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.

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.