so on. Just last month, Boss released an ad where David Beckham dropped trou while getting wet and soapy in the shower.

Yet the difference between the concept of sex as a selling tool, and the return of skin on the runway is this: where the former is used as a commercial mechanism, the latter feels like an opening of a dialogue on what we find to be sexy for ourselves today. As we know, Gen Z shoppers have pushed cropped tops and tiny bum-baring shorts en masse for years now. To them, it’s far more freeing to wear whatever they want to wear, than worry about whether they are scandalising prudish commuters on the subway. Then, there’s also a study by researchers from the University of Wroclaw who noticed that survey participants were more likely to admire healthy legs. Now, do you see why short shorts are back and bigger than ever?

Returning to the discussion of the runway, shorts were in over 700 looks presented in New York, Milan and Paris, allowing male shoppers to dip their toes into the sexiness of it all in the easiest way possible. The most convincing cases came unsurprisingly from Sabato De Sarno’s final menswear collection at Gucci, where tiny little shorts were worn underneath long leather coats in pink or olive tones, or with printed caban shirts unbuttoned and worn underneath roomy leather coats. At Fendi, Silvia Venturini Fendi took her menswear collection back to school in a preppier direction. There were plenty of logo-patched blazers, schoolboy checks and loose shirts for an ease that will bode well for the hot months ahead. To seal the deal: 26 looks—almost half of the collection—saw these bookish outfits teamed with shorts.

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Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez, who run the popular Tom + Lorenzo style blog and podcast, said it best in the matter of short shorts and its rising popularity. Fitzgerald remarked cheekily: “Too many people are too hung up on whether men should show a little skin, and we think everyone needs to lighten up and let the breeze hit them where it never gets to. The Earth is on fire. Let the guys cool their pins off.”

But what if it didn’t just stop at shorts? For Dean and Dan Caten, the twins behind the DSquared2 brand, it certainly went further. Sure, they have had their share of shorts—leather booty-length ones with front laces, or studded with gold grommets—but they took the whole “sexy man” thing several notches higher. The Caten twins are known for their unblushing approach to fashion, so they tapped onto another of the season’s big trends: the return of all things sheer.

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Sheer is a fascinating trend as far as erogenous trends go, simply because you can be so covered up and yet show so much at the same time. For the Caten twins, the lace shirts and organza tees shaped like basketball jerseys will be a hit through this summer’s many music festivals. In Paris, the last collection that passed through Dries Van Noten’s own hands gave shoppers a more grown-up way of wearing sheer. Where the Caten twins courted the sweaty nights in Berghain, the Van Noten army of sheer looks will appeal to those who prefer to hang around the Uffizi Galleries instead.

The way that Van Noten deployed his use of transparency was masterful. It came as trousers to be worn with sharp suiting or velvety cardigans that looked like they emerged from the closet of a rockstar in the ’70s. There were sheer shirts paired with high-shine coated jackets, tulle wraps shrugged over double-breasted jackets, and a flamingo-coloured trenchcoat cut in organza to show the graphic seamlines.

Even Prada wanted in on the sensual action. For Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, their Milan spring/summer 2025 show was about celebrating the optimism of youth, and the careless freedom that we lose as we age. Here was a collection of bright pops of colour, shrunken knits, haphazard layering and the glory of the bared midriff.

Prada’s collections are often an exercise of intellect to dissect and suss out what Simons and Mrs. Prada are trying to convey. Yet here, the message is simple—stop overthinking, just wear that crop top you love. After all, shorts or no shorts, sheer or opaque, core-flashing or not, it all comes down to one thing: the sexiest thing about a man is his confidence.