A few weeks ago, a link ripped through social media, subreddits and industry newsletters, funneling people to the culture blog Deez Links. The blog has been producing of a series of “hate reads”, diatribes in which a rotating cast of anonymous writers let loose about something they hate (Berlin, climbers and NYC media parties were all given a good lashing). This particularly viral essay carries a title too vulgar to repeat here, but it boils down to: “I hate menswear.”

Written under the nom de plume Andy Sachs (presumably inspired by the protagonist of The Devil Wears Prada), the essay has more vibes than substance, making it guilty of some of the author’s criticisms. But the fact that it went viral suggests it resonated with readers.

According to Sachs, the internet has flattened culture, making aesthetic inspirations entirely too traceable. People have surrendered their sense of personal style in favour of safe, algorithm-dictated outfits and the accessibility of digital information has made everything mainstream. “Men’s fashion, rather than opening new doors for identities to try on, has instead become the defining identity,” Sachs argued. One only needs to scan the most hyped influencer accounts to see what they’re talking about.

But… I have a counterargument: there has never been a better time in menswear, and tomorrow will be better still.

It’s important to place this moment in the context of history. At the turn of the 20th century, TPO (time, place and occasion) and socioeconomic class still played a significant role in determining how men dressed. Men in high positions – such as those working in law, government or finance – were expected to wear a long, fitted garment known as the frock coat. Those a few rungs lower on the social and professional ladder, such as clerks and administrators, wore the fustian lounge suit (what we today would recognise as a rougher version of the business suit).

A man’s attire during this period would have depended mainly on his social standing and what he was doing that day. This notion is perhaps most neatly captured in the 1919 muckraking exposé The Brass Check, where the staunch socialist Mr Upton Sinclair coded class conflict in terms of shirt colours. Blue collars were for those whose labour was hidden away in the mailroom; white collars were for those snivelling scriveners who regarded themselves as members of the capitalist class, even though their class interest was closer to that of the blue-collar worker.

For the first half of the 20th century, one can go through each item that could have occupied a man’s wardrobe – white poplin shirts, dark worsted suits, black calfskin Oxfords, blue chambray shirts, five-pocket jeans, or military surplus chinos – and infer something about the wearer’s life.

In the post-war period, menswear grew increasingly chaotic and noisy. Sportswear thrived. Ready-to-wear proliferated. Designers eventually replaced tailors. This revolution in menswear coincided and overlapped with the culture wars of the 1950s and 1960s. Establishment types wore the suit; anti-establishment types took to white tees, leather jackets and jeans. That shift towards what the editor Mr Bruce Boyer calls “rebel clothing” was the first meaningful move away from the coat and tie.

During this period, men started fashioning new identities: swing kids and hep cats; bikers, rockers and outlaws; beats and beatniks; modernists and mods; drag and dandies; hippies and bohemians. By the close of the century, a person's identity could still be read off their clothes. Youth subcultures – such as punks, goths, skaters, preps and jocks – all had distinctive modes of dress.

Today, dress is still tied to identity, but things are more fluid, tenuous and complex. It’s no longer the case that a person’s attire necessarily telegraphs anything about their cultural interests, socioeconomic background or even lifestyle. Graphic designers in Brooklyn wear Carhartt WIP double-knee work pants and French chore coats; rap fans dress goth; older men wear streetwear, while younger men dress up as Mr Gianni Agnelli.

It’s true that something magical happens when your attire connects with something deeper within you. But by loosening the bonds between what occupies our wardrobe and how we’re expected to dress, men can enjoy fashion without any pretense of social utility.

There has never been a better time to develop personal style. Just look at the way Mr Wisdom Kaye creates compelling outfits without needing to communicate something more profound about himself. In this new era, fossilised notions of luxury and class refinement have been overturned by a new value system that privileges ideas over social standing and emotional impact over utility.

In the opening of her 1981 book, The Fashionable Mind, Ms Kennedy Fraser recalls seeing the first wave of post-war democratic dress in the early 1970s, when she first took her post as a fashion columnist for The New Yorker. “After [1970], there was no longer any unabashedly accepted, universal fashion authority, and no real point in reporting the latest word of fashion news each season,” she wrote.

Things have only become more democratic since then. In 2015, Ms Cathy Horyn wrote an article for The New York Times, where she described a “post-trend universe”, arguing that as information has become more diffuse and people live in digital enclaves, it has become more challenging for any designer, celebrity, or editor to shape trends. “The fashions of every decade since World War II are represented in the new spring collections,” Horyn wrote. “That may sound like more revivalism – but the ability to find styles that actually suit one’s body and personality is cause for celebration, offering women so many more forms of self-expression.”

We’ve reached an age of possibilities when it comes to appearance and the ascendancy of one look doesn’t necessarily displace another. Modern minimalism (The Row) and patchwork boho-chic (BODE) are both considered legitimate, as are soft Italian tailoring (Rubinacci) and structured silhouettes (Husbands Paris), conceptual deconstructionism (Maison Margiela) and rugged workwear (RRL), futuristic techwear (ACRONYM) and folk clothes (KAPITAL), Japanese avant-garde (Yohji Yamamoto) and prep (Polo Ralph Lauren), vivid colours (KENZO) and dusty earth tones (Stòffa).

You can layer high and low fashion; wear slim-fitting clothes or oversized silhouettes. As Mr Gilles Lipovetsky writes in_ The Empire Of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy:_ “Nothing is taboo any longer; all styles are accepted and exploited unsystematically. There is no longer a fashion; there are fashions.” This was not true even as recently as 15 years ago, when fashion-conscious men had to squeeze themselves into the bone-hugging silhouettes.

The greatest indication that men can now fully enjoy the spectrum of dress possibilities is the increasingly porous border between men’s and women’s styles. Not only are more men playing with ideas about gender through dress, but men’s style as a whole feels increasingly in conversation with womenswear.

It’s true that while men nowadays can take inspiration from anywhere, there’s a small subset of hyper-fashion-conscious consumers who are “dressed by the internet”. Neophilia and a need to look cooler than others drive many to jump through an endless series of “if you know, you know” references. And the internet has sped up how quickly niche brands can suddenly feel mainstream. However, on balance, the democratisation of men’s fashion has been a good thing.

You can ignore the “cool kids” trying to outcompete each other by simply curating your social media feed. And if you feel the urge to stop wearing certain clothes because they became mainstream, did you even have personal style in the first place?