Spring Choices in Menswear Run the Gamut

Two well-known designers of menswear express varying opinions on what’s right today in the following interviews reported by Fashion85 staff writers Betty Goodwin and Mary Rourke.

At the opposite end of the men’s fashion pendulum is Ermenegildo Zegna, whose design tastes are rich--as in $500 sport coats--but not gaudy. No fuchsia bikinis. No graphic sweaters. He shows subtle plaid jackets and contrasting plaid pants in tone-on-tone natural colors.

If there’s a trick to dressing tastefully, Zegna says, “it is to look expensive.” By that, he says, he means subtle. “Women like to see men looking elegant. They don’t appreciate boldness,” he finds.

When women shopped for men the way they used to, they had more say in the matter. But these days, Zegna has noticed, more men shop for themselves.

“Women have a better sense for blending fabrics and patterns than men do. They’re more experimental and more sensitive,” he says. “I have to show men that mixed patterns can look classic enough for the most conservative type.”

For spring, Zegna is showing natural-tone linen jackets in fine-line plaids to wear with pants in contrasting plaids that appear to be solid colors, except up close. Zegna shows them with subtly nubbed linen shirts in natural colors. Spring suits are shaded gray or dark blue, with pin stripes or fine-line plaids in plum or sky blue.

“Los Angeles men wear more color than Italian or New York men,” Zegna says. (He is based in New York, but the family textile and fashion design business is in the Italian Alps.)

He notices that Los Angeles men dress up and dress down with ease, the way men do in Australia. But he says that he can’t get used to Rodeo Drive, where men wearing shorts and tennis shoes walk with men wearing formal tuxedos.

Zegna suits and sportswear are available at Giorgio, Mr. Guy and Gentlemen’s Quarterly in Del Mar.