DAKS (Q1902)
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British luxury fashion house
- DAKS Simpson Group plc
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | DAKS |
British luxury fashion house |
|
Statements
2009
Creative Director
Daks celebrated its 125th anniversary in Milan today. In considering the past century and a quarter, creative director Filippo Scuffi landed (rather heavily) in the ’70s.For women, dresses were knotted and knitted, or shift-style and tasseled, or tiered and bohemian; for men, suit pants were oft so big they seemed to plod along. Other examples that featured a tighter and neater fit were stronger. Moderately curiously, the palette felt marginally on the side of autumnal. Altogether, the impression left by this show bordered on the stuffy and the un-invigorating. The accessories in particular were a weak point—it’s tough to show an XL sun hat after Simon Porte Jacquemus has all but monopolized that piece.There were moments of note, however. Daks re-created its signature check to celebrate turning 125. It worked nicely on a men’s trench (see look one). Likewise, short shorts for both men and women felt modish and season-ready, while blazers and a sunflower-printed PVC raincoat also received check marks. These helped keep the ’70s verve swinging, but in a more wearable, not-so-nail-on-the-head manner.
17 June 2018
The Daks men’s and women’s collections weren’t just presented side by side; they were set within the story line of a romantic encounter on a steam train. While screeching brakes and a sea of theatrical smoke marked a couple parting ways onto the platform-slash-runway, coy smiles on the models’ faces and a disco soundtrack blasted at full volume suggested that their brief time together had been very well spent. Such a degree of performance can be cute when handled irreverently and cringe-worthy when extreme. This one leaned toward the latter, but only slightly and only because Daks shows often feel so stylistically nostalgic, which then risks coloring our perception of the clothes as better suited to a period film than real life.But the actual color that permeated so many of the looks proved a zesty foil for the sepia tones of the familiar house check, which made stops along a timeline of 20th-century silhouettes—essentially from the 1940s through the 1970s. The most appealing ensembles, however, were chronologically ambiguous: a women’s check jumpsuit rather than the Givenchy-style dress; a turtleneck sweater under looser men’s suiting rather than a waistcoat and watch chain. When applied judiciously, the flamboyance had appeal, too; which is to say, lose the crayon-colored hosiery and baseball-bearskin hat hybrids, keep the fabric boutonnieres and jewel-toned velvet slacks. So many British blue-blood fashion codes filtering through creative director Filippo Scuffi’s obviously Italian lens came at the expense of inclusivity; the collection’s positioning, no matter how dressed up or down, was unapologetically first class. That said, many among us would happily take that seat if we could.
15 January 2018
The Daks men’s and women’s collections weren’t just presented side by side; they were set within the story line of a romantic encounter on a steam train. While screeching brakes and a sea of theatrical smoke marked a couple parting ways onto the platform-slash-runway, coy smiles on the models’ faces and a disco soundtrack blasted at full volume suggested that their brief time together had been very well spent. Such a degree of performance can be cute when handled irreverently and cringe-worthy when extreme. This one leaned toward the latter, but only slightly and only because Daks shows often feel so stylistically nostalgic, which then risks coloring our perception of the clothes as better suited to a period film than real life.But the actual color that permeated so many of the looks proved a zesty foil for the sepia tones of the familiar house check, which made stops along a timeline of 20th-century silhouettes—essentially from the 1940s through the 1970s. The most appealing ensembles, however, were chronologically ambiguous: a women’s check jumpsuit rather than the Givenchy-style dress; a turtleneck sweater under looser men’s suiting rather than a waistcoat and watch chain. When applied judiciously, the flamboyance had appeal, too; which is to say, lose the crayon-colored hosiery and baseball-bearskin hat hybrids, keep the fabric boutonnieres and jewel-toned velvet slacks. So many British blue-blood fashion codes filtering through creative director Filippo Scuffi’s obviously Italian lens came at the expense of inclusivity; the collection’s positioning, no matter how dressed up or down, was unapologetically first class. That said, many among us would happily take that seat if we could.
