Backstage before his show, Siki Im seemed sheepish to say his collection drew from the 1970s. "Not my favorite, really, but that s why I thought I should explore it," laughed the designer, grabbing a pair of wool felt trousers. "Boot leg!" he said. "I never had one in my life. It was a huge stretch for me." Aside from the boot legs and a few butterfly collars, Im s take on the decade was more avant-garde, less disco. That wool felt was an homage to German artist Joseph Beuys, who famously worked with the material. Im s version, also in charcoal, included a subtle hunter green blanket stripe that extended the length of an oversize fox-collar coat as well as a pant leg or two. Beuys was also a performance artist, and Im enlisted the illustrator Richard Haines to sketch on selected garments with white oil pastels just moments before the show. Those drawings—mostly silhouettes of men s faces, hands, and dotted lines that echoed basting stitches on a few pieces shoulders and pockets—showed up in stark contrast on the backs of overcoats and leather boots, but on a heather gray chain-rib sweater they were pleasantly subtle. It could be a new take on custom printing, or just a highly evolved version of doodling with a Sharpie on one s Converse.
About the boots—they were clogs. And there were low-top ones, too, all of which had steel plates bent around the toes. If a badass man s clog has ever existed, this may have been it. Leather and metal have never been so prevalent for Im, and he showed a mastery of the materials in Perfecto jackets inspired by the one that German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder made his signature when Olivier Zahm was still a schoolboy. A version in glazed bottle-green cowhide was already starting to show beautiful color variations where the material was crinkling. It didn t need an asymmetrical bottom—a detail that distracted rather than enhanced—to make it seem special. A round-neck pullover shirt in the finest gray flannel offered a nice alternative to a T-shirt or fine sweater, and it would also be lovely on a woman. In fact, this season marked the first time a female model, Sarah Bledsoe, walked in Im s show. Her look—a fine, flowy Haines-decorated mackintosh with boot cut trousers—wasn t distinct from those on the male models, but Im noted that he makes garments in size extra-extra-small. Perfecto.
