The only exclusively men’s fashion house under LVMH, Berluti retains its masculine, utilitarian aesthetic with a range of bomber jackets, released alongside its Spring/Summer 2017 collection. Offering a warmer alternative to its Summer Essentials range, the collection includes a rock-inspired lambskin jacket, featuring a removable shearling collar with an alligator undercollar in blood-red, a shade reflected in the jacket’s silk lining. The collection is a part of creative director Haider Ackermann’s debut for the brand, a coveted designer whose modern, sophisticated draping and knotting style reflects his international upbringing.
Image: Berluti.
Image: Berluti.
Rounding out the collection, the remaining styles reunite the bomber with its military history—a jacket made with calfskin nubuck, finished in unfussy walnut-brown with a shearling collar and quilted lining, and a cashmere bomber in medium gray and violet, featuring a Berluti leather patch beneath the breast. With Ackermann’s skillful blending of color and material, Berluti redefines a classic men’s style.
The Berluti bomber jacket collection will be available in select stores starting April 18, 2017.
In the rainy spring weather, high above New York City’s Varick Street, Uniqlo drew back the curtain on its upcoming LifeWear iterations—that functional, utilitarian umbrella that drives the retailer’s fashion foray—with a runway that, no coincidence, left the retailer’s Japanese home for the first time since the presentation’s premiere. The event’s most eyebrow-raising moment, however, came in a high-fashion descent on the stark white room, as with baited breath those in attendance watched Inès de la Fressange, a longtime collaborator with the brand, giggle in a pre-recorded clip, announcing that her eighth season will (finally) include its own menswear collection.
Image: Uniqlo.
Greeted with a buzzing excitement, the announcement simultaneously answers and begs many questions wracking the brains of industry players—how to stay relevant, where is fashion headed, and what do audiences want from their designers? “Democracy for beauty is one of my targets since forever,” she says. “I really think beauty sells better and it’s possible to make quality, creativity, and elegance for cheap.” Beginning with a simple idea—recreate a ballet flat’s versatility through clothing—the label quickly blossomed into one of Uniqlo’s premiere lines. “The best way for me to create a collection is to have wishes,” the designer says. “Very often, while we were doing fittings, I would say, ‘this could be possible for men too.’ So it was obvious!”
Image: Uniqlo.
The collection itself is malleable, not intended to be one sole life force. “I think we covered all the categories,” says Naoki Takizawa, a former designer at Issey Miyake and, under his current Uniqlo design director header, de la Fressange’s collaborator. “[Today] design is very anonymous, people don’t know which brand I’m wearing. I cannot find any other brand that has an image that can mix with a designer. That is a very unique point for Uniqlo.”
This idiosyncratic notion is one that allows designers such as de la Fressange and J.W.Anderson—beginning his own recently announced trek into the Tokyo retail family—and artists like Jason Polan free reign within the ferocious mass retail machine. When tasked with creating a high quality line at a lower price point and then, by default, a larger scale of production, it became clear that the usual runway avant-garde would not be translatable. When asked of this, and of her ideal man to dress in the collection, de la Fressange’s answer is surprising. “Easy: the men who are not models; the men who don’t like to go hours for shopping; the men who don’t want to be fashion victims.”
Image: Uniqlo.
So when one must strip away the extremes to leave behind the truth, what’s left becomes this latest iteration. A Parisian chic line, the pieces lend themselves to a timeless nature due to a subdued color palette and an overall adaptability. “Inès knows what is most important: the item,” Takizawa says. “If we could find that one essential item, and, depending on how to mix it together, find a different occasion, that is the idea.”
Meant to be worn as a couple, befitting for a line inspired by the City of Love, the collection is more than just an extension of an old idea. Amalgamating the past and the present with a drop of contemporary androgyny, it is clear that de la Fressange is on to something. “Because of my daughters, I see a lot of young boys and I realized they admire pictures of men in the past, vintage clothes, old movies,” she says. “Since they were born they lived with jeans and sweatshirts. Now they wish to have different types of clothes that they still could mix with their hoodies and bring a new sex appeal.” This marriage of vintage and modernity makes her POV a unique one, breaking through the mold to bring Uniqlo to a new level. “Universality is part of Uniqlo politics; it’s my obsession too,” she explains. “Finally, the success of all our collections is the best proof to show [quality at a manageable price point] is possible and worth it. Pretentious, but true!”
