Men’s RTW—Spring/Summer 2018

From Farm To Fashion

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Loewe stays with British actor Josh O’Connor through spring/summer 2019. Is O’Connor to Loewe what Eddie Redmayne was to Prada?

 

Loewe SS Campaign 1

Inclusive has been a buzz word in fashion for quite a while, but it is men’s wear, more than women’s wear, that is likely to cast an unlikely face to front a brand. Loewe’s signing up of Josh O’Connor, again, for their spring/summer 2019 season (above) is a case in point. That designer Jonathan Anderson will pick a fellow Brit is unsurprising, but that a relatively unknown, un-megastar, and un-hunky individual is selected is fascinating.

Mr O’Connor is not what you would call handsome, not as you would Daniel Craig or Michael Fassbender or Henry Cavill (perhaps wrong choice, given the controversy now plaguing him). Among the younger actors, he’s not as swag as Freddie Stroma (Pitch Perfect) or Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service). In fact, you would likely place Mr O’Connor in the class of recent leading men who do not negate their man-childness, and are not defined by their musculature, such as Timothée Chalamet of Call Me by Your Name fame or Ben Whishaw in the 2008 film version of Brideshead Revisited.

In fact, Josh O’Connor has something more: youthful courage and insouciance. Without, let us add, the intellectual inconveniences of Mr Chalamet’s Elio Perlman.

Loewe AW Campaign 1

Fashion folk started taking notice of him when he appeared in last year’s Francis Lee-written-and-directed indie charmer God’s Own Country, for which Mr O’Connor was awarded Best Actor at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). Screened last week at The Projector as part of Pink Screen (one of the many activities of Pink Fest that leads to Pink Dot this Saturday), God’s Own Country has been inaccurately described as the “new Brokeback Mountain”. It’s stretching it to connect the two: little similarities except that in both films, love was forged in remote parts of the world.

Mr O’Connor plays Johnny Saxby, a tortured soul caught in the humdrum of cattle and sheep husbandry, who falls in love with hired Romanian help Gheorghe Ionescu (Alec Secareanu). Johnny Saxby’s internal turmoil palpitates with anguish—life is hard and boring in the Yorkshire moors. As if toil and turd aren’t enough, his love, when he finds it, “wears forbidden colours,” as David Sylvian sang thirty-four years earlier. Mr O’Connor’s feel-for-him performance is compelling to watch: his troubles are those of a conflicted soul, and there is a realness to his performance that brings to the fore the tenderness and insecurities of men in love.

And somewhere in there, cup noodles have a cameo role and the seasoning packets not only add flavour to the instant meal, but also relish to the romantic tension of a love that, in the rough, wind-whipped countryside, dares not speak its name.

Loewe AW Campaign 2

Mr O’Connor’s appearance in the Loewe campaign for spring/summer 2018 seemed to continue with the compelling indifference he projected as Johnny Saxby. You wouldn’t guess if it’s not said that this is fashion communication. It was so under-styled it could have been a Gunze ad. In many ways, it recalls Eddie Redmayne’s (The Danish Girl) appearance for Prada in 2016: a film character in an advertising shot, only Mr Redmayne, also traditional-handsome-defying, was styled to look more like a fashion model. Loewe’s, lensed by Steven Meisel, showed a somewhat country lad unusually into books (and we thought people don’t read anymore). Mr O’Connor doesn’t just read any book; he’s perusing classics such as Gustave Flaubert’s tragic Madame Bovary and, perhaps, just as tragic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

If you look closely, these book covers are nothing you have seen in the stores. Not yet, anyway. According to media reports, these are old—read “archival”—fashion photographs of Mr Meisel, and reimagined by Loewe, now into book publishing, as cover jackets. Amber Valletta as Madam Bovary!

If classic literature can win new fans, maybe the genre needs a seemingly conflicted character selling its appeal through a luxury brand’s marcom, designed to look anything but high-brow. Jean Genet, we suspect, will approve.