15 January 2018
If you’re English, Daks looks ersatz. That’s because this is a vision of Englishness designed by an Italian and intended for a predominantly Asian clientele. Today’s collection focused on rowing, nominally the Henley Royal Regatta. This still-going but pretty anachronistic moment in the long-faded “season” for an English social set whose importance has been supplanted by the international super-rich is, admittedly, a seductive notion. Sturdy chaps in striped rowing blazers and boater hats quaffing down the Pimms alongside lissome English roses in floaty ethereal frocks, that sort of thing.In front of a backdrop mounted with antique oars and sculls, this womenswear-peppered-with-menswear show made smooth enough progress down its parquet runway. There were lots of perfectly acceptable white cotton plissé pants and skirts worn with shirts rolled up on the sleeve and teamed with ties tucked into waistbands. The shoes were brogues, sometimes backless. There were suits, coats, and skirts in an attractive diagonalized hybrid of house check and rowing stripe, and lots more suits in a straightforward rowing stripe whose dull putty color wouldn’t have passed muster for a second in Henley proper. There were some okay strapless cotton jumpsuits, including a closing example whose wide-cut plissé legs rucked deeply inelegantly, just where you don’t want them too, and some prettily applied floral patterns on pale purple shirting and in some white-on-white embroidery. The dresses were a mish-mash of imagined Edwardian daywear and pre-Raphaelite sleepwear. Designer Filippo Scuffi followed a vexing instinct to give his skirts and coats two facades. So a perfectly pleasant thick linen double-breasted topcoat had two panels at the back cut in plissé cotton—what’s the point of that, and how could you ever sit down?—while a wide skirt in that nice diagonalized check/stripe was similarly scuppered. The menswear was about as authentic as Dick Van Dyke’s accent inMary Poppins, all boaters and Oxford bags.You could if you were sensitive and English call this out as cultural appropriation. But given that the English have arguably been history’s most rapacious and ruthless appropriators of other people’s culture—normally we just chucked it in the back of a boat and brought it home—we probably deserve far, far worse than this so-so Daks collection.
15 September 2017
The gents in the latest Daks show were attired as though attending a turn-of-the-century Henley Royal Regatta—the turn of the 20th century, to be clear. So impeccably vintage were their looks—the boater hats, the mustaches, the waistcoats and nautical sweaters, not to mention the antique boats and suitcases staged down the runway—that this crew may as well have rowed through a time canal with no sense of how radically the world has changed. The casting—depicting zero diversity beyond a few silver-haired coach types—compounded the issue.So for all the respectable tailoring that went into those generously sized, high-waist linen slacks and classic summer-weight jackets, the overall statement was quite literally too sepia-toned to be taken seriously. Backstage, creative director Filippo Scuffi did hint that he was aiming for irony—and reviving a moment when sportswear was at its most dapper qualifies as a well-intentioned message. Still, the artificially jaunty interactions among models weighed down by heritage made for a scene more fitting of a period movie than the present day.
18 June 2017
There were some flashes of perfectly fine, sartorially inspired daywear for women at Daks today. Blue-on-gray check and white pinstriped gray flannels were used to fashion some totally serviceable soft shouldered jackets and wide-cuffed narrow pants that called it a day six inches north of the ankle. If you squinted a bit and disregarded the shoes (oh, how they snagged at the lustrous pile of the Langham’s carpet and made their wearers yaw), this could almost have been Brunello Cucinelli. Then there were some looks, like a black sweater over a striped menswear shirt and a dark pleated mid-length skirt, which were so shockingly unadorned and simple that they seemed—especially in their context—a normcore rallying call akin to the first look of the most recent Prada menswear show.These were the straws to grasp as Filippo Scuffi set up an awkward conversation between a winsomely mumsy rose-toned floral and his menswear base, which ran from a semi-sheer Blumarine-ish blouse over a men’s pant; to an all floral pant, shirt, and 48-hour bag ensemble worn under gray check cropped vest jacket. The wide white-and-blue check that opened the show (with dysfunctional beading placed at the corner of each inner square on a stiff-looking overcoat) was repeated on a five-tiered chiffon ruffle dress with a matching blouse and cloak. A herringbone overcoat with silver-ish glinting metal insertions and more pinstripe jackets with matching long-train skirts made the point, again, that this collection was feminine/masculine. We got it.
17 February 2017
Although this collection was billed as a passage to India—despite detours that took us through the Edwardian era and the entire menswear tradition ofDaks—the actual clothes seemed most recognizably Italian. That’s because creative director Filippo Scuffi, apart from being Italian himself, has that same breathtakingly cavalier fearlessness for metaphor mixture that you often see in Milan, plus an orthodox affinity for la bella figura.So, India: There were turbans and heavy pieces of silver Indian jewelry, some that carried the authentic tarnish of vintage pieces. On occasion, this silver was worked into the garments—either as cords crossed as six rough stitches at the back of a white linen jacket, tracing a neckline, or as the garnish at the pocket flaps of a metal-weave men’s jacket. There were also perfectly respectable batik-inspired prints.The Daks “codes” came into play with its brown-black check reworked into a breezy silk T-shirt skirt, and onto bolts of cloth that functioned as off-the-shoulder sari tops. Three dresses in gray suiting cotton had some interestingly dissonant interplays of pleat and ruffle, while a check spliced with gray and burgundy—the key color combination here—was most entertainingly deployed on a tiered dress with 13 levels: full commitment.Despite some rough touches—oh, VPL—some powerfully dubious menswear, and an odd aside of Vetements-meets-Blumarine ditzy print, this collection was too sincerely delivered to detest. Should you require Italian-flavored, English-inspired, ersatz Indian attire next spring, proceed directly to Daks.
