New York Fashion Week: Men’s puts global influences of fashion on display

Fashion has a long storied history of taking inspiration from foreign
cultural influences and travel. This season at New York Fashion Week: Men’s
was no exception to that long standing trend.

Nick Graham started off the morning with a collection inspired by Havana
Cuba. For the opening look to his show, model Chad White walked out in a
white 3-piece linen suit and an exploded fern print shirt. Graham wasn’t
just looking at Cuba for inspiration, he was specifically looking at Cuba
in the 50s.

During the 1950s, Cuba was the go-to place for gamblers, mobsters, and
royalty alike, but at the same time, the Cuban revolution was in the air.

“With all the recent political events surrounding Cuba, I thought now would
be as good a time as any to do a Cuban inspired collection,” Graham said.

Cultural influences permeate through collections at New York Fashion
Week: Men’s

Other pieces in his collection involved crisp, lightweight lines,
seersuckers, checked madras suits, and floral shirts to create Graham’s
signature look of post-prep.

As usual, Graham did not disappoint, and he created a quintessentially
stylish collection for today’s modern man.

For Assembly’s presentation this season, they drew on ideas of the yin and
yang, playing on cultural ideas of the mythical. However, the reductive
black and white palette left the collection feeling very stale. The
well-worn aesthetic cheapened what were high-quality garments. Upon walking
in, the first look that was seen included a raw silk blazer, but for
something so luxurious as a silk blazer it just didn’t read as expensive.

#details at
Assembly men’s #ss17 presentation

A photo
posted by @assemblynewyork on Jul
13, 2016 at 11:16am PDT

Rochambeau was their usual off-the wall, urban style, and outlandish self.
The brand centered this year’s theme around Morocco, as vacation and travel
inspiration ruled design choices during New York Fashion Week: Men’s.

A photo posted by rochambeau (@rochambeaunyc) on Jul 13, 2016 at 8:42pm
PDT

Silhouettes were kept loose and free. Some looks really hit the mark and
others were a miss. The creative of designers Laurence Chandler and Joshua
Cooper was really exemplified with looks like the setting sun stones
bomber, sunset t-shirt, jajouka shorts, and bazaar joggers, while other
looks like the Marrakesh hoodie appeared as if they were playing up that
Moroccan theme a bit too much. Overall, it was a very cohesive collection
though. Chandler and Cooper certainly know how to keep it consistent.

The brand, which is currently sold on e-commerce sites like Farfetched, is
making their bid towards more retail partners, and perhaps a few pieces
from this collection will help do it.

Matiere took inspiration for their collection from the dead sea and West
Coast culture. While the blues they used were beautiful, the silhouettes
for the garments were very mundane. The brand should be commended for their
excellent use of quality materials though, such as Japanese yarn dye stripe
crepe, raw silk, and water resistant materials that were used to create
anoraks.

Despite the over simplicity of the silhouettes, the collection was very
functional, which will be easy for appealing to retailers and buyers.

New York Fashion Week: Men’s showed that fashion is truly a cultural
melting pot when it came to inspiration. As brands are focused more on
globalization and growth, even in a sluggish market for higher end goods,
they still want to appeal to all their consumers worldwide.

Nick Graham photos courtesy of HL Group

Matiere photos courtesy of Agentry PR