Aquascutum (Q2698)
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trademark and fashion brand
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Aquascutum |
trademark and fashion brand |
Statements
2000
womenswear designer
menswear designer
2006
CEO
One of the advantages of heritage companies is they tend to have snappy slogans to inspire incoming creative directors. For her third collection at the house, Joanna Sykes was particularly taken with Aquascutum's "Dressing the Powerful." That used to mean kings, generals, politicians, but what Sykes had in mind was, she said, "a Tarantino woman, dark, provocative, dangerous."With a new Italian manufacturing deal in place, Sykes claimed she was now free to focus on design. The immediate impression of her new collection was structure, emphasized by cagelike, almost bondage straps running round hems, or angular architectural details like the patent stripes on an oxblood leather coat, or the zippers that streamlined outerwear closings. Bonded fabrics added substance. The tailored silhouette echoed the military precision of Aquascutum's past, in a gray officer's coat or olive jacket cropped over matching pants and a snowy-white poplin shirt.Where the danger lay with this woman was anyone's guess, but maybe Sykes meant that the whimsy she initially brought to Aquascutum has been shelved in favor of a sleek, sexy hard edge. Any woman willing to don the low-slung pants with the cutout top is guaranteed to kick ass.
17 February 2012
In fashion, context counts in large amounts. For today's Aquascutum show, Joanna Sykes surrounded herself with a supercool crew: Vanessa Reid styling, Lucia Pieroni and Paul Hanlon on makeup and hair, the universally adored Dan Lywood and Ben Bridgewater on the decks. Not a bad way to make a break with a past that, as Sykes said, was all about menswear. By way of contrast, she claimed she wanted to do something "extremely precious and fragile, feminine and delicate." Funny, then, that the show partially played out as a fetching debate on the boy/girl thing that constantly ebbs and flows around fashion. So a dramatically slit column in dandelion yellow georgette followed a tweedy pantsuit that wouldn't look amiss on Oliver Twist. And the same tweed made a biker that preceded a black satin-and-lace lingerie jumpsuit.With this collection, Sykes followed Stella, Phoebe, and Hannah to become the latest example of a special London phenom: designing women who match form to function in an instinctive, sensual, real way. You can tell by the generous way all of them cut a pair of women's trousers. Sykes referred to Aquascutum's 150 years of masculine heritage with a tailcoat (paired with pedal pushers), because, she said, she liked the fact the item was originally designed with a purpose. For the same reason, she laminated her silk georgette, because "that took something delicate and made it functional."
19 September 2011
Joanna Sykes' womenswear debut for Aquascutum was called English Icons, in reference to the label's long and illustrious outerwear history. Like Clare Waight Keller at Pringle of Scotland, another company dense with heritage, Sykes opted for a little light iconoclasm as her way in. She touched the classic bases—trenchcoat, field jacket, peacoat—but she toyed with proportion, layered things oddly, deconstructed, reconstructed. The collection had a slouchy, loose, tacked-together quality, like Sykes' argyle, which wasn't much more than a few squares of fabric loosely engaged with one another. Or a silk smock, whose pattern might have been a very abstract take on an Art Deco motif, which was peculiarly paired with a bonded leather gilet. A herringbone coat had a puffer shrug attached; the combination of the ultra-classic and hyper-sporty could be shaping up as Sykes' signature contribution to the collection. But she's going to have to turn down the volume. There were droop and bulk when there should have been snap and litheness. Still, that's what opening nights are for.
21 February 2011
Pure modern English with a classy accent and breaking new fashion ground with it. Michael Herz's Fall collection for Aquascutum marked a pivotal moment at which the designer found a perfect equilibrium between his own instinct for what feels right—the long, slim silhouette he started last season—and the heritage of this august yet stodgy British coat and suiting company.After a season's absence from the runway (while the company was sold to Harold Tillman, who is also chairman of the British Fashion Council), Herz has come back with a design clarity that could rival that of many a bigger brand. On the one hand, he was among the first to commit to long, fluted skirts and narrow dresses (a movement in London that's gaining momentum by the day), and he made them work for Fall by styling them with small, leather-belted jackets; white shirts; capes; and pointy silver flats. And on the other, he's found a device that neatly ties his ideas back into the tradition of Aquascutum: a series of seventies advertisements about the virtues of the house camel coats—the fabric of which is now, of course, at peak desirability again.On the runway—a presentation on the ground floor of the flagship store on Regent Street—Herz interspersed fragile dresses featuring diagonal shirring with modernized elements of sensible English outdoorwear, putting the quilted liner on the outside of one jacket, cutting jacket-cape hybrids, and using simplified drawstring poacher pockets.The effect—from the beginning to the lovely gold jacquard tissue dress at the end—had a freshness, simplicity, and elegance that was thoroughly convincing. Sometimes, Herz has seemed daunted by the weight of carrying the responsibility for the brand heritage and reacted by overthinking his design and trying too hard to please all sorts of customers. Now that he's concentrating tenaciously only on what he believes in, it's all come together.
