Michael Bastian (Q3369)
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Michael Bastian is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Michael Bastian |
Michael Bastian is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
For Spring,Michael Bastianfound a muse in Miles Davis—both sonically and sartorially. “His progression is so interesting,” said the designer. “His sound went from very controlled cocktail music to making experimental frog noises on the trumpet . . . and his look went from sort of Ivy League prep to really freaky.”Bastian is gifted at taking themes and distilling them, subtly, into garments that are ultra-luxurious (a friend of this reviewer likes to call him the American Loro Piana). He studied Davis’s penchant for narrow double-breasted suits, and made a knockout tuxedo with similar buttoning. Channeling the jazz star’s funkier vibes, Bastian wove cord leather lacing down the entire leg of moss green corduroy trousers (they’re adventurous, though manageable). Even a Lurex intarsia trumpet on a navy cashmere sweater, the most direct nod to his inspiration, felt cool and not camp.In jazz, too, Bastian located a sporty tempo—he had some excellent double-face track jackets, and a perforated element that ran from anoraks to suede inlays on jumpers. “I geek out over fabric,” he said, lifting a lean cotton-mesh blazer to reveal that it’s entirely see-through in sunlight. He has further reason to geek out: Imminently, Bastian is revealing a diffusion line, with “suits that are in the $600 to $700 range.” Music, no doubt, to many a gents’ ears.
14 July 2016
“They discovered an area on Pluto in the shape of a heart,” saidMichael Bastianduring an appointment at his West Chelsea office today, surveying his Fall collection’s mood board. “The universe was telling us something—so we just went down the road of astronomy nerds . . .”An interstellar romantic streak mixed with an academic-but-adventurous sensibility? For Bastian, the notion succeeded, and, in its own way, it catalyzed a welcome tone-down in preppiness. Here were clothes ready-made for a weekend in the country—but for staying home and stargazing through the telescope, not for shooting clay pigeons or enjoying a South Side–soaked lunch at the club. “It’s sort of the bane of our existence . . . we’re kind of put into the bucket of, ‘Oh, they’re the preppy guys,’ ” said the designer. Hence, the adjustment.Sweaters came in delicious cashmere weaves but with galactic intarsia motifs (hazy Pluto, contrasting constellations, a four-point star in Lurex). Bastian and his team also developed a print inspired by the cosmos-etched ceiling of New York’s Grand Central Terminal (one button-down even had it replicated in the station’s turquoise-and-gold color scheme). A hooded coat stole the show; its chunky metal hardware and Casentino pre-pilled body (“an Italian hunting fabric,” clarified Bastian) might’ve been the most streetwise thing the man has ever come up with. A close second was a slim-fit pant with a cargo pocket on the front left thigh.It’s important to realize, though, that Bastian will nevernotbe preppy. Prep is part of the brand’s DNA. The shapes and the cuts and the silhouettes are all relatively safe—he makes luxurious clothes for a certain type of (arguably fashion-conservative) man, the kind of guy who might also look toBrunello Cucinelliand Loro Piana in rounding out his wardrobe. Yet Bastian regularly achieves all of this with glimmers of rambunctious youth—that twinkling Lurex star being his own little way of going “out there.”