Photos: Steven Meisel/Loewe

Still Quiet At Jil Sander

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Luke and Lucie Meier

The new husband-and-wife co-designers at Jil Sander have decided to keep the quiet at the house they’re now in charge of, so much so that momentarily you sense it’s on the verge of the monastic. Not that that’s a bad thing. Luke and Lucie Meier (above) offer such a palate refresher of a collection in the wake of eye-popping clothes at other major Italian houses that their debut truly stands out for being able to do more with less.

Does it matter then that, for many fashion consumers presently, these clothes may risk coming across as boring? Probably not. The Meiers are so determined to stay true to the by-now-forgotten minimalism of the brand that they reportedly met Heidemarie Jiline Sander, the German founder herself, before putting the spare-but-not-quite collection together.

The presentation opens with rather ascetic white, as well as back and white sets. The suits have a familiar silhouette and cut, although many would associate it with Raf Simons who was at Jil Sander for seven years; and the white shirts, once so much a signature of the brand, have a lightweight appearance about them—more appealing now that global warming is not only real but palpable. Just as you thought the show would be monochromatic all the way, the Meiers introduce shots of colour, not quite the bold chromatic outings of Mr Simons, but colours that show a particular taste, and possibly quirk: one indescribable blue and those mustardy shades.

We are enamoured with the possibility of the nightshirt as day and evening dress (even if, admittedly, Raf Simons had explored the idea at Dior), the treatment of sleeves and the unusual volumes (particularly the puffed version with the wide cuff deliberately unbuttoned), and the colour-block knitwear (clearly ‘easy’ but also ‘designed’). We also noted the playful elements such as blanket stitching (on the men’s wear) and the ultra-long fringing that tails what looks like macramé-style knit tops.

Jil Sander SS 2018 G2

Now based in Milan, Jil Sander was established in 1968, the same year Calvin Klein opened a coat shop under his name which, consequently, enjoyed the description “and the rest is history”. Jil Sander the brand saw its founder serve three tenures as designer before finally bowing out. After the Queen of Less, as Ms Sander was often called, three other designers have tried to restore the brand to its former glory before the Meiers were brought onboard, but it was Raf Simons who was able to convincingly give the label the intellectual rigour it gained under Ms Sander, masterfully maintaining the brand’s heritage while elevating its poetic femininity when he held the creative reins between 2005 and 2012.

Although the first successor Milan Vukmirovic, former Gucci design director under Tom Ford, created a commercial collection, he did’t quite make Jil Sander sublime enough for an audience that had begun to gravitate towards something less spare. Before the Meiers, Rodolfo Paglialunga, ex-Prada, rejuvenated Jil Sander and had, to us, created a very appealing interpretation of the brand with rather imaginative cuts and styling. “He is the most fitting designer to write the Jil Sander story,” said CEO Alessandro Cremonesi at that time, but sadly, in about a year’s time, few wanted to read that story, fewer still when Gucci’s came to overshadow it.

Jil Sander SS 2018 G3

It is possibly a better time for the Meiers now. The protracted flashiness of the Milan season seems opportune for the emergence of a counterpoint, an opposite of ostentation. Minimalism has been so regulated to the annals of history that some people associate it with ‘normcore’, that short-lived trend when fashionistas became bored with fashion and adopted something un-flashy and deliberately everyday in order to stand out from the competitive peacocking that has come to be synonymous with modern style.

We like what the Meiers is proposing for Jil Sander: the near-hush of the collection, the off-beat colours that are rather Milanese, and the sometimes playful sum of parts that hints at a more intelligent and less brash approach to dressing.  There is a reason why the casting of the show did not include any Jenner or Hadid. Yes, we like.