20 February 2010
If there were a medal for fashion creativity under fire, Michael Herz should get it this season. As he was designing the Aquascutum collection for Spring—a tight and focused vision of army-surplus fatigues over soft, long dresses—the Japanese owners of the British trenchcoat-and-tailoring brand put the operation on ice and announced they were selling the company. To his credit, Herz continued working with fast-dwindling resources and with personnel leaving by the day. In the nick of time, just days before London fashion week, Harold Tillman, the chairman of the British Fashion Council and the entrepreneur owner of Jaeger as well as a string of restaurant concerns, bought the company, so the show (or rather a series of presentations in the flagship store showroom) did go on.Strangely, working against the odds seemed to bring out the best in Herz, who said his way of dealing with the stress over the summer was to get out more, go to music festivals with friends, and, with nothing to lose, only design what he believed in. He edited that down to a personal inspiration: a khaki shirt belonging to his father, who was in the army in Guyana. From there, he extrapolated a series of slim washed-canvas trenches, printed gauze and washed silk forties-inflected summer dresses that had a youthful throw-on ease, and some belted jackets and pants for more grown-up daywear. What it lacked in breadth, it made up for in believability. Aquascutum's new backing ought to give Herz the ability to do more next season, but in the meanwhile, struggling through adversity might have done him a favor: The lesson is that having a big budget to fill a runway isn't necessarily the best way to demonstrate what a designer's made of.
20 September 2009
British heritage labels used to be the preserve of classy ladies to such an extent that the incoming designers charged with updating them would run a mile rather than acknowledge those traditional customers. Not so this season at Aquascutum. Many a beloved and familiar British face was on the runway: Stella Tennant, Susie Bick, Yasmin LeBon, Cecilia Chancellor, and Jenny Howarth—a veritable roll call of great locally grown models of the eighties and nineties. The fact that they walked alongside members of the new generation, including London girls Jourdan Dunn and Daisy Lowe, sent the message that Aquascutum might have something for everyone.Designer Michael Herz made his best argument for cross-generational accessibility in the rainwear, Aquascutum's original claim to fame. An innovative touch came in his "two-for-one" double-layered techno-taffeta coats, combining airy volume with functionality, and a couple of tie-on fur tippets (one fur, one mink) designed to transform any coat into something snugly and luxuriously warm. Maybe, though, the idea of addressing women in their forties or over—however right and exciting in principle—was something that made Herz suffer empathy-failure. It was hard to imagine that the grown women walking his runway would ever choose to wear a revived Aquascutum house check, or a puffy pink floral organdy dress, or something tuniclike cut out of crystal-sprinkled lace. New classy ladies (of any nationality) are not like the old guard, and some of these clothes would engender a natural fear of age-adding on sight. Maybe next season Herz should take things further and hire the stylish, fashion-experienced women he gathered on his runway as a focus group, not just a clutch of trophy models.
21 February 2009
It's the second time there's been a rhapsody in blue on the runway this season, though the one at Aquascutum was in quite a different key from the Gershwin reference that played at Marc Jacobs. Save for the opening passage, this was a collection done almost entirely in blues—a color spectrum that's been preoccupying Michael Herz since his pre-Spring show. It's apparently had a calming and softening effect on him and the clothes. "Really," he remarked, "all I want is for everything to be easy."That was a good place to start for a line that needs to appeal to women professionals rather than to a closed claque of fashion fiends. Herz brought a fresh air to Aquascutum's outerwear, turning out trenches in parachute silk. Vertical pleats and the odd floating panel, meanwhile, broke up the symmetry of sheaths. Although he loves to manipulate fabric and print, Herz is probably most innovative when he keeps things simple. On that score, it was a long, lean, incredibly elegant jersey pantsuit that looked newest and most convincingly aimed at his target audience.
