Damir Doma Spring 2015 Ready To Wear

The sounds of nature have abounded at the shows this season: birdsong, waves crashing. Even a designer as urban-minded as Damir Doma is thinking about the beach. You can hardly blame him: With his signature collection, a lower-priced line, and a men’s offering, Doma is looking at upward of 10 collections a year. His modern customer is just as busy, if she’s anything like jewelry makers Annette and Phoebe Stephens of Anndra Neen, longtime clients who collaborated with Doma on the show’s necklaces and bracelets.

The idea of escape infused the new collection with a subtle ease. Doma’s not the kind of guy who makes dresses from striped towels. Jackets sashed closed, instead of buttoned; a halter dress was suspended from a scarf that he wound through large leather grommets; tanks and tees were made from a mesh-like lace, as cool as a breeze. “I would like my woman to breathe a bit more,” he said backstage. Making customers’ lives easier is often code for boring clothes, but Doma’s approach to wardrobe staples was unexpected and thoughtful. Denim, for instance, was cut into pajama shapes, doubling the comfort factor. And he romanced other familiar items, cutting a pantsuit in a navy fil coupe or adding sheer insets to an understated little black dress. The athletic ribbed collars and waistbands were a little predictable; sports references are tending to feel played out. Otherwise, Doma’s day at the beach was a very pleasant trip.

Ted Baker Autumn Winter 2014 Men’s Lookbook

Louis Vuitton Spring 2015 Menswear

Kim Jones was named for a Rudyard Kipling character, the Irish orphan alone in late-19th-century India. Jones is a real traveling man, so it’s surprising that it has taken him all this time to actually get to India. It was the late Louise Wilson, his professor at Central Saint Martins, who persuaded him to make the trip. He dedicated his latest collection for Louis Vuitton to her.

Inevitably, a fundamental synchronicity emerged. The maharajas of Jodhpur and Jaipur were big Vuitton customers in the twenties. The timeless luxury of their palaces was an inspiration to Jones and his team. The palace guards were the starting point for the collection’s variations on military garb, like an army shirt and shorts in a lustrous suede, and jumpsuits in khaki and pink, “the navy blue of India,” according to style oracle Diana Vreeland. Shisha mirror-work beautifully decorated a flight suit and military bombers, every single mirror engraved with the LV logo. It was this kind of detail that testified to the designer’s all-seeing eye. There were plenty more. How often do you find yourself possessed by belt buckles or buttons? It was hard not to be when they were as immaculately realized as they were here. Jones had to produce the cotton-silk Airtex lining of his jackets artisanally, because mass production has destroyed any other options.

But that is really the kind of story that Louis Vuitton is always trying to tell: a connoisseur’s appreciation of the rare, the precious, honed by exposure to the best of everything. Jones obsesses over fabric research. Everything, from the organza shirts to the water-resistant leather bags, testified to that. He also knows from personal experience what real travelers need. It was a shame that the audience had no idea that a couple of the cases carried in the finale opened to reveal a portable writing desk or everything a musician would require (music paper, notebooks, ink). The guitar case, on the other hand, was obvious, even if its sheepskin lining wasn’t.

What people see and what they don’t is always going to be an issue when a collection like this is presented in the conventional way. For example, the seventies-influenced silhouette—high-waisted trousers and longer, double-breasted jackets—polarized the audience, so the big picture obscured the many wonderful details that distinguish Jones’ tenure at Vuitton. But the true connoisseur won’t be distracted.

Bottega Veneta Spring 2015 Menswear

Tomas Maier professed amazement at the changes in the men he sees on the streets of New York, unabashedly displaying their pampered selves. “They’re taking over the female role,” he said wonderingly. Which is good news for a designer like Maier, who has always played to a man’s physical, sensual side. And never more so than with today’s Bottega Veneta show, which, he said, was more about “movement and freedom” than anything he’s done before.

In keeping with that, Maier showed a collection that was inspired by dancers, everyone from Nureyev and Baryshnikov to break-dancers in the street. Elevated by some particularly empathetic styling, the theme infused a presentation of deluxe workout wear. With their headbands and tap shoes, washed-out scoop-neck tank tops, rolled-up track pants, and long johns, the models were Broadway hoofers fresh from rehearsal (though you wondered how many of them could afford the intrecciato backpack, the signature bag of the collection).

Maier likes clothes that look like they’ve lived a life, so he added some extravagantly worn knits to the mix, including one sweater that appeared to have been attacked with a paint roller, and another that seemed to have a child’s crayon scrawl around the neck. Everything was unbuttoned, folded down, rolled up. In this context, even the more conventional clothes the designer showed—like a generously cut double-breasted suit—took on a louche physicality. There is often an iconic Hollywood reference buried deep in Maier’s collections, and here the one that came to mind was James Dean at his dance classes in the fifties. However much a flight of fancy that might be, it’s hard to imagine Maier disapproving.

Patrik Ervell Spring 2015 Menswear

Furniture and clothes aren’t all that different. We buy them both based on comfort, necessity, and style. One of the main differences between the two is the amount of time you expect them to last. And there begins Patrik Ervell’s Spring 2015 collection thesis.

Ervell borrowed materials from interior design—polyurethane, vinyl, racing leather, and a set that featured a wall of venetian blinds—to create a collection that was minimal, structured, sporty, and classic. “It’s a tricky thing,” he said backstage before the show. “How do you make it convincing in menswear? There’s a strangeness to this that kind of makes it like a sculpture on the body.”

The clothes didn’t stray from what Ervell does best: sharply cut trousers with slightly oversize, subtly athletic outerwear. Coats were cut with exaggerated venting. Knit jersey pullovers were reminiscent of retro, low-tech North Face pieces. Trenches and macs in a heavy, supple polyurethane fabric with raw hems appeared laser cut. Metallic turquoise shorts and track pants added vivid, industrial color. The final look featured a nearly perfect black calfskin police jacket that Ervell remarked resembles a beautiful car. On the runway it did.

Will any of it last as long as a couch or an armchair? Probably. Whether or not we actually want indestructible clothes—part of the fun is in desiring and acquiring, not just wearing—Ervell makes an important proposition. This is fashion week, after all, and as thousands of looks blur into a season, one must consider how much of what we see will endure.