4 February 2016
Already one of the toniest enclaves on Earth, Bel-Air has just nabbed another accolade: the theme of Michael Bastian's Spring men's show. But to be clear, "it had nothing to do with today's celebrity or Coachella or any of that," the designer said backstage. Rather, this was an interpretation of old Hollywood, particularly the privileged insiders and power brokers who made it tick, people like super-agent Lew Wasserman and the famed retailer Fred Hayman of Giorgio Beverly Hills.Bastian, himself a New Englander, made another little jab. "In L.A.," he laughed, "you can't leave your house without getting shot." Thus his reimagining of Bel-Air—consisting of a manse-like facade, complete with ivy and a chandelier visible through a window—was marked with signs that read, "This property is protected by video surveillance," while those cameras were trained on the audience.With the cheeky Big Brother mood set, Bastian unleashed every conceivable trapping of nouveau pastel entitlement. There were cashmere cardigans, windowpane suits, cream shorts, knit ties, white piqué shoes, Donegal tweed, paisley pajama shirts, and one very fancy dusty rose tux jacket. Living up to the campy premise, Bastian offered plenty of twists, too, like banana-leaf camo, towel-striped sweaters, and a pec-hugging polo shirt stitched in squares to look like croc. And, as Kelis crooned, "I'm just a carefree American," Bastian sent out several women's pieces, his first foray on that front, nicely counterbalancing the paean to preppy-dom.
15 July 2015
After taking a break from the show circuit to recalibrate his brand, Michael Bastian has returned to his roots. "I said I'd never design anything I wouldn't wear myself," he said. "I fell into the rut of designing for the runway." The past two seasons have brought Bastian back to what he does best—putting out classic American menswear on a luxury level (mostly made in Italy), with lots inspiration borrowed from his personal life.Upstate, Downstate was the theme of his Fall '15 line. It was a conceit the Lyons, New York, native—now a Manhattanite—knows well. The upstate part? "Functional clothes," Bastian said. "Clothes up there need to do stuff—mostly keep you warm." Anyone from upstate knows winter sports are an integral part of living in an area covered by snow half the year. That sentiment came across via retro ski coats and sweaters that were true to the originals but cut in fabric and fit that would pass in the city today. A needlepoint belt depicted a parade of snowmobiles—a favorite weekend pastime for many upstaters. Bastian also included a note of personal history in the collection—his father was a high school history teacher. "He had a uniform," said the designer. "Jeans, workbooks, knit tie, navy blazer, a down vest if it was cold." Here, the vest was reversible, denim on one side. Blazers were Italian wool in vintage plaids; the navy version reimagined as a sweatshirt. Jeans were slim, in dark and faded washes, and also became jeanos—a hybridized option for indecisive fellas. The downstate part? To Bastian it was all about modernizing the upstate guy, mixing a smart, tailored sensibility into the functional clothes. "There's this idea of New Yorkers in all black all the time—I don't see that guy!" he said. He used stoplight colors for knits, and modeled slim cargo pants on the exact trousers worn by the NYPD. The chest pattern on a sweater was based on the fence around Stuyvesant Park. And the element that tied it all together, something both sides can get behind: The New York State crest embossed on all of the suit buttons.
18 January 2015
"The Southwest is a little bit of a challenge," said Michael Bastian at his studio in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. "I really wanted to avoid all the clichés—no cowboy, no poncho, no fringes. You know, how real guys in that part of the U.S. would dress, or my dream of how they would dress." For Spring 2015, Bastian took his collection of sportswear to Arizona. "Maybe because I grew up in Rochester, but the desert Southwest to me is exotic," the designer said.Clichés were mostly avoided, but not entirely. There were embroidered Western shirts, suede outerwear, and bronze feather accessories from the George Frost x Michael Bastian collaboration. The best expression of the theme was in the dusty hues, soft, textured fabrics, and faded denim. As always with Bastian, the tailoring stood head and shoulders above the rest of the collection. Sharp suits in a linen-blend "denim," plaid, herringbone, and windowpane were the highlights. All kinds of trousers were reimagined in typical Bastian fashion. Riding pants and cargos were stripped down; motocross pants were made summery in faded canvas and denim; and slim, tapered sweatpants were done in gray piqué.Bastian's vision for guys in the Southwest favored glamour over ruggedness. There was something louche in the mostly unbuttoned shirts, short shorts, and, of course, the quintessential Michael Bastian racer swimsuit. But the ease of the collection was almost too easy. The designer might have successfully avoided clichés, but all of the softening and fading seems to have removed the grit that makes the Southwest special.