15 September 2008
Aquascutum's designers, Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler, set themselves two missions this season: to research the company's origins in 1851, and to delve into the vintage highlights in the company's archives. What they found there: excellent examples of militaria (since Aquascutum, like Burberry, outfitted soldiers for the trenches) and some stately English ladies' coats derived from fifties couture. It takes more than that to make a rounded, modern runway show, though, so the designers concentrated on bringing bright color and texture to dresses to perk up the outerwear.In the sequence of the show, the coats came out first in a lot of variety: a khaki officer's greatcoat (double-breasted and long, a London trend), a molded bright-blue bouclé collarless style, and a fit-and-flare gold-and-mustard jacquard hourglass being three of them. The lack of a consistent shape running through the show looked puzzling, until the outerwear came out again slipped over colorful embroidered wool or one-color dresses in turquoise, burnt orange, and red. Then the designers' combined eye for color made the show jump alive: a dark bordeaux coat with a red dress, a khaki trench over orange, yellow with red, and so on. It may seem simplistic, but sometimes it's those little footnotes on how to wear things differently that end up being the most inspiring point of a whole show.
11 February 2008
"It's like a metamorphosis," said Michael Herz, pointing at the Polaroid lineup of the Spring collection he designed with Graeme Fidler. "She starts off with the sober recognizable raincoat, and then gradually there starts to be color, and then she becomes a butterfly." Well, not literally, but you could see his point. Following the slate gray mac, lovely dresses kept on emerging amid the more sensible tailoring. There were fitted shifts, one woven in painterly blues "like a seascape," another in white organza with black cream and ivory appliqués. An asymmetric T-shirt dress introduced an easier, younger line, and then, at the end, hand-drawn fifties-style rose prints broke into full bloom. Charming, wantable, and very wearable.The clever thing is that none of it looks weighed down by the idea of "English heritage," which is one of the burdens that sometimes scuppers young designers charged to revive a classic brand. In its old sense, Aquascutum is a carapace that needs to be broken away from, though not entirely. What the Herz-Fidler team has decided to retrieve and update is the label's reputation for quality and workmanship, and in their hands, it's rich and quirkily done. Embroideries based on abstractions of the traditional paisley turn out to be made of silver hooks and eyes or stitched in multicolored strands of chiffon. Thanks to surprisingly luxe moments like this, plus the sense of youthfulness and ease they're now playing up, the pair is gaining confidence and respect. As Herz says, it's like a metamorphosis.
18 September 2007
Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler riffed on Aquascutum's soldiering history for Fall. The company made officer's uniforms as far back as the Crimean War (as well as "trench" coats in WWI, of course). It didn't turn out to be an aggressively militaristic collection, though. Inspired byThe Nutcracker, the designers said they ended up thinking more about toy soldiers, which explained the capes, military jackets with oversized frogging and toggles, and the little medals hanging from dress straps.Still, anyone can come up with a catchy theme. The test of true design drive is whether the execution takes the material somewhere else; equally important is whether idea and execution merge to apply to a believable customer. Herz and Fidler's jackets and short coats ticked both of those boxes. Minutely quilted wool and silk numbers with slight standaway volumes had a grown-up sophistication, while waterproof anoraks in color-blocked black, cream, and mustard had a sporty zip.If they're clever, the Aquascutum duo has the potential to appeal simultaneously to traditional customers as well as to a fashion fiend who just might be tempted by a scarlet jacket that seems to be made of painted feathers (it was a jagged cotton and plastic, in fact). And that seems to be the direction the designers are safely headed in now.
