Does sex sell again? Men's underwear shows more skin and less complexes in 2022

It is a classic of homoeroticism: the locker room of a sports temple after a match as a setting for the most varied sexual fantasies.

A chaos of towels and underwear at this point as typified as leather garments;

an equivalent to the

bricklayer that, back in 2006, the journalist Mark Simpson baptized as

mix between

(sport) and

(porn).

"Sport is the new pornography and its protagonists do not seem to ignore the hordes of gay fans who are beginning to worship them, from David Beckham to Fredrik Ljungberg," Simpson said at the time.

Three decades have passed since that article and what was previously an implicit allusion in the advertisements that showed the bodies of the gods of sport, today has become an express reference.

"At a time when physical activity is more democratized than ever, the most pleasant thing is to look back at the sports references that have built an aesthetic imaginary," explains Álvaro Ramos (Madrid, 1991), founder of the firm On Tracks, which was born very recently with an aesthetic approach between homoeroticism and nostalgia.

Solid color cotton t-shirts and briefs, wrestling jumpsuits or

and

in the classic ribbed underwear are part of its offer.

“We missed underwear like before.

Brands today are focused on new patterns, designs and materials, and we wanted to play at replicating

from a modern perspective.”

The images of his campaigns show intertwined bodies of men, as if they were fighting, and muscular men in images of erotic simplicity.

The photos that they posted, as a preview, on their Instagram account already anticipated it: more

half-naked athletes , more intertwined fighters and an ode to the fetish of socks and underwear (today, the brand's images prevail in the account ).

Fredrik Ljungberg presenting his Calvin Klein Pro-Stretch campaign at Selfridges in London in 2003. Ferdaus Shamim (WireImage)

“It has taken a long time for man to reach a point where he can express himself personally through clothing, beyond certain niches or urban tribes, of feeling attractive, of wanting to show it, of breaking with certain canons and of not being afraid to be yourself”, says Ramos.

Photos and ideas that until now belonged to certain folders on the computer have become, in short, ingredients for image campaigns that are no longer unheard of.

Ramos' proposal is similar to other young firms such as Étalon, Brassai, CDLP or Kvrt Stvff.

But the current offer in men's lingerie also includes bold voices that not only work with sexual appeal.

This is the case of Leak NYC, Menagerié or Wicked Mmm, whose motto reads: “Underwear to adapt to your gender expression”.

Image of the On Tracks brand campaign, which plays with the homoerotic element in sport.On Tracks

An open-minded approach that has also reached mass-reach firms such as Rihanna's Savage x Fenty line, which launched its first men's collection in 2020 and sold out in 12 hours, according to

what its marketing manager told

in the past. april.

In the singer's signature, corpulent men, bald or with a paunch (or all of the above), pose, for example, with daring sets of red

and semi-transparent T-shirt, garments that until now would only have been fit for a Victoria's Secret angel. .

These briefs from the Savage X Fenty men's line include transparencies, something until recently almost exclusive to women's lingerie.Savage X Fenty

One of the first to explore the limits of sex in advertising was Tom Ford, in the mid-1990s, when he was given control of Gucci.

He liked to provoke: he said not to wear underpants so that they would not make him fat and, putting the male body in the foreground, he became one of the great commercial prodigies of fashion of the 20th century.

He then called

.

“When Tom Ford entered Gucci everything was round, brown and soft.

When he came out, everything was square, black and hard,” said Domenico de Sole, CEO of the Italian firm at the time of Ford, in Rizzoli's volume on the firm in 2008. “We live in a culture that objectifies women. women, but as soon as a man is shown in that same way, there is a real phobia and everyone is outraged.

I am aware that nudity is still controversial, which is why I want to provoke a reaction by showing it," Ford told Olivier Lalanne in

in 2019 .

His gesture back then is almost parallel to that of this new litter of firms, which emerged as a reaction to men's underwear that seems stuck in those images of Mark Wahlberg for Calvin Klein, with his

peeking out over the jeans, or in colored versions of the same underpants with the logo on the elastic.

Or as the creator of On Tracks sums it up: “Many times we conceive of clothing as something we should wear, period, but we forget that it can make us feel ourselves and even part of a larger group.

Being able to feel

is just another step along the way.

It is time to be yourself and go out as you please, because without the freedom that this game gives, the world would be a much more boring place”.

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