The fashion designer Jerry Lorenzo does not know how to draw. He doesn’t sketch at all actually, nor did he receive a formal education in garment construction. Instead of heeding the typical processes to source fabrics that frequent the trade, Lorenzo mines through racks of vintage tees and resale pieces with a blind faith, begging for that brush of flannel that feels just right or that one wash of jean that might once have eagered Kurt Cobain. If the market was imagined as an assembly line, with each successful fashion brand as the physical machines that it readily relies on, then Lorenzo is a wrench in the operation, reversibly building down to constitute the standard anew. So how did his clothing line, Fear of God, a brand without either a public relations team or group of salespeople, one that doesn’t entertain runway—not only from a lack of interest but also, due to season- less releases, it’s not even possible—secure shelf space next to the likes of Saint Laurent and Rick Owens, and street style sightings on everyone from Justin Bieber to David Beckham?
Image: A.P. Kim.
“Somewhat selfishly, I just want to be at a place where I make enough to wear what I want to wear every day,” says Lorenzo. We are discussing purpose, and, as the designer admits, he began the label in 2013 to make clothes for himself, yes, but also to reckon with the stubborn fragments of sociopolitical and cultural tension from his youth. “I went to an all-white high school, but my mom took us to an all-black Southern church on the weekends,” says Lorenzo. “So I’ve always had this juxtaposition of cultures that I’ve been trying to find my place in without leaning too strongly toward either.” Add to that upbringing a steady diet of early ‘80s films—John Bender remains to this day a life-changing force for the designer—and the result is a putty-like fascination with youth that molds itself into recognizably cool collections of clothes that kids today want to wear.
Image: A.P. Kim.
It’s through this basic understanding of the culture of now that has granted Lorenzo—who, after working odd jobs in retail his entire life, established his network of future fans (perhaps most infamous, Kanye and Kim Kardashian West) as a club promoter in Los Angeles—a fast track of sorts into the hashtag-endorsed arena of high-end menswear. His newest issue, Fourth Collection, is the designer’s most comprehensive assortment yet, continuing his signature grunge-style layering with expanded elements of DIY-shredded denim and utilitarian silhouettes crafted from age-affected textiles. “I am always trying to be appropriate … but never too appropriate,” says Lorenzo. “The thing is, I’m not presenting totally really new ideas, just fresh takes on what’s already out there. Imagine walking to the club, and the guys outside are like, ‘Ah man we don’t let people in here with shorts on, but damn those shorts are so dope that they just work, so come on in.’ That’s the type of clothes I am trying to make.”
Image: A.P. Kim.
Another part of the release, super-sole military boots, a first for FOG, arrive as a second-wave drop this February in neutral-colored suedes and black and white. “They took a while to make,” says the designer. “I had to raise the dollars and visit all the right factories, but I just felt that in order to tell the whole story of what I’m thinking, I needed to be able to control every detail perfectly.” And in the world of FOG, Lorenzo does indeed control everything creative, from the brand’s Instagram—an all-power digital fingerprint that forces fashion buyers, influencers, and even press like myself to come to him—to the sheen of the silk-lined collar on his flannel of choice, with each minute detail born from an astute awareness and a surprisingly direct sense of humanity. “I remember my first retail job at Diesel when I was 15-years-old. I wasn’t cool enough to work the sales floor, so I was stuck in the stock room for two years,” says Lorenzo. “I know how I’m viewed and I know how people perceive each other. All of this now, being seen as this really cool guy with a really cool brand … that’s not just me. The name Fear of God was rooted in my spirituality and in being raised in a Christian home. I wanted something that had a meaning to it deeper than just cool clothes, and I want people to know that.”
Converse has achieved the impossible by reinvigorating a footwear staple in its new Chuck Modern collection. Fusing its own rich sports heritage—the Chuck Taylor All Stars dominated the NBA for almost two decades—with cutting-edge technology, the shoes focus on being jacks of all trades. As fit for streetwear as a night out, this line comes in either a breathable mesh or canvas that combines durability with wearability. With styles available in exciting colors including buff, porpoise, khaki, and jade, the Modern leaves behind the expected Chuck palette. By mixing the old with the bold, Converse has updated its icon perfectly.
Diverting slightly from the rebellious, pop-punk narrative of its Spring/Summer 2017 ready-to-wear, Gucci releases an eyewear campaign that bridges the divide between the aforementioned’s aesthetic and the straight-laced collegia of its Pre-Fall line. Starring model Nick Fortna, a Gucci favorite for the ’17 season, and lensed by Glen Luchford, the images spotlight the wide-lensed construction favored by the Italian house and its creative director, Alessandro Michele.
