Band Of Outsiders (Q7921)
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Band Of Outsiders is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Band Of Outsiders |
Band Of Outsiders is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
Angelo Van Mol’s penchant for pike was honed on the waterways of Maasmechelan, Belgium, during boyhood. Today he continues to fish—he recommends Lake Windermere—and is like me a fan of the excellent “Carl and Alex fishing” YouTube channel. Hence, angling provided the initial angle for this gently pleasing Band of Outsiders collection.Van Mol took the “Outsider”-ness of the brand he helms pretty literally, positioning two dreamy VW Samba camper vans as presentation backdrop to a collection that was ruggedized from its wide-brimmed chin-strapped fishing hats down to its Kickers collab Lennon boots rusticated via khaki colorway and an integrated drawstring lacing system. This gear, though, was designed to lure the kind of guy who wears Patagonia in Paris, not Patagonia. Therefore the Mackinaw jackets came leather-lined, with an integrated popper-attached hood, and in a densely woven but extremely lustrous wool check. Ripstop pants featured elastic cinches at the ankle—totally outdoorsman—but were finely tailored and cut in a needle striped cotton. Van Mol worked with an illustrator who rustled up some appealingly cutesy-pagan line drawings of Bigfoot and various other monsters, one of which (tellingly) seemed to be wearing a mushroom: these were used on nice-looking stadium jackets and boy-scout neckerchiefs.The intersection of organic, beardy, check-shirted, Portland hipsterism and synthetic, semi-skatey (thinking about Butter Goods), urban ornamental functional-wear (ok, streetwear, but better) is a compelling position on the Venn diagram of contemporary mass masculine aesthetics. With this collection Van Mol cast his brand slap-bang into it.
4 January 2020
“The concept is very easy,” said Angelo Van Mol. ”I thought about summer and good vibes and something that I can properly relate to as a person rather than a designer.” That this chilled outlook was not a pose was proven by Van Mol’s shrugged disclosure that around 50% of this Band of Outsiders collection was still in the possession of a courier company. What did make it to the presentation was all perfectly palatable poppy and preppy jazzed-up dad wear with a gently ironic sheen.Amit Greenberg’s post-Haring landscapes of characters at a BBQ or sunbathing provided the pulsating prints that featured on shirting and shorts. There was some nice slouchy deconstructed tailoring in crispy khaki cotton. A zingy orange on blue stripe cardigan in knit cotton was worn inside out to show texture—other knits were strafed in nylon for texture and crunch. Square quilt gilets came in a worn gray synthetic, and finely observed denim coats and jeans in indigo had violent yellow topstitching. Van Mol’s thesis meant there was little to observe about this collection beyond the fact it was, as he said, positive vibe-wise and easy to imagine wearing once the weather gets warm next year.
9 June 2019
Take it or leave it, but here’s a word of advice from an editor’s perspective to Angelo Van Mol, who has a new title at Band of Outsiders as creative director: Clothes that hold their own do not need to be shown in an over-conceptualized presentation. Doing so detracts from the garments, and suggests something of an insecurity in conviction.This was the case today. Band of Outsiders is, or should be, about wearability with a wink of humor and cheek. That’s how it was built. To try to spin it otherwise just doesn’t work. Van Mol showed Fall in a cramped East London film boutique, and screened a short movie to reveal the collection, as the shop couldn’t fit all of the models that would’ve been needed. (I caught about half of the movie before being ushered out.)Loosely, the collection is inspired by people watching the moon landing from their living rooms in 1969. (A timely theme, given China’s lunar headlines this week.) It’s a solid enough capsule of ’60s- and ’70s-era-inspired regularwear, from corduroy suits to long chiffon dresses (one of these had a stripe-and-rocket-ship motif that effectively captured BOO’s built-in sense of quirk). But, all in all, there was a dissonance between a label that calls for its clients to “not take themselves all too seriously” and a presentation that took itself far too much so.