16 September 2016
You expect a few rough edges in London. Because however much the British Fashion Council cheerleads this city’s credentials as a booming commercial powerhouse, London’s show-season selling point remains rich creativity expressed on a shoestring. Today alone Ryan Lo, Clio Peppiatt, and Alice Archer did a lot with relatively little.Daks, though, has no excuse. Owned by Japan’s Sankyo Seiko, the brand shows in London—to market its now largely defunct but once meaningful part in British tailoring history—to consumers in Sankyo Seiko’s home market. At first the presentation promised to be fine but dull. Filippo Scuffi opened with a long gown, semi-sheer, in a pixelated version of Daks’s once-famous house rust-and-black check. A fitted black dress featured a backward collar and a too-big-to-be-real jeweled detail on the front. The pixelated check—a remix to mark its 40th anniversary—reappeared on a jacket over a long sheer skirt and under a jaunty fedora.Slowly, though, the clothes became more otiosely grandiose: a fitted dress with feather-hemmed cutaway panels on the arms; a black wool coat with ridiculous straps to secure the arms against the body; an oversize check dress (browns again) whose hem was a mess of 90-degree angles over a trail of brown fringing. Then an extended collage of widow’s wear tropes compressed into mournfully overstuffed single looks. Menswear included a black patch-pocket Crombie coat daubed with rust brushstrokes. It was possible to imagine the Daks man and Daks woman coexisting somewhere, although difficult to conclude exactly where that might be.What made Scuffi’s collection impossible to swallow, however, were a series of careless touches that made this pitch at luxury read like comedy. One dress with a tube skirt of feathers had lost 10 clumps of it by the time its turn on the runway was done. Another dress in the Spanish widow section had a piece of blue duct tape attached to its hem. A menswear look featured pants whose left leg hadn’t been pinned properly so it drooped south over the shoe below. The male models must have had high shoulders—and Daks no provision for alterations—because the outerwear often displayed the telltale pucker of poor fit across the back.The production was slapdash where it could so easily have been smooth, thus fatally undermining a collection that wasn’t particularly convincing anyway. Today is windy in London.
Postshow, one of those tragic orphaned feather clumps had blown out the door onto the sidewalk and was last seen gusting away across Cavendish Square. And who can blame it?
19 February 2016
Sure, Daks was born in London, shows in London, and maintains a retail home on Jermyn Street—the greatest old-school menswear thoroughfare in the world. Those British roots, though, have become a mere backstory for a house that thrives in Asia and most especially in Japan, where its owners are based. Today the brand’s creative director,Filippo Scuffi, delivered an assured portfolio of conservatively au courant womenswear that avoided the painful Anglophile bombast that has marked some of Daks’s most recent shows.The catwalk was plastered in marble-patterned paper and lined with chrome-effect cladding as if to resemble the Art Deco foyer of some grand 1920s hotel. Along it unfolded a collection that played with some tropes of that time. There were flapperish chiffon dresses, marble-print pants, and a pleasant recurring diamond relief Scuffi had sourced from a bolt of wallpaper printed in 1925. Yet this lineup roamed confidently beyond one particular theme. There were some deftly handled plays on trad gents’ fabrics rebooted as feminine, masculine shirting detailing emphasized on silk blouses, and brogues that were transformed into double-strap high heels.Rust, the key color in Daks’s historic check, translated nicely into a slouchy suede patch-pocket skirt, a shirtdress, and scrunchily tactile bombers. A pleat-heavy riff on chiffon dresses and blouses printed with iterations of that wallpaper pattern in teal and purple were well-executed takes on theRoyal Tenenbaums-influenced Pucci/Gucci/Prada reappropriation of soft ’70s kookiness. Most meh-heavy was a climactic evening section whose various grand gestures of volume or length seemed out of sync, at least to this eye. Backstage, Scuffi pointed out that one recurring print—a washed-out botanical X-ray—had been “a special request from Asia.” And when a designer is thinking so hard about one particular market, it seems churlish to complain that his collection isn’t perfect for another.
