Adam Kimmel (Q2536)
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Adam Kimmel is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Adam Kimmel |
Adam Kimmel is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Adam Kimmel's menswear collections have been marked by a steady evolution as solid as his signature silhouette, which he used to call an "American cut" to distinguish it from its slender Euro peers. His fabric research and his introduction of subtle ingenuities like reversibles and three-in-ones guaranteed that his clothes were a private pleasure, demanding to be touched and tried on for full appreciation.Moving at a much greater speed has been Kimmel's development as a showman. He's like a great moviemaker in the way he can find and tap American myths to contextualize and elevate his product in his presentations. His latest may have been his greatest. Area 51 is the ghost in the American machine, an enduring mystery and inspiration for writers and artists, some of whom have in turn inspired Kimmel in past collections. That was one reason for his interest. Another was that it offered him an idiosyncratic take on military style, a theme he'd been thinking about for a while. Almost the only male figure missing from Kimmel's repertoire of American heroes has been the military man. Area 51 offered him flyboys, special ops guys, boffins, all the straight arrows laboring in the twilight zone. Ordinary men, in other words, in extraordinary circumstances. Which, in some skewed way, pointed toward the essence of Kimmel's new collection.The set starred upended jet plane wings set in desert sand like a techno Stonehenge. From somewhere deep inside, a signal beamed into space. The ebbing roar on the soundtrack sounded like jets—or aliens—taking off and landing. The models were teleported out of and back into a chamber at the rear of the stage. It was disconcertingly convincing. More so when the first man out—deadpan, monotone in matching suit, shirt, and tie—looked exactly like the sort of operative who'd show up to interview an abductee. Many of the characters on the catwalk trailed that sort of association, courtesy of the thousands of sci-fi movies, conspiracy thrillers, and TV shows that have been made in the six decades since the Roswell Visitors and their craft were shipped off to Area 51 for further study. So there was the special ops in his gray suit and shades; the intense young researcher in his shirtsleeves and suspenders; the head scientist, authoritative in his double-breasted navy suit; and the handsome test pilot, dressed to test in his jumpsuit or ready to play in his trim shearling bomber.
There were even some paranoid abductee types, coats belted tightly against the nonbelievers.Of course, all that character was in the eye of the beholder. Examine the clothes up close and character became a movable feast, like the flight jacket that flipped from shearling to tech nylon, which could be simply appreciated for its skill or construed as Kimmel's comment on the mutability of men. After all, Area 51 does funny things to a guy.
18 January 2012
Over the years, Adam Kimmel has perfected the art of the fashion presentation, introducing visual and performance elements that gorgeously complemented his clothes. You have to wonder why he felt it necessary to take what a lot of people would see as a step backward, back to the world of the conventional catwalk show. A new challenge? Or an old frontier?Kimmel's concept for his new collection was just the kind of twisty fix he's taken on American menswear since he started. He loves an archetype. This time, it was the surfer—but the kind of surfer who nixes the traditional trappings of the activity in favor of something a little more antisocial. "Dark Surfing," Kimmel called it, and the image that evoked was beautifully captured by the back projection for his show, which featured an ominous tube of water curling like Robert Longo's eerie depictions of giant waves, while the Beach Boys sang "The Lonely Sea," the spookiest song ever written about California's beach culture. Given this was his first-ever show, it was appropriately the farthest-out Kimmel has ever gone. And now he was also able to physically cast a group of men to embody his inspiration.That bit worked brilliantly. His models, both professional and street-cast, were the kind of charismatic individuals he has always sought to dress. But there was something about the rote nature of them parading up and down a runway that detracted from the clothes. Kimmel's designs aren't about bells and whistles, they're made to be felt and lived in, and that utilitarian foundation is a hard thing to communicate in something as overt as a fashion show. What stood out on display was exactly that bit of the inspiration that sounded most dramatic: Over-dyeing turned Hawaiian shirts and a psychedelic print into a sartorial complement to dark surfing. But a show wouldn't help you appreciate Kimmel's reversibles or soft tailoring. If the plainness and functionality of his designs has always been a real strength, it scarcely rewarded scrutiny on a catwalk.
22 June 2011
WhenAdam Kimmelwas a kid, the Pacific Northwest meantTwin PeaksandRiver's Edge: dark, creepy mood pieces with enough wickedness to capture a rebel teen imagination. How reassuring that Kimmel's adult experience of the region should so perfectly match his fantasy. That's thanks to artist Dan Attoe, the man who inspired the designer's Fall 2011 collection. It was wild in them thar hills when Kimmel and his wife, Leelee, went to stay with the Attoes. In the celluloid aide-mémoire that the couple made to go with the show, Attoe rides his motorbike through snowcapped majesty and gets set upon by Bigfoot—the consummate Northwestern experience, in other words—and you can feel the designer falling under the spell of this "backwoods motorcycle punk," as he calls him.Kimmel has done that before with his male muses, but this time there's something of a hairy paradox in play. If the impact of the whole shaggy-dog experience lingers in the designer's logo—now all fuzzed up, Sasquatch-style—his clothes have responded by becoming more sophisticated than ever before. Sure, there are hunting and motorcycle references (bike leathers abstracted in waterproof canvas not unlike what Dries did today). But if you studied the living diorama—i.e., real men in a fake forest setting—that Kimmel staged, what came across was a new level of technical accomplishment, especially with reversible items like the soft linen blazer that flipped to a nylon rain slicker, or the olive green peacoat that turned to quilted moleskin. For the first time, Kimmel has worked with his artist/conspirator on actual pieces. There's an eagle scarf, a forest knit, and—merciful heavens—a Sasquatch tee.
