The fan-boy situation in fashion is endlessly mesmerizing. Marc, Raf, Hedi—all these grown men given huge resources to flex their adolescent fascinations. But king of the hill is Undercover‘s Jun Takahashi, because his fandom couples with what seems to be a natural Japanese impulse toward the curatorial. So he will latch on to one arcane enthusiasm, exploit it to the max, and, in the process, create an extraordinary cultural artifact.

The most extraordinary was Takahashi’s book on Westwood-McLaren’s label Seditionaries. It’s so hard to find that it has attained the status of urban myth. And that glorious period—the heyday of punk in London—seemed to be his prime inspiration for a long time, even as he took side trips into The Jesus and Mary Chain and Krautrockers. But for Spring 2015, Takahashi said he’d made a leap, from the overt fabulosity of punk London to the “inner life” of punk New York, specifically the band Television, whose main man Tom Verlaine was responsible for a spidery, spiraling form of guitar music that grows in stature as the decades wear on.

In an odd way, the fiercely antifashion Television loaned themselves to the revisionism of a designer like Takahashi. He used the starkness of their two album sleeves as an intensely visual graphic, and the cryptic poetry of their lyrics as running motifs across and around items of clothing. There was so much more—the plaid-printed biker jacket and the cable-printed coat being two examples—but the peculiar combination of Verlaine’s elliptical presentation and Takahashi’s bold reinterpretation created the entrancing prospect of Takahashites around the world greeting the day in the sleeve of Adventure, Television’s second album. Takahashi’s passion for music is such that all he wants to do is convert people to his cause. Seeing that Television is the current cause, can we recommend the tracks “Friction” and “Foxhole” as starting points? Then you may stand converted.
—Tim Blanks
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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
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Since 2004, Engineered Garments has been the singular menswear brand in New York when it comes to vintage-inspired sportswear. With a discreet identity and an “if you know, you know” reputation for quality in fabrics and construction, there is as much mystique as there is obsession surrounding the label. The Spring 2015 collection is a testament to why.

There is a story behind this offering: Designer Daiki Suzuki looked to the now-defunct brand British Khaki by Robert Lighton and the image of the British army in India, their khaki mil-spec gear commingling with bright colors and kalamkari and paisley prints. The result was a collection of contradictions. Khaki, olive drab, navy, and gray paired with bright florals, printed canvas, and jacquard; Nehru collars, harem pants, and long shirts alongside British officer jackets and double-pleated trousers. Military and workwear tend to be sober by nature, but here much fun was had in mixing and matching patterns, in unlikely fabric combos, and in the contrast between informal and exotic with formal and traditional. More challenging pieces like the wrap-and-tie wide-leg fisherman pants added irreverent fun to a jacket and tie. Numerous riffs on safari- and military-style jackets, all executed with a balance of nuance and convention, were never quite what you’d expect. Suzuki’s design process begins with the fabrics, and so one of the greatest strengths here was in the materials—luxe tropical wool; soft, richly colored twill; bright nylon; linen blends; and more unique fabrics like a water-resistant striped cotton with poly backing.

But the British safari narrative is somehow too confining for the clothes; it too neatly categorizes the collection. Above all, this is the vision of a sportswear mastermind. Suzuki doesn’t design from historical archives or a template for what a collection should be. He finds inspiration and intuits his way through both vintage and entirely original designs. While there are staple pieces in the line—the brand’s cult following knows them well, the Bedford jacket and workshirt, in particular—every pattern is new each season, constantly being tweaked to improve and adapt based on what Suzuki feels is right. “This is something nobody else can do,” the designer said, standing in the showroom of his Garment District office. “Only I can do this.”
—Noah Johnson
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Nothing said “new Couture customer” like Giambattista Valli‘s collection tonight. Imagine the Alhambra Gardens. A girl wakes, maybe she’s still dressed from the night before, maybe she swathes herself in a striped sheet or slips into her beau’s pj’s. It’s bright so she puts on sunglasses. Her head hurts. She wraps it in a napkin from the champagne bucket. And she goes for a walk in the garden. There’s a dry, warm wind, blossoms are blowing, they cloud her…

A pretty picture, and Valli did it justice on his catwalk. He visited the gardens years ago and filed the memory away for access at the right moment. It was the eclecticism of the Alhambra that appealed to him, the mix of Moorish and Spanish. That mix was entirely sublimated here, but there was still a feeling for the heat of the gardens, for the richness of the flowers, and even, at the end, a monochrome catholic strictness as a kind of cleanser before a finale of skirts fluffed into an extravaganza of feathery tulle. “They’ll be the best-seller,” Valli announced confidently, because they would lend themselves so well to weddings.

“The secret of my girls is that they’re always eccentric,” he said before his show. “They don’t play it. They are.” So you could say that there was eccentricity in a skirt in pink fluoro lace laid over a striped body. But the strength of this lineup was that Valli didn’t, for once, actually cater to that waywardness. Skirts were pencil thin and below the knee, and right away that gave the collection a long, elegant, grown-up line. They were paired with crop tops, tanks, or a capelet situation that Valli liked. In the case of the full-skirted frenzy of the finale, he used tiny piped pajama tops as a counterpoint.

There was something old Hollywood about such a look, an impression Valli effortlessly compounded with dresses in a wisteria-printed mousseline that begged for Norma Shearer. Hardly the apogee of a “new” Couture customer, but entirely emblematic of an aspirational age of elegance.
—Tim Blanks
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