5 January 2019
Reading Vogue Runway’s cache of Band of Outsiders reviews is to follow a rise and fall in stop-motion: When this brand was at its height, it was clearly hugely esteemed in the American fashion community. Those who loved the old Band of Outsiders will naturally be preinclined to lament, and even resent, the new one.Here at Pitti, that history is not especially resonant. And, anyway, when it comes to rises and falls, a city that was defined by the Medicis, in a nation whose culture was shaped by the Romans . . . well, what better place to put BOO’s tale into perspective?Design director Angelo Van Mol, I reckon, thought so, too. Given the chance to show here, he sprinkled a grassy square in the Fortezza da Basso with styrofoam columns, busts, and sculptures, then had his models roll up in a yellow U.S. school bus: These were college kids on an Italian tour.They looked like they’d been in the gift store before they hit this garden, as a few of the Cuban-collar shirts plus shorts that ran through this show featured outline drawings of the same busts. Elsewhere, they came in narrow, multicolor stripes, all straight but for a delicately kinked scarlet; it was a cool little detail. Fanny packs, sigh, were worn old-school on the fanny and intersected loose suiting in with-a-twist dad-checks whose notch-collar jackets were sometimes lengthened into outerwear hybrids and worn over zip-up cagoules. Another on-tour acquisition was an appreciation of heritage Italian sportswear. The brand’s director, Daniel Hettmann, arranged a collaboration with Sergio Tacchini (whose own corporate story isn’t a million miles from BOO’s) and the fruits were some appealing tracksuits and sneakers in candy store pastels. It was all a bit Beastie Boys video, ironic West Coast dad apparel—which is a fantastic seam to mine right now—and it was well done.
13 June 2018
There was a happy dissonance at tonight’s unveiling of Band of Outsiders’s Fall collection, which marked brand director Daniel Hettmann and design director Angelo van Mol’s third effort for the label.Picture: the grand Neoclassical courtyard of Somerset House, filled with mulled cider–sipping attendees waiting under the thrum of “Jungle Boogie,” which played over the speakers. In the middle of that atrium was a skating rink (Somerset House keeps it open to the public throughout the season), which Band of Outsiders took over to host its unconventional . . . let’s say,skateway show. As more disco music kicked up, a mix of hockey players and figure skaters took to the arena in what was Hettmann and Van Mol’s best collection yet—full of idiosyncratic but wearable pieces, and well edited in terms of continuity and cohesiveness. It brought to mind all sorts of pleasant memories: skating on frozen ponds in New England as a kid; watching my dad play hockey; listening to “Brick House” on repeat in elementary school,Soul Train, the extraordinaryI, Tonya. If anyone is worried about the dissonance outlined, don’t be—remember that Scott Sternberg’s BOO was recognized as having dorky East Coast prep and aspirational California surf vibes, in tandem.Emboldened by colors self-named as Verbier Grey and Telluride Red, among others, the athletes flew by in long-john track pants, camouflage-pattern cords, shearling jackets with multi-tonal neck tabs, and what Hettman called “loosened up” suiting. Each did a little freestyle, and somehow, the clothes looked at home on the ice—adding credence to their direct winter sport (or simply wintry) inspiration (there were lots of prints of skiers and polar bears). One highlight was a collaboration with Stutterheim, the Swedish raincoat manufacturer. The piece—rubbery navy, with thin white lines banding its cuffs and angling across its hem—brought a few oohs and aahs from the crowd. And, one last point: Though the winter theme was about as direct and obvious as it could have been, Hettman and Van Mol were able to make it fun, especially so with the help of their staging. It might’ve even slightly warmed LaVona Fay Golden’s icy heart.
6 January 2018
Band of Outsiders’s story is a little hard to follow; it was relaunched three seasons ago under new ownership, post-Scott Sternberg, by Belgian investors. The designers for BOO rebooted season one were let go after their poorly received debut collection. Then, brand director Daniel Hettmann and designer Angelo van Mol were brought aboard. Spring 2018 thus marks their sophomore outing, and, while not quite sailing smoothly yet, the Band of Outsiders comeback looks to be on course.Those nautical references are purposeful: Hettmann and van Mol’s new lineup was inspired by seafaring, with a workwear lean. (Their first effort for Band of Outsiders recalled Wes Anderson’sThe Royal Tenenbaums; Spring might vaguely be linked to the director’sThe Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.) “We looked at sailing and utilitarian garments,” said van Mol, “and at the same time we tried to have the funny accents. . . there’s a killer shark print, as well as a print of a smelly deck cat. On all sailing ships, there was always a cat, to take all the vermin off.”Band of Outsiders was always known for its geek-chic quirk, but that’s now missing. Van Mol and Hettmann would do well to bring back a little more of that original slyness—though such isn’t to say that their vision isn’t appropriately playful. Those schooner-sleuthing felines were all-over embroidered on a khaki car coat; those murderous makos on a mid-length bathing suit.What is most promising is the duo’s energy. Spring is a much larger collection than Fall, with 110 new SKUs, and there was plenty of range (also, they showed the clothes with a bona fide complementary comedy show—all of the performers wore BOO. Neat idea). PVC-coated cotton rain jackets stood out, as did a Bahamian blue gabardine topcoat lined with a twist on the classic nautical stripe. “We added a bit of a wave,” said Hettmann, pointing to the wiggly bars. “We’re sticking to the original DNA, but adding our own spin—we’re not doing exactly the same thing,” he added. It’s on its way toward working, but the calibration isn’t yet 100 percent there.
