SUMMER 2010
Jesse Ashlock | April 20, 2010
Left: Moncler Gamme Bleu; Right: Woolrich Woolen Mills
As everyone knows, fashion is cyclical, and lately we’ve been experiencing an uptick of love for heritage brands—witness the resurgent popularity of names such as Filson, Pendleton, Barbour, Carhartt, Red Wing, Alden, Stormy Kromer, and numerous other longstanding purveyors of classic, durable workwear and outerwear. Two of the more compelling presentations at Milan Menswear Week last month gave a nod to this trend—but rather than seeking to trade on nostalgia, they combined the comfort of the past with fresh ideas about the present.
The first was for Gamme Bleu, a new men’s range from the venerable mountaineering brand Moncler. Designed by the seemingly ubiquitous Thom Browne, it will serve as the counterpart to Moncler’s Gamme Rouge women’s line. Everyone knows Moncler, which became famous for outfitting the French Olympic ski team and is now based in Italy, for its technical mountain gear, especially its quilted puffer jackets and vests. Now Browne has taken this iconic style and combined it with his own idiosyncratic ideas about men’s suiting, yielding a quirky, fitted prep-school take on ski-slope chic. Some of the looks faintly evoked the Michelin Man, and a few were downright goofy (as you might expect where Browne is involved), but overall, the collection connected a legacy of high-quality cold-weather apparel with new silhouettes and attitudes for dressing men warmly in the winter, whether in the city or at the chalet.
The second presentation was for Woolrich Woolen Mills, the recently founded offshoot of venerable American clothier Woolrich Inc., which is overseen by Daiki Suzuki, the Japanese designer unabashedly besotted with classic American sportswear. For his Fall/Winter collection, Suzuki immersed himself in the Woolrich archive in Pennsylvania, while also studying early-20th-century vintage clothing ads in magazines like Field & Stream and Outdoor Life. Suzuki’s innovations are less radical than Browne’s, but with moves like introducing a new green-and-black version of Woolrich’s signature “shadow plaid” and appropriating Woolrich’s traditional blanket fabrics into his pieces, the designer has put a contemporary spin on the brand’s timeless Americana.
In uncertain times, it’s only natural that we should be drawn to classic, familiar clothing that is designed to insulate and protect us. But as the new Moncler and Woolrich collections show, instead of smelling like mothballs and grandpa, these styles can carry a whiff of the genuinely new.
KEYWORDS: clothing, Daiki Suzuki, fashion, Milan Menswear Fall/Winter 09/10, Moncler, outerwear, Thom Browne, Woolrich Woolen Mills, workwear
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