13 February 2007
Apparently figuring that it was time to focus more on the brand heritage of Aquascutum—a decision that coincides with a change of management at HQ—Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler were in a comparatively subdued mood for spring. Essentially, they've been drafted into the battle of the British trenches, a tricky field to contest when Christopher Bailey at Burberry—but a short walk across Piccadilly Circus—has already stolen the march on that.The tactic Herz-Fidler adopted was to go to the archive and abstract the surfaces of the classic Aquascutum mac. They did that by taking elements like pleating, tucks, and smocking and working them onto zones of raincoats and trench jackets. This looked effective, as did a barrel-shaped, olive three-quarter coat, but otherwise the collection seemed to lack the oomph of their first few outings. The addition of more regular-looking shirts and pants watered down the youthful experimentalism of their work, and when they sent out the odd raffia-skirted showpiece, it didn't make a coherent point. That was a shame, because when these boys are on the mark—as they were last season with an acid-yellow Empire coat that has been rapaciously copied up and down the high street—their talent can shine brighter than this
19 September 2006
It's rare to see polish, modernity, and quality together in a single collection on a London runway—and all the more exciting when it's coming out of a great British background. After three seasons, a convincing revolution really is under way in the back room at Aquascutum, where Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler are recutting the heritage of the coat-and-tailoring brand into great-looking twenty-first-century shape.The best symbol of change is their chrome-yellow bouclé coat, slightly bubble-shaped, with bracelet-length sleeves: right proportion, right length, and right on the money in its reference to Cristobal Balenciaga. Better still, it's a piece Herz and Fidler developed from the company's archive, which contains racks of beautiful coats aimed at well-dressed ladies who appreciated Balenciaga's style in the fifties. The duo's knack: knowing how to turn an authentic reference into something young and of today.In fact, the outstanding items in this collection were all coats: collarless ecru ottoman shapes with slightly stiff volumes; a brown high-collared cossack with a raised waist; a pale washed-silk trench. One black coat came with a belt decorated with silver flower-and-leaf embroideries commissioned from the specialists who work on British military regalia. There was plenty more going on here, too, in the way of short Empire-line dresses and complicated deconstructions of trenches and pantsuits. Herz and Fidler's creative enthusiasm can't be faulted, but they do their best work when they keep things simple. Several editors in the audience found their gaze slipping enviously toward the immaculately undeconstructed men's jackets. That could be a good way for women to go next season—but in the meanwhile it's good to see these young designers finding a voice.
14 February 2006
The latest challenge of refashioning a square old British brand into acceptable shape for the twenty-first century has fallen to Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler. Back in the day, Aquascutum was a venerable raincoat brand and gents' and ladies' suit maker, but now, under new Japanese management, it finds itself in the same position as Burberry ten years ago—a moneymaker, but nowhere on the fashion radar.Herz and Fidler, in their second season on the runway, are attacking their problem by romancing the technology of the raincoat and co-opting pieces of a man's wardrobe for women. Herz said he imagined what would happen if a couple washed up on an Indonesian shore with one suitcase intact. The result—somewhat more intellectual than the costumes ofLost—is essentially a collection of floppy, washed, sometimes cut-up trench coats, crinkly sun-dried cottons, and dresses made from patchworks of Indonesian checked fabrics. All, supposedly, what the pair would end up with, once they'd started improvising with what clothes they had, pieced together with local finds.Well, the Aquascutum castaway would need a good sewing machine to wash up alongside that suitcase if she wanted to wear stuff like this. Apart from one beautiful long dress made out of pinstripe shirting, Aquascutum's Indonesian print and toile de Jouy dresses were short and fitted and cut with a multiplicity of complex darts and gathers, complete with every seam meticulously finished with bias binding. True to the company's reputation for reversible raincoats, Herz promised that each and every garment was as beautifully finished inside as out.But in the end, the guys need to learn a bit about woman-think. No woman obsesses over the way the inside of her dress is finished like Herz and Fidler. By the time the show was over, their absorption with such details left them with what looked like a zillion renditions of the same dress, in everything from a bright seed-packet floral to a gilded linen. Although these were paired with different treatments of the trench—a cropped bolero jacket, a puffy dark muslin—a new vision for the brand has yet to be completely articulated.
19 September 2005
What does it say about fashion now that the sighting of a few plain, modern, well-made clothes on a runway is capable of sending a frisson of excitement through a grateful crowd? The fact that a skinny tailored black pantsuit, a charcoal-gray double-breasted military coat, and a deluxe shot taffeta parka are suddenly coming from the former fashion dead zone of Aquascutum (a British raincoat brand established, like Burberry, in the 1850's) certainly adds interest to the case.Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler, both in their 30s, have been brought in to give Aquascutum's men's and women's labels a style makeover. Their taste is for modern urban luxe, much in the minimalist vein of Helmut Lang or Jil Sander, except that they tend to go mad with tulle-and-lace English deb dresses, too. They did a good job of abstracting ideas from Aquascutum's heritage, making a neat black coat-dress with epaulets, as well as a slew of short trenches belted over all those net dance skirts. But this launch collection wasn't quite coherent. At times it was too conceptual; take, for example, a tricky turning of jacket hems inside out to show linings. And the repetition of the Mac-and-frock look raised the curious question of why a raincoat company should be so enthusiastically pushing girly eveningwear. The truth is that what's missing from fashion now is strong, believably utilitarian daywear. If Herz and Fidler build on the few very desirable examples of that they showed in this collection, they'll be heading in a promising direction.
14 February 2005