New York Fashion Week: Y-3 calls in the cavalry

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For its fall-winter 2011 collection, Y-3 (the collaboration between Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto) could have been having a ‘True Grit’ moment (the floor of the venue was covered in a thin layer of gritty sand, after all), or been simply tapping into the overall Western/rural/country zeitgeist we’ve been noticing, (cue the soulful train-whistle soundtrack and the audio clip of Harry Dean Stanton from the 1984 film ‘Paris, Texas’), but the clothes that came down the runway on Sunday had an undeniable prairie vibe to them.

At least the women’s side of the collection did, with a range of Western-inspired pieces including prairie skirts, capelets and a healthy dose of buffalo plaid.

From a distance, the men’s side of the Y-3 line seemed to have a subtle military feel (circa World War I) in pieces such as the brown, baggy wool trousers with contrasting tweed cargo pockets and khaki safari jackets with detachable gray suiting fabric hoods. There were also a fair number of toggle button jackets -- the season’s trending outerwear piece -- for both men and women.

But, as the male models passed by, bucking and galloping horse screen-print designs could be seen on their T-shirts and printed or appliqued on the back of their jackets, along with slogans such as ‘homeward bound.’

Military meets horse play? Sounds like Y-3 has called in the cavalry.

Westward ho!

-- Adam Tschorn in New York