Fresh Talent : California’s Newest Menswear Designers Break Out Easy Linens, ‘Brady Bunch’ Velours and Clingy Knits
Call them fashion spoilers. Or, perhaps, rebels with a cause. California’s newest menswear designers are out to prove there’s more to West Coast fashion than rave-, hip-hop- and beach-related sportswear.
San Francisco-based Lat Naylor, for instance, layers loose linen shirts, chamois cotton shirt-jackets, handmade cotton-silk sweaters and hand-tailored sport coats for a look reminiscent of “The Great Gatsby.” The aristocratic collection, known as Think Tank, won Naylor the California Mart’s West Coast designer of the year award in January.
Michele Dahan and Anthony Miller of Los Angeles take a different approach, combining inner-city-street and thrift-store chic in a cartoonish line called Tag Rag.
“It’s the Brady Bunch meets the streets,” Dahan says of the extra-wide-bodied shirts, jackets and trousers in thick corduroys, textured velours and fancy knits from the ‘70s.
While Naylor, Dahan and Miller lean toward the oversized look, Los Angeles’ Gregory Poe--a former women’s wear designer and distant relative of poet Edgar Allen Poe--does a modish, skintight assortment of casual knit Ts, vests, jackets and skinny-legged trousers under the Dutch Courage label. And the newest of the L.A. newcomers, sportswear-buyer-turned-designer Tim McConnell, offers a youthful collection of casual shirts, jackets and pants in recycled denim, wool and cashmere-like cotton fleece. His Hero U.S.A. line features such elaborate styling touches as blanket-stitched seams and frayed edges. The West has rarely offered menswear shoppers such a diverse selection, notes Ray Wills, men’s fashion director for Bullock’s. “The talent has always been here (in California), but all of a sudden designers are expressing it a lot more,” he says. “It’s really encouraging to consumers who want something a little different.”
Except for Hero U.S.A., which was introduced in March, the collections have been quietly ringing up sales at local stores for the past year. They could really take off after Bullock’s showcases them at Passport, the world’s largest fashion show, to be held this fall in a hangar near LAX, Wills says.
Why the influx of new talent? In recent years, a cost-cutting practice known as matrix buying, in which buyers purchase large quantities of clothes from well-financed suppliers for multiple stores, shut out many small fashion entrepreneurs and turned department stores into warehouses of basic goods. Now, the big stores are trying to correct that imbalance by adding more fun, innovative styles to their mixes.
“A lot of these smaller companies can respond to the public needs in a shorter period of time,” allowing them to pounce on the latest trends, Wills says.
Still, Naylor says his designs merely represent the natural evolution of classic California fashions.
“In some ways, the look I’m showing is the genesis of surfwear,” he says. “It’s taking that ease and sense of fun . . . and growing it up a bit.”
And Poe insists his zany collection of checkerboard vests, waffle-stitched shirts and clingy knit pants is classic American sportswear in disguise. “There’s not much you can do with menswear except for color and a wacky pattern now and again,” he says. “Guys don’t want to wear nutty stuff and they shouldn’t wear nutty stuff, because they look better dressed like guys.”
The Clothes
* Frayed plaid shirt ($65), flannel vest ($50) and denim trousers ($65) by Hero U.S.A., available in the fall at International Male and Cignal stores.
* Linen-cotton coat ($260), hooded linen shirt-jacket ($235), linen camp shirt ($200) and linen trousers ($220) by Think Tank, at Red Wheel Barrel in Beverly Connection and Ron Ross in Studio City.
* Zip-front acetate-Lycra polo shirt ($72), coordinating vest ($80), cotton knit trousers ($85) by Dutch Courage, at Bullock’s in the Beverly Center and X Collection on Melrose Avenue.
* Cotton T-shirt ($33) and oversized cotton trousers ($60) by Tag Rag, at the Broadway.
* Location: Griffith Observatory
