The panel of experts that selects the designers at this Topman/Fashion East menswear incubator favor raw, sometimes aesthetically volatile talents. And why not? Because taking risks in the hope of reward is the point of an experiment like this. Here, in order of appearance, are today’s designers, two debut participants followed by one repeat offender.
First, Per Götesson, who showed his graduate show from the Royal College of Arts only last night. Today Götesson imported just one of his looks from that collection into this. It was presented at first statically, with Götesson’s models arranged around an open crate of stacked-high, highly stained mattresses (easily picked on the promiscuously fly-tipped streets of London). Then they runway-ed. Denim dominated, complemented by found then melted-together accessories that included a vaguely threatening nightstick studded with soda can ring-pulls. There was a lot of rip-and-repair to a ragtag hobo-touched collection dominated by denim. Why the massive pants? Partly it’s personal: Götesson is 6 feet 4 inches and thus intimately concerned with the effects of physical scale on viewed proportion. His jeans looked like they’d been exposed to the same gamma rays as Bruce Banner—definitely not for the diminutive. Still, Levi’s should maybe take a look at Götesson—he’s got a fresh eye.
The second newcomer was LVMH prize finalist Feng Chen Wang. According to the press notes “she uses clothing as a metaphor”—often a red flag unless you need the right coat to set off your simile—but her particular category of wearable allegory kind of worked as literal clothing too. Wang’s designs came in what looked like crunchy treated cotton and then later technical nylon. She made liberal use of nylon bungee and cord locks to tourniquet her garments at extravagantly anti-functional junctions. This was technicalwear for the visibly discombobulated: One guy had only one shoe and one gaiter in an ensemble vaguely suggestive that he’d just miraculously survived a juddering plane crash. The thigh-high gaiters were good, too.
Finally to Charles Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY label (his capitals), which used the darkness of inter-designer intermission to heap the runway with flower petals. Any collection that includes a pair of boxer shorts with integrated sink-plug filter and shower tube is surely worth a second look. This one did—which was good. Because at first look, thanks in part to the arresting casting, this felt at times like a look-at-me tribute to Taboo for anachronistic chronic attention addicts. Beneath the histrionics, however, was playful fashion historicism. Jeffrey seized upon the munificence of Woolmark to incorporate fine tailoring fabrics into interesting inversions and subversions of past-period garments from Regency ruffle collars to sleeveless New Look jackets. A scallop-edged corset worn over utterly unrefined track pants was a typical epoch-clashing ensemble. Time-traveling, gender-explorational attire for extravagantly inclined Doctor Ooh-look-at-that-guy guys.
