Choihoonsung

Friday, October 02, 2009

Monday, September 28, 2009

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Thom Browne Men's Collection 09s/s

Astronauts used to head into space with vials of fragrance that would keep Earth close. Freshly cut grass was apparently the most popular. Thom Browne's venue reeked of it. The most comforting scent on the planet paired with the most deliberately discomforting men's collection? No, I won't go there. This time around, Thom actually reined in most of his more outré tendencies in favor of a relatively crisp, clean dissertation on American sportswear. And he did mean sports, as in Flushing Meadows. Terry headbands and armbands, embroidered criss-crossed racquets as a recurring motif, white polo shirts and shorts—bits and pieces to gladden a ball boy's heart were complemented by patrician seersuckers and paisleys, but as usual the hiked-high schoolboy proportions made you think that the Browne man's mom still buys his clothes for him—and that Norman Bates-ian notion flowered in the parade of shorts, long socks, and Church's-for-Thom shoes.And suddenly, the outré effortlessly reasserted itself: The checkerboard train on a racquet-embroidered coat, the gangsta-style low-slung shorts, the endlessly reiterated waders, and—the coup de grâce—the giant tutu that closed the show. They all whiffed of Thom's ongoing Barnum and Bailey assault on masculine convention. Browne's bigger picture is hovering into view. Those low-slung shorts, for instance. You could say they offered a new take on his continuing fascination with male powerlessness: a man caught with his pants down.

Thom Browne Men's Collection 10s/s

Thom Browne the showman has often gotten in the way of Thom Browne the designer, with the archness of his presentations infecting his collections. But shorn of the ceremony and shown simply in his Tribeca shop, Browne's clothes felt refreshed, confident, and as upbeat as the soundtrack of Beatles songs. Maybe it's something to do with a new business structure that will finally allow for the kind of growth Browne has long craved. Maybe the prospect of that growth inspired him to expand on his odd and insular aesthetic, to let more people in, as it were. Has his experience designing for Moncler and Black Fleece by Brooks Brothers broadened his repertoire? Whatever, there was a whole lot more to like in this collection, and it felt like Browne himself was really having fun with the design process. Best of all were the suits in distressed and mended fabrics (one in Prince of Wales, another in seersucker). Browne called them "Robinson Crusoe suits," because he was thinking of a castaway living in his clothes through thick and thin (the way he'd like men to wear his suits in the city). The Fair Isle from Fall (remember the bunny rabbits?) was summer-ized in print and knit with palm trees and swordfish. It looked great. Marks of a new accessibility were proportions more generous than before, and outfits that broke down more easily into individual pieces: silver cargo shorts, for instance, or a topstitched navy jacket with a little peak to its shoulder, or a tan coat-jacket worn over jersey pants (with someone as rarefied as Browne, one hesitates to call them sweats).A white coat with a cutout circular motif suggested Courrèges and his spacey sixties designs. So did a helmet with goggles. Not at all, laughed Browne. He just loves polka dots and Darth Vader. That's what I mean about the lightheartedness. It was winning enough that it compelled indulgence of Browne's signature oddities: the floating nylon curtain wrapped around the waist, the halter-neck playsuit in white piqué, the decontamination suit, the collarless double-breasted jacket with an unflattering portrait neckline. On the other hand, a full-length Japanese-influenced wrap dress in black nylon had a sinuously weird charm as an alternative—make that very alternative—evening option.

Thom Browne Interview

Thom Browne

Thom Browne (born in 1965) is an American fashion designer. He is the founder and head of design for Thom Browne, a New York City-based menswear brand. Browne was named the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Menswear Designer of the Year in March 2006 and named the GQ Designer of the Year in November 2008.

Browne grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from William Allen High School. He then attended the University of Notre Dame, where he received a degree in business. He was also a member of the swim team. Following an attempt at acting in Los Angeles, Browne moved to New York City in 1997 for a job as a salesman in Giorgio Armani’s showroom.
Browne was picked up by Club Monaco, a brand of the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, to lead its creative development team. He worked with the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren in this capacity. Browne spent several years at Club Monaco leading its design department before launching his own label.

Browne’s menswear line was created as a response to the broad acceptance of business casual as being considered acceptable in lieu of formal attire.
A Thom Browne suit is distinctive in structure and fit. The suits are composed of flat front pants with exposed ankles and a jacket that concludes mid-wrist and doesn't cover the backside. They almost always have three buttons, narrow lapels rolled to the middle button, side vents, and trouser without belt loops. The designer is best known for wearing suits in a range of charcoal-grey colors, always paired with a tie cut from the same fabric, a silver tie clip, a white button down shirt, and black leather dress shoes.
Since its debut in 2001, the Thom Browne collection has extended into a more complete menswear line with dress shirts, sweaters, ties, underwear, and accessories. Thom Browne can be purchased at retailers around the world and at the flagship store on Hudson Street in TriBeCa.

