The Tamesis
Haider Ackermann’s gift for creating a fashion atmosphere is so great that he once staged a menswear collection in near-total darkness, explaining that he wanted us to “smell the clothes.” The results have won almost unanimous praise from the industry. More than a decade later, at Tom Ford, designers were presented with a commercially necessary pre-collection format that was equally counterintuitive: You could neither see the designs nor talk to the designers.
Yet even without any direct contact, Ackermann’s fashion pheromones remain so captivating that you can still “smell the smell” of the clothes, and the aromatic atmosphere they evoke, simply through the lookbooks and quoted quotes. His women’s “creatures” (his term) are sensual, soulful and serious, wrapped in a fiercely stylish skin of silhouettes, textures and colours. A plastic raincoat trimmed with brown leather reveals the pinstriped Finance Brothers architecture beneath it. A rolled-shoulder camel coat is worn over a double-breasted suit and paired with assassin gloves. Several all-leather looks based on caban or moto styles were put together, with only denier between them and the skin of the creature within. Fitted midi dresses in lavender silk or mustard wool are cut and placed to accentuate the hips. Ackermann’s take on the Erewhon yoga pants routine, paired with sequined leggings and a black knitted rugby shirt, paired with loafers, is a real eye-catcher. (Those loafers are slippers and appear to be oversized shearling.)
While the menswear protagonist is described as an “explorer,” there are plenty of returns for the womenswear, too, including bird’s-eye suiting, sexy fitted leathers, finely washed denim, and pops of decorative undercollars to frame pensive facial expressions. You could smell the “British intensity” Ackerman was aiming for in the lookbook, punctuated by a redesigned Prince of Wales check suit. Elsewhere, tunics, tie-matched double-breasteds and oatmeal jersey loungewear had a more dandy feel to those of Como’s neighbours. Both gendered parts of the collection have multiple facets—jewel tones, shoes, svelte sensuality—that gently reinterpret contemporary fashion’s most evocative Proustian madeleines: Tom Ford’s Gucci. It seemed like the perfect authentic way to pay homage to the brand’s roots and inspire the desires of a contemporary fashion clientele.