Photos: (top) Indigital.tv and (catwalk) Jil Sander

The Glam Of Gucci

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Even if we don’t say a word, you’ll still know what Gucci showed

Gucci SS 2018 show

It was reported that the latest collection was inspired by Rocket Man Elton John (not Kim Jong-un!). But it could have been Liberace, for all we know. The flashy jumble with a ’70s vibe that fans have come to love and expect cannot be missing in a Gucci show. And for that reason, it’s become increasingly hard to say anything different from what has been said before. Given its still-raging appeal, the season-to-season similitude is perhaps calculated—for the same reason brands are milking Rihanna’s fame for whatever it is worth.

“I think it’s no longer time to just talk about the clothes,” Alessandro Michele told members of the media. Shifting the attention away from the clothes is a clever move. Whatever can be said has been said. Or, could it be because Mr Michele has modest newness to offer, so the show, as with last autumn/winter’s, was presented in pertinacious gloom. Even their live stream did not factor the illumination needs of the videographer. The darkness and the relentless flashing of the strobe lights used was a test of the strength of eye muscles and of patience for clarity. How unbearable it must have been for the attendees or, maybe, charming for the adherents!

Gucci SS 2018 G1

But the clothes still matter. Squint hard enough and you’ll see the usual light-catching obsessions now associated with Gucci, as well as the goofiness that has placed the brand firmly in the man/woman-repellent category of clothes that challenge conventional sex appeal. We gave some thought to the unfading Gucci optics. To reconcile the flashiness and our penchant for designs that are less flamboyant, it should, perhaps, be said that the ostentation Mr Michele is partial to has a long tradition in post-20th century dress.

The taste-indeterminate leaning of his designs against the tailored refinement of the Italian establishment is as old as Paul Poiret’s Eastern-inspired exotica in a climate of haute couture tastefulness. As the man famed for hobble skirts said in his biography En Habillant l’Époque (Dressing Up the Era), “The faintest of pinks, lilac, swooning mauve, light hydrangea blue, watery green, pastel yellow, and the barest blue—all that was pale, soft, and insipid was held in high esteem. So I decided to let a few wolves into the sheep’s pen…”

Gucci SS 2018 G2Gucci SS 2018 G3

Mr Michele lets in more than mere wolves; he unleashes dragons and serpents; birds of incredible plumage and insects of conspicuous brilliance, and the odd cartoon character (e.g., a Bugs Bunny that’s camp than cartoonish); not to mention—in the current advertising campaign—Ultraman-age dinosaurs and monsters. Unlike Poiret’s colour preferences, selected to “raise the voices of the rest”, Mr Michele’s creatures, big and small, attempt to silence.

The Gucci look—and it is a look—is less one complete picture than the sum of individual images established in one item, assembled or styled, if you will, to tell a story that’s not necessarily coherent. And the look is as much aesthetic and strategic: stay with it until it is no longer weird or annoying to the majority, and desirable to the initially-skeptical. Fans, besotted from the start, consider this Alessandro Michele’s personal language. The communication, therefore, does not need to be changed every three months. Just let the chatter flow.

Photos: Gucci

Plastic Makeover

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Burberry SS 2018 Pic 1

The forecast for spring/summer 2018 at Burberry appears to be inclement weather. We don’t remember seeing so many pieces of rain wear in a Burberry show before. Or is this just a statement about the notorious English showers? Or, the hurricane season in the Caribbeans? It sure isn’t quite the reflection of the climate of Asia. In fact, the clothes looked a bit un-summer like, with so many outers—even a coat that looks like shearling —and rather chunky knits. Or, has Christopher Bailey chosen to remain largely in calm, bearable spring? But this isn’t a spring showing; this is The September Show!

Anything that can be made out of water-repellent “soft-touch” plastic, they were out there: raincoats, dusters, ponchos, anoraks, hoodies, and even skirts! It is not entirely opaque plastic, which means there’s quite a bit of flesh to flash and the only-fashion-types-get-it interplay of translucency (softly coloured!) and textures. It’s as if to deliberately blur the more interesting bits underneath—lovely knitwear, for example. Or, staying with the weather, is that saying something about London’s fog?