20 July 2014
Michael Bastian spent a lot of time in Tokyo last year. "I've been thinking about Japan for a while," the designer said in his West Side Highway studio a day before taking to the runway. More specifically, he'd been thinking about how Japanese men—in particular, the editors and buyers who travel to Florence's famous Pitti Uomo tradeshow—take Italian, English, and American design references to another level. "They draw from the best of each culture and make it look even better," he said. "Team Japan is nailing it."So, while Fall 2014 was very much about "American luxury" for Bastian—although, when isn't it?—he was looking at those ideas through a Japanese lens. "ReverseTake Ivy," he said, alluding to the book of photographs of Ivy League students by Teruyoshi Hayashida. Bastian wanted the nods to Japan to be subtle. In general, they weren't, but that didn't detract. A sporty zip-up sweater with Mount Fuji knitted on the back and a windbreaker made out of a dragon-embroidered vintage kimono fabric might have been literal, but they were also just the things one of those Pitti street-style stars would wear. As was a burgundy turtleneck that took thirty days to hand-knit and -bead. The Fair Isle part of the sweater was made of 150 Japanese Edo-period coins, 140 aventurine beads, eighty jade beads, and more than 600 other tiny pieces. The charm of the collection was in the details, whether it was the orange grosgrain that lined the seams of a pair of slippers designed in collaboration with Stubbs & Wootton, the tiny ribbon made out of kimono fabric fastened to the lapel of the blazers, or the fire-breathing monster stitched on a cashmere sweater.Given that his three-year collaboration with Gant is about to end, this season marked new partnerships and deals for Bastian, including a range of Italian-made socks with Soxiety (available to preorder on soxiety.com immediately after the show); the official launch of his bag line with Fall River, Massachusetts-based Frank Clegg; and a jewelry collection by George Frost that incorporates Japanese coins and horsehair tassels. Along with these marketable endeavors, Bastian also has plans to take his brand up a notch—at least in regards to where it's placed on the sales floor. Bastian's goal is to be the leader in American luxury menswear, which means going up against Italian stalwarts like Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, and Ermenegildo Zegna rather than his New York-based contemporaries whose prices are just a bit lower.
"We really know this guy," Bastian said. "We feel like we can take care of him." It'll be interesting to see how well customers respond to the shift over the next couple of seasons.
4 February 2014
The immanence of the Internet means no reference is farther than a Google search away. Michael Bastian found his on Hulu Plus. "It started with watchingThe Red Balloonfor the first time in twenty years," he said after his show today. "It snowballed into this French-guy thing."His invitation bore the legendFrench men always break your heart. But despite the warning, and hot on the heels of Fall's grim, gothic collection, Spring found Bastian in a bubbly mood. "We want this to feel joyous," he explained, "which is an underused word."His joy came brightly colored and lavishly printed—with more prints, in fact, than he has ever used before. There was an abundance of leopard. There were pineapples, slingshots, balloons. Even shirts that from afar seemed innocuously patterned revealed paperclips and wineglasses up close. "Print abuse" was his own term for it. Every guy reliably has a print shirt, but print on print on print on print, as the looks were styled here? "That felt fresh."Fresh or French? Therein lies the question. It's hard to see the pile-on of pineapples and paperclips as anything other than American brash. The strength of the Bastian look is that it is impervious to any attempts to strip its muscular sportiness and its yen for camp. A Paris-printed cap and a tourist-camera prop didn't telegraph the American-in-Paris idea as clearly as it might, nor did the live performance by the American R&B chanteuse Alice Smith do much to reinforce the mood. That's the distraction of Internet-era reach: Like print on print on print, it offers the narcotic lure of more, more, more. But what whiffs of Francophilia distracted from here is just how fully formed Bastian's own world is unto itself. As if to prove the point, he customizes accessories to match. He doesn't need to travel. His people—Stubbs & Wootton for shoes, Eugenia Kim for hats, Randolph Engineering for shades, Frank Clegg for bags—come to him.
