There was a brilliant Dries Van Noten show some years back that celebrated Bryan Ferry s early-seventies leopard-clad glamness, but his subsequent career as rock s Most Elegant Man has been a significantly under-exploited inspiration in contemporary menswear. Until today, that is, when Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made him the launchpad for their latest collection. Ferry s record covers were all over the mood board, his music was all over the show, and there he was on the seasonal "icon" T-shirt. It seemed entirely appropriate, then, that the man himself was front-row center. But the show s theme, Sartoria Eccentrica, actually had much less to do with Ferry s own classic style than the designers retailoring of anything classic, starting at Savile Row, for a much younger audience.
The singer s taste for West End girls is well documented—the beauteous Amanda Sheppard was at his side today. The clothes on the runway, though, were better suited to East End boys. Low-rise, multi-pocketed pants were slung off skinny suspenders. One model sported Freddy Krueger stripes and a trilby casually tossed back on his head. There was a spiffy edge to a checked, fitted, double-breasted jacket, while cropped, double-vented jackets and those pegged, low-slung pants created a boxy, bubble-butted silhouette that added beef to the already buff models. Add that to the chunky, bovver-ready footwear and these boys were a bit of rough fighters, not lovers. But wasn t Bryan Ferry famously a slave to love?
Domenico and Stefano threw the lovers a bone with a couple of pavé-sequined jackets in pink and black, then they closed the show with their own quintessential march past of black velvet jackets and distressed Dolce denims. Call it glam for a brash, butch new age. As for Ferry s more rarified brand of contemporary glamour? That remains to be explored another day.
