It s a significant part of Duckie Brown legend that every collection title references in some way the oeuvre of Barbra Streisand. Though it s been so for more than a decade, the well may be running a little dry on that conceit. Today s presentation was called Duckyl (cf. Yentl), and when the music suddenly stopped partway through the show, it was all but impossible not to shriek, "Papa, I can t hear you." Still, as the Slits so memorably declaimed in the glory days of punk, silence is a rhythm, too. And when the music started up again for the models final walk-out, it was just as hard to resist the notion that it was all quite deliberate on the part of Steven Cox and Daniel Silver. They re not playing anyone else s game. They ll do anything to make you stop and think about what it is you re looking at. "We re always asking why," said Cox after the show. "Why does a coat have to be on top? Why not put the structure underneath?"
In many other designers hands, such questions often lead to arbitrary exercises in fashion flimflammery, but Cox s technique is so strong that Duckie Brown has always been able to transmute his most arcane notions into strong—albeit utterly idiosyncratic—revisions of masculinity. Today s collection may have been a career high. One key silhouette was a bomber over an overcoat, compounded by a double pant. Such layering is standard garb for the men who work in London s markets—and God help the individual who impugns their butchness—but Cox turned the long-under-short idea into a meditation on proportion. There were no shirts, just utility-influenced coats made of shirting that sat under shorter outerwear, or an elongated sweatshirt under, say, a denim jacket. And however skewed it all seemed, a fundamental sobriety tied it all together, always with an eye to the classic Harris tweed or camel.
But it wouldn t be Duckie Brown if there wasn t some element that took that sobriety, flipped it on its pointy little head, and fucked with it. In a collection that was strong on items, one of the strongest was a back-buttoning coat (more like a tunic) in a deep violet. It had that bad old Saint Laurent "do me up, baby" frisson. Which was a reminder of how much of their own story Cox and Silver have managed to infuse their work with. If you think you saw a Hudson s Bay blanket in a coat today, you did. And that was Cox tipping his cap to Silver s Canadian roots.
The collection was made with passion—and it showed.
