Fall Menswear 2012: Alexander McQueen, Prada, Gucci, Ferragamo and more.

Alexander McQueen
Knee-breeches are the best. I've been wearing them, or variants thereof, for a while now, and eagerly await the moment when Tudor pantaloons come back into style. (I can dream, OK?) So it's time once again for me to be smug about spotting an upcoming trend in advance, and/or using my pattern-recognition skills to twist reality to fit with my desired worldview.

This season's McQueen menswear doesn't reach the lofty heights of the label's recent womenswear collections -- what could? -- but it's buoyed up by a surprising amount of personality for what's essentially another riff on the classic suit. And even though McQueen chose to go for a photoshoot rather than a runway show this season, the modeling choices are interesting in themselves -- no typically lanky, beanpole-like male models here, plus some of the poses hint towards not androgyny (that staple of all high-end fashion) but a certain femininity.

I particularly like the outfit below since it's more or less a typical city banker suit, except breeches instead of trousers. It illustrates how easy it'd be to transition from a typical trouser to this -- although I'm aware that many people will still think it looks dumb.

Bottega Veneta

Trussardi
Trussardi gets a [dis]honourable mention here since their show was, to me, so comedically unappealing. The theme appeared to be "skeezy Starsky & Hutch villain", to which inspiration they brought such marvels as this:

He's stolen your baby and it's in his bag right now.

And this douchebag, whose outfit isn't actually so bad (although it does look like an action-comedy costume, thanks to the colour-scheme), but who appears to be carrying a... bottle... of urine...?

No, seriously, I have no idea.

Salvatore Ferragamo
Ferragamo, along with Ermenegildo Zegna, is one of the finest designers of razor-sharp but ultimately boring menswear. Fantastic to look at, and reeking of style, but not exactly groundbreaking or imaginative. The way I judged this particular show was, "Would Magneto wear this?" since the combination of dark, slim jackets, turtleneck sweaters and purple made me think of Michael Fassbender's wardrobe in X-Men: First Class.

In the following picture, I like to imagine that the pouch on his belt is for snacks. @zanzando suggested on Twitter that he'd use it to transport metal balls for weaponry emergencies, but in my opinion Magneto doesn't need a bag for that, so snacks it is. Cookies, baked incompetently by Charles Xavier because they are buddies and the sequel to X-Men: First Class is totally going to be all about them running a mutant school together. Right? Right.

Moncler Gamme Bleu
Another year, another marvel. Last season it was fencing; this year its Formula 1 drivers. This show wasn't quite up to the level of Spring's opaque masks or faux body-armour with random straps all over it, but a valient effort was made nonetheless.

Moncler Gamme Bleu is one of those Zoolander-esque designers whose customer base I can never quite divine. Evidently they must be doing well since they manage to keep on creating such bizarre and niche designs -- shown on the runway at Fashion Week, no less -- during this economic climate, but how? Who wears it? Maybe it looks less baffling when you're only wearing one item instead of the entire outfit of padded red nylon?

But why is he carrying a blanket?

Prada
Prada did well this season, gimmick-wise, by hiring a mixture of male models and familiar faces for their show. The clothes were underwhelming in my opinion, but the gimmick worked because: Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman! He is reason enough, my friends. Also on the catwalk were Jamie Bell (who tweeted an adorable fanboy message about meeting G. Oldman, I noticed.), Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brodie.

This jacket is too tight.

Miuccia Prada was evident in the details, such as the colourful designs on the accessories, but aside from that the collection was largely old-fashioned yet decidedly run-of-the-mill coats and suits. The shoes, socks, and sunglasses were the main highlight, for me.

My main reason for including this next guy is because I liked his name so much: Bernd Sassmannscausen. Plus his facial expression, which suggests that he's about to Voldemort all over the place.

Gary Oldman!

Jamie Bell's outfit confused me a little, since the waistcoat blended so closely into the shirt and show every sign of being tucked into his trousers. It makes his torso look oddly bandaged, and bulkier than expected.

Gucci
The fit of the suits in Gucci ran extremely slim this season. So slim, in fact, that the trousers all had to have zips at the ankles. But the focus was on fabric choices, from gaudy velvet flocking to iridescent geometric patterns to murky, almost blurred floral prints. I'm not sure if it was successful in most cases, though, especially if worn in a non-fashion context.

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Dolce & Gabbana Menswear: Fall 2012.

I think this is the first menswear post I've made on Hello, Tailor, so let me begin with this obvious yet necessary disclaimer: menswear is different from womenswear. Due to the way our society views men "dressing up", menswear tends to be a lot less daring than womenswear. I guarantee that when Fall Fashion Week comes along, there will be multiple looks that will make you go, "What the hell is that?" and then think, "Well, I suppose Lady Gaga/Tilda Swinton/Beyonce will be wearing it by next month." During Menswear Fashion Week there will be some bizarre and wonderful outfits on the runway, make no mistake, but I highly doubt that you'll be seeing many of them on men in the public eye. There will always be people willing to spend a three-figure sum on designer t-shirts, but there's less pressure for menswear designers to explore much further than that. Happily, there will also be an awful lot of well-tailored suits, so you can expect to see a lot of suit pictures in the upcoming weeks.

photos from Style.com

Dolce & Gabbana is only the second show I've looked at this Menswear Fashion Week, but I'm already sure that it's still going to be one of my favourites come the end of the season. D&G have expertly trod the line between traditional suits and eye-catching runway fashion, ending up with something that mixes unexpected fabric choices, three-piece formal suits (always a winner), and old-fashioned luxury without often straying into the territory of over-the-top opulence.

