Menswear Fashion Week, Fall 2013: Agi & Sam, Astrid Anders, and Craig Green

All three of the following labels appeared in this year's MAN show, an initiative partly funded by Topman to help up-and-coming British menswear designers. I hadn't heard of any of them until today, but I expect at least one of them will make it big in the next couple of years. Perhaps I'm overthinking things, but it seemed to me like each of these three labels represented one of the tenets of Topman's success as an affordable fashion mainstay: Agi & Sam as the dapper traditionalists, Astrid Anderson for larger-than-life street style, and Craig Green representing the cutting-edge trend junkies.

Agi & Sam
Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton's ideal client is, apparently, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. 

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Their muse this season is Alexander George Thynn, seventh Marquess of Bath, which at first made me go "oh no" because shows inspired by British aristocrats are invariably dull and/or baffling. But then I googled Alexander George Thynn, and wow:

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TOTALLY VALID CHOICE OF STYLE ICON. I'm now kind of disappointed the show doesn't look more like him, because he's clearly an incredible role model if you want to look like a walking stained-glass window and/or cartoon magician.

This collection combined three things I always like to see in men's runway fashion: good shoes, non-traditional models, and a decent grasp of how to use bright colours without making everyone look like a children's TV presenter. I don't think I'll ever be in favour of padded bodywarmers/gilets as fashion items -- especially when they're layered over a coat -- but the interesting mix of fabrics and patterns more than made up for that.

With some predictability, this next outfit was my favourite of the collection. The cut of the suit is sleek and dapper, and the studiously bland jacket balances out the loud patterns of the trousers and waistcoat. Also, this is a rare moment when I can get onboard with the trend of men buttoning their top buttons but not wearing a tie, because in this particular case another colour or print would have overloaded the overall look.

(N.B. I'm not sure if the garment between the jacket and the shirt is a waistcoat or not, as it appears to have sleeves that overshoot the cuffs of the jacket. Is this a second shirt, or is the yellow cuff just another part of the jacket made to match the waistcoat?)

Astrid Anderson
Cartoonish exaggeration is pretty much the only context in which I can muster any interest in sportswear. Astrid Anderson's designs, partially made from mink, are just about glam enough to make the grade -- particularly since they're paired with gold lipstick.

Craig Green
CLEARLY THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENT OF MENSWEAR FASHION WEEK THUS FAR. Taking Derelicte to a whole new level.

I'm a-flutter with curiosity. Will Craig Green's burnt-out plank headpieces be available for purchase?? Are all of his models latter-day Dementors? Do they really represent a battle between good and evil, as represented by the dark and light sections of the runway show? All I know is, the inspiration for this show was: "SHADOW".

Actually, I almost feel like I have to defend this show. It's not uncommon for either menswear or womenswear collections to feature one "extreme" accessory like a mask or hat, but have the rest of the outfits look perfectly reasonable. Taken individually, most of Craig Green's designs have a definite appeal -- especially the patchy sweaters and striped trousers, which show signs of a particular talent for the kind of rugged texture-mixing designers like Yohji Yamamoto are famed for. Plus, I think this is the type of show that one must view as a single unit rather than a selection of possible outfits. Craig Green is in a near-unique position in that he's critically acclaimed (and well-funded) enough to present his first collection after graduation as an art-fashion show featuring both body-sculpture and wearable menswear styles. I'm certain that I'll have seen some pretty ridiculous shows by the time Menswear Fashion Week is through, but this wasn't one of them.

(That being said, I was not hugely surprised to learn that Craig Green worked with Walter Van Bierendonck while Green was still finishing his degree at Saint Martin's.)

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London Fashion Week, Fall 2012: Mary Katrantzou.

Digital prints have been on the rise for a while now, but Katrantzou is still queen. She's been on the radar for less than four years, but youth and the fact that she runs her own label give her liberty to pursue her strengths. And what that means at the moment is that she's producing entire shows of unique digital-print clothes season after season. Thanks to a combination of critical accolades and publicity for her new Topshop line, Fall 2012 was her true breakthrough London Fashion Week show.

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Mary Katrantzou shot to the top of my favourite-designers list as soon as I saw her Fall 2011 collection last year. She deserves her good reviews for a multitude of reasons, but most importantly to me, she's creating clothes that are drastically different not only from the current fashion zeitgeist but from anything I've seen before. She's the sort of expert that creates itself -- an artist who has been developing her own visual brand for years, waiting quietly for the rest of the world to catch up. I have no doubt that there are other, lesser-known designers who don't have London Fashion Week slots who have explored prints in equally innovative ways, but Mary K is the only designer in mainstream fashion whom I'd describe as a true master of the art.

In previous seasons, Katrantzou's prints have taken inspiration from various sources. This time last year it was porcelein art and Ming vases; a show full of delicately painted koi swimming around ornate fish-ponds of dresses, and imagery taken directly from decorative tiles and wallpapers. Six months ago the prints took on a far more abstract theme, and this week she's gone in yet another direction: everyday household objects. Take a look at the white dress above. What's that design around the waist? Spoons. The magic of Mary Katrantzou is that through an almost mathematical repetition of shapes within each design, pictures can lose their meaning and just become another part of the pattern. Her clothes are fun, but -- unlike a spoon-themed print in the hands of many other designers -- they're not a joke.

One of the major developments this season was that instead of having each outfit be a mish-mash of different colours like the images from which they were originally inspired, the collection as a whole was divided into sections by colour. A smart decision, because while Katrantzou has been getting excellent reviews for several seasons now, people are more likely to wear clothes that hit one or two points on the colour-wheel rather than, you know, all of them.

