ELIE TAHARI FALL 2011 MENSWEAR

Alert the Commander in Chief: There’s been a military leak. Thankfully, it’s mostly of blankets. The iconic stripe covers favored by the armed forces have been exerting a strong influence on menswear of late. Styles inspired by them turned up at Iceberg, at Tommy Hilfiger, and again this week at Elie Tahari. The label’s creative director, Kobi Halperin, at least, has a better claim on the style than most. «I was in the military,» he explained during a presentation at the Tahari showroom. «It’s nice to be turning a very dusty and unpleasant experience into the beautiful glamour of fashion.»

Military influence in menswear is nothing new, but here it was managed ably. In a palette of tobacco, charcoal, black, and gray, tailored takes on army gear predominated. Stripe details, often in mixed materials, appeared on vests, work shirts, jackets, and as tuxedo piping on flat-front, slightly tapered pants. Outerwear is one of Tahari’s strongest men’s categories for sales, and two car coats—one in that dusty tobacco, with a contrast collar, another in black, with contrast leather sleeves—were worth saluting.

DNKY FALL 2011 MENSWEAR

DKNY opted to present its latest men’s collection on a brigade of models at a pawn-shop-cum-restaurant on the Lower East Side. The setting was baroque, but the clothing was, for the most part, streamlined and austere. The palette didn’t stray far from cityscape colors—concrete grays and silver, dusky slate blues—that lent focus but left the whole a little light on spark. «Modern military» was the theme of the season, expressed by the panels of nylon trimming polos and sweaters and the polyurethane coatings that lent outerwear an all-weather sheen.

BUCKLER FALL 2011

Give him points for showmanship: For his Fall 2011 presentation, Andrew Buckler shut down an entire block of Soho and walked his darkly dressed boys through the street. (Apparently, getting approval is a long, rather than difficult, bureaucratic process.) The setting was important, Buckler said after the show, because of the theme of the season: the artists «using the streets as their medium to communicate messages.»

No more of the 1930’s German students who’d occupied him for Spring, in other words. And none the worse for that, really. The mostly somber color scheme put Buckler way afield of many of his compatriots in menswear this season, but basic black isn’t bad business. Neither is repeating what’s worked before—specifically, a long, layered silhouette, anchored by narrow pants, some skinny through the leg; others with more volume up top before tapering around the knee. They came topped with long, cabled cardigans or tailored jackets that ranged from the casual cotton slub to a few more refined tux options in wool gabardine.

The clearest hint of any street-art style was in the blast of highlighter yellow that came near the end, in paneled jeans and a blazing parka. And like street art, they had an aggressive insistence—even a welcome sort of vulgarity—that the well-behaved rest seemed to lack.

BILLY REID FALL 2011

When we last left Billy Reid a season ago, the Florence, Alabama-based designer had scooped up the GQ/CFDA Best New Menswear Designer in America award and was short-listed for the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund prize. Now he’s taken that one, too (and in a competitive field, which included Prabal Gurung, Altuzarra, and other big names). Last season, Reid showed in a bustling room on the eighth floor of Milk Studios. This time it was the penthouse. Hard not to read a little something into that.

The man’s star is on the rise, and he knows he’s got more eyes on him than ever before. Make no mistake: He didn’t disappoint. The menswear on show was classic Reid: masculine suiting mixed with more workmanly pieces, cut on the slightly looser side—a little rope in the shoulder and a slight boot-cut to the pants. Reid’s fabrics are those of traditional menswear: wool and tweed, camel hair and moleskin, cotton and cord. He’s not above a luscious (if subtle) flourish, like a formal dinner jacket in un-dyed velvet, but his aesthetic is masculine and untrendy. Like the designer himself, it’s tried-and-true.

Reid did himself a service by refining the Southern twang of his show, which always resided as much in the spirit and the staging of his work as in the clothes themselves. That even extended to the set, pared down this season from the mud-and-all Alabama haul-in antique doors and weathered floorboards he used to use. Here, the sparer environment refocused attention on the clothes (including, for the first time in a Reid presentation, a few women’s looks, which had a slinky appeal of their own).

