Men go back to the basics

Phumla Matjila: The penny dropped while I was browsing through a collection of award-winning photography of wildlife.

Since skinny jeans, floral shirts, pointy shoes, metallic suits in nausea-inducing hues, white shoes and belts, big hair and corn-rows became vogue for men, I have thought: Why? Why dress like that, man?

Nature provided the answer to the question that I'm sure baffles many other women, that is: why is men's fashion getting more and more colourful and more and more showy?

Walk into any department store and you'll see what I'm talking about. There you'll find jerseys in colours you would see while bird-watching in Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga.

Piles of custard yellow, rose pink and tangerine jerseys folded neatly, along with sprinkles of more conventional brown, black and blue knitwear.

Men's suits have become as iridescent as the Cape glossy starling and the African firefinch.

I had never thought of big hair, rainbow-coloured tight pants, floral shirts and shiny suits as being synonymous with manhood.

However, men appear to have known this all along, and are obviously getting in touch with their wild side.

How else would you explain their explosive display of colour and shimmer?

When I was looking at the breathtaking pictures of African wildlife, the answer stared me in the face.

A picture of manliness and boldness in nature gave me the epiphany.

With its head, neck and chest a mesmerising bright blue and its tail feathers fanned out to reveal eye markings of blue, gold, red and other hues, the peacock's attention was on the dull, greyish brown peahen in front of it.

It is during such colourful displays that peahens choose their mates, assessing the, ahem, size, colour and quality of the tail feathers of the peacock.

I chuckled as I turned the pages, thinking perhaps there is method to the bright-coloured, floral madness that has swept our streets.

If the most brightly coloured birds are male, why wouldn't our men also dress the part?

As some fundis say, the dull colour of female birds makes them harder to spot when they are incubating eggs. So camouflage wins over colour, survival of the species-wise.

As I flipped a page, another picture of manhood, boldness and fearlessness caught my eye - and it shed some light on men's obsession with hair, these days the bigger the better.

With its huge mane, ruffled for extra volume and glistening in the last afternoon rays of the sun, mouth dripping blood, chest puffed out as if in salute, forelegs spread as if it was about to charge, the lion stood on top of the elephant -which had died a natural death - as if it was responsible for its demise.

Clearly hair is just as big on our streets as it is in the wild, judging by the number of men with their hair in corn-rows, ponytails and sky-high mohawks.

Are women missing something by dismissing the corn-rowed, ponytailed, big-haired man as peculiar?

Could it be that the guy you sit next to at the salon, who is having his hair split and braided in the same style as yours, has more swag than his bald-headed counterpart?

Lions use their manes to appear larger and more intimidating during confrontations with other animals.

Perhaps more importantly, lionesses select their mates by the size and colour of their manes. The darker and denser the hair, the healthier the lion is thought to be.

It turns out it is the women who want to vomit at the sight of bright coloured menswear and glossy suits who are not in the know.

While women's fashion is in a state of bipolar disorder, with one foot in eras gone by and the other in the vanguard, men's fashion is looking to nature for inspiration.