Fall 2015 Menswear Les Hommes

MILAN, February 10, 2015

It could have been the Art Deco relief on a last-century city building. Or perhaps it was some ancient Inca motif. Really, it could have been anything. The pattern that ran through this Les Hommes collection, an irregular grid of angled black lines, sometimes shaded, sometimes drawn with stark simplicity, came unburdened by symbolism. What lent it weight was the imagination—and simultaneous restraint—with which it was incorporated by Tom Notte and Bart Vandebosch. Sometimes it zigged across matching mohair outerwear knits, their volume ramped up. Sometimes it zagged as the imprinted molding on sleek leather bombers. Blown up, its vectors flashed at the shoulders of baggily chested neoprene sweatshirts. Shrunken, it angled through a silvery slim-fit suit.

Around this decorative thread, Notte and Vandebosch wove an uncontroversially attractive suite of roomy wool parkas and bombers, bi-textured leather jackets, highish-hemmed fitted pants, and the occasional leather biker legging. Their silhouettes were often defined by roominess, but the details within were precise and close—narrow ties, collars, and tiepins worn above high-necked undershirts. These seemed clothes for severe individualists. They made a virtue of presenting what at first glance seemed relatively unremarkable, finely executed standards but in which, after a moment's processing, there is often something—that pattern, a stiff sheen to those sweatshirts, atypical volume at untypical spots—to snag back the eye for a second look. Not unlike the models' fetching on-the-side quiffs.