SA Fashion Week – A/W’18

The fashion gods have spoken! Yellow is cool, your cuffs should match your laces. Welcome to my judgmental discussion on current menswear styles. With any luck it’ll help you avoid the fads that betray you as a nuub.

This season had me really excited! As soon as the schedule was published I started planning which shows to attend and what to wear. Olga and Antonio obviously came along for the party, and the endlessly judgmental string of put-downs essential to the enjoyment of any fashion event. Strangely few of my clients even knew Fashion Week was happening, and even fewer attended any shows or paid attention to any of the related media.

I can’t help but wonder if the marketing angels we think are reaching our consumers are really just preaching to the choir.

But let’s get straight to the juicy bits and figure out what’s IN NOW!! Or at least, what people are hoping to be ‘in’ in 6 months when this scorcher of a summer is over.

Shut Up and Take my Money

(De Mil)

Although I do enjoy De Mil’s beautiful draping and interesting visuals, I feel this whole game was played out in the Health-Goth phase of 2015.

(De Mil)

Coenraad does bring a new angle to the aesthetic, and is obviously talented, so I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen some more of his work.

(Floyd Avenue)

Floyd Avenue originally bored me somewhat with his overuse of denim and introduction of random seams for no reason. But his show this season really took my breath away.

(Floyd Avenue)

I felt everything was well styled, coherent and accessible. Aesthetically I feel I’m seeing Floyd truly come into his own with this collection. It’s definitely worth the watch.

(Floyd Avenue)

Vintage Zionist is another South African brand that appeals so directly to me it’s kinda creepy.

(Vintage Zionist)

I can’t quite put my finger on the difference between this collection and De Mil’s but I feel it has something to do with Vintage Zionist’s absolute relevance to the NOW of fashion.

Zzzz, Meh and Just go work in an Office

Some collections I wasn’t too blown away by, though I am quite jaded so take it with a pinch of salt

(Tailor Me)

Tailor Me didn’t wow me I’m afraid, which I understand is difficult for a brand that focuses on traditional men’s formal wear. Though surely you could whip up something a little more interesting than this?

(Dope)

I wasn’t so annoyed by Dope this season surprisingly, as I’ve had a vehement dislike for the brand since it first hit the runway. There seems to be slightly more effort in the design process, though whether the results can be called fashion is another question entirely.

(Beware the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing)

Beware the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing…sho…where do I even begin? Andrew Chandler just came out of two years radio silence after winning the new talent search in 2015. Everyone was excited to see what he had to show, but I think we mostly left underwhelmed.

(Beware the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing)

A lot of his garments were simple repeats of his 2015 collection, and I really battled to find a coherent narrative throughout the collection. Some obvious construction problems coupled with lack luster styling left me more than a bit disappointed.

WTF NOW I’m paying Attention

Richard Keys put together a menswear collection this season which went very swiftly from a whimsical take on men’s formal attire

 

To underwear of all varieties, with absolutely no transition…but hey who’s complaining.

(RK Menswear)

ME! I’m complaining! WTF is this outfit even?!? This entire collection makes absolutely no f*cking sense!?!

I was EXTREMELY excited to see Roman Handt this season as I’ve enjoyed his shows for a while but never seen one live.

(Roman Handt)

My first impression was how cheap the designs were, being made almost entirely from various grades of batting. This is something I never noticed from the well-lit press images of course. Having said that, one cannot fault this man on construction, regardless of the medium used every single piece had to be individually cut, sewn, folded, ironed, sewn again, folded again and and and.

(Roman Handt)

I wasn’t too impressed with his commercial garments, since I feel that I don’t buy Fashion Week Tickets to see tee-shirts and sweat pants. But these pockets give me life so I’ll forgive him this one time ;)

(Ephymol)

As always there’s just too much fashion to cover properly, but these were certainly the highlights for me. Also this granny chic situation from Ephymol WHAAAAAAT?!?

If you’d like to see what everyone thought was going to be big for this Spring/Summer, you can check out my cover of those collections here.

I’d like to hear more about your fashion week experiences. Do you generally go? Do you feel the shows are relevant to you as a consumer? These are the questions that keep me up at night so help a brother out in the comments!

Images from safashionweek.com, where you can see more fashion, read up more about the designers, and generally become a better person from within

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