Rag & Bone‘s cinematic off-shoot, Rag & Bone Films, sees its star rise with the inclusion of its latest short, “HAIR,” in the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Starring Bobby Cannavale and John Turturro, who also assumes the director’s chair, the 5-minute film is a real-world first for the studio, its cinéma vérité quality allowing viewers to assume an observational position as the two actors contemplate the finer points of personality through hair. A true passion project for Turturro, the film, located in his hometown of Brooklyn and shot by his “The Night Of” collaborator Fred Elmes, is an industry shakeup, a pivoted perspective of fashion’s place in today’s cinematic landscape. Though “HAIR” presents Rag & Bone’s very first documentary-style piece, the film follows the high-reaching 2015 release of “The Driver,” the short-form, Michael Pitt starrer that released in unison with his monochromatic Spring/Summer 2015 campaign.
Tickets to see “HAIR” at the Tribeca Film Festival are available online now.
Though home furnishings may occupy much of the current fashion frontier—see Versace’s Vasmara line or Loewe’s Salone del Mobile installation for reference—Cali-born STAMPD aims to bring something new to the self-designed table through its first home-goods partnership alongside IKEA. Announced at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair, and with IKEA’s “passion for life at home” mantra at its forefront, the new line will focus not on grandeur but rather on the simplified, the crux of the collection building on its ability to assist, rather than detract from, a customer’s lifestyle. Centered around a strategy of at-home storage and its many capacities, the pieces are meant to organize and display items that project a customer’s self-image within the home. Whether it’s one of STAMPD’s Louisville Sluggers or an IKEA tchotchke, the principle of the design theory is to de-clutter one’s life to better instill a personable energy that reflects a specific space’s inhabitant, broadcasting a consumer’s lifestyle, rather than obscuring it from view. This inaugural partnership between STAMPD’s contemporary luxury aesthetic and IKEA’s global vision provides a smooth segue into the young brand’s upcoming minimalist pieces and would seem to profess the staying power of the 2011-founded label.
The STAMPD x IKEA collection will be available in IKEA stores beginning in Spring 2018.
Ushering in a new age for the minimalist German brand, Jil Sander names fashion couple Luke and Lucie Meier as its latest creative leads. Filling the position after the departure of Rodolfo Paglialunga just last month, the duo are aiming to bring a more clever feel to the ’60s fashion house. Having served under the label for three years, Paglialunga reinvigorated its DNA through clean campaigns and sharp-cut collections. With Lucie having worked for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Balenciaga, and with Luke designing under Supreme before leaving to head his own brand, OAMC, this latest creative endeavor will be the first professional relationship shared between the two. The married couple are poised to debut their premiere collection with Jil Sander in September 2017.
This week’s complete social snapshot, distilled for your pleasure.
From the hottest celebrity parties to the regretful morning-after shots, ESSENTIAL HOMME‘s Weekly Instagram Roundup brings all of the hottest designer, model, and trendsetting pics from the week directly to you. After all, no one has time to scroll through anything but the best.
Plein Sport
Taking the stage at NYC’s Vision Expo—the celebration for visionaries in spectacle education, fashion, and technology—sportswear brand Plein Sport, an off-shoot of the envelope-pushing Philipp Plein, brought its line of athletic, multi-colored eyewear to the masses. Having premiered its warrior-driven Autumn/Winter 2017 runway at Milan Fashion Week, the brand continues its streak of combining athletic-wear with unapologetic design in this classroom-inspired getup.
Loewe
Loewe Creative Director J.W.Anderson has kept himself very busy. From an upcoming Pitti Uomo presentation to a just announced Uniqlo collection, the designer is poised to experience his grand second coming. Following his most recent museum curative project, Anderson brings Loewe’s Spanish sensibilities to Salone del Mobile—the largest global furniture fair held in Milan—to showcase its sleek home goods line, a brazen mix of cultural inspirations and artistic expression.
Giovanni Squatriti
Fashion photographer and frequent ESSENTIAL HOMME collaborator Giovanni Squatriti expanded his polaroid portfolio with the help of model Francisco Lachowski. Posing next to an Hermes bust, the insta-ready images continue a lucrative partnership between the pair, one that first reared its head within the EH family in April/May 2014.
