Mood board: Finally, designers are reacting against the rampant puritanism of all things pop. With Art School’s walking-home-from-the-club strut, Mowalola’s naked clothes and Charles Jeffrey’s playful parades, the message is one fuelled by positivity and passion and the body. The invitation to Cottweiler’s autumn/winter 2019 show featured a gushing pyramided public urinal, placed in the great outdoors; Ben Cottrell and Matthew Dainty said they wanted to explore the affects that technology has had on human face-to-face interaction. It looked to traditional masculine dress codes from the sportswear worn in their native Essex and Bristol hometowns and, the notes say ‘the lost art of cruising.’
Best in show: All of these collections say something about the politics of sex in an age where relationships are made and broken with the swipe of a screen. Here they translated into a range of smart tracksuits, techy outerwear and waterproof protection. A reminder of the corporeal world. Nods to nefarious outdoor pursuits were there in the Reebok socks with reflective strips at the back. Zips darted diagonally across the pelvis. Standout were the hand-dyed merino shearling track pants and roomy parka. The textures were all from a sci-fi, digital utopia yet brutally rendered in sensual, Arcadian hues.
Team work: New for the season was a capsule collection of 10 raincoats made with the Italian outerwear specialist Allegri. Each had a base layer similar to a wet suit with an outer shell in sports nylon. The pieces were inspired by the 1988 film Le Grand Bleu directed by Luc Besson with a focus on activities related to the deep sea, from diving to underwater sports like spear-fishing, and will be shown as part of Pitti Uomo 95. §