11 June 2017
Well, that was fast. No sooner had Band of Outsiders Los Angeles relaunched under the creative direction of a trio of designers than that team was shown the door and another collective installed in its place. You’ve got to give the new owners of Band credit: They cut their losses after a disappointing first season and seem to have instructed the new design team to lean harder on the brand DNA established by original Band man Scott Sternberg. That much was evidenced by this season’s nods toThe Royal Tenenbaums, a Sternberg-y reference if ever there were one. This Band of Outsiders take on Wes Anderson aesthetics was rather odd, though—even as it picked up on leitmotifs like the teddy bear coat and the red tracksuit,, familiar from the film, and the dandyish look favored by the director himself, this collection completely missed the tone of neurotic fussiness that underlies Anderson’s visual sensibility and that characterized Band of Outsiders collections when Sternberg was at the helm. This was Anderson unspooled, wearing loose, long, broad-shoulder suit jackets; throw-on outerwear; and baggy jeans.From a strictly commercial perspective, the turn toward easygoing menswear silhouettes may be a wise one. There’s a larger market for men who want sweats and baseball jackets than there is for ones who want scrupulously detailed clothes fitted to a T. Whether there’s also a commercial benefit to replacing natty tailoring with the attenuated suiting proportions seen here is an open question. What’s not in doubt is that, from a creative perspective, Band 2.0 (or is it 3.0 already?) is still figuring itself out. There were some nice touches—the corduroy and suede lent the collection a pleasant sense of texture, for instance, and the prints were appealingly silly—but you couldn’t look at these clothes and instantly identify the man who’d want to wear them. Who, exactly, is Band of Outsiders trying to appeal to? What is this brand trying to say?
7 February 2017
The proportions felt like a riposte. Niklaus Hodel, Matthias Weber, and Florian Feder, the creative team behind the newly relaunched Band of Outsiders were out to make one thing clear as they debuted the rebooted brand tonight: This isn't Scott Sternberg's Band anymore. The point was made most plainly in the general slouchiness of the clothes they showed, streetwear-inspired stuff that erred toward the oversize and leaned hard on au courant elements like elongated sleeves. It was a far cry from the shrunken fits the original Band of Outsiders made its name on.Sternberg had a lot of friends in the fashion industry. But those loyalties would have been set aside if the vision for the new Band that Hodel, Weber, and Feder introduced here impressed showgoers as distinctive and exciting. Though some individual items were appealing—a leaf-patterned satin bomber, say, or the little lace pencil skirt shown with a no-brainer hoodie—the men's and women's looks on the catwalk this evening represented a fairly well-wrought hodgepodge of ideas that have been better effectuated on other runways.Speaking before the show, Hodel noted that as teens growing up in Europe, he and his confederates had a fetish for Americana. This show did reflect that; it was personal in that way. But the version of Cali cool these designers put forward suffered from a sense of vagueness. Basketball shorts, varsity lettering, suits mixed with sweats—it was a bullet-point take on American sportswear, which would have counted for something if Hodel, Weber, and Feder had at least acknowledged the clichés as clichés and romanced them a bit to make up for their familiarity. The trio inherited Band of Outsiders' brand equity, the bulk of which, one might have assumed, rested in the particular inflection that Sternberg had given to American prep. The new leadership went out of their way to dispense with that. Why?Whatever Scott Sternberg's shortcomings—as a businessman, as a designer—he never sent out a collection that didn't seem to have emanated from his peculiar imagination. This Band, which the owners have given the official moniker Band of Outsiders Los Angeles, appeared to be the work of a committee.