19 January 2011
Snoop Dogg collects lowriders. There were a couple parked outside thehôtel particulierin Le Marais, where Adam Kimmel staged his Spring presentation. There were also some Snoop looky-likeys leaning on them, and a whole lot more inside, lolling around the Lincoln Continental that was humpin' and bumpin' in the courtyard. They were wearing Kimmel's collection, inspired, he said, by "one of the most original artists of the last 30 years." And so Snoop Dogg joined the designer's pantheon of outlaw heroes—and fashion muses.Kimmel tends to use his inspirations for style and attitude more than actual items of clothing, but in this case, the football jersey with its stars-and-stripes motif and the satin bomber jacket were pretty straight lifts. He'd custom-designed a bandanna print in cotton silk which he used for cuffs, collars, the lining of a chambray jean jacket, among others, and the sleeves on the latest edition of his signature jumpsuit. And Kimmel's new peak-notch lapel was just like Snoop's.He suggested that a striped shirt paired with pleated chinos was the sort of outfit that reflected hip-hop's conservative element, but it also fitted well with Kimmel's own American working-stiff aesthetic. And it's that—rather than his muse of the moment—that drives him to master design challenges like the reversible jackets that are his new signature pieces. Here, a casual blazer flipped into a tux.Kimmel's last presentation, with models wearing masks by the artist George Condo, generated the best press and the biggest sales of his career. It was hard to see how he could top it, and he didn't. But he insisted his latest was his favorite yet. "I'm excited about taking something 'Made in Italy' and introducing Snoop elements." That football jersey, for instance? The finest cashmere. Snoop would like that.
23 June 2010
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
20 January 2010
Style.com did not review the Spring 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
24 June 2009
When Adam Kimmel was showcased at Pitti Uomo in Florence this January, he flew in a planeload of his art-world buddies from New York. They inspire him, just like he's currently inspired by the community that sprang up aroundSemina, an art-mail magazine created by Wallace Berman in California in the late fifties. The era has always sparked Kimmel's imagination, and the addition of theSemina-l influence worked wonders, animating his fall collection with the enduringly cool spirit of West Coast beats.Kimmel took his silhouettes and fabrics from the clothes in the pages ofSemina, but this was no mere retro resurrection. He wanted everything as soft as possible. There was cashmere everywhere—even in the corduroy. And when there wasn't cashmere, wools that looked rough were silky, as in a generous double-breasted herringbone coat that would have done Charlie Parker proud. Kimmel's signature jumpsuit reappeared in a cashmere/angora herringbone, a clear marker of how far the designer has come from the stolid working-man inspirations of his earliest collections. Even the pieces that harked back to those days were more than they seemed: a classic denim jacket was lined in cotton flannel; western shirts were double-lined for extra softness. Another Kimmel signature has always been repurposed industrial fabrics, but his new mastery of elegance (kudos to his Italian manufacturers) meant they were sleekly chic. Or at least the suit cut from army cotton was. A jumpsuit made from what looked like a mover's blanket was a bit more of a stretch. And a special mention for the leathers, another marker of this designer's fast and furious evolution.
4 February 2008
Adam Kimmel's fascination with the style of New York's art-world scenesters in the fifties lighted on a new cast of characters for spring, including Larry Rivers and the rough-'n'-tumbler Neal Cassady. The era seems to represent an ideal of uncompromising—and uncompromised—masculinity for Kimmel and his peers, and he has responded to it by evolving an aesthetic of "real man" dressing. Even its most formal elements have a proletarian unfussiness. What was added this season was elegance. Credit Kimmel's new Italian manufacturer for the finesse of the suits and jackets, including a three-piece tux whose sleekness was radical in the light of the designer's past collections—but that's only because he excels at clothing that's rooted in the salt of the earth.The best pieces in his new collection were still the ones where form followed function: a jean jacket in white twill, an artist's work coat in blue linen, a waterproofed flight jacket, summer shirts in a plain check Kimmel called "napkin." The shades of chambray that dominated the color scheme compounded the utilitarian quotient in, for example, his signature piece, the ultrafunctional jumpsuit, which he showed either hooded or buttoned-down. And Cassady, who once worked on the railroad, provided inspiration for a standout "railroad" shirt, again in the chambray or a Casey Jones stripe. Where once he had the tentativeness of the tyro, Kimmel now has the confidence to stretch himself. Hence a cashmere group (a long-sleeved polo with shirt cuffs seemed like a good idea), and jackets tailored from a waffle-textured fabric Kimmel developed from a fifties scarf. "Fantasy rooted in a masculine context," is how the designer described them.