My love of richly-embroidered fabrics meant that I was biased towards this collection almost immediately. The show itself was steeped in heavy-handed operatic melodrama, with the models walking to Pavarotti along a darkened runway with red and gold antique furniture in the background (footage here). A great deal of typical D&G trad menswear followed (not pictured here because there were 76 looks in this show and I'm not wasting space on the ~20 near-identical black tuxedos included therein), occasionally modified with Italian opera capes, or Tistera.

After I saw BBC Sherlock's "A Scandal In Belgravia" I reread the original Holmes short story "A Scandal In Bohemia", meaning that the description of the King of Bohemia was fresh in my mind when I saw this collection today. "His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as bad taste." "...impression of barbaric opulence..." and so forth. The heavy coats and capes over dark three-piece harkened back to late 19th/early 20th century formalwear, although definitely more European than British.

Trousers aren't a typical place to find brocade, and although I think the jacket pictured below went a little too far on the embroidery and decoration stakes, I love the steady creep of curlicues up this model's legs, like the growth of some type of coral or ice-crystal.

The heavy fabrics were a particular delight for me, since they'd been purposely weathered to avoid being too bright, giving the appearance of an antique. Although I wouldn't classify this show as remotely steampunk, I'm sure it'll find many fans in the steampunk community. When it comes to dressing up, you often have to go back to the early 20th century and beyond for menswear inspiration, since so many trends in the latter half of the 20th century are not easily mined for wearable menswear looks (cf. DISCO). Unlike womenswear designers, who dig up the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s ad infinitum.

I particularly liked this next look (and the sweater + embroidered cape pictured earlier) since it neatly combines different eras without seeming jarringly retro. Ignoring the poorly-tailored trousers for a moment, the shape of the sweater is very trendy and new while the embroidery could easily come from some minor Russian royal's home furnishings circa 1850. And then the gold-studded shoes are perfectly modern as well. (I've been racking my brain to remember where this type of stiff, wide, half-length sleeves come from -- I thought somewhere in the Himalayas but Google has not been forthcoming in this regard.)

There were several pajama outfits in the collection, complete with slippers. Or at least, I hope they were intended to be pajamas because the collar certainly suggests that, never mind that they were all worn with a jacket over the top. The fabric choices, once again, were excellent.

Among the more directly modern-looking outfits was this knitted ensemble, which included those irritatingly unflattering drop-crotch trousers that are so fashionable right now. One thing I will say in favour of this pair is that they look admirably warm. If you've read any of my Fall or Pre-Fall womenswear reviews you'll know that I have a persistant bugbear when it comes to outfits that are supposed to be worn in London, Paris, or NYC in November, yet include bare legs and a tiny jacket made from lace. I suspect that this is down to the high-end fashion world's dismally archaic view of what men and women "should" look like -- ie, it's a rare day that you see a menswear collection that highlights the delicate and fragile aspects of its wearer's appearance, or a womenswear collection that tries to make the models look strong and bulky.

The shoes in this show were a particular treat for me. They went from trendy to formal to artfully distressed, plus many of them would go with a wide variety of outfits. The neverending queues of tuxedos we see on the red carpet would be significantly more interesting if their wearers threw in some gold-embroidered shoes now and then. And I loved the urban neo-antique appearance of sock/show combos such as this:

I would wear this like a shot.

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Loki was just misunderstood! Oh yeah, and some stuff from Milan Fashion Week as well.

I was looking at the new Milan Fashion Week shows in an attempt to think of some kind of cohesive theme for my first post on this blog, but then I got distracted by Thor. :/

Manish Arora

Last season Manish Arora had a kind of Bladerunner thing going on (some of it spectacular), but this year's theme appears to be: the movie Thor mated with the 1960s. First up, magical sparkly space-viking armour dresses:

*wipes away tear* I'm sorry, you guys. I just really love Thor, OK. It makes no attempt whatsoever to be adult or dark. Instead it gives you Chris Hemsworth riding a space-horse across a bridge made of rainbows, and Anthony Hopkins wearing a gold eyepatch:

The tragic tale of a young outcast dealing with his father's betrayal, and his conflicted relationship with his dumb-but-sweet brother who likes to hit things with a big hammer. In a world where everyone wears impractically voluminous capes and sparkly armour at all times, despite having perfected intergalactic travel and having magical powers. Why that movie didn't end with Loki and Thor, a) hugging tearfully, and b) becoming co-rulers of Asgard with Loki doing logistics and Thor making public appearances with his shiny shiny hammer, I just do not understand.