18 September 2015
Oh, Daks. If you are British, male, and know clothes, this brand really means something: It's deep. That check! Trousers without suspenders! The incredible building on Piccadilly! Great sportswear and ready-to-wear tailoring!But that was then and this is now. Globalized 21st-century Daks is massive in Korea and designed by Filippo Scuffi. And in the context of now, he is doing an excellent job. For this collection Scuffi deployed a rigorously efficient cut, paste, and meld: stirring a Quant-touched, Austin Powers '60s-ishness with a breath of bell-bottomed '70s-ishness. The motif was biker jackets. To counter their diamond quilt and horizontally ribbed leather toughness, a (perhaps oversize) rose print gave us femininity. The women's pants worn above brogues were sometimes great—low on the hip, wide cuffed, and in check, or in a slouchy leather.There was a masculine counterpoint that wore jumpsuits—one especially unbeautifully rendered in black leather—and iffy matching shirts and ties. These, though, were just show ponies. Overlooking the silly hats, the red tights—seriously?—and the history of the brand, this was an efficient enough collection. And a trouser fastener on the back of the houndstooth skirt in look 20 hinted that Scuffi at least knows what Daks once was, and respects it. That's something with which we old Piccadilly haunters can console ourselves.
20 February 2015
As soigné looks in silk plissé, taffeta, and ostrich feathers glided through the magnificent Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, audience members kept glancing down at their invitations to confirm they were at the Daks show. Where were the checks? The camel cashmere? The English heritage? And what was a taffeta mantilla doing there?Most of what we expect from Daks was wiped clean, with creative director Filippo Scuffi starting off with new ideas, signifying a major shift for the English house whose roots are firmly embedded in the sporting life. Golf was ditched as an inspiration, and Scuffi's eye turned to ballet (hence the venue).Swan Lake's Odette was referenced, and the palette consisted of lavenders, grays, and white. Jarringly, the house check was abandoned in favor of what Scuffi called a "double-D" print, which was so subtle it was nearly impossible to make out the "D." In any case, it was used sparingly. Fluid silk dresses and skirts often hit well below the knee, and Scuffi conveyed the message that Daks, which holds three royal warrants, always gives some thought to propriety. Shorts, on the other hand, were short.The designer shifted Daks' silhouettes from the equestrian ring to the red carpet and ballroom. Details like origami pleating, fan shapes, and a striking floral taffeta neckline signaled a departure from the expected. There were also crisp white cotton shirts teamed with rigorously cut trousers with ostrich-feather details, and leather bondage strips around a frothy silk fan-pleated blouse. Elsewhere there were skinny mauve leather trousers, and an ethereal gray kimono-sleeve dress. Some looks needed more thought, such as a dress with a straitjacket-like top, but a pair of white pants in lace-overlay floral fabric shown with a white shirt worked well. The back, clavicles, and a lot of leg were on display.Scuffi has moved the needle significantly, and it will be interesting to see how Daks' customers adjust to the change. Still, even if one lives the sporting life, there is always a need for clothes that can work away from the golf course and the shooting range.
12 September 2014
This year Daks celebrates its 120th anniversary. The temptation when tasked with designing a collection for a brand with such a long history is to dip too heavily into the archives and end up with a mishmash of greatest hits. Daks creative director Filippo Scuffi checked all the boxes, not least of which was an exploitation of the Daks "house check." It appeared on lapels, as fringes, in tube beads, in sequins, and even as a bearskin, which certainly hit you over the head with the heritage message (a member of the team suggested it will not be produced beyond the runway).Scuffi was at his strongest when restricting himself to camel knits; stretched extra long into a slinky dress or in second-skin double-face cashmere, they captured the streamlined, refined attitude you associate with the brand. But then the collection ended with a floor-sweeping knit gown inflated by a crinoline. Not even the lustrous leather opera gloves—which offered retro-futuristic C-3PO appeal—could distract from the blanket-over-a-birdcage effect.It was curious to watch Scuffi tackle the trenchcoat, manipulating it into a strapless dress or gathering its sturdy material into a bustle. One wonders if women want to dress in such a deliberately throwback manner (never mind the impracticality, which was ironic given the coat's original purpose). Moreover, the trench remixing invited an elephant into the room—a very large, checked elephant—and it drew attention away from the label's impressive milestone.