Typwriter dress!

Katrantzou's designs aren't all print, though. Her go-to silhouette is already quite easy to identify: neat sleeves, sharp shoulders, and usually either a peplum or some extra layering at the hips. In order to showcase the prints correctly the fabric on the majority of the dresses is unusually rigid and there are far more flat planes than one usually finds in this type of outfit. The end result is that the restrictions necessitated by Katrantzou's primary concern, the print designs, have caused a recognisable Katrantzou silhouette to emerge.

Within the strong colour divisions, each colour was represented by a different object. Earlier on we saw the red typewriter dress and the white spoon dress, but green was themed around something even more banal: grass. The gown pictured below combined images of hedge-mazes with green jewels at the hips, oversized jewels being an ongoing motif in Katrantzou's designs.

This yellow and pink dress blows my mind a little. It looks great and all -- very frothy-Hawaiian-cocktail, very Capitol City from The Hunger Games -- but God is in the details. See the swirl pattern on the body of the skirt? That pattern is made of pencils. Not pictures of pencils -- actual pencils with the erasers still attached at the end. I don't have any close-up pictures here, but there's a video of the show at the end of this post and this dress is 3.55 minutes in -- take a look. It's a really exquisite example of Katrantzou's desire to take mundane objects and make them into something unrecognisably glamourous and fantastical.

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Ozwald Boateng: A Man's Story

For the past twelve years, documentary filmmaker Varon Bonicos has been following Ozwald Boateng's journey to becoming one of the most successful tailors and menswear designers in the world. A Man's Story may not be one of the most investigative of documentaries, but from the perspective of someone who gets the same pleasure and intellectual stimulation from high-end fashion that other people might get from going to an art gallery, this film is a godsend.

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A Man's Story is a delight to watch for the same reasons that people gravitate towards world-class athletes and musical prodigies. It's immediately apparent that Boateng was made to do what he does. When we first see him with his parents it's a shock because they are so normal-looking. Ozwald, on the other hand, towers over everyone, has perfect posture, and is one of the most attractive people I have ever seen. His mere presence is an advertisement for the clothes he wears and creates. In motion, he's as smooth and exacting as one of his suits. And when he's working on those suits, it's with a silent, intuitive speed that belies the 10,000 hours of practise Malcolm Gladwell says one needs before one can be a master of any skill.

Ozwald Boateng in Tom Stoddart's Walk With Giants photoshoot.

In order to understand Boateng both as a creative person and as a powerhouse of the menswear industry one must first understand that he's not a "fashion designer", he's a tailor. He's the youngest person -- and the only black man to date -- to open a shop in the prestigous Savile Row, and even once he reaches the level of Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy and is dressing A-list celebrities, he makes no bones of the fact that his aims are that of a tailor, not a typical fashion designer. Also, he's not terribly good at the sort of art-school jargon that most high-end designers tend to churn out when explaining their work. Boateng is the director of a few of the sort of short fashion films in which people spout cryptic phrases at each other while doing things like pouring sand into boxes and gazing thoughtfully at at the landscape, and having watched a couple of them I think it's safe to say that while his aesthetic instincts are second to none, he's no concept artist.

The 100 models of Ozwald Boateng's A Man's Story collection in 2010.

I think it's rather telling that even after twelve years of filming and four hundred hours of footage shot, both the documentary itself and its portrait of Boateng are still more style than substance. The tagline is "The Coolest Man On Earth", which couldn't be more accurate considering his effortless good taste and the endless well of confidence that allows him to rub elbows with the rich and famous and maintain a ruthless "You have no option other than to impress me," business attitude. There are a lot of talking-head interviews with celebrities saying how witty and fascinating he is, but no real evidence of that onscreen. At no point does he successfully articulate the thought processes behind his creative drive, and the film doesn't make much of an attempt to delve into the technicalities of tailoring or the menswear design industry.

from Ozwald Boateng's Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

This is a man with only two aspects to his life: his career and his family, and over the course of the film he torpedoes the latter in favour of the former. In the footage from the mid-2000s it's clear that Boateng is an incredibly uxorious man, but even while you're watching him speak of the deep love he has for his wife, you get the feeling that the marriage is unlikely to last. Never mind the more prosaic concerns that they're a pair of rich, extremely good-looking creative people who spend a lot of time on opposite sides of the globe; he's just too single-minded. Like many geniuses, his focus is so concentrated on his work that everything else is a secondary concern. One of the truest moments in the film is an interview with his ex-wife, in which she says with a sort of weary affection that Boateng still doesn't really seem to understand what went wrong in their marriage.

Boateng in 1994. I'm 90% sure he doesn't actually age.

As a triumph-over-adversity story this film is emotionally engaging but far from groundbreaking. However, it's still impressive to watch Boateng steamroller through the various obstacles life throws at him and proceed to become a world-famous designer and businessman. In the aftermath of his first divorce, his first major show after moving to Savile Row is beset with disaster, and then the entire collection is promptly stolen from the premises. And yet a few years later, through a combination of talent and unrelenting ambition, he's been awarded an OBE and is sought-after for red carpet fittings by A-list actors. Both as a behind-the-scenes film about the fashion world and as a biopic I think A Man's Story could have gone into more depth and detail, but if you enjoy menswear as much as I do then that may not matter all that much.

Ozwald Boateng in Tom Stoddart's Walk With Giants photoshoot

A Man's Story goes on general release in the UK on March 9, 2012.

Links
Trailer/preview clip for A Man's Story.
Ozwald Boateng homepage.
Footage of Boateng's 100-model-strong A Man's Life show in 2010.

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