Men Wear

Sunday, 8 February 2009

This being Viktor & Rolf's first collection with Staff International, the conglomerate led by Renzo "Mr. Diesel" Rosso, the word was out that we were in for something less hidebound by the tricksy thematizing V&R are prone to. In other words, commercial viability was now a big, fat part of the V&R equation. So there was, for instance, a shoe collection for the first time. It featured padded orange high-tops. In fact, padding and orange were writ large throughout the entire collection. Along with padded jackets, there were padded belts and ties. Orange showed up in the tone-on-tone embroidery on a polo shirt, and in a quilted nylon jacket in herringbone. And everywhere else.

While there may not have been a theme per se, V&R's congenital appetite for peculiar artifice found ample outlet. Hence, a napa leather shirt with a pleated front, a detail that also cropped up on a shearling and a biker jacket (you must set your mind free to imagine such a thing). The old-school English gent remains V&R's touchstone in the area of tailoring, so they printed a bowler hat on a shirt, and made a jacket out of a jacquard of pipes. It looked like houndstooth—quite good, actually. Then V&R literalized their mix of formal and casual by proposing tails with track pants. In a word, disastrous—it looked like something Anthony Michael Hall would have worn in a John Hughes teen pic. But a double-breasted jacket in jersey, as unconstructed as a cardigan, suggested their concept may yet find its sea legs.

— Tim Blanks

Trussardi Fall 2009

Salvatore Ferragamo Fall 2009

Roberto Cavalli Fall 2009

Wednesday, 4 February 2009

Raf Simons fall 2009

Prada fall 2009

As Miuccia Prada saw it, the message of her latest men's collection was simple and obvious. "Survival," she said backstage. "And to survive, you have to be strong." There have been seasons when Miuccia toyed with the fragility, the ineffectuality of the modern male. Not this time, thank God. The setting was a tight little carpeted pit, almost a cage; Thunderdome with shag pile. One model sported a tasseled headband, like an extreme fighter. The clothes themselves began as emblematic Corporate Man: gray suit, matching topcoat, black oxfords. Then in crept an ever-harder edge. First, a laser-cut leather duster, almost monkish in its austerity. Next, a shoe covered with studs, presaging an avalanche of hardware on shirts, pants, jackets. Toughen up, tough it out—that's what the leather and metal was saying.

Still, while you're picturing studs armoring gray flannel or a banker's striped shirt, you might wonder who, right now, would honestly want to arm erstwhile Masters of the Universe against their just desserts. But Miuccia was presumably using such menswear staples as symbols of Honest Joe Everyman. And it's Honest Joe who is suffering. Maybe that's why the patterns that decorated shirts evoked the thirties, another era of values-questioning social upheaval. Longtime Prada collaborator Frederic Sanchez's aural accompaniment incorporated Anne Clark, whose visionary combination of spoken word and techno sounded like dystopia's backing track. All in all, a stunning summation of the current jittery mood in fashion.

— Tim Blanks