11 September 2016
For the second season in a row, Scott Sternberg eschewed a formal presentation for his Band of Outsiders womenswear collection. It's funny to recall that Sternberg used to be one of fashion week's most engaging showmen: His early presentations were known for their theater-worthy, immersive sets. But as the Band of Outsiders business has expanded, Sternberg has seemed more and more inclined to invest his sense of drama in his clothes.With this collection, the drama was to be found in a few punchy gestures—the bustiers layered into looks, the hyperrealist plywood print on a mac, and, most notable and noticeable, the oversize Pilgrim belts on many of the looks. The latter was Sternberg's homage to '70s-era Perry Ellis, a key reference this season. Another one was workwear, a theme purloined from the Band menswear collection, and it accounted for the plywood and paint-spatter prints, as well as the collection's emphasis on denim, a material Sternberg has used sparingly in the past. The most intriguing and most cleverly deployed reference here, however, was the work of the artist Brian Sharp: Sternberg put a preppy spin on Sharp's geometric aesthetic, abstracting motifs such as argyle and stripes to create patterns that felt suggestively familiar, yet fresh. It was one of the things that gave this collection a sense of looseness, despite the tidy silhouettes.In the end, the fact that Sternberg is taking time off from the runway or the presentation stage seems to have removed the pressure on him to strain for high-impact effects. In this transitional moment, Sternberg is focused on making clothes for the sales floor—which is really the place where they have to perform.
17 February 2015
The Great American Hardware Store. If there was something shocking about Band of Outsiders' Fall jumping-off point, it's how long it's taken the label to get there. Designer Scott Sternberg is a master of gleeful subversion, and he works in varying shades of Americana kitsch to coolly classic effect (see his previous menswear muse: "psychedelic barbecue dad"). Band and hardware are a match made in heaven.This season's riffs on Rockwellian mom-and-pop aesthetics ranged from the broad (a killer plywood faux-bois mack) to the more abstract (isolated cable-knit elements on a sweater designed to look like drill bits, knit caps with fully functional cargo pockets). There was plenty of that signature Sternberg cheek, too, in the mashing up of True Value and Ace Hardware logos, or the transformation of a certain tire manufacturer's name into "Bad Year." Beyond graphic goodness, Band's famed suiting was here in spades. Sternberg whipped up urbane shrunken flannel jackets and trousers that could charm even the most DIY-averse. And a hardy denim jumpsuit? That looked way too good for hanging drywall in.
20 January 2015
Joan Didion celebrated her 80th birthday on December 5, and the writer's writer has been much in the news lately, what with the buzzy Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about her life and work. Anyone familiar with Didion's oeuvre will not be surprised to learn that she is a Scott Sternberg muse: Who else would the Band of Outsiders man call on for inspiration as he daydreamed about waning summer days in '70s-era Malibu? It had to be Didion. On offer were maxi skirts; paisley sundresses; a touch of crochet; a boiled-jersey blanket coat and dense Peruvian shawl-collar cardigan, perfect for wrapping up in as the sun sets and the temperature drops on the shoreline. Sternberg was in a romantic mood for Pre-Fall, but—like Didion—he didn't get carried away. This concise collection also featured strong tailored pieces such as an inky suede blazer and trim Italian denim pants, while the signature Band preppiness revealed itself in little striped sweaters and felt peacoats trimmed in shearling. Perhaps no single item summed up the label's vibe this season better than a pair of shoes: Sternberg's still-young range of footwear looked pretty great, but the standout kick had to be a Dr. Scholl's-like wood-soled slide with penny loafer detailing. Hippie and preppy, at peace.
8 December 2014
Band of Outsiders impresario Scott Sternberg took this season off the fashion calendar, the better to focus on his first-ever stand-alone store, which opens in Soho on Sunday. And the new Band shop played an important role in shaping the brand's latest collection, as Sternberg explained at an appointment today. Although his jumping-off point was a Louise Dahl-Wolfe photograph of two young women in short pleated skirts hanging out in Brazil, considerations of store merchandising and how the collection fit into the larger world of Band inspired Sternberg to be concise. "I want people to walk in and see one message, not a circus," he said. Thus, lengths here were uniformly short, from the pleated silk-cotton skirts filched straight from Dahl-Wolfe to the knit short-shorts and the easy, tee-shaped dresses in seersucker and toile de Jouy. Sternberg also carried through just a few key motifs, such as lattice patterns riffing on his knee-high Roman sandals, and graphic zigzag and palm tree prints inspired by the covers of mid-century Brazilian jazz albums. Elsewhere, items such as a ladybug print bonded cotton mac added a whimsical touch. The additional whimsy hugged the border of cutesy-cute, but it was nice to see Sternberg investing in an upbeat tone so totally and wholeheartedly. The good cheer of these clothes will draw lots of customers to the new Band store—and they'll stay for their impeccable fabrication and finish. One message, many lovely details.
