It started with models that didn’t look like “models.” With their moustaches, specs and rough masculinity, they appeared more like scenesters plucked from Hackney dive, the Joiner’s Arms. An odd, subdued colour palette dotted with pools of silky metallics, backpacks, and shirts that look like dresses followed. A bodysuit, a fur jacket, tops with massive sculpted bows on the back that actually looked covetable and then… a floor-length, quilted skirt. And it didn’t even look ridiculous or attention-grabbing, just weirdly logical. J. W. Anderson’s debut at MAN – during February’s London Fashion Week– was a shock to the senses in plenty of ways, but one that seemed to uncoil, fully formed with the experience of showing independently in London way before the mainstream picked up on his work.
A/W 09 seems like Anderson’s biggest collection yet, a sign of his unwillingness to compromise. Many fashion writers picked up on a Wildean, gentleman-explorer theme but on closer inspection, it’s sportswear is what makes each look work. Panelled jodhpurs are both futuristic and familiar, thanks to the classic shape rendered in waffle fabric, sporting zipped ankles. A tracksuit top is printed with a black and white ghost image of a tuxedo, and there’s the astonishingly well-cut jersey suit you can see here. It’s neither really sportswear nor tailoring, but something more exciting, made by someone who looks like they have fun; disregarding the imaginary boundaries and taboos people put up around what men should wear.
His trademark has always been this kind of perversity, but it’s easy to see that replaced by diversity. It’s hard to think of another men’s designer who can boast such breadth in a single collection. When you’ve got the clothes up close, in your hands, it’s the amount of materials that is mind-boggling; horse hair, silk, fur, jersey, ‘bowclay’, organic tweed, copper, knitted wire laid over cable jumpers, wool, ribbon, beading and denim. Phew! It never feels like too much, though. That’s why I think J W Anderson is one of the names of the season and before hebecomes huge and disappears off to Paris, someone whose work we should all be looking to.
