Twenty years down the line, there is every chance that Michael Bastian will be, well, a bastion of American menswear. It helps that he s just picked up the reins of the men s business at Bill Blass, but more to the point is his ability to weave all his threads of reference into a comprehensive story. This season, for example, he d been looking at Bruce Weber s first-ever shoot for GQ in 1981. That s where the papery nylon anorak over a bathing suit came from. Then there was a motocross subtext that sprang from his absorption in Paul Newman: A Life in Pictures. Danny Quatrochi s 1983 photo of Police drummer Stewart Copeland in a T-shirt with the cheeky legend "Cherie" inspired Bastian s Tesorino ("little treasure"). And so on. But it was hardly necessary to know every wrinkle of inspiration to appreciate the casual efficacy of his clothes.
In Bastian s case, there is always a sense of mission: to celebrate the physicality of men at ease with themselves. Which is one reason his key item has turned out to be a pair of shorts. They came as easy as cutoffs, as sexy as joggers, as functional as the hiking shorts that emerged when corduroys were zipped off mid-thigh. Bastian said everything was supposed to feel like you were on your way to the beach or you d just got back. He doesn t like sweatpants, so instead he offered karate pants, suitable for dragging on over a bathing suit. Even his more elaborate items had the same relaxed flair: a glen-plaid linen blazer, a herringbone jacket in hemp, or the dressiest piece, a tissue-weight cashmere tux, deceptively simple until Bastian pulled back the jacket to reveal a pleated lining. Actually, a deceptive, seductive simplicity might be his leitmotif. The patching effect on a corduroy jacket was achieved by laborious hand-stitching. The belted cardigan Bastian called Santana (and we know as Starsky) came in a luxuriant cashmere. And the lining of a double-faced mackintosh was sprayed silver, then washed—like having the Factory inside your coat, which, for some, would be the consummate private pleasure.
