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. 

pics from Style.com

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:

source

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.

pics from Style.com

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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