On September 8, 2006, Brooks Brothers announced its partnership with Browne as part of a guest designer program to create and distribute a 50-piece men and women’s high-end collection, named Black Fleece. Claudio Del Vecchio, Chairman and CEO of Brooks Brothers, felt that “Thom Browne’s brilliant eye, his ability to foreshadow the market and offer a special look will bring a new dimension to Brooks Brothers.” The line appeared exclusively in 30 Brooks Brothers stores worldwide beginning in September 2007.
In July 2008, Thom Browne and Brooks Brothers announced their decision to continue their partnership in the Black Fleece collection for another three years. The joint venture proved so successful that Brooks Brothers opened a standalone Black Fleece store located in the West Village.

Thom Browne Officer Website

Junya Watanabe Men's Collection 06f/w

Fear isn't necessarily an emotion one expects to feel at a fashion show, but the thousand-yard stare on one of Junya Watanabe's models sent a frisson down the front row. The guy was a ringer for Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Watanabe, though, was actually taking his cues from another vigilante psycho. His models in their Mohawks and army-surplus outerwear (with deeply ironic LOVE appliqués) evoked Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver, the Scorsese movie whose soundtrack played throughout.The designer claimed Bickle as a positive inspiration. "Motivation," he said via his translator. "Men should take charge." However dubious the line of logic, it produced some intriguing clothes. Travis's camo appeared as a beautifully cut jacket; olive-drab made an equally elegant coat. Or it was patchworked for a pair of trousers. A flight jacket was elongated into a parka.These were all minor masterpieces of recycling. But what made them more remarkable was the sense of an outsider's eye trained wonderingly on an entirely alien culture. Watanabe has always excelled at this perspective. That's how he can conceive of his Travis Bickle in ethnic knitwear, or a shearling-lined nylon jacket in a lustrous, positively glamorous purple. Weird, but also a little wonderful.

Junya Watanabe Men's Collection 07f/w

There are designers who are happy to wax lyrical about their inspirations—and then there’s Junya Watanabe. He flatly rejected any suggestion of subtext or deeper meaning in his latest collection. He doesn’t even like motorbikes. Bikerwear just happened to be a convenient jumping-off point for one of his characteristic meditations on iconic American menswear. Ah, yes, but that’s a subtext, whether he likes it or not. Bike boys are laden with connotations (rebellion, the freedom of the open road, the cult of the outsider) and Watanabe underscored the connection by his choice of collaborator: Vanson Leathers, a leading American manufacturer of motorcycle jackets, pants, and biking accessories.The Watanabe way is to leave no sartorial cliché undeconstructed, so he broke down the biker jacket into its component parts—collar, belt, zips, etc.—and put them back together in unexpected ways: an elongated version in felted wool, for instance, or a tight little red number, also in felted wool, or a stand-up-collared example with the zipper trailing around the neckline. A fabric biker jacket and matching pants looked like a new kind of suit. And the zips that were slashed all over the Levi’s items (the latest examples of his ongoing partnership with the brand) added an edge.This designer’s eye for a classic brand with which to collaborate is unerring. As well as Vanson, he settled on Barbour this time. The khaki oilskin had “cult” written all over it. And yet, in the end, this collection wasn’t vintage Watanabe. Perhaps the source material was just too finite, because the delightful disorientation he usually offers on the lethally familiar was not much in evidence here.

Zazous look (color change)

Women's Wear

Men's Wear

Zazous look (Men's Wear)

Monday, September 21, 2009

Junya Watanabe 2010S/S Men's Wear

There's a lot to be said for face value in fashion, but it rarely gets said when Japanese designers are the subject. They contribute almost nothing to the dialogue, preferring to let their work do the talking for them. Unfortunately, the way they approach that work is so loaded with nuance that the hapless Westerner is left drowning in self-imposed subtext, especially when the designer at hand is the cheerfully gnomic Junya Watanabe. He has always insisted that his menswear is driven by nostalgia. His new collection felt even more so, like a relatively straight gander at a certain patrician style of dressing. (He described it as "snobbish.") From the first passage—plaid jacket, white pants, foulard with pocket square, correspondents—the look was rakish gent. A tan shorts suit looked like a modern take on golfing plus-fours (with a lot of help from the flat cap), and Junya's latest strategic alliance—with Scottish raincoat legend Mackintosh—was another clue to his protagonist's heartland. Still, Serge Gainsbourg's boulevardier vibe was on the soundtrack, which added the kind of incongruous note that always distinguishes Japan's take on western style. As the show wore on, the looks got looser and the fabrics got tech-ier, like a pinstriped nylon parka with matching Bermudas. Shirts were collaged from stripes and checks, waistcoats had their backs cut out. But any sense that Junya might be deconstructing that snobbish (and presumably good) life he mentioned was dispelled by Levi's that were lovingly mended, rather than patched. He even served up a proper finale, with his models stepping out in more-or-less matching white (or pale) shirts and shorts. It was an uncomplicated, charming, summery closer, and for once, the search for subtexts was stilled.