London Collections: Men

patches

Christopher Raeburn, James Long, Christopher Shannon, images via.

Patches on clothes can have value beyond their material composition. Whether on a uniform or on old jeans that have been refurbished, they can function as visible signs of membership, rank, achievement or personal history. This year they recurred on enough of the London menswear shows to be noticeable and plausible as a ‘‘trend’’: Christopher Raeburn showed tops and jackets adorned with patches from the military airforce; Christopher Shannon used patches of texts, stars and geometric shapes; and James Long attached swarms of multi-coloured patches on pre-distressed denim.

Somebody who knows the work of Christopher Raeburn, upon seeing one of the designer’s patched jackets on a guy crossing the street, would immediately recognise its distinctive design and thus would be able to confidently deduce information about the jacket — its provenance, its perceived quality, where it might have been bought, for how much, etc. — but he would know nothing of the guy wearing it (besides the fact that he is wearing a Christopher Raeburn jacket). Here the patches are not conferred on the wearer based on his merit, nor do they have any personal association with him. In fact they are not really patches at all but covert designer logos, which are signs themselves. The difference between the two is that while a designer logo on clothes has nothing to do with the personal history of the wearer, a patch has everything to do with it.

Detail shot of patched bomber jackets from Christopher Raeburn SS15 collection.

Detail shot of patched bomber jacket from Christopher Raeburn SS15 collection, image via.

The reason I refer to patches and logos is not because I think they were the exclusive focus of the London menswear shows, which covered far more extensive grounds (see J.W. Anderson, Agi & Sam and Craig Green). I am only using them as examples of those features of garment design not directly related to heat retention, the primary concern of clothing. Such design elements constitute “fashion”, which can be defined as the way in which clothes can additionally function as signs, signifying specific images and ideas.

Take for example the three designers showcased by the MAN show, whose clothes collectively elicited a narrative arc: the journey from the city to wilderness and back. Nicomede Talavera, whose collection opened the show, mixed pinstripes with gingham, abstracting the former from connotations of nine-to-five conservative office doldrums, and the latter from those of kitschy picnics, thus reducing both back to essential patterns of parallel lines. Liam Hodges evoked camping and the outdoors through khaki, hiking boots, jewellery made out of twine and whistles and, most importantly, through clothes adorned with simulacra of Boy Scout patches. Bobby Abley closed the show with a return to the urban, with skater guys in sweatshirts printed with characters from The Little Mermaid (here appropriated as the designer’s logo). The models represented groups of men who go camping, an activity which does not so much re-enact a distant, pre-pre-industrial way of life as fabricate a world where men are totally self-sufficient and women are absent. The show used one female model near the end, an odd decision which was not so much a gesture that included women but that emphasised, by showing an exception to the rule, their conscious exclusion.

Nicomede Talavera, Liam Hodges, Bobby Abley, via.

Nicomede Talavera, Liam Hodges, Bobby Abley, images via.

The choice of models is never an afterthought because fashion is influenced by individuals, who have the ability to maintain, alter or completely do away with the signification of the clothing they wear. The Astrid Andersen, KTZ and Nasir Mazhar shows used models that complemented their respective clothes, which were invariably sustained fetishisms of MMA fighters, on- and off-duty superheroes, and stuntmen of all stripes — types of men for whom a thick neck is, on the whole, characteristic and whose images might conceivably be fixed to children’s bedroom walls as poster archetypes of those of the XY-chromosomal persuasion.

thickneck

Astrid Andersen, KTZ, Nasir Mazhar, images via.

Of course any analysis of a fashion show may not completely reflect the signification intended by the designers. This is because the meaning of clothes, like that of any sign, is arbitrary, imposed and maintained only by convention. The narrative of the MAN show referred to earlier is not an idea inherent to the clothes but an imposed meaning. That such an interpretation sounds credible can only be because it shares some common ground with the designer’s vision. Designers can control only to an extent how their clothes will be interpreted.

This is also the case with those who wear clothes as “fashion” — to the more obsessive of you, a warning: the image of yourself that you wish to project with your outfit is evoked in others only at their discretion.

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