Burberry SS 2018 G 1

The shower curtain material must have disappointed animal rights activists, reported to have made a spectacle of themselves, shouting outside the show venue—Old Sessions House, a former London court—and causing delay to the start of the presentation. Will it be eco-warriors next to be up in arms in demanding that the plastic be bio-degradable?! Mr Bailey, a win is hard.

But for many fans, the media included, this is a winning collection, if not for its protection against precipitation, at least the revival of the Burberry heritage check, which, at one time, was considered unfashionable when it was associated with British bengs known as ‘chavs’. But it’s all very British—this part of the brand’s history and Mr Bailey isn’t afraid to confront it head on. He has, of course, made it all a lot more current, even when wearing baseball caps of the said check or the knitted sweater-vest (worn alone) that hinted at past chav style, by not being terribly serious about how things are paired and worn.

Burberry SS 2018 G 2

It is, therefore, likely that the collection is aimed primarily at the young, as chavs tend to be. The proportions of the clothes—including details such as large collars and lapels— parallel sizes popular in the ’70s and ’80s. This may be in keeping with the prevalent shape of things, but it’s not immediately discernible that the anti-fashion, working-class silhouette and mix of things (cocktail waitress on the way home after work?) will win the love of those of a certain age.

Targetting the young is also augmented by the clear nod to streetwear, a move few designers can afford to avoid these days—“a little street, sophisticated” the designer told Vogue Hommes. Although there’s something to be said of a 46-year-old Christopher Bailey designing for kids less than half his age (“it’s their world”, he conceded to Edward Ennful in a video interview for British Vogue), the sighting of Mino and Hoony of the Korean boy band Winner in the front row attests not only to Burberry’s intended audience/shopper, it bolsters the brand’s youth-oriented image and keeps up their strive for relevance in an age of the young and restless.

Photos: (top) Burberry and WWD

Just Kors

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Michael Kors

Now that Michael Kors has a “Southeast Asian flagship” on our shores, we’re told that he’s an important player in the fashion retail scene here—important enough that he has a local hybrid orchid named after him. So we thought we should have a look at his catwalk presentation—something we don’t do. The last time we took occasional notice of what Mr Kors did was during his 6-year tenure at Céline, the 72-year-old French house that dressed Rene Russo for her role as the stylish Catherine Banning in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, a film, at that time, considered to be “a fashion orgy”.

Presently, Michael Kors is, of course, not only a fashion designer, he’s also a multi-brand business owner, having just added Jimmy Choo to his bulking-up company, that, according to Forbes, has a market cap of USD20 billion. The label, however, isn’t roaring like it used to, with planned closure of stores in the US, up to 125 of them by the end of this year, according to Fortune.

Michael Kors P1

Still, Mr Kors is a buzz-maker during New York Fashion Week, and we suspect it’s to do with the front row than the catwalk. The show opened with Carolyn Murphy in a tie-dye sweatshirt-dress, something so shockingly underwhelming that knowing it’s made of cashmere won’t save it from blandness. Even Ms Murphy couldn’t make it look less Kuta and more Capri. Is that really fashion? Or is that the hailed wearable ease that has firmly placed the brand in the “casual luxury” category?

To show you how informal and laid-back things can be, Mr Kors offered a light-as-a-sea-breeze collection that’s heavy on the suggestion of “somewhere on the beach”, as pal and fan Anna Wintour told vogue.com. That means styling a white shirt with same-tone lei! Or, offering prints that are tropical fronds, such as those you see on the sand and don’t bother picking up. There are more dresses for a romantic seaside dinner than we bothered to count and the obligatory flip-flops that are best left to the likes of Havaianas.

