LONDON MEN’S COLLECTIONS
LONDON MEN’S COLLECTIONS
From June 15 – 17, this season’s London Men’s Collections showcased some of Great Britain’s top menswear designers’ Spring/Summer 2015 collections to fashion-forward men and celebrities from all over the world. Alongside established global brands like Burberry, Moschino and DKNY MEN, smaller niche labels stood their ground and offered a myriad of wares from couture to street wear and everything in between.
Vibrant colors, prints and Japanese-influenced designs found their way into more than a few collections this season. And while several runway shows boasted typically feminine accoutrements like cutouts, cropped pants and scarves draped over the shoulder, we gravitated far more to the classic collections featuring looks that were modern, tailored and thoroughly wearable for any Wiles man. Take a look at three of our absolute favorites!
#1 – A SAUVAGE
DESIGNER NAME: Adrien Sauvage
BACKGROUND: Adrien Victor Sauvage is a British designer, director and photographer of Ghanaian descent. Established in early 2010, British fashion house A.Sauvage has acquired a reputation for its under-stated luxury and non-nonsense approach to contemporary tailoring. Applying the principles of Adrien Sauvage’s founding philosophy, ‘dress easy’ (D.E), House A.Sauvage focuses on the changing needs of its clients to create menswear with an emphasis on a perfect cut and casual elegance. Originally specialising in contemporary tailoring, the brand has since diversified to offer made to measure, womenswear, casual separates and leather goods.
SIGNATURES: “Dress easy.”
#2 – DUCHAMP
Providing a bit of aristocratic flavor to this season’s showcase, Duchamp opted for a more experiential presentation of its collection than a standard runway show. We loved the traditional 3-piece men’s suits, innovative expression of the current print on pattern trend and bold use of color in this collection.
Duchamp is a great British success story. Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2014, the company traces its origins to France and the chance discovery by the founder of a cache of 10,000 vintage cufflinks in a Paris flea market back in 1987. Appropriately enough, the founder was reading a book about Dadaism at the time, and decided to name the new company after the French surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp.
The early collections were rapidly snapped up by the likes of Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols and three years later Duchamp launched its silk tie collection. By 1998 Duchamp had opened its first stand-alone store in Ledbury Road in London’s Notting Hill, heralding the next phase of the company’s expansion.
Duchamp is also carried in the world’s most prestigious department stores, including Bloomingdales in the USA, Barneys in Japan, Holt Renfrew in Canada and David Jones in Australia.. But by far the biggest investment has been in design. The company has gone on to launch leather goods, swimwear and underwear and in 2009 thanks to customer demand, jackets were introduced.
With the launch of its range of ready-to-wear tailoring in Spring 2011, Duchamp legitimately laid claim to be a head-to-toe, socks-to-scarves menswear designer brand.
Although Duchamp now offers everything from trench coats to trousers, the core of the collection is very much occasion wear for men who love dressing up, with velvet tuxedos and evening dress shirts for events from big nights out to a day at the races.
#3 – CASELY- HAYFORD
It’s fitting that a fashionable father and son duo would find their way, yet again, to our London favorites list this month! This time, they bowled us over with their innovative use of traditional menswear staple, the pinstripe, in looks that deftly ranged from casual wear to street wear. We also loved the feel and flow of the cropped pants, oversized anoraks and relaxed suits from this collection. Well done, gentlemen!
DESIGNER NAME: Joe Casely-Hayford OBE and Charlie Casely-Hayford.
BACKGROUND: The London based father and son design duo formed Casely-Hayford in 2009 to convey their vision of London style to an international audience. Their signature look fuses sportswear with tailoring and high art with street culture, realized by combining the finest craftsmanship with new technology. Having both studied at St. Martins, Joe is the former Creative Director of Gieves & Hawkes who had previously run his eponymous label for men and women.
After graduating from History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, Charlie apprenticed under his father whilst styling musicians from British band The xx to hip hop artist Nas.
SIGNATURES: Sportswear with tailoring. Formal wear with street wear.
TRADEMARK PIECE: The Casely-Hayford signatures suits are crafted in Japan fusing unstructured light weight jackets with matching luxury formal tracksuit bottoms.
THE COLLECTION: Art Intervention.
Photos courtesy of the British Fashion Council