Designers Dress Down Spring Menswear Lines
If menswear designers have their way this spring, American men will be dressed in “kinder, gentler” fashions; clothes that wear gentler and are kinder to the wallet.
At the annual Men’s Fashion Assn. gathering in Los Angeles last weekend, structured suits and coordinated sportswear gave way to “softly constructed” business clothing and mix-and-match separates.
For example, casual chambray shirts are just as likely to accompany classic double-breasted suits as they are jeans; leather outerwear tops dress shirts and neckties for the office; and loungewear shapes such as pajama-collar shirts and drawstring pants, mixed with suits and blazers, are as welcome in the boardroom as they are in the bedroom.
Chip Tolbert, a fashion director for the association, says: “This happens because designers and consumers are recognizing the need to make existing wardrobes go further.”
For spring, designers Joseph Abboud, Bill Robinson, Zylos/George Machado, Jhane Barnes, Alexander Julian and Roger Forsythe for Perry Ellis have taken lifestyle changes and the economic downturn into account, creating beautiful collections at more affordable prices.
Each has a secondary line priced as much as 50% less than the signature collections.
But they have some competition, most notably from such new designers as Rick Dunnington, a bright new talent in the sportswear market; Luciano Franzoni, showing affordable Italian-tailored clothing under the Confezioni Riserva label, and Walter Muroya, whose boldly colored, tailored sportswear won him the California Mart Rising Star menswear designer award for 1991, presented last weekend.
The most versatile addition to a spring wardrobe is clearly the chambray shirt.
Besides suits and jeans, designers showed it with a bomber jacket (Nautica), under a regatta-striped blazer (Bill Robinson) and a linen blouson jacket (Barry Bricken), demonstrating its unusual dress-up/dress-down characteristics.
Coincidentally, while designers create softer clothing, several new silhouettes have emerged.
The new athletic-fit suit (Gladiator) features broader shoulders and a narrower waist; the new two-button blazer with broad shoulders and peaked lapels (Country Britches and C.W. Phoenix) is a hybrid for men who like the look of a double-breasted suit and the comfort of a single-breasted sport coat.
Bill Robinson came up with the season’s most directional new blazer, shown in a butter-soft cotton chenille, with a slouchy, smock-like silhouette that is as much casual sportswear as it is tailored clothing.
Although designers used microfiber, a new polyester or nylon luxury fabric that feels like silk but is more durable, in everything from outerwear to underwear, the freshest use of the fabric came from Ronaldus Shamask, who personified the casual/dress-up trend by showing a microfiber anorak over a suit.
