Hot new menswear designer John Varvatos officially kicked off Fashion Week in New York yesterday, getting the nine-day coed debut of spring 2001 fashion collections off to a no-nonsense start.
It’s not just that Varvatos, who was awarded the Perry Ellis Award for menswear by the Council of Fashion Designers of America this year for his fall collection, designs workwear for serious business types. But his mix of luxurious fabrics, vintagelike references and sleek, modern fabrications promises to inject an air of reality back into the lackluster American scene.
For the last few seasons, American men have been buying khakis and golf shirts and little else, according to Michael Hand, president of apparel at the NPD Group, a market research company.
Unfortunately, they have been dressing that way as well. The casualization of the workplace has left most men — and some human resources departments — in a quandary. A suit and tie doesn’t cut it at some dot-com companies. The look of polo shirts, cargo pants and generically cut separates begs for more sophistication in traditional corporate America. And the types of bold and shiny body-conscious separates often embraced by hairdressers and musicians make most men feel too uncomfortable.
So what’s a serious man to do? Wait for a serious menswear designer? Edgy designers like Sandy Dalal and John Bartlett no longer show here, and presented their collections over the summer in Milan. Others have skewed their collections to the young.
But others are hoping to woo their clients back by offering the types of elegant separates a man of any age can appreciate.
That certainly seems to be the case with 46-year-old Varvatos, a 12-year menswear veteran who formerly worked for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and who features eclectic but very masculine combinations of looks, from school-boy preppy to rustic gentleman to modern urban.
“From Ralph I learned to raise the bar very high,” he says. “From Calvin, I learned simplicity. More is not necessarily better.”
And his first collection — this season’s mix of shearlings, luxurious knits and relaxed tweeds in colors such as brown and olive — is already selling well at stores like Barneys New York, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Marshall Field’s and Davis for Men in Chicago.
“Men are becoming more savvy about fashion,” he says. “They want quality, but they also want something to be wearable.”
Clearly years of casualization have not turned the country into a nation of well-dressed gentlemen.
“It became the worst assortments of ragtags last year,” says Michael J. Setola, chairman and CEO of Salant Corp., the licensing organization for Perry Ellis sportswear, accessories, pants and dress shirts. “Khaki twills, docksiders, a logo golf shirt and maybe a sportscoat, that was the elevator bag, men didn’t know how to dress.”
And Setola should know. He works in midtown Manhattan’s the Grace Building, a high-rise that is also home to law offices, insurance agencies and computer companies.
But in the past few months, Setola has noticed a change.
“There’s been a recognition that men looked terrible,” he says. “And there’s also been a tremendous effort by retailers and manufacturers to educate men how to dress.”
Sometimes it’s as obvious as a color-coded separates collection, or Banana Republic’s latest campaign that promises to turn your office into a veritable wardrobe clinic.
For spring, designers are seeking subtle ways of reintroducing such classic staples as sportscoats and dress shirts back into a casual vocabulary.
“We all know how to dress up tailored clothing,” says Varvatos. “The issue is how do you look sophisticated when you’re wearing casual sportswear.”
For Varvatos, it comes down to craftsmanship and the types of details and finishes that aren’t necessarily visible on the runway, like linens rendered out of hemp and cashmere so they’re anything but stiff and wrinkly, or corners finished off with hand-laced suede instead of yarn.
And that refined edge is what spring 2001 seems to be about. It isn’t about pushing any style envelopes with hot hues, feminized cuts and wild floral prints. Rather it’s about offering high-quality garments that can appeal to both the Jil Sander customer and the Ermenegildo Zegna man.
Some of the standouts for spring include laser-perforated suedes, tweeds made of a silk and cotton blend, and thinly sheared leather dyed in colors such as eggplant and tan, and chic trench coats to be worn over jeans and finely woven T’s in saturated shades of orange, ocean blue and even pink.
Though this may sound like a collection geared to the young and hip, BCBG designer Max Azria says his line has nothing to do with age and everything to do with self-confidence.
“Men know that to get ahead in business you can’t be shy or understated,” says the designer, decked in a pink shirt and a white tie. “You have to project self-confidence and sophistication. But you can also have fun. Look at me, I’m 51 and I don’t feel ridiculous wearing this.”