2 September 2014
As far as inspirations go, it doesn't get much better than psychedelic barbecue dad. If that description doesn't do anything for you, think Don Draper on a weekend acid trip. That was Scott Sternberg's vision for the Band of Outsiders Spring 2015 men's collection.Sternberg's journey down the rabbit hole began with beautifully constructed, ingeniously twisted mackintosh raincoats. Trenches were turned inside out, covered in rivets, waxed, washed, and printed all over with abstract sailboats. No BBQ dad would be caught on the weekend without his sweats. The wavy, ombré Black Watch tracksuit was hallucinogenic. Tanks and crewnecks were made into surreal mash-ups with dress shirts. Elsewhere there were plenty of far-out visuals—locker loops multiplied and took over shirt fronts, plackets disguised as ties were patterned from collar to hem, and the preppy-favorite embroidered whale morphed into a pattern of colorful geometric shapes.As you come down from the Band of Outsiders Spring experience, it becomes apparent that there's much more than trim shirting in fun colors behind the label. There's a keen sense of humor—the hooded sweatshirt with a cartoonishly large zipper will be an Instagram like-monster—and an uncanny ability to create classic menswear that refuses to fall in line.
27 June 2014
Scott Sternberg is a busy man. Busier than usual, in fact: At the end of the summer, he'll be opening the doors of the Band of Outsiders store in Soho, and in the meantime, he's gone a little shoe-crazy—launching Band of Outsiders footwear with a saddle shoe for Fall and ramping up production in both Portugal and Italy on a wide variety of styles. This season's penny loafer shower slides and wedges looked something like must-haves.Designing this Resort collection, then, undoubtedly provided Sternberg with an excuse to daydream about going on vacation. His fantasies took him to the south of France, and were shaped by films such asLa Piscine, with Romy Schneider, andContempt, with the equally goddess-y Brigitte Bardot. Sternberg cottoned to the fact that neither woman felt compelled to dress like a bombshell—why gild the lily, right?—and instead went for clothes with a kind of knockabout ease. A few looks in this collection aced that vibe, like the nautical blazer in cotton hopsack, the low-slung wide-leg pant worn with a trim cashmere turtleneck sweater, and the lace tee plus dotted cotton-matelassé pant. Elsewhere, Sternberg turned back to Band signatures, like the shirtdress, and elaborated them in laid-back ways—to wit, the cotton and leather minidress, buttoned in the back. Other standouts included the bow-shouldered lace and cotton dress and a trim plaid suit with a draped back. Neither look was particularly on-theme, but c'est la vie. Conceptual consistency: When you've got a store opening imminent and about a zillion shoes to produce, who needs the stress?
1 June 2014
Band of Outsiders opens its first U.S. store in Soho this summer. Today, Band mastermind Scott Sternberg played host at the space, showing via presentation for the first time in many seasons. Due in part to the staging, there was a sense of humility to this collection: Silhouettes were easy; fabrics were cozy; and the debut Band of Outsiders shoe, a simple but refined oxford, was appealingly matter-of-fact. As Sternberg noted, he wanted to make stuff to "fill out a woman's wardrobe, things she'll actually use." Of course, these clothes weren't entirely down-to-earth. Taking cues from Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Elsa Schiaparelli, Sternberg flashed some surreal wit, playing trompe l'oeil tricks on his signature bandage skirt or introducing an element of the unexpected by offsetting pattern. The mix of the realistic and the surreal made this a particularly successful outing for Sternberg—there will be plenty of customers for these clothes come opening day.
