Face, Fancy, fashion, London Collections: MEN, men's fashion

Richard James Spring/Summer 2016 London

The bulk of the schedule’s menswear shows are based around the Old Sorting Office in Holborn, a strange stretch of mid-town real estate that has little connection to the fashion industry; that all takes place much further east, in the lines of north-south streets that follow the city’s ever-changing frontiers. But walking from Holborn to the Richard James show this morning was a walk back through menswear history – from Covent Garden in the Nineties to Sixties Soho, to pre-war Savile Row and on to Jermyn Street and the gentleman’s clubs of Pall Mall. There, amidst statues of portly Victorian generals and smugly triumphant explorers, Richard James unveiled their latest collection in a long underground space overlooking St. James’ Park.

Read more
The title of father-and-son team Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford was nicely apposite for London menswear's themes as a whole: OF INDETERMINATE ORIGIN. That's not to say you couldn't have picked apart all the disparate threads of this, or any other of this week's shows: Nineties hip-hop, Sixties Mod discipline, rave-era Ibiza, Northern Soul, and all the other reference points that have clung round every collection. It's that all those things have become so melded together, so fused into something familiar yet strange, that the points of origin matter less and less. Instead, they're elements garbled in translation, warped and stretched into hybrids so far evolved that they've become almost entirely separate things.
Face, Fancy, fashion, men's fashion, Runways

Casely-Hayford Spring/Summer 2016 London

The title of father-and-son team Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford was nicely apposite for London menswear’s themes as a whole: OF INDETERMINATE ORIGIN. That’s not to say you couldn’t have picked apart all the disparate threads of this, or any other of this week’s shows: Nineties hip-hop, Sixties Mod discipline, rave-era Ibiza, Northern Soul, and all the other reference points that have clung round every collection. It’s that all those things have become so melded together, so fused into something familiar yet strange, that the points of origin matter less and less. Instead, they’re elements garbled in translation, warped and stretched into hybrids so far evolved that they’ve become almost entirely separate things.

Read more
Fancy, fashion, men's fashion

Lee Roach Spring/Summer 2016 London

Not the first time a designer does not employ models so they look new proposals. But this is a big production of Lee Roach, covers all the details. First we see the extraordinary designs clothes, beautiful jackets, fine shoes, everything as if it were a work of art. All details including the arrangement of the mannequins was very well done.

Read more
The inspiration points behind Agape Mdumulla and Sam Cotton's menswear collections have always been divertingly off-piste – from Lego bricks to upholstery prints to Japanese modernism, and from retro football jerseys to scuba gear to African oil logos. This time around, the trigger was fear, harking back to childhood nightmares of baddies and ghosts. That expressed itself in hand-scrawled stripes and flapping bogeyman silhouettes, in murky shades of cocoa, slate, denim, and midnight blue. The workwear details which have been cropping up in collection after collection this week were here too, with sleek leather utility vests worn under drab macs.
Face, Fancy, fashion, Male Model, Runways

Agi & Sam Menswear Spring/Summer 2016 London

The inspiration points behind Agape Mdumulla and Sam Cotton’s menswear collections have always been divertingly off-piste – from Lego bricks to upholstery prints to Japanese modernism, and from retro football jerseys to scuba gear to African oil logos.

This time around, the trigger was fear, harking back to childhood nightmares of baddies and ghosts. That expressed itself in hand-scrawled stripes and flapping bogeyman silhouettes, in murky shades of cocoa, slate, denim, and midnight blue. The workwear details which have been cropping up in collection after collection this week were here too, with sleek leather utility vests worn under drab macs.

Read more