New York Fashion Week: The Men’s Fall 2023 Contemporary Market
Although womenswear continues to dominate the calendar, there were a few men’s-only or gender-fluid brands that also brought their fall collections to New York for the biannual event. Here are a few of the highlights.
Teddy Vonranson
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Teddy Vonranson, the menswear designer who spent 15 years at Ralph Lauren and was also the creative director of the Frye Group, is making his mark with his own brand. Called Teddy Vonranson, the line of updated American classics blends an East and West Coast sensibility that reflects the background of the Canadian-turned-New Yorker who studied fashion in Los Angeles.
His fall collection reflects a retreat he took to Maine, where he soaked in the rugged coastline, quaint harbors, soaring mountains and evergreen forests. He used that as the backdrop for a lineup that offered staples such as plaids and tartans in a matching shirt and bomber in Black Stewart as well as leather and suede chore coats, fringed jackets and blazers.
“Traditional clan tartans felt cool to me,” he said. “It’s the tightest collection we’ve ever produced, but I think it has a strong edit and point of view.”
“It’s classic preppy mashed up with street,” added Peter Gryson, who recently came on board as chief executive officer to handle the business end of the brand that sells at Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Ron Herman and others. “It’s artisanal, sexy, playful, youthful and distinctly American.”
Von Ranson’s signature color for the season is cobalt blue, which he used in a melton peacoat as well as a single-breasted suit. The Maine reference also came through in cabled fisherman sweaters in cashmere with touches of cobalt and charcoal.
And in a nod to genderless fashion, von Ranson offered up a kilt with a matching pant and popover in a polyester twill and a traditional plaid pattern.
With this collection — and the addition of a brand operator in Gryson, who said he is targeting the Asian market as a key growth opportunity — von Ranson is a name that is bound to become better known in the future.
Kuon
In his first trip back to New York since the start of the pandemic, Tokyo-based designer Shinichiro Ishibashi brought a taste of the snow that has been lacking in the city all winter.
His fall collection was inspired by his time spent skiing and playing in the snow when he was a child. “As I grew up, I was inspired by the characteristics of what snow can bring,” he said. “As mundane as this may sound, I was mesmerized by snowflakes falling on my ski gloves and melting, and amused by drawing on frost-covered windows.”
Those references were evident in the snowflake pattern embroidery he used on blousons and track pants as well as on chevron-patterned knitwear, all inspired by the skiwear he wore in those early years. Silent snowy nights inspired the abstract stripes on shirts created with Arimatsu Shibori, an ancient Japanese tie-dye technique, and the country’s history in selvedge denim was evident in a new trucker jacket and five-pocket jeans that used dyes that will fade in time. Other key looks included a piece-dyed corduroy blazer with a lining that intentionally peeks out of the bottom, as well as reversible varsity jackets, a check shirt with pin-tucked details and a wool overcoat with a trench-style back.
Bugatchi
Creative director Anthony Keegan offered an extensive fall collection that hit all the high notes of the season and proved its ability to move beyond its roots as a shirt brand.
That being said, shirts continue to be the backbone of the business and Keegan explored winter florals as the key message this time by offering a variety of patterns in seasonless fabrics, many of which were sustainable.
Beyond the shirts, he reinterpreted James Dean in a modern way through a black leather biker jacket — also available in a cabernet color — that he paired with updated sweaters. In addition to the motorcycle jacket, Keegan brought a variety of other suede and leather pieces to the fall collection. “Because of all the puffers, that’s been quiet for a while,” he said.
Other nonpuffer options included embroidered sweaters, knit shackets — some quilted, others with double-faced interiors — and sleeveless sweater-vests. There was also a three-in-one car coat in a clean silhouette.
With the exception of the floral shirts, most of the palette was tonal and the majority of the styles were light and focused on comfort.
Le Père
Its third collection since launching in 2021, men’s contemporary line Le Père is continuing its strategy of working with multiple designers for its fall collection. Helmed by designer Samuel Choi, who formerly designed at Ralph Lauren and R13, collaborated with Russian mixed-media artist Anton Reva and American collage artist Ian Woods for a streetwear collection that takes inspiration from music, film, sports and other sources.
The fall collection includes an array of mixed-media designs, such as a dress shirt featuring superimposed film images that Reva experimented with on Photoshop and then physically manipulated. There’s also sports jerseys featuring small hand-drawn illustrations, woven sweatsuits made from digitally produced yarn and puffer denim jackets.
Nihl
Neil Grotzinger continues to take his queer-centric brand, Nihl, into a space of exploration that blends fantasy and nuances of queer self-exploration, constantly redefining the codes of masculinity.
For fall, Grotzinger’s lineup is centered on blending qualities of raw industrialism with ornate glamour, inspired by the concept of blending aspects of a cinder block with that of a Fabergé egg — infusing upcycled and repurposed materials, such as a bag that utilizes a velvet rope as its strap, undershirts fashioned out of upcycled laundry bags that morphed into voluminous, satin-like blousons shown underneath jackets and tank tops and corsets made of lightweight curtain fabrics with sheerness of chiffon and the plastic-like shine of trash bags and Grotzinger’s hero pieces that continue to be present in his collections, such as his crystal beaded tops and asymmetric sheer shirting.
Grotzinger’s aesthetic continues to revolve and celebrate new ways of understanding identity and continues to blend masculine and feminine attributes by blurring the lines of what gender expression means to each individual.
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