3 September 2013
Michael Bastian is out to bite the hand that feeds him. "I hate that when people talk about American style, they mean preppy style," he said last night. Last season, he stripped American menswear down to swaggering sexiness. This season, he blackened it into goth. "Trying to find the goth corner of our guy," is how he put it. He traded his Sunday-morning show slot for one after dark, and left the well-lighted rooms of Milk Studios for a lonelier aerie not far from Penn Station. Though the catchall "preppy" is still applied liberally to Bastian and his collections, he's more interested in the corners and subcultures hiding therein.His goths wore swoops of eye liner and more black than has ever been seen in a Bastian show. They'd been inspired by the creepy Maine pastorals painted by Andrew Wyeth, given a cult-y eighties spin. ThinkAmerican Gothicmeets American goth, and you're not far off.Where does a loner shop in the great state of Maine? Bastian imagined him trawling vintage stores, hunting stores (hence the camo and hunter orange), and Walmart. Where at one of those outlets he got the Audemars Piguets, also styled into the show, is anyone's guess.Competing with last season's standout Fire Island collection was going to be a challenge, if not an outright impossibility. So to say that Fall didn't match its predecessor is barely a complaint. It did bring a sinister new edge to the collection, one that will be interesting to see develop. But Bastian can't smother his nicer instincts. For all the talk of goth, his beloved Stubbs & Wootton slippers were still sprinkled among the stomping boots. Yes, the guys glowered, and yes, the creepy motifs of blackbirds and wolves (especially coupled with fur scarves and gloves that looked freshly scalped) said goth, by way ofGame of Thrones.But it was the Beatles' sweet "Blackbird" that was playing before the show. And the signs posted at the entrance of the venue offered a warning that was almost comically considerate: "Disclosure: Please Note that the Space Is Scented." It tempted you to say about Bastian what would be anathema to any of his goths: What a nice, well-brought-up young man.
11 February 2013
Michael Bastian's Spring show was scheduled for high noon. High tea would've been more apropos, but there's no room to wriggle on the New York calendar. Some designers might've blushed to put so much flesh on display before brunch, but not Bastian. There's always been an erotic undercurrent to his shows, but for Spring he shot it to the fore. "People try to pigeonhole me as preppy," he said backstage after the show. "I don't feel like I'm preppy at all. There's a base of that, but there's a base of that in any American menswear designer. The two poles of American menswear are Ralph Lauren as the superego and Calvin Klein as the id—and I want to start going more toward the id. This felt like a big step in scraping preppy off. You talk about American heritage; one of our biggest heritages is sex. I don't feel like that's been out there enough."Id, he did. Bastian had begun the collection in homage to Helen Frankenthaler, whose watery colors inspired the palette, but the death of Donna Summer, disco queen and gay icon, rerouted his course. Mid-show, one of his thick-thighed avatars was sauntering out to "Love to Love You, Baby" in a glittery Donna Summer '81 ("Summer Is Back!") T-shirt. The scene Bastian had set was a Fire Island pool house, where, he said, "there's that feeling that you wouldn't rather be any other place."The show's success was that you believed he wouldn't. This was Bastian reveling in Bastian-ness. These Adonises, unrepentant in their swagger: He loves to love them, baby. To dress them, too. The Bastian codes are well established, and they don't veer far from season to season. Here as ever were linen suits, vintage-y short shorts, polos, great knits. There'll be plenty to buy. But the achievement of this show was Bastian's embrace of his own fantasy without apology. Even in a day when sexuality and equality is an increasingly visible political issue, there's a reticence to speak openly about it in men's fashion for fear of spooking "normal" guys, "real" guys. Facing it head on is, in its campy way, brave, even if Bastian dismisses that notion. "The whole conversation,Is it straight? Is it gay?I can't tell who is what any longer," he said. "I can't tell what country anyone's from, I can't tell anything. People like things that make them feel sexy—that's the secret. If something makes you feel better about yourself, you'll pull out your credit card." There's a utopian vision for you. Fabulous.
