Marcus Wainwright s grandfather was stationed in Aden when he was in the military. That chapter of the designer s family history was one inspiration for a Rag Bone collection that mixed WWII desert rats, North African nomads, and the Wild West into a surprisingly convincing whole. It helped, of course, that traditional Berber stripes look so much like the kind of cotton ticking that we associate with railroad men, especially when cut into a utility jacket. And dusters work equally well in the Sahara or the Sierras. Rag Bone s denim roots were showing in an indigo suit, a pair of dungarees, a jumpsuit, and a patchworked jacket, the kind of sturdy workwear that made Wainwright and his design partner David Neville s rep, but those pieces now sat alongside a jacket in red silk faille, or a long paisley shirt in the gauzy batiste cotton you d find in a nightgown (they actually called this item a nightshirt), or a camel leather tank that looked like Celine for boys. That represents progress for the label—if Rag Bone s clothes always told a story, there are now some curious and seductive new twists to the tale.
