The Tamesis
Swaim Huston brings his preppy bona fides to Rag & Bone, the brand built from a pair of jeans to an American standard by Brits Marcus Wainwright and David Neville. Hutson, a tennis ace and possible cousin of Wes Anderson with a penchant for subversive conservative tailoring, is a contemporary of the Rag & Bone founders but a few years behind them in the CFDA/CFDA position.Fashion Fashion Fund. Like Wainwright and Neville, he witnessed the boom and bust of American fashion. If his previous labels, Obedient Sons & Daughters and The Academy New York, never took off as R&B, now that he’s here, he’s steering the creative side with humble confidence.
“I wanted to make sure that what I was doing was true to the DNA of the brand: workwear, obviously denim, and then injecting some tailoring into the mix,” he said during a showroom appointment before bringing the collection to Pitti Uomo this week. On his fall mood board: a vintage photo of Basquiat and an artist-photographed ’80s boom-era Mercedes on the streets of Brooklyn Heights, in bright cherry reds and Carolina blues, and perfectly faded rugged denim, the familiarity of these references only going some way to heightening their appeal. The same goes for the clothes on the shelves, which range from oil-washed canvas work pants and matching zip-front jackets to navy chalk-striped tailoring at one end, with plenty of preppy staples in between — striped rugby, Fair Isle sweaters, black watch-checked flannels. “I’m full of energy,” he said. “It’s something I believe in and can wear.” Rag & Bone’s customers seem to feel similarly.
