AND Last but not least Giannini... FBM Mens Review is Complete

Frida Giannini never stops finding inspiration in her hometown, Rome—someone should give that girl the keys to the city. For her latest men's collection, she'd been spending time at the legendary film studio Cinecittà, looking at fifties-era photos of actors like Marcello Mastroianni in their white suits and piqué polo shirts. But sportswear as we understand it now didn't exist in Italy then, so, to bring things up to this century, Giannini also drew on the boys the Romans call adorable caniglia, who twist tradition with a little sartorial eccentricity. Then, to add some unambiguously masculine spice, she injected a dash of speed demon Steve McQueen in the form of aerodynamic biker jackets and pants. Giannini's recipe needed that weight because, in the end, what really stood out was her own playful Gucci-lite sensibility: leather jackets in silver, white, butter yellow, or lacquered black paired with skinny trousers in bold checks or bright colors, which had an almost cartoonish flair that evoked the eighties. Also echoing that decade was the new-wave smartness of a check suit, striped shirt, and spotted tie combination (the effect was compounded by the soft, Capezio-like shoes in white or silver). Giannini claimed the checks actually came from her research into the fifties at Cinecittà, but it was men she was looking at in those old photos, and it's boys she's dressing when she matches Mastroianni's smart checks with a green suede baseball jacket. Though the look still has its charms, it might be time to move on up.-Tim Blanks

D&G

The soundtrack for Dolce & Gabbana's presentation was Timbaland, but the inspiration looked like purest Timberlake: the shaved-headed models, the young urban take on dressing up, the overall edge. Domenico and Stefano smartly acknowledged the way that contemporary menswear merges day and night by running their show back to front. They opened with a formal look—tuxedo-striped pants, shawl-collared jackets, contrast lapels—and closed (finale aside) with a blouson and combats in linen all scrunched up in the curious twenty-first-century Stone Age effect they used in their last women's collection. In between came a typically catholic collection of items that covered the ever-widening Dolce & Gabbana waterfront: from a white linen jacket that offered one of the season's more appealing takes on menswear's evolving see-through kick, to a pair of denim clamdiggers that, teamed with a floral shirt, hinted at one half of the design duo's long-standing affection for hippie chic.The final march-past of mannequins all sported white orchids in the breast pockets of their evening suits, but that romantic flourish was less intriguing than the show's use of technology. Screens suspended over the catwalk featured a Minority Report-style forensic look at the proceedings, and one passage of combat-inspired clothing was illuminated by LED-like hardware, an arresting way for the modern attention junkie to feed his habit.— Tim Blanks

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Varvato's Update

The key to John Varvatos' fashion sensibility might be found in the last outfit that made its way down his catwalk: a tuxedo jacket and jeans. It's a quintessential dressed-up-rocker combo, the sort of thing that a Varvatos fave like Jesse Malin (front-row center, in a painful-looking neck-and-back brace arrangement) might wear to an awards show. Perhaps he’d even tie a silky scarf around his waist, the way Varvatos showed it. The designer made his mark with collections that delivered American frontier spirit with European finesse, and he’s gone on honing that proposition (the set—a collage of dusty, cracked old window frames—simultaneously suggested a Wild West ghost town and abandoned buildings in the Eastern bloc). His latest standouts included a fitted, zippered jacket that bloused in the back, a mushroom-toned military jacket, and a slate cotton tux. Given the commercial expansion envisaged for this label, there was a subtle boldness in the light gauge of the knits and the asymmetry of jacket and coat closings. But what would be truly great would be to see Varvatos tapping some of the contrary spirit of his other front-row face: Alice Cooper. Amid all the tastefully subtle aging, dyeing, and tailoring, it wouldn't hurt him to throw in the occasional jolt of black eyeliner.
— Tim Blanks

Adam is ready for Spring 08

Adam Kimmel's fascination with the style of New York's art-world scenesters in the fifties lighted on a new cast of characters for spring, including Larry Rivers and the rough-'n'-tumbler Neal Cassady. The era seems to represent an ideal of uncompromising—and uncompromised—masculinity for Kimmel and his peers, and he has responded to it by evolving an aesthetic of "real man" dressing. Even its most formal elements have a proletarian unfussiness. What was added this season was elegance. Credit Kimmel's new Italian manufacturer for the finesse of the suits and jackets, including a three-piece tux whose sleekness was radical in the light of the designer's past collections—but that's only because he excels at clothing that's rooted in the salt of the earth. The best pieces in his new collection were still the ones where form followed function: a jean jacket in white twill, an artist's work coat in blue linen, a waterproofed flight jacket, summer shirts in a plain check Kimmel called "napkin." The shades of chambray that dominated the color scheme compounded the utilitarian quotient in, for example, his signature piece, the ultrafunctional jumpsuit, which he showed either hooded or buttoned-down. And Cassady, who once worked on the railroad, provided inspiration for a standout "railroad" shirt, again in the chambray or a Casey Jones stripe. Where once he had the tentativeness of the tyro, Kimmel now has the confidence to stretch himself. Hence a cashmere group (a long-sleeved polo with shirt cuffs seemed like a good idea), and jackets tailored from a waffle-textured fabric Kimmel developed from a fifties scarf. "Fantasy rooted in a masculine context," is how the designer described them.
— Tim Blanks

Ralph Lauren Spring 08

You know the drill by now. Ralph offers three ranges: Polo is the fast-fashion fix with a dozen little refractions of the young metropolitan male; Black Label is a more upscale, edgier version of city dressing; and Purple Label is the apex—Lauren deluxe. The comprehensiveness of the vision is always enthralling and, given the size and success of the operation, it's a pleasure to see there is no laurel-resting. This season, for instance, Purple, always dandified in its extreme English-tailored proposition, galloped into flamboyance with eye-poppingly toned sportswear in orange, yellow, leaf green, and cyclamen. The narrow lapels of the suitings nudged against the smaller collars on shirts, which were wrapped around tightly knotted paisley ties of an extravagant four-and-three-quarter-inch width. It's the design house's 40th anniversary, and this was Lauren's way of bringing it all back home—to the tie on which his empire is based. Black Label also took up the cudgels of color, sparking an all-black group with stabs of pink and turquoise.As ever, Polo offered outfits for a sweep of Central Casting archetypes: sensitive artist, global nomad, eccentric playboy. But even within these previously explored parameters, Lauren found ways to freshen the mix. The artist went a little nautical, for instance, in navies and whites, with an Edwardian edge to stand-up club collars. And a group called Flat Iron played sportswear against tailoring: a sweatpant, for example, with a linen-blend herringbone jacket. But it was perhaps the World Traveler storyline that contained the "Rosebud" moment to the Ralph Lauren saga: It imagined clothes as souvenirs of everywhere you've ever been or anyone you've ever wanted to be. That's Ralph for you—a boy with a dream.-Tim Blanks

Happy Holiday from FBM

Hey Readers... Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Season and work on your Holiday Belly! ITS OK only this time of year is it fashion forward... I am going to work correcting more fashion wrongs... check me out next Sunday for more updates :-)

xoxo

Dwight Allen O'Neal