Hiii! Please help me determine is it a women's shirt or men's? The size on the tag says 42 (might be women's 42 and it's just big, or maybe it's italian men's 42??) The sleeves are quite long, and the cuffs are wide, that got me thinking, it might not be women's. But it is profiled in the waist. Also, do you think it's more contemporary? I have no experience with MCM clothing :/ Thank you so much.
MCM's website about page is here. i remember the name from some great surfwear we got there back in the mid 90s, it looks like they've gone more into bags and shoes than they originally started out. maybe they're under new ownership, i didn't take the time to look in to that aspect of the company. love this shirt. oh, and to differentiate between men's and women's shirts, article from The Smithsonian. eta: so this is a women's shirt.
The easy way to remember it is 'Men are ALWAYS right' -- I don't know why women have such a hard time remembering that... Seriously though, it is well known in the fashion industry that you can make pink shirts with frilly collars for men as long as you have the buttons on the right side. Men will not buy a shirt or coat or jacket that buttons on the left.
I used to think this was true but I have proven it's not, ha. I have been marketing certain women's blouses on a particular male model and am very clear that they button on the left side and were originally made for women. But they are marketed as glam, unisex, performance wear and for the metrosexual man. I double the prices that I would put on them on a female model - and they have all sold - to men, or to buyers with masculine names! Here's an example, a Louis Feraud silk ascot blouse, sold. Escada, animal prints, and other "fancy" blouses will sell to men.
You are tapping a niche market... gender-neutral may be trending but its not mainstream. Two years ago I sold a FUGLY 1980s women's ski jacket at the Toronto Vintage sale. Women would try it on and it looked just too 80s in a bad way on all of them. Then a young handsome middle eastern man tried it on and it looked FANTASTIC. I of course had marked the jacket down to dump it so he walked away with it for $35.00, but there should have been a 1 in front of that price. That was a zipper closure of course, not buttons, but selling cross gender lines is sometimes a great way to tap a market. Kudos on styling the women's blouses for men. P.S. I guarantee you they would sell better if they buttoned on the right.
MCM still does mainly bags, suitcases etc. which is what they started with. I couldn't find any information on when they would have started doing clothing as well, but there seems to have been a big break in the company history in the early 2000s, when the original owner was convicted of tax invasion and the company was split up and the brand rights sold. After that they concentrated a lot on Asian markets as the brand hadn't suffered the loss of reputation that it had in Europe/Germany, and it is still in Korean hands (I did notice on my travels over the last 5, 6 years that the brand seems to be a lot more present and popular there). So I am wondering if clothing was only added once it got there. I do remember the brand being around here (I am in Switzerland) earlier, but definitely only as a bag brand, not clothing. I'd thought it had disappeared, and then I started noticing it when I travelled more in Asia.
