It's time to pull out the pocket watches and cuff links, guys: a new generation of designers likes a smart-dressed man. Bow ties, dress shirts, and waistcoats that looked straight off Savile Row dominated the recent Kwantlen Polytechnic University fashion-and-technical-design-program grad show. Think 1920s stockbrokers restyled for the age of Interpol and the Hives.

This year's event at the River Rock Show Theatre targeted a wide array of underserved markets for men and women—niches as diverse as Ming Ikatura's rainwear for chic urban dog walkers to Janis Brunke's neon-splattered racing gear for hard-core female mountain bikers. But an unprecedented number of students recognized that if there was ever an area that screamed out for innovation, it's the staid realm of menswear. Lines ranged from Nicole Ballash's Long Division, tailored business suiting for tall men, to Theodora Lee's Perception, a dapper, colour-splashed line for smaller Asian men. Kiomi Renwick's Cavalier found bespoke vests, cuffed shirts, and jackets aimed at urban bicycle commuters, while Leith Irvine's Caledonian collection pumped extra style into leather motorcycle wear.

“We both were in Scotland and the U.K. last summer and we noticed how different the men dress there,” said Irvine after the show. She was referring to the influential trip she and BFF and fellow student Renwick had made to Britain, where they saw men taking extra care, from their dress shoes up to their carefully starched collars.

For Renwick, there were also other reasons behind her clever collection of 1920s-styled, sartorially savvy suits for cyclists—bow ties and long, Victorian-looking jackets made from a fabric that has reflective threading; a dress shirt with a hidden mesh back panel that allows stretching and sweat-wicking; and front-pleated pants with snaps at the cuffs so they don't get caught in spokes. “The look is a mix of my grandpa and my dad,” she told the Straight. “I grew up with them looking well put-together.”

The key to the look is in the details. “I have a coin pocket on the vest and on the jacket and I did have cuff links under the jacket,” she explained.

Irvine felt the same attention to tailoring could be applied to the motorcycle market, which seems to be split into the bandannas-and-black-leather-wearing Harley drivers and the Robocop-like racers. “There's nothing for the guy who goes for a ride on a Sunday and then out for drinks afterward,” Irvine explained. The result is a collection that puts as much attention toward the protective power of thick leather as it does into chic styling: hand-pleating along the black-leather panel of a distressed mustard motorcycle jacket or a long brown jacket with flaps buckling down the front.

Phaedra Godchild's Baron Menswear was the most dandified of the lot, complete with old-style vests with pocket-watch chains hanging out of them. One look found a thick-wool, checked burgundy vest over a black V-neck cashmere sweater and a stretch-cotton shirt with stripes that ran the spectrum of purple to gold and cranberry.

“I spend my summers in Calgary, and there's a really young, thriving men's business culture there,” she explained to the Straight. “Because it's [Alberta] such a conservative province, I wanted to come up with a different way to dress them, so I layered patterns with really colourful textures. I grew up on Salt Spring [Island]—so I pulled from those two opposite ends of the spectrum.”

Most of these design upstarts hope to pursue their menswear lines post-grad; Irvine and Renwick are off to London, while Godchild wants to have Baron up and running within a couple years. They just may be on to something: recent headlines have been predicting a turn away from casual officewear and back to dapper tailoring in these economic times. It's the smart-dressed man, after all, who might get noticed for the job.