John Elliott
John Elliott‘s popular Watching Water series receives a casual update alongside retail shop United Arrows & Sons with a selection of exclusive tees based on the same oceanic principles. Featuring roiling imagery of power and tranquility, the pieces are a more relaxed iteration of the thematic elements in the brand’s NYFWM Spring/Summer 2017 runway—where vibrant palettes and watery tones took center stage.
Armani
Milan’s premiere shopping center ups its street credibility with the addition of Armani/Casa, the latest from the Italian brand’s brick-and-mortar locations. Featuring the iconically modular collection known to the house’s furniture offerings, the new flagship will see architecture rub elbows with interior decor as minimalist home goods pair with a state-of-the-art interior design service, aiming to integrate living spaces with conceptual progression.
As true believers of the work hard, play hard mantra, we present you with It’s Been a Long Week, a weekly column aimed at awarding some liquid appreciation to you for just being yourself, dammit. Make a glass or two on us, you deserve it.
WHAT
Jose Cuervo’s El Diablo
Two classics collide in Jose Cuervo‘s El Diablo—a fruity twist that takes the fun of margaritas and blends it with the refreshingly crisp bite of ginger.
HOW
Ingredients:
1 part Jose Cuervo Especial Gold
0.5 part Crème de cassis
0.5 part Lime juice
2-3 parts Ginger beer
Image: ESSENTIAL HOMME, Dekuyper, Jose Cuervo, and Buderim Ginger.
THEN
Combine all ingredients into a shaker, excluding the ginger beer. Shake, then fine-strain mixture into an ice-filled rocks glass. Top with ginger beer and garnish.
Gearing up for the French Open and warmer weather, sports-inspired clothier Lacoste collaborates with quirky accessories brand Yazbukey on a playful new collection. The line features a series of charming avatars, including three tennis ball characters and a re-imagined crocodile—two parties that seem to be embroiled in their own tennis match, or, as Yazbukey calls it, “a game of seduction.” The images appear on the breast pocket of the iconic Lacoste polo shirts, featured in white, navy, and red, with some boasting horizontal stripes in contrasting colors. Also included is a striped t-shirt design, a pair of summer shorts, a collection of leather goods, and a white cap showing three crocodiles chasing a tennis ball.
Image: Lacoste x Yazbukey.
Image: Lacoste x Yazbukey.
Image: Lacoste x Yazbukey.
Image: Lacoste x Yazbukey.
The collaboration solidifies Lacoste’s reputation of unexpected partnerships—such as its recent teamup with streetwear titan Supreme—and invites fans to experience the lustrous world of Yazbukey, a flourishing brand known for its pop culture-inspired designs. Practical and playful yet distinctly Lacoste, the collection captures the spirit of a summer’s tennis game.
The Lacoste x Yazbukey collection will be available online starting April 14, 2017.
ESSENTIAL HOMME magazine is seeking talented students and young individuals to join our teams as interns this summer.
From high-end openings, like-worthy content, and portfolio-building work, you will gain invaluable experiences, attend industry events, and grab an occasional swag bag or two. Interns must be based (or should be able to easily commute to) New York City and are expected to be available at least two full weekdays a week for a three month commitment. Internships are unpaid, however school credit is available if needed.
EDITORIAL
Editorial interns work on both print and web formats, assisting editors with fact-checking, proofreading, market research, as well as pitching and writing articles themselves. Applicants should come from a journalism or media background and have excellent communication and writing skills, an understanding of the fashion landscape, and a willingness to learn. Additional responsibilities include: news writing, event coverage, and general administrative tasks. Please send one or two writing samples with email.
FASHION
The fashion department is seeking an intern. This person will work closely with the creative director and the associate market editor. Day-to-day responsibilities include but are not limited to: maintaining the fashion closet, sample trafficking, assisting on photo shoots, helping editors with market research, and general administrative tasks.
SOCIAL
Social Media/Advertising interns work closely with publishing director and digital editor assisting on day-to-day operations related to research, digital newsletter, social network sites maintenance, and administrative duties. They will be able to learn all facets of online and offline marketing/advertising. Perfect for an undergraduate juniors or seniors, or a graduate student wanting to pursue a career in the Marketing/Advertising/Media buying/PR industry.
DESIGN
Graphic design interns assist in the daily workflow of the art department of the magazine and website, including but not limited to designing online graphics, updating layouts, and retouching images. Candidates should have solid understanding of Typography, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Please provide a portfolio of recent work.
For consideration please indicate the position you are applying for and submit a cover letter, resume, and any other required documents to joshua.glass[at]essentialhommemag.com.