Michael Kors G1

We wondered, therefore, if the collection would have been more appropriate for the Cruise season. But for the brand’s core customers, it probably does not matter. Despite the collection’s usual lack of fashion elements that can put it on par with, say, Céline—Mr Kor’s former employer, the luxury basics, as fans prefer to call the merchandise, that he churns out are the wardrobe fillers that can satisfy those willing to pay for a pricier but just-as-accessible Banana Republic.

Michael Kors dresses a very specific woman: she’s successful; visibly feminine; not girlish; married (or wants to be); glad to always talk about her beau or husband; considers strolling on beaches most romantic; spends a small fortune on aromatherapy candles for her home and office (where she wants her dress to just about stand out); and declares she loves fashion, but, really adores Lululemon more. If this, to you, sounds like Blake Lively or, gasp, Sumiko Tan, you’re not off the mark.

Screen grab and photos: YouTube and indigital.tv

Yankee Oodles Of Luxe

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Coach 1941 SS 2018 P1

Are Europeans lured to American brands to make American fashion great? Let’s, for now, put aside “again”.

Over at Coach 1941, the English designer Stuart Vevers opened their spring/summer 2018 season with a Western shirt. This isn’t the same as the one that Raf Simons also sent out first at Calvin Klein, but they have a common genesis: American West. Nostalgic Americana is what Mr Vevers built the Coach 1941 aesthetic on from day one, and he’s not, as it appears, letting up. The hip New York crowd, it seems, likes a little bit of Roy Rogers in their wardrobes, minus kippy belts. Or, as crazy as this may sound, making up for the relative rarity of westerns coming out Hollywood? If only this was launched during Madonna’s Music rhinestone cowgirl phase.

Mr Vevers has what the industry, especially in America, looks out for: pedigree. His first job after graduation at the University of Westminster was with Calvin Klein. He has worked with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. Just these two American names are possibly quite enough to let his American employer know that he has what it takes to give Americans what they want.

Coach 1941 SS 2018 G1Coach 1941 SS 2018 G2

What does he think the Americans desire? What Michael Kors knows all along: nothing that requires figuring out. Coach is not Loewe, where Mr Vevers worked before joining the former. Loewe took the route of Louis Vuitton—which acquired it in 1996—when the latter launched a ready-to-wear line in 1997, designed by Marc Jacobs. Coach, like general stores of the past, retails practical goods that people need—fashion as a selling point only a recent consideration, when it launched its own clothing collection with Mr Vevers just 4 years ago. They’re somehow all connected there. Take some time to join the dots.

So it is articles of clothing that the Americans are familiar with that Mr Vevers is giving “the world’s largest market for personal luxury goods”, according to a June report by Bain and Company. That inevitably means souvenir and trucker jackets, the varsity variety and the biker cousin; sweatshirts; over-sized sweaters/cardigans; sundresses; Hawaiian shirts, and everything in between that New York’s downtown types would love to wear.

As with Raf Simon for Calvin Klein’s salute to Andy Warhol, there was also homage to another still-popular-after-death American pop artist. This time, it’s Keith Harring—even the artist’s face appeared on a T-shirt. Elsewhere, on dresses and denim tops, Mr Harring’s famous graphic, almost naïve shapes of animals and people in motion make their visible appearance. It’ll be fascinating to see if these images will catch on when Uniqlo has already beaten Coach to using them.

Coach 1941 SS 2018 G3Coach 1941 SS 2018 G4

Sometimes one wonders if what these non-Americans are really doing is to indulge in the ‘optics’ that to them must be rather exotic: cowboy country. Or is this dalliance with what are considered to be American “icons” to boost America’s—or, perhaps New York’s—fragile self-esteem when it comes to their true contribution to the world of fashion. We sure know that the three letters U, S, and A now do not have the same allure they once had, ironically less when there’s the call by Donald Trump to get things made in the States again. Does American fashion need a makeover, such as business-y belt worn above exposed zips?

