At his spring presentation, Tim Hamilton looked like the man in the gray flannel suit, with his big black shoes and nerdy glasses, sweating with nerves and heat. He was like a 21st-century apotheosis of Jack Lemmon, all clenched hair and eagerness to please. But the clothes sent a very different signal. Hamilton is 36. He grew up in Iowa. It s easy to imagine what the eighties meant to him. (Depeche Mode on the soundtrack was an aural aid.) The decade that style allegedly forgot is a huge trove of inspiration for people like Hamilton. He kept it clean with jolts of clear, primary color—the way a pair of red pants zapped out from under a glen plaid coat, for instance, or all the pieces in the particular shade of blue that will be forever New Wave. That era s energetic hedonism also seeped through in the sporty re-combinations of activewear and formalwear components. And one scarcely need mention the thrilling biker jacket in red leather.
But Hamilton is no mere nostalgist. His use of layering suggested a contemporary design signature. A hoodie would be laid over a jacket, or a white cardigan would bestride green. Hamilton ensured this proposition was friendly rather than formidable, and that s everything to do with the power of his own personality.
