A hollowing out of big-name talents for menswear in progress at London Fashion Week Men's

New York

THE menswear calendar feels increasingly empty these days.

In recent years, not a season has gone by in which a trickle of high-profile names did not quietly disappear from the schedule. London Fashion Week Men's, which began Saturday, was no exception.

Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner - two of the British capital's top design talents - are missing from the lineup. (Mr Green will be the guest designer at Pitti, the menswear trade show in Florence, Italy; Ms Wales Bonner will be holding appointments on June 18.) They follow in the footsteps of previous fixtures like J. W. Anderson and Burberry, both brands that have now decamped to the womenswear schedule, showing co-ed collections.

With no big-league names left on the schedule, top billing has been given to Charles Jeffrey, twice an LVMH Prize finalist and winner of the British Emerging Talent Menswear Award at The Fashion Awards in December.

On Monday, he will present his third solo outing for Loverboy, his avant-garde menswear label.

Its playful experiments with conventional signals of gender have been the talk of the town in recent months, an ode to flamboyance at a time when casual, unisex fashion brands have increasingly dominated the emerging fashion scene.

Other names looking to fly the flag for British menswear and its future? A-Cold-Wall (whose designer, Samuel Ross, is another LVMH Prize finalist and a protégé of Virgil Abloh), Martine Rose (menswear consultant to Demna Gvasalia) and Nicholas Daley, who impressed insiders last season with a collection inspired by great jazz musicians and the way they wore tweed.

On Tuesday, the circus will pack its bags and move to Florence for Pitti, then on to Milan and Paris, before ending up across the Atlantic for New York Fashion Week: Men's.

Here, in no particular order, are five things to look forward to this season:

The first revived issue of the twice-yearly magazine, which will have five collectible covers for each edition, will be released on Tuesday. That's the opening day of Pitti in Florence, so a party for 500 industry insiders is scheduled - after all, the magazine is ideal reading material for the nomadic front row. The next issue hits newsstands in October. NYTIMES