"I don t like to be visual. I like to be graphic," said Neil Barrett after his show. That s a heavy one for a designer to lob across the plate, but when you rolled it around your skull for a bit, it started to make a kind of sense. Drilling down is the Barrett mode. Distill, baby, distill!
"Visual" can be showy, and Barrett, but for the occasional Bauhaus sweatshirt, isn t that. He s happy to show less when less will do. He made a point in his show notes that this season included one boot and one shoe. The showroom, one imagines, harbors more. But the runway message, even over the course of a long show, was knife-edge honed. The pants, cropped and tapered, are a familiar label piece—this season, they came with tab flaps at the ankle. The covetable coats here were descendants of the covetable coats from last Fall (and there were a few of those in the audience tonight). This year s model belted from the outside to the body to give a sinuous new shape. Structure, Precision, Texture were Barrett s Fall 13 edicts. Yes, they always are, he admitted, "but I m trying to up the bar," he said.
And so he upped—and upped, and away. Barrett explained that he d been thinking both of the Bauhaus and the nineties, pare-back times. He s hardly the only designer thinking about sportswear and how it might profitably infest dress, but he s the only one who went so far as to ban shirt collars from his show. Take a look—not a one. They ve been banished, as have fasteners and fixers. The breastplate vests Barrett showed with many looks had fencing-jacket fronts and waistcoat backs, but not a button or a buckle in sight. Not visual, graphic. The secret ingredient was Velcro: "Super easy!" Barrett bragged.
