The Peculiar ’60s Designer Who Redefined Men’s Fashion
If there’s one word to sum up the fellows on the runway this season, and the reassertion of masculine flamboyance in fashion, it’s ‘‘pretty.’’ They looked pretty in J. W. Anderson’s blousy shirting and ankle-strap ballerina flats; in Thom Browne’s geisha getups; in all that flowing, flowery stuff at Gucci. Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci, has a penchant for brocade and ribbons in his men’s wear, for cap sleeves and pajama suits in bright silks and lots of pussy-bow blouses knotted around young men’s throats. These new dogs are actually up to some fairly old tricks. Michele acknowledges it: His collections, for all their pontificating cant about notions of the contemporaneous, and philosophical quotes from Roland Barthes, are rooted in turn-of-the-’70s nostalgia. More precisely, in a small store, long forgotten, in Mayfair, London, whose shopping bags carried the slogan ‘‘Peculiar to Mr. Fish.’’ Because the clothing they contained was frequently peculiar — even in late 1960s London. Read more at The New York Times.