Mood board: ‘This is the first collection of a new decade and I wanted to consider what it means to be a man today. It has changed so much over the last several decades.’ So said creative director Paul Andrew after his graceful A/W 20 show. The label’s return to the Milan menswear schedule explored the fluid and free nature of masculine identities. Machismo unfurled in the sensual clothes. Andrew presented outfits that purposefully defy categorisation: ‘a man today is not obliged to assume a single, set role. He can be a multitude, and he can change his worn identity any time he wishes,’ he said. There was a softening of line applied to six alpha male archetypes: the businessman, biker, racing driver, sailor, soldier and surfer. A nautical peacoat came in traditional herringbone tweed and worn with double-faced silk wool leggings. Surfer palm print camo was matched with military flight jackets in leather.
Best in show: Tailoring was fitted with velcro straps so that it can be altered by the wearer: from structured to slouchy. Jackets and long, double-breasted coats in fine pinstripe wool were cinched at the hip. Bermuda short suits, worn with high boots showing just an inch of knee, were smart and fresh. There was a spongy feel to blousons that rolled around the shoulder. Knits had bounce. The mood board included photographs of Sean Connery as James Bond (the theme tune to the 1967 hit You Only Live Twice played during the finale). ‘It used be more about a certain machismo, but I feel that the way millennials are dressing today is much more about mixing the classic archetypes of men, some of them masculine, some of them more at ease with their femininity,’ Andrew said. Sensuality reverberated around the baroque Rotonda della Besana which had been wrapped in a buttery yellow carpet, bathed in shards of winter sunlight.
Sound bite: ‘There are many more archetypes than the six we looked at but these were the ones that spoke to me and the ones I incorporate most into my own wardrobe,’ Andrews said. ‘Now I’m overseeing both men’s and women’s, it is interesting to see the contrast. The way you approach womenswear is often through thinking about a certain decade – the 70s, the 80s, the 90s – you work around that premise. Men’s tends to be about a character – a tailored businessman or a slouchy sailor – but I feel the way men are dressing right now is all of those things. The last ten years have been so much about sportswear and I think that’s coming to a hard close.’ Everything had ease.