9 February 2014
Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg, who splits his time between New York and Los Angeles, feels the pain of print media's slow demise and expressed his sentiments the best way he knew how: in a men's collection."It started on a visit to theLos Angeles Timesbuilding to shoot a Polaroid campaign [Spring '13] with Frank Ocean," said Sternberg at his preppy, youth-y presentation today, referring to the quirky seasonal campaigns he himself shoots with celebrities in uncelebrity-like locations around SoCal. "I was looking at the building and thinking about the end of print, when I felt a deep sense of, not sadness, but nostalgia."Sternberg thus channeled the buzzy, frenetic spirit of old-school newsrooms, cobbling together mismatched patterns like windowpane and polka dot in clever and appealing ways. Some of those polka dots were filled in with classified copy, which could also be found on ties. The palette pinged between black and white, sticking mostly to gray scale, occasionally darting into lush green dégradé or red-blue tartan. Squint and you could almost make out Clark Kent in Sternberg's thought process, but no, these were old-fashioned newsboys, topped with jaunty little newsboy caps to prove it.Nostalgia aside, Sternberg has plenty to look forward to. Namely, his first store, right where his presentation took place, at 70 Wooster Street in Soho. When the space, which will include his showroom, opens in the summer, it'll look nothing like the raw concrete storefront it is now. Expect an eccentric, lovable California vibe.
9 February 2014
"People always say Pre-Fall is so difficult," said Scott Sternberg, citing the short shelf life. "But, for me, it's back to school." Hence the plaids and prep-school blazers, perfectly in line with the private-schoolgirl chic that's always been a Band calling card. There were motions toward expanding the options—creating a "suit" of cropped, square-cut jacket and trousers, rather than only the usual shrunken schoolboy jacket—but, for the most part, the pieces here elaborated on Band's fundamentals: a little pretty, a little preppy, a little poppy. There was more of an East Coast sensibility than usual for the West Coast brand, evident in the "Connecticut" florals and nods at upper-crust horse girls and their traditional garb. The latter influence was particularly apparent in the "not quite jodhpurs" in patchworked chino with a gathered-leg sweatpant style. And because it would hardly be Band without a visitation—at least inspirationally—from an alterna-heroine, there was Chloë Sevigny inThe Last Days of Discoon the mood board, whose sequined tube top inspired a few cocktail-friendly pieces in foil-stamped tulle. Those had an element of novelty, but overall Sternberg was content to keep this collection smack dab in Band's sweet spot.
8 December 2013
A little of this, a little of that. A good cook has the confidence to improvise. And this season, Band of Outsiders honcho Scott Sternberg threw a myriad of flavors into his pot. Athletic apparel, the 1990s, Nina van Pallandt in Robert Altman'sThe Long Goodbye—all that went into the mix, plus a soupçon of that Band-trademark prep school vibe and, of course, more than a few tips of the old hat to menswear. The mashing up was all in service of conjuring, as Sternberg put it, "the ghosts of Malibu," those girls sauntering down the beach into the Pacific sunset. It was easy to picture them in one of the collection's wafting long T-shirt dresses, or a sheer floral-printed poncho. Sternberg's way of using sport elements to get at a diaphanous, bohemian vibe was genuinely intriguing. And the looks worked. So, for that matter, did the patchwork shirting dresses; and the piped soccer shorts made from a crinkly material that looked like Tyvek; and the sleeveless, raw-hemmed, extra-long blazers; and the oh-so-nineties halter tops and bias-cut slipdresses. This wasn't a perfect show, but it was a very good one, and for all the variety of its influences, it felt cogent. Apparently, Malibu breeds friendly ghosts.
7 September 2013
The rock star ensconced at the Chateau Marmont is a time-honored type. So to complete the troika that began with—titles my own, because Band of Outsiders brings all of its observers into its L.A. orbit, and whoisn'ta screenwriter out there?—How Much Is That Model in the Window(Spring '13) andThe Scavenger Hunt(Fall '13), for Spring '14, Scott Sternberg presented Devendra Banhart in…Amok at the Chateau.The reedy, matinee-idol-handsome folkie holed up at the hotel, wore the Spring collection, and live-streamed the whole thing one sunny day in July. The images at left are the stills from said shoot. Cut. Print."We create these constructs that are not natural at all," said a shrugging Sternberg, who was, famously, formerly an agent at CAA. That bit of Band prehistory comes out time and time again because Sternberg so insistently brings the cinematic spirit into the medium of fashion. (Despite the exponential rise of "fashion film," the dominant gestures of showing clothes are still mostly borrowed from theater.) Out-of-the-box presentations have become as much a part of Band of Outsiders as the clothes, which, for their part, stayed the charted course this season. The collection will always have its abbreviated suits (with shorts for Spring), styled with the boat shoes Sternberg makes with Sperry. The inspiration of the moment, the Stones' and Beatles' sixties flirtation with India, was most clearly seen in pieces like the patchwork madras robe coat and an Indian-inspired floral print. But it's Band's own kicky, prep nouveau sensibility that ultimately burns brightest. "Future Prep," Sternberg called it, pointing out the nylon strip running across a sweater, equal parts Fair Isle and guitar strap. Season after season, that larger story continues (so, for that matter, does progress on Band's first store, in Tokyo). So Spring was a sequel, of sorts. Just like Hollywood makes.
24 June 2013
In the beginning, there was Boy and lo, it was good. But then Boy begat Girl, and really, Band begat both, and the whole thing begat complications for retailers and editors alike. Scott Sternberg, designer of the whole lot, was not insensitive to this. He's renamed the whole enterprise—men's and women's both—Band of Outsiders. Lo: Nowthat's good.Semantics is a relatively small part of fashion, but the simplification not only eased the usual wonderings about what was what and which went where, but also gave Sternberg a chance to revisit some past hits. As an added bonus, the women's lineup gelled nicely with the men's collection, too: The designer had in mind the musical spectacle he staged at Pitti Uomo two years back, for all the collections the label made. So this outing had some of that fifties-meets-eighties flavor, with drop-sleeved leather jackets, skinny cigarette pants, and flat loafers. But then there was a multicolored version of the bandage skirt Band has been selling for seasons, and a collection of soft, silky maxi dresses like those Sternberg once showed for Girl. Add in those pieces that were cross-pollinated from the menswear—the dégradé anorak, for instance—and the immersion in Band World felt complete.On the side of newness were prints and intarsias by the Israeli artist Guy Yanai, commissioned by Sternberg to give a Resort feel: bright, poppy blocks of saturated colors, and Hockney-esque swimming pools surrounded by supersize palm trees.
2 June 2013
It all started with Billie Holiday, Scott Sternberg reported before his Band of Outsiders show today. "I had a mix of her songs, and I was killing everyone in the office playing it on infinite repeat," he recalled, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "So basically," he added with a shrug, "that got me thinking about the 1940s." If the forties-inspired silhouettes on Sternberg's runway had a matter-of-fact explanation, so too did the collection's seemingly far-flung Atari reference. As it turned out, those Asteroids prints and primitive digital graphics grew out of a forthcoming Atari collaboration Sternberg is working on for his menswear. Strong-shouldered shapes redolent of Hollywood's film noir heyday, plus Space Invaders and Pong: Why not?It was tempting to get distracted by the rich possibilities of Bogie and Bacall films being remade as video games. But the clothes snapped you back to attention. The striking thing about this collection was that the looks were very womanly—there were menswear references in the pinstriped shirtdresses, and in Sternberg's variety of classic wool suiting materials, but atypically for Band, there wasn't a gamine in sight. These were full-fledged, curve-having, sexually confident Band of Outsiders women. "Dames," if you will. Or even "broads," perhaps. The dresses were a highlight of the show, particularly the nipped-waist pencil dresses with small Atari character prints; other strong looks included the slouchy pinstripe and micro-check suits and a pleated skirtsuit of patchworked Black Watch plaid. Sternberg also deserves special credit for his capes—that's a conceptually tricky garment (what do you do with your arms? And your hands?), but his versions were convincing. Eventually, the rather remarkable-looking knit turban caps on all the models started to look convincing, too. You could envision the broad wearing one turning to some smirking guy on the subway, and saying, "Wipe that look off your face, Joe, or I'll knock you right in the kisser." Game over.
8 February 2013
From a see-through truck parked in Union Square, Scott Sternberg and his merry band staged their latest assault on fashion-show orthodoxy. (It reminded you that another West Coast provocateur, Ken Kesey, and his Merry Pranksters had also used a bus as the base from which to thumb their noses at convention.) Sternberg, plainly, is tired of the menswear runway show. Last season he installed a model in the window of a Paris gallery for three days of constant surveillance by a live-streaming Internet crowd. This time around it was an interactive scavenger hunt, live from the streets of New York. Two male models—Matt Hitt and Miles Garber, label favorites both—facing off against each other, completing challenges, and stopping back at mission control to change into the collection's next outfit, take photos, and tally their scores: a happy Hunger Games. (The numbers behind the models in these photos are their running counts; Hitt eventually won.) The whole was live-streamed, tweeted, Instagrammed, Tumblr'ed: fashion show 2.0.The collection itself, as it appeared over the course of the day, was similarly future-looking. "It started with this idea of an urban utopia," Sternberg said. "If I could build a city from scratch, what would everybody wear? What do the workers look like? What do the jocks look like?" As it turned out, the workers looked a bit like jocks and the jocks a bit like the workers. Suiting and sportswear cross-pollinated: A heavy, double-breasted suit in cavalry twill had ribbed sweat suit cuffs and pockets. Sternberg's go-to move is the tweak. "What can I do to classic pieces to make them more desirable?" he asks himself. He beefed up a windbreaker by making it in corduroy and lining it with shearling. Everything the same, but different. Reinventing the wheel isn't the Band priority. That much was clear when a wool piqué tux came on the scene. Devotees might recognize the fabric as one first used in a collection six or seven years ago. But when a new fabric delivery this season didn't work out and a bolt of the old stuff was still on the shelf, back in it went. Newer were several map-printed pieces created in collaboration with the L.A. artist Sam Durant. They came on tees and pajama sets.If there's any complaint to be made about Band's brave new runway-free world, it's that it can be tough to follow in the moment for those without the liberty for a quick 12 hours of scavenger hunt. But that's splitting hairs.
The collection's already been to market, reportedly with record success, so now's the time for play. What other message could you gather from the thronged burgers-and-whiskey cocktail party that rounded out game day?
6 February 2013
Scott Sternberg's dream vacation is a stay atThe Lightning Field, Walter De Maria's land art installation in New Mexico. Sternberg's usual aesthetic is brighter and a bit merrier than the Santa Fe scrub, but he married the two in a collection that riffed, in his words, on the area's tropes and clichés. So no plain Navajo print; rather, a rainbow one he dubbed Tetris. On the whole, this collection substituted sleight of hand for loud print. Poplin tops with Frankenstein seams were inspired by Louise Bourgeois' fabric works; others made room for panels of alternating fabric or began as pullovers seemingly soldered to button-front shirts. A varsity sweatshirt turned out to be silky crepe de chine. Pieces like these and raw-hemmed shorts suits brought to mind some of fashion's Japanese provocateurs (ground breaks, by the way, on the label's Tokyo store, its first, this year). Meanwhile, an expanded section of eveningwear, with long plissé skirts and tuxedo blazers, was an homage to Charlotte Rampling. To its credit, the mix worked. It all fits under the evolving rubric of Boy, Sternberg's higher-end women's line. As if to seal the point, he debuted a new BOY monogram, on shirts and knits, to christen it.
10 December 2012
Boy and Girl have parted ways. This season, Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg decided to showcase his Boy by Band of Outsiders collection on its own, rather than in the omnibus format of previous shows. On the basis of the rich and rather surprising collection Sternberg sent out today, Boy has certainly earned the right to stand alone.Before the show, the designer explained that, in a roundabout way, he was inspired this season by the filmThe Hunger Games. "It's not a good movie," he pointed out, "but I was interested in the way movies like that make war into this light, beautiful thing." There was certainly a warlike aspect to this collection—tribal in its macramé tops, cinched trouser cuffs, and bright patchwork bandeaus, and martial in its jumpsuits, khakis, and braid. The collection was also very Japanese, a reflection of Sternberg's reference hopscotch fromHunger GamestoBattle Royale, the Japanese film that may or may not have inspired it, and from there to kimono-wrapping and shibori dyeing techniques.And Japan got Sternberg somewhere really interesting. There has always been more than a touch of the Tokyo school in his design philosophy—he's a true perfectionist, with a stereotypically Japanese fetish for the imperceptibly finessed detail. But Sternberg's latest explorations seem to have moved him to think about his clothes in broader, more tactile and expressive terms, and the strongest looks at today's show possessed an almost unfinished looseness. ("Almost unfinished," because it's frankly unthinkable that Sternberg hadn't attended very, very closely to the unfinishedness.) Take, for instance, the shibori-dyