At the beginning of 2001, male fashion was about to live one of those moments whose repercussions continue to resonate decades later. The debut of Hedi Slimane as creative director of Dior Homme not only changed the presence of male fashion in the French house, but also established in fashion an aesthetic ideal that, for the first time, arrived directly from outside the margins of the industry itself. The man model proposed by the French designer after his first step by Yves Saint Laurent was decidedly androgynous, heir to a tradition in which languor is understood as elegance and, the most novel, he drank directly from one of his passions, rock. That landing in the dior house would make the next decade settle from men looking for an ideal of beauty that was forged in the Backstage of a concert hall, but devoid of all the atavistic virility of classic rock. A small subculture was born, the Hedi Boys (that is, the hedi boys).
Almost a quarter of a century later, the world of the first years of the change of the century may seem distant and frivolous, the testimony of an era in which the concerns were insignificant and the anguish that causes an increasingly uncertain future had not ended the desire to seem immaculately distant and unattainable. However, and against all prognosis, the ideal of male style that Slimane established has returned and has done so through the environment less related to everything that the French designer wanted to convey: Tiktok.
“Help. There is an epidemic of Hedi Boys.” With that headline, the British trend website CULTED He recently expressed a trend that has been leaking little by little, directly inspired by those first years of the change of the century. But what is a Hedi Boy? The answers that the publication seeks in the streets range from the simple (“someone who saw Hedi Slimane”), to the sociological: “There are some characteristics: coffee only for breakfast, studies fashion and has been rejected in a casting in Celine because it is actually shorter than it appears.” Others are more affordable. “Pitillos pants, leather jacket, pointed boots and probably, blond hair with a mod cut”. A robot portrait that could refer to men who were around twenty two decades ago, when bands such as The Libertines, The Kills or Franz Ferdinand had bridges between music and fashion, and however it is happening right now.
A simple search on Tiktok shows us that, although it is not a massive phenomenon, it is real. From applicants to Influencers Fashionable that explain why Pitillo pants are again acceptable after years in which the Z generation has ridiculed them as a sign of their parents’ cultural lag, to others who explain how to look like a Hedi Boy with a tight budget that does not even allow the coveted designer’s pieces on the second -hand websites. The phenomenon is not freed from the irony of the Network era: another Tiktoker It shows the diet of a Hedi Boy, composed exclusively of cigarettes. What is more difficult to explain is why at this time, in which for years the fashion associated with youth has opted for parameters almost opposed to Slimane’s ideal, the French designer is once again an aesthetic guide.
From rock to the masses
If Hedi Boy is so surprising as aesthetic model, it is first, because it is intimately associated with a moment and a set of cultural references. Without specific formation in fashion, although since childhood he made designs that his mother made, Hedi Slimane studied political sciences until he discovered photography. The refined aesthetic style of his images, always in black and white and in analog, earned him to make the leap to fashion, first as a consultant and then with his first great position, designer of the male line of Yves Saint Laurent. There he began to shape his imaginary, that he drank both of his own fashion and rock in his most androgynous and remote aspect of what mainstream. The sign of the times was prone: the beginning of the new century had brought a new wave of musicians who claimed that lineage that goes from the Velvet Underground to Bowie. It was the time when Franz Ferdinand, The Kills, The Strokes or The White Strips began to emerge, and they would all have some connection point with Slimane, wearing their designs or being photographed by him.
That link with rock that, at that time, still carried the accompaniment of “independent”, together with the great secretism of Slimane, allergic to the interviews, helped to enlarge his myth. The presence of the designer was not only noticed in the catwalks, but in the streets: his masculinity models, based on thin boys, with a distant and impeccable style, was something that many young people aspired to, especially those who were guided by the British music codes of that time. Meanwhile, Slimane’s shadow was noticed beyond fashion circles. During the Bencassim International Festival of 2007, the press shop was the presence of the designer, who was accompanying and photographing one of her music friends, Amy Winehouse.
For designer Alejandro Palomo, from Palomo Spain, Slimane’s arrival was little less than a moment of revelation. “The phenomenon Hedi Boys It was really what marked the fashion of 2000, especially male fashion, “he explains.” For me it was a awakening, understanding that man had the possibility of bringing fashion beyond what I knew. It was very recognizable and very seen in 2007 or 2008, so it marked my adolescence, when I started to observe myself to feel close to fashion in some way. All this later translated into that look from London, related to rock indie, Pitillo pants, narrow shirt, sweatshirt, jacket … ”, he says.
In 2025, all that world seems already ancient history. Rock, independent or not, has lost relevance and aesthetics of Hedi Boy It seemed distant. The aesthetics advocated by Demna Gvasalia in Vetements and Balenciaga had established a new canon, making the oversize and the aesthetic codes of Eastern Europe its flag. The pose of a thin boy, with cigarette pants, cigarette in the mouth and sunglasses even if the day is cloudy seemed a trace of the past. But aesthetic cycles, added to the power of social networks, are not surprising.
Aesthetics without ethics
In 2025 the world is another. The music made with guitars has lost ground in the preferences of adolescents and posters today, much less retains that identification aura with the aesthetically transgressive. The bands that lived that boom at the beginning of the century continue to appear in the upper part of the festivals posters, but already as an almost nostalgic exercise for those who lived it in their day. Why then that interest in claiming that aesthetics arises?
Alejandro Palomo points out that cyclical tendency to look towards the past to get away from the boredom of the present. “The youngest generation is being set again at that time just like we look at the seventies, eighty or ninety when we were teenagers,” he explains. “Now they are looking at the beginning of the 2000s and it seems very relevant to happen now, that it seems that Slimane is having a moment again,” he adds.
Iria Domínguez, an expert in fashion communication, also points out the coincidence that this aesthetic resurfaces when there is a conversation in the fashion world about the future of Slimane, who abandoned Celine’s creative direction in October 2024. “I am struck that is right now, at this time of knowing what happens to him,” he says. “I had appeared this trend in Tiktok, especially, but I had seen it a little in Paris and in New York. In New York, I was clear to see that there is a Revival of the look Hedi Slimane, that pitillo scene, a little vampire … is clearly a Revivalbut I also believe that it is closely linked to the fashion capitals and now that it is totally disconnected from music. I do not rule out that they continue listening or that bands like those of that time now arise, but I think it is now pure aesthetics, ”he says.
Another reason that points to this revival is the exhaustion of an aesthetic very marked by the urban, dominant in recent years. “The Look of Demon and oversizemore of street and chandaleo, it has already been exhausted. I believe that young people now want to change, differentiate themselves from that generation, ”explains Domínguez. While the fashion world awaits the next step of Slimane, their aesthetics again generates adherents as a quarter of a century ago. What has changed, however, is that now it is only that, aesthetics.
For more updates, visit our homepage: NewsTimesWire