11 September 2007
In his fifth full season, Adam Kimmel juiced up his American tailoring with a shot of Italian refinement. "More constructed, more complicated, more modernized" was how he described it, and it was obvious in the sharpness of a two-button almost Air Force blue blazer or the cleverness of a waxed cotton trench with a snap-out wool cashmere lining that functioned as a second coat. Otherwise, his design signatures remained unchanged. First, his repurposing of functional fabrics: This season, Kimmel cut shirts, trousers, and a bomber jacket out of chamois, and he turned the kind of industrial cotton flannel you might find in sheets into a tuxedo. Second, the face-off between the prosaic and the posh: a navy suit in wool canvas vs. a gray suit in 100 percent cashmere. And finally, the method of presentation: the collection shot on a posse of artist friends—Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, the Neistat brothers, among others—rather than paraded on a catwalk.The (relative) discretion of this approach was reflected in the construction. For instance, Kimmel felt that Sea Island cotton is too sheer for most men, so he doubled the chest panels on a shirt. And the short double vent that is something of a trademark comes from his conviction that it makes his jackets more flattering for men with a little meat on their bones. The art-world connection is also an ongoing source of inspiration for Kimmel. Chamois cloth litters the studios of his friends (last season, it was the cotton of drop cloths that turned him on). What's more, "artists don't shop," he said, which made him more determined to come up with a suit they'd want to buy. This collection's "fantasy" piece was something he called a holster cape, ideal for an eccentric creative type. If there was something incongruously romantic about such an item in the context of the designer's work, it was perhaps best to see it as a hard-boiled romance, the kind that would suit a real man like Robert Mitchum, in his Kimmel coat with the generous all-American-sized armholes.
8 February 2007
One of the most inspiring sub-currents of the New York fashion scene is the handful of new menswear designers who are applying themselves to their craft with energy, rigor, and a remarkable degree of thoughtfulness. Chief among them is Adam Kimmel, whose background is architecture and the art world, and whose Spring collection took as its starting point the rough cottons he found as drape cloths and rags in friends' studios. His clothes are usually characterized by a dialogue between high and low elements, and this one was no exception. A navy tux in cotton was the most obvious example; a canvas jacket lined in cashmere silk was another. True to form, Kimmel augments those contrasts with a gutsy masculinity. His inspirations here were fifties archetypes: hard-living Abstract Expressionists, military men, working stiffs. That's why the tailoring had a generous boxiness (Kimmel name-checked Jerry Lewis with a standout slubbed suit). It also accounted for the utilitarian edge he favored in items such as a hardy cotton canvas sweatshirt or a black bomber with industrial clip closings. Kimmel's clothes aren't fashion-fussy (he is, after all, the designer whose signature piece is the bastard child of the Maytag Man's coveralls), but such plainness demands a discerning eye. He rewards it.
26 September 2006
Classic American sportswear is characterized by its minimalism: Easeful form follows function. Given today's relaxed dress codes, it's no surprise that this proven formula is influencing a new generation of menswear designers. Helmut Lang led the way, of course, injecting a little Eurochic and sex appeal into the basic equation; now that Helmut's on hiatus, others are stepping into the breach. Adam Kimmel's second collection borrowed Lang's palette—white, ivory, navy, gray (plus a hit of red)—but the 26-year-old former architecture student also showed that he is his own man.Kimmel has talked about "elevating the industrial by infusing it with a relaxed elegance," and here that meant a conceit as unexpectedly winning as a tuxedo in navy sweatshirt jersey. He favored prosaic terrycloth not just for sweatshirt and pants, but even for a trench, a three-button blazer, and a utilitarian jumpsuit. The latter, his signature item, also appeared in a short-sleeved version that looked positively chic in pale gray linen. Its rounded stand-up collar was just the kind of "infusing" detail the designer says he's aiming for.The new kid on the block proved he was capable of "classic" with a brass-buttoned navy blazer and then a white cotton suit shown with a dress shirt (a relaxed variant on evening dressing for summer). But his key pieces tended to be more idiosyncratic: There was a smart lab coat, refined in navy linen, and a snap-closing jacket he called an "artist work coat," inspired by the functional yet elegant way Willem de Kooning used to dress in his studio.
15 September 2005
Adam Kimmel's fall collection fused the designer's signature jumpsuits with waxed-cotton trench coats and long, double-breasted overcoats, producing an effect that was equal parts androgyny and workingman's chic. The New York native's penchant for the stylishly utilitarian was also evident in tuxedos made of sweatshirt-inspired fabrics. Kimmel pals Hope Atherton and Norman Reedus helped to model the designer's other autumn wares: fox-fur-lined jackets, satin lapel blazers worn over full pants, dark denim jumpers featuring elastic waists, and men's shirts paired with unbuttoned overalls.
18 January 2005