The one potential quibble is that the offering might have been a bit too tried-and-true; this wasn’t a season marked by change. But perhaps that’s just how Reid needs it to be right now, given that plenty of the visitors dropping in are playing catch-up to his work. (The South, where he has several stores, has been on the bandwagon for years.) Reid showed the best of what he does tonight. But here’s the tricky thing about the spotlight: Next season, people will be clamoring to see the next twist in the tale.

GANT BY MICHAEL BASTIAN FALL 2011

Gant is a historic American label—full name: Gant of New Haven—but the second-act success story of its revival owes as much to the Swedes as to the WASPs; it’s now Nordic-owned. The label’s dual citizenship gave Michael Bastian a jumping-off point for Fall. «We’ve been spending so much time in Stockholm,» he explained. «We really wanted to celebrate the two sides of Gant’s life: the whole U.S. heritage, but also now this cool, modern, sexy Scandinavian thing that has crept into the label in a big way. What you’re seeing is a hybrid of America and Scandinavia.»

The individual pieces—sport coats, parkas, puffer vests, embroidered khakis, camo pants, and so on, for men and for women—are true-blue U.S.A. But the styling, according to the designer, comes from the Swedes. «Swedish winters are not for the faint of heart,» Bastian said. «It’s dark, it’s freezing, but somehow they manage to look cool, chic, and sexy while totally layered up—which is hard in a big parka.»

A big parka’s not the half of it. It wasn’t uncommon for looks to include three or more shirts, plus a coat, plus hats and belts, watches and ties, color piled on color, print on contrasting print. But take off any piece, put it on a rack, and you’ve got what smells like a sale. And, even layered nearly to the point of exhaustion, the pieces did have the kind of off-kilter, cocky cool that’s native to rambunctious kids. What sort, exactly? «We thought of the guy as part of a cross-country ski gang—which is kind of funny, because cross-country skiers don’t form gangs,» Bastian mused. «Then these girls were schoolgirls who were almost abducted by this gang.» Freedom fighters, meet the Winter Olympics. Stranger things have happened.

TIMO WEILAND FALL 2011

Timo Weiland and his design partner, Alan Eckstein, were inspired by the vestiges of colonial India for their latest collection. They envisioned a fictional trip that Gloria Vanderbilt and Keith Richards took there in the sixties. «This is what they looked like when they came back,» Weiland explained at the sitar-scored presentation this morning. Clothes in a second. First, a moment to imagine the doyenne and the drug-fueled rocker cavorting together in Bombay. Nowthat’s a trip.

The Indian influence was felt in the print, a tweaked image of the Himalayas at sunset, and a custom Bengal tiger jacquard, which appeared as a scalloped-hem cocktail dress and a double-breasted women’s jacket. You got a sense of subcontinental dressing in the rich, embroidered gold jacquards they used, too, and the way gold was woven through a few netlike blouses. For the men, the gist was less of India than its expatriate English residents: Weiland spoke warmly of a Prince of Wales check, which was shown as a patch-pocket blazer and a shirt—together in one look.

That’s a lot of look; more-on-more is practically a house rule at this label. But actually, Fall found Weiland and Eckstein in smartly subdued form. They’re never going to make basics, and really, there’s no reason that they should. But scaling back on some of the squall of seasons past helped let the strongest pieces shine. And when they did, they gave sparkle without the old glare.

BAND OF OUTSIDER FALL 2011

The presentations that Scott Sternberg has staged for Band of Outsider are legendary by now—there was the time he created an actual beach, replete with water and sand, for instance—so it was inevitable he’d bring a little stagecraft to his first-ever runway show. His outing today comprised all three of the lines under the Band of Outsiders umbrella—the original menswear Band, the menswear-inspired women’s line Boy, and the more feminine Girl, launched last season—and it opened with a bit of derring-do, as Band of Outsiders-clad male models rappelled from the ceiling.

That was a nod to Sternberg’s original inspiration this season, the book The Stonemasters and its images of seventies-era California rock climbers. Before the show, Sternberg said that The Stonemasters invited a more general contemplation of bygone California, land of stoner princesses and hippie communes, and then those influences pinballed around a little more, dinging Yoko Ono and Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club along the way.