8 September 2012
So-called "extra men" have a storied history in polite society: they're natural-born charmers, called upon to make up numbers at the table, dance with undesirables, and escort other men's wives to functions when the ladies' husbands can't be bothered.Michael Bastian called his Fall show The Extra Man. He turned up aNew York Timesarticle from 1974 listing the top 30 the city had to offer. They ranged from Charles Addams to Bill Blass to, oddly enough, Norman Mailer, the irascible, six-times-married novelist who famously stabbed one of his wives. "Everybody wanted to sit by them," Bastian said of the extra men. "To me, it feels like this great New York phenomenon. I just love walking around the Upper East Side and seeing those guys who didn't just take an extra 10 minutes in the morning to get ready, but an extra 40 minutes. This is a kind of valentine to them."The extra men were a springboard to glamour for Bastian. The designer is famous for unapologetic luxe, and imagining a cast of ideal party guests gave him license to indulge it to the hilt, in cashmere and camel hair, silk and shantung. "Snazzy" was his watchword of the season. His men were unquestionably that, piled with peacock finery observed to the smallest detail.But it bears repeating that a less-pleasant word for extra men is walkers—as in, they won't do anything but. (Many extra men were, as they say, confirmed bachelors.) Bastian even threw in a little joke at this expense. When he arrived in New York as a young man, he misunderstood the term. "I would think, wow, these dog walkers get invited to the best parties!" he said, and spun the memory into a series of conversation-piece sweaters knitted with pups. The debonair model Pedro Andrade trotted his dog, Miles, down the runway in a quilted jacket that matched his own.An extra man is an escort defanged, and there were moments here that were stilted, too. Bastian's charmers were charming but some lacked the hot-blooded virility he's marshaled so expertly in seasons past. Case in point: Most of his extra men wore floral boutonnieres. But they were resin replicas of real blooms.
12 February 2012
Michael Bastian spent last season off the runway, severing ties with his former business partners, taking full ownership of his company, and working out new production contracts to reduce the prices of his all-American but formerly exorbitantly priced menswear. (He famously admitted he couldn't afford it himself.) He's only been gone a year—during which, by the way, he was crowned the CFDA's Menswear Designer of the Year—but today's show at his once and future venue had all the force of a misty homecoming.For his return, Bastian presented an homage to James Dean, whose squinting, moody visage, picked out in the designer's logo, was splashed over the backdrop. The first model emerged, a fifties kid in dungarees, penny loafers (with pennies; Bastian is nothing if not detail-oriented), and windbreaker—the rebel without a cause of Roy Schatt's famous photo. "I've been keeping this inspiration in my back pocket," Bastian explained post-show. "I had this idea: What if James Dean came back and picked up where he left off? How would he dress?"The show included bits that were a kind of biography: outfits inspired by pieces Dean actually wore, like the sweater from Schatt's iconic "torn sweater" series; a garage jumpsuit inspired by his love of race cars; and a wrestling singlet—a nod to Dean's days at Fairmount High. (It even read "Fairmount.") But Life of the Saint treatment gave way to an imaginative costuming. Dean died in 1955 at only 24. Who knows what he would have gone on to wear? Bastian offered a wealth of options, playing on his label's own standards, like running shorts and frayed cutoffs, as well as immaculate tux jackets, suits, and the Stubbs & Wootton slippers he prefers. And just as James Dean can be all people, so too, said Bastian, "everyone can be James Dean for a day." Instead of a parade of blondish, blue-eyed facsimiles, he offered Deans of every size, color, and creed—including a female Dean, played by Missy Rayder.That's the canny bit of the Bastian magic: breadth. It's not a virtue of Dean's. We tend to forget because of his outsize influence, but his canon is impossibly small: just three films. This paean is just the reverse. And that's because—and this is a positive thing—even with his love of spectacle, Bastian is a salesman as much as a showman. Backstage, he revealed he'd doubled the collection's sales. And now it's priced to move.
