London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Why you should be chomping at the bit for a ‘chewing gum top’

Why you should be chomping at the bit for a ‘chewing gum top’

GQ goes inside menswear’s slinky, strappy, sexy new mood, AKA the ‘chewing gum top’

Cast your mind back ten years ago: London Fashion Week Men’s was naught but a twinkle in the BFC’s eye, street style was still in its infancy and the pin-sharp three-piece suits worn by Donald Draper and his army of dapper Mad Men were considered the bleeding edge of masculine fashion.

Fast forward a decade and, my, what a way we’ve come. The brief, jersey-clad, pandemic-induced interlude aside, last year Harry Styles wore a Gucci frock on the cover of American Vogue, this year A$AP Rocky rocked a kilt on the cover of American GQ and, more recently, the world’s menswear designers have begun throwing gender-normative caution to the wind, with even the straightest-laced brands sending freewheeling looks and garments down their respective runways: silken blouses slipped out at Giorgio Armani’s SS22 show, while thigh-grazing mini skorts slunk down the glossy red catwalk at Prada.

But far from being a fad, this movement towards total flexibility, whether in the wider realms of gender or, indeed, the way in which a garment simply works or is worn, seems to have taken hold at the very heart of the fashion industry and, suffice to say, it’s exciting.

One of the most intriguing garments to be spawned by this new era of playfulness on the part of the designers is a piece we’re dubbing “the chewing gum top”. Defined as a vest, T-shirt or long-sleeved underlayer featuring multiple cut-out holes, designed to evoke a popped Hubba Bubba bubble-cum-stretched spider’s web effect across the torso, it was difficult to move for all the chewing gum tops parading up and down the runways during the SS22 menswear shows back in June.

The look was at its most mouthwatering at Y/Project, where Belgian designer Glenn Martens (who also oversees all things creative at Italian denim brand Diesel) stretched an array of stringy cut-out vests across the torsos of his models as part of the brand’s wider collaboration with Fila.

Y/Project SS22

Indeed, Martens is spearheading the charge for the new menswear mood, eschewing the “tops and bottoms” approach of so many designers before him in favour of a uniquely flexible approach to silhouette. The designer’s trademark pieces include oversized origami shirts and blazers finished with expansive wraparound panels and a couture sensibility.

At Rick Owens, the aesthetic was equally stringy, but this time the look was infused with a witchiness all Owens’ own. The American designer has long propounded the notion of genderless fashion and his takes on chewing gum vests could just as easily be worn by men or women as they could by the extraterrestrial-esque models who walked in his Venice show.

Rick Owens SS22

At GMBH, Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby showed classic trench and greatcoats finished with waspy “revenge dress” wraparound toppings, which revealed the ultra-masculine models’ shoulders and acted, in the words of the designers, as “an exploration of whiteness”.

At Burberry Ricardo Tisci took the butch-fem cosplay in a different direction, with beefcake models walking the runway wearing the kind of sculpted halterneck that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the wardrobes of Regina George et al in the 2004 teen flick Mean Girls.

The most exciting thing about the chewing gum top – as well as all the other radical garments which are being spawned alongside it, from revenge dress coats to party frocks for blokes – is that viable, wearable, flattering alternatives to basic shirts, suits, trousers, T-shirts and sweaters are finally coming to the fore. And they’ve arrived not a moment too soon, because, here at GQ, we’ve never been more bored of our wardrobes, HBU?

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
×