Stuart Vevers brings along with him a wealth of experience that covers a rather big swath of the European continent. He has learned the trade at English, (Mulberry), French (Givenchy and Louis Vuitton), Italian (Bottega Venetta), and Spanish (Loewe) houses. Yet, it is American western culture, rather than that of cities of glamour, that has captured Mr Vevers’s (and, hitherto, Raf Simons’s) attention. Does it mean the same for us Asian as it does for them? Picture this: a Coach 1941 cowboy shirt over an Ong Shunmugam cheongsam!

Photos: Edward James/style.com

Raf’s Americana For Calvin

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Calvin Klein SS 2018 finale

The Western shirts with the texture of satin that opened the spring/summer 2018 show was, to us, a little ominous, and an indication that Raf Simons isn’t moving on from where he started—the autumn/winter 2017 season, when he showed his first collection for one of the biggest American labels, Calvin Klein. Mr Simons is now in America, and he’s showing Americans the America that Donald Trump is desperately trying to bring back.

The colour blocking of these shirts for boys and girls (only boys and girls will wear them, no?)—five of them, with contrast collars, yokes, and pockets; in colours that would not be out of place among participants of the Rose Parade, hinted at something brash that we have not really seen from Mr Simons, clownish even, if we were to ride on the current box-office hit that is It. Does America change European designers when they arrive on her shores just as she did to Hedi Slimane, who would go on to wreck Saint Laurent with West Coast rock-trash aesthetic? What does it say about the still-complicated Euro-American sartorial relationship?

Calvin Klein SS 2018 G1

The near-kitsch, colour explosion shouldn’t be surprising. Back in July, the new Calvin Klein flagship on Madison Avenue, conceived by Mr Simons and his serial partner-in-crime, the artist Ruby Sterling, opened to shoppers with a bang of yellow—walls, ceiling, scaffolding, fixtures—under which other blotches of colours punctuate the space like spilled paint. This is a Calvin Klein we have never seen before. The neutrals that Mr Calvin Klein himself was known for have stepped aside for the colours of Guanajuato, the Mexican city that’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mr Simons is, of course, not alien to colours. We saw how good he was with them at Jil Sander, but back then he was still considered a minimalist designer. Now, he appears to have gone a little Willy Wonka, with the American customers his many Charlies. Watching the live stream on calvinklein.com, the collection felt to us like a costume designer’s first presentation to Gus Van Sant for an upcoming film.

Calvin Klein SS 2018 G2Calvin Klein SS 2018 G3

Our bad; we had not read the show notes. As widely reported later, the collection is homage to American cinema, particularly those films that shock and scare. “American horror, American dreams,” Mr Simons told the besotted press. Here’s a Belgian showing Americans, tongue possibly in cheek, how to dress American, with B-grade dash. What can be more charming than that?

To be sure, there’s elegance to the clothes, even if there is, at least to most Calvin Klein Jeans and cK One consumers, an alt touch. Mr Simons re-imagines an America that few now recognise without excoriating the flashiness that has always attracted those who still take cheer-leading very seriously. Look beyond the gory movie references, the high-school pom-poms (that, in some cases, shroud bucket bags, or hang as tiered dresses), and the nod towards America that’s not along the coasts, and you may just find hints of ’50s couture and a way with transparency that is today’s nightie-for-day.

Calvin Klein SS 2018 G5

But Mr Simons also seems to be repeating himself. There’s the Andy Warhol photo-prints, which, undeniably reminds us of Mr Simons’s own collection of this past spring/summer season, which saw Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos applied onto shirts and outers at unexpected places. So which is more disturbing: Mapplethorpe’s male genitalia or Warhol’s car crash?

Reminiscent of his work at Dior (but in the colours that reprise those he did for Jil Sander) are the skirts—full and circular, only now, Marion and Joanie Cunningham’s present-day avatars might wear them. If we look at them from a filmic standpoint, as Mr Simons likely prefers, these are skirts the Stepford Wives (set in Silicon Valley?) would gladly and dutifully wear. How’s that for horror?

Photos: Imaxtree