11 September 2011
Michael Bastian's Spring 2011 show was an exuberant celebration of strength and athleticism, and further proof of the evident joy this designer takes in his work. Inspired by Navy SEALs and the crew of Jacques Cousteau'sCalypso, Bastian injected an extreme body-consciousness into his take on classic American sportswear. Emphasis on the sports: Upping the ante on his signature shorts, Bastian made the bathing suit a building block of his new summer wardrobe, pairing it with everything from a rugby shirt to alpaca and cashmere knits. (Seersucker shorts for evening were aslightlymore conventional alternative.)Bastian also put a twist on the military theme, with a camouflage pattern created from leopard spot. He cut a shirt and tie from this to accessorize a midnight silk/mohair tux, underscoring the finely honed appetite for the outré in his work. This collection, for instance, managed to tip its leopard-camo cap to both David de RothschildandFrançois Sagat as contemporary male archetypes. Predictable? Hardly—and that is the secret of Bastian's success.
12 September 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.
13 February 2010
Michael Bastian's 300-piece collection was so densely laden with personal references that you felt a twinge of regret: No retailer could possibly do justice to the multilayered story he was telling with his clothes. Bastian claimed that his new gig as menswear designer for Bill Blass has liberated him to get more personal with his own line. "What must I do to make you love me?" was the poignant plea woven into a scarf. The jacquard lining of a classic tweed jacket featured an alphabet with the letters L-O-V-E highlighted. And Bastian's eyes featured as a Laura Mars-like print on T-shirts and in jacket linings. Then there were the antique keys that he hung off his limited-edition chinos (the key motif was also woven into knits or embroidered, WASP-style, on trousers). What doors might those keys unlock? It was all a mystery, and it meant that a collection with the superficial appearance of classic American sportswear spiraled off into enigmatic idiosyncrasy.The "chubby koala" motif on a sweater? Absolutely random, which is undoubtedly why Bastian is big in Japan. He has an eye for the kind of fetishizing detail that the Japanese excel at. So his corduroy was the traditionally heavy English kind, rather than the lighter Italian variety. He replaced the belt of a trench with a martingale (the coat looked so much better for it that it seemed stupid no one had thought of it sooner). And he revived the nylon-filled shirt jacket he remembered his uncle wearing. Bastian was thinking of the shirt or sweater that becomes a jacket as a response to a world where the climate is changing—in-between clothes, if you like. Again, such a notion gave the collection a depth that wasn't immediately apparent. If you take the secrets that men keep as the key idea (John Kennedy, Jr. as inspiration only sustained the backstory), an anonymous tan nylon jacket that opened to reveal a vivid orange lining might even be the key piece.
3 February 2008
Twenty years down the line, there is every chance that Michael Bastian will be, well, a bastion of American menswear. It helps that he's just picked up the reins of the men's business at Bill Blass, but more to the point is his ability to weave all his threads of reference into a comprehensive story. This season, for example, he'd been looking at Bruce Weber's first-ever shoot forGQin 1981. That's where the papery nylon anorak over a bathing suit came from. Then there was a motocross subtext that sprang from his absorption inPaul Newman: A Life in Pictures. Danny Quatrochi's 1983 photo of Police drummer Stewart Copeland in a T-shirt with the cheeky legend "Cherie" inspired Bastian's Tesorino ("little treasure"). And so on. But it was hardly necessary to know every wrinkle of inspiration to appreciate the casual efficacy of his clothes.In Bastian's case, there is always a sense of mission: to celebrate the physicality of men at ease with themselves. Which is one reason his key item has turned out to be a pair of shorts. They came as easy as cutoffs, as sexy as joggers, as functional as the hiking shorts that emerged when corduroys were zipped off mid-thigh. Bastian said everything was supposed to feel like you were on your way to the beach or you'd just got back. He doesn't like sweatpants, so instead he offered karate pants, suitable for dragging on over a bathing suit. Even his more elaborate items had the same relaxed flair: a glen-plaid linen blazer, a herringbone jacket in hemp, or the dressiest piece, a tissue-weight cashmere tux, deceptively simple until Bastian pulled back the jacket to reveal a pleated lining. Actually, a deceptive, seductive simplicity might be his leitmotif. The patching effect on a corduroy jacket was achieved by laborious hand-stitching. The belted cardigan Bastian called Santana (and we know as Starsky) came in a luxuriant cashmere. And the lining of a double-faced mackintosh was sprayed silver, then washed—like having the Factory inside your coat, which, for some, would be the consummate private pleasure.
