Author Archives: Jack

Gryphon

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Nick Cave’s dynamic Soundsuits inspired the exuberance of Aimee Cho’s latest collection. “Of course I’d never compare my work to his,” she said. “But I did think a lot about these sculptures he makes that come to life on a body.”

The electric jolt was felt in a washed fluorescent-coral army jacket—refined by sleek pockets—and a black barn coat, the back embroidered with an abstract orange and gold floral that almost resembled a goldfish. While those particular toppers gave off a casual vibe, there were great office-appropriate items, too. A Japanese sweatshirt material, for instance, was patched together with a coral-accented basket-weave jacquard to form a surprisingly unfussy blazer. Cho is offering her standard styles—a trench, mini trench, and cropped peacoat—in a cotton woven with metal to make it water resistant. The subtle shimmer from the metal adds just the teensiest bit of opulence to otherwise utilitarian pieces. (No, it doesn’t rust.)

The designer launched Gryphon in 2006 as a collection of coats, and after veering into ready-to-wear for a while, she has chosen to refocus strictly on outerwear. That tunnel vision is good for the market, since one can never have too many coats, especially ones as special—and functional—as these.
—Lauren Sherman
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Burberry Prorsum

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When Christopher Bailey claimed inspiration from “the inner sassiness of the girl next door” for Burberry‘s Resort collection, he might have been invoking the stuff of a 16-year-old boy’s fantasy. Is that the Burberry woman? Well, maybe if Cara Delevingne were living next door. But otherwise, Bailey’s reference points were more apposite: Audrey Hepburn for the soft tailoring, the little black dress, the beatnik/librarian vibe (Funny Face Forever) of a sweater and pencil skirt paired with a mid-heel shoe; Helmut Newton for worldly eveningwear whose racer backs cried out for Newton’s broad-shouldered Teutons.

It was a funny kind of mix. Slouchy knits—an angora cardigan jacket, for instance, or a sweater that was bowed in back—had a fresh, pastel sweetness, matched by the squidgy luxury of crushable envelopes in crocodile. But posed against that were fabrics thickened by bonding and cut into substantial coats and skirts, or experiments in texture like the dress in a plongée leather washed to a papery fineness and foiled with gold. They seemed to be tipping the cap to a slightly screwy glamour, even screwier when it was expressed in cotton tees weighed down with big, shiny embellishments.

A Burberry bird whispered that those Funny Face-d proportions—the long-lapelled coats and jackets, the pencil skirts, the mid-heels—were actually an early warning of an incoming 1990s renaissance. But equally, they followed on from Fall’s fetish-y pre-Swinging Sixties feel. It worked so well for Bailey last season that it wouldn’t be at all surprising if he kept it round a little longer.
—Tim Blanks
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