13 February 2014
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
12 September 2013
Natty English check was a big trend on the New York runways this season. And so it was reasonable to expect that Daks, an actual English heritage brand, would muster its considerable authority on the look and send a chest-thumping collection down the runway this morning. Well, that didn't happen. The use of the Daks check was more emphatic than usual, but aside from that, womenswear designer Sheila McKain-Waid kept this collection very, very understated. There were two key themes here, the first of which saw McKain-Waid shrinking her trademark sculptural silhouettes and concentrating on less obvious construction ideas, such as wrapping and curved seaming. The second theme was more ambient, but it echoed the first: In place of the dreamlike mood of the past few shows, this one found the Daks woman exhibiting an attitude of streetwise nonchalance.Both of these developments served to make this collection feel somewhat constrained in its ambition. The execution was typically assured, and there were a few knockout pieces, like the cropped jackets with doubled lapels and the twisted wool flannel jumpsuit that opened the show. But the focus seemed to be on producing conventionally proportioned, commercial looks—an impression underscored by the near-constant repetition of the Daks check. Still, McKain-Waid isn't a lazy designer, and even if this collection didn't always seem scaled for the runway, the individual pieces generally repaid close scrutiny. To wit, McKain-Waid's fantastic single-breasted macs, which had been shorn of breast flaps and shoulder pads and pretty much any other potentially extraneous detail; they weighed virtually nothing. The collection was full of good ideas like that. Here's hoping that next season McKain-Waid once again gives herself room to communicate all those good ideas with a bit more force.
15 February 2013
It's not a perfect science, but reading between the lines of a show casting can tell you quite a bit about a brand's take on itself. There were no megasuperstar models at this morning's Daks show, but the presence of serious, in-demand girls such as Marie Piovesan, Kate King, and Lara Mullen gave a clear impression that the house is liking its chances at the moment. That confidence isn't misplaced: The new Daks collection was the most compelling yet from Sheila McKain-Waid, who instituted a regime of clean, sculptural sophistication when she debuted as the brand's womenswear designer a year ago.The show today opened with a series of looks in tonal exchanges of chalky white and cream. The limpid palette established an atmosphere of weightlessness that carried through much of the show. And that weightlessness was what really felt fresh here: Where other brands have seized the moment for sculpted silhouettes by bonding, lacquering, and hardening their fabrics, McKain-Waid had the wit to go in the opposite direction, and create ethereal volumes using barely-there materials. Witness the belted cream vest on Kate King, with its ballooning volume in back, or the handkerchief-weight, broad-leg jumpsuit worn underneath it. McKain-Waid wasn't opposed to using sterner materials, but when she did, it was with great specificity, as in her see-through nylon anoraks, or sporty vests trimmed with plastic.The see-through nylon and plastic touches were part of a larger conversation within the collection about opacity and transparency. In general, McKain-Waid played with the theme by overlapping sheer materials—an idea taken from an antique Vionnet blouse made from sewn-together scarves. McKain-Waid makes a habit of using her references well: Another inspiration this season was a Jasper Johns painting, of white paint brushed on raw canvas, which influenced the collection's tonal and textural play, as well its excellent brushstroke prints. (One of these was a riff on Daks' heritage check, which McKain-Waid is of course obliged to incorporate into all of her collections. If she minds, she doesn't show it.) There were some weak spots here—the leather, for instance, seemed a little out of place—but overall, this collection was thorough, polished, and compelling.
14 September 2012
English heritage brand Daks has undergone a stealth reinvention. Sheila McKain-Waid quietly took charge of the house's womenswear last season, and just as quietly made her debut with a Spring '12 collection that had an almost meditative cleanness. Today's Daks show had a similarly Zen quality to it, but it made for a high-volume announcement of its emergence as a brand to watch.Despite Daks' Englishness—the brand has three royal seals, and a history that goes back almost 130 years—the house is actually a rather international concern. Its biggest market is in the Far East, and not only is McKain-Waid American, but she arrived at Daks following stints at Halston, Donna Karan, and Oscar de la Renta. It's not altogether surprising, therefore, that this collection had as much an international feel as an English one: The designer's woven detailing and cocoonish outerwear silhouettes owed something to Japan, and her pared-back approach to the clothes owed something more to the look and attitude of classic American sportswear. (Claire McCardell is one of McKain-Waid's oft-cited references.)All of that served a distinctly English sense of reserve, with the Daks checks artfully exploited. The most successful use of the check was in inventively constructed outerwear: McKain-Waid amassed an army of pattern-making techniques for the coats and jackets, including circular seaming, paneling, and bias-cutting, which provided the pieces with an unexpected sense of volume and movement. Elsewhere, her high-waist, wide-leg trousers were dramatically chic, and a group of check-referencing burnout velvet pieces gave the dévoré a graphic update. With today's show McKain-Waid nicely positioned Daks as a minimalist's answer to Burberry.
17 February 2012