6 September 2007
The ski-bum subtext of Michael Bastian's latest collection was nostalgic, but it had nothing to do with the nostalgia for snow that gripped Europe's designers as they faced the warmest winter in years. Instead, he was dwelling on the gilded charmer who'd drop out of Dartmouth and head West to drink beer in hot tubs and fritter away a birthright on the ski slopes of Colorado. This hipster ne'er-do-well, a staple of the seventies in Bastian's mind, gave the designer's collection an irresistibly graphic hook. Sure, he tipped his cap to the Tyrol with boiled cashmere sweaters and a military coat with embossed buttons, and he acknowledged the Andes with ethnic sweaters, scarves, and fingerless gloves, but the mountain range he loved most was clearly the Rockies. Meanwhile, the colors of a vintage BMW 2002—bright green and yellow—loaned Bastian's sportswear a strong spine, and the designer's own Olin Mark IVs provided the startling orange that lined a safari jacket and colored a zipped cardigan (possibly one of the season's best buys). "Why don't people ski in jeans anymore?" Bastian wondered prior to offering flannel chinos and herringbone tweed pants, primed for the most revisionist skiing or snowboarding.Previously, Bastian had a curatorial approach to menswear that made his work a little too studied, but this season he cut loose. Maybe that was because the ski theme connected so closely with his own history. Or perhaps it was because the West gives a designer so much to work with (as Ralph Lauren well knows). Embroidered western shirts, a reconstructed cowboy pant, and a lush double-breasted chocolate shearling combined fashion and frontier. Zip off its sleeves, and a fully reversible parka made a neat four outfits in one. And Bastian's après-ski—a corduroy printed-plaid jacket with black cotton lapel—offered the kind of sturdy, studly chic that could well become his signature.
6 February 2007
Five years as men's fashion director for Bergdorf Goodman would be enough to give anyone invaluable insight into the mind of the male shopper, but Michael Bastian also relies heavily on what he fancies for himself. For Spring, his second collection, that meant a look back at what he called "the perfect American sportswear" of Perry Ellis in the early 1980s, as well as his father's sporty style in the 1960s. (An old black-and-white photo of Bastian Senior playing basketball inspired the collection's neutral tones.) Ellis's effortless combination of casual and formal has also become a Bastian signature, as evidenced by a tailored jacket with beat-up shorts, or a formal shirt with short sleeves. Bastian's faith in a skinnier fit, meanwhile, was evident in items as varied as slimmed-down cargo pants, a tennis sweater, a suede fisherman's vest, and a big-zipped windbreaker (the designer called it the "Spielberg" after the director's on-set attire when he was makingJaws), unified by a sportiness that also looked good in a knit polo in the same mesh as a basketball jersey and a short-sleeved cashmere sweatshirt. Bastian's experience served him well with the tailoring (he's definitely feeling the suit for spring), but equally appealing were the funkier pieces in this big collection: frayed cutoff chinos with the boxer shorts built right in, cord low-riders, and a button-free rugby shirt.
26 September 2006