Look at those eyes, Thor. Why can't you two just get along?

 Anyway, check out that colour palette of iridescent metallic whatsits and tell me it isn't a tad Asgardian:

Shoulder-armour always makes me wonder about the chicken-or-egg situation regarding the relationship between sci-fi and reality. As in: jules Verne invents the submarine; Star Trek invents the fliptop mobile phone; Minority Report invents those rad touchescreen computers that actually look kind of tiring to use in real life unless you're an orchestral conductor. Which came first: silly catwalk fashion shoulder-armour, or the kind you get in every post-apocalyptic action movie ever?

Poor baby

If you've got a female character who has to do a bunch of fighting, you can be certain three things will be covered: her vagina, her nipples, and her shoulders. I guess vagina and nipples because you don't want to be censored, and shoulders to prove that she's a Fighter without having to do anything so sensible as, say, cover any internal organs. Not that I want to hate on Xena's "armoured" outfit, of course, because Xena is awesome. But you know what? Here's another thing I liked about Thor: Sif's entire body was covered with just as much armour as her bros-in-arms, and she actually looked less silly than several of them. Hello, Loki looks like he could be defeated by a low doorway.

But enough of me weeping over Tragic Misunderstood Loki, let's look at some pictures of really uncomfortable-looking models wearing torso-cages:

There's a whole intestine thing going on with the top half of this outfit, and I don't know if I'm comfortable with it.

I LOVE those birds! Not wild about the foot-jeans though. Is the hoof look in this season, or something?
 

Here's where the 1960s part comes in:

P.S. Anyone who wants to see the most adorable piece of Loki fanart ever should click here. I don't know who made it, but it's amazing.

Jil Sander

Jil Sander's colour-blocking skirts blew the critics out of the water last spring. No pressure or anything. Luckily, they managed to produce several outfits that, even if they don't reach the iconic status of those bright yellow sacks last year (seriously, they may be a groundbreaking style revolution, but they still look like the original sketch was by a 3-year-old practising shapes with crayola colours -- although I guess they look pretty much the same on any body shape, which is a plus?), are guaranteed to appear repeatedly in the fashion pages for the next couple of months.

Slap a paisley print on something I'm pretty much guaranteed to like it more, plus these slim, tailored suits have somehow managed to retain the Jil sander "I'm so clean and neat I can wear the busiest pattern in existence and still look like I was born in IKEA" look.

Aquilano Rimondi

You know, there have been a lot of these high-fronted chest-panel dresses this season (Fendi was a standout), and while I find them interesting I also find them irritating because they're so clearly designed for flat-chested women: ie, not many women. This is one of the times when what I find aesthetically interesting or appealing goes to war with the obvious fact that many designers are ignoring a lot of prospective customers. However, I suppose that "innovative fashion + only wearable by models" is better than "boring + only wearable by models", and it's not exactly news that catwalk fashions aren't designed with the lumpen masses in mind.

This show is incontrovertible proof that I will look at an otherwise mediocre silhouette dress and find it delightful because the fabric resembles 18th-century French upholstery/wallpaper. (N.B. I think this dress would be ideal for Blair from Gossip Girl to wear.)

Frankie Morello

I hate seeing a catwalk full of [INSERT DESIGNER NAME AND/OR LOGO HERE] t-shirts. It reeks not only of desperation but lack of inspiration. People will buy t-shirts with a designer's name written on them regardless of what's going on at Fashion Week, so why bother with featuring them in a show? The only time I give this a free pass is when the models come on wearing brand t-shirts for the encore only, as in Betsey Johnson's New York show this week. (Which is on youtube here and here, BTW -- it's totally kitschy, I love it.)

I think Frankie Morello was going for a "fun" theme of Italian tourist shops, but it didn't hit the mark. There's a difference between referencing cheesy giftshops and actually wearing them.

Gondola hat. Colosseum belt. Leaning tower of pisa hat. Are you kidding me here?

Salvatore Ferragamo

I find the difference between Ferragamo's menswear and womenswear to be quite baffling, but sometimes you just see something that goes, KAPOW!

Sorry, Jil Sander. This is the colour-blocking for me.

  

 Roberto Cavalli

Emporio Armani

I love the humble shirt-collar, and I'm interested always to see new things being done with it. I wish I could find a picture of this shirt from the back.

I can see this accessory selling like hotcakes. Or at least seeming to sell like hotcakes, since it's so recogniseable that two people wearing it would probably be interpreted as a trend.

Giorgio Armani

I love this type of look where one smaller belt goes over the top of a larger one, or a single tapering belt is wrapped around itself. For the waist especially, a wide belt is always way more flattering, and I find a large, fabric belt with smaller one tied over the top looks more sleek and interested than a buckle. I wish I'd been able to take photos at the textile design show I went to last night, because there were some great double-layered skirts of that type by a young embroidery designer named Morven Strachan. 

All close-up photos like this one are from NYmag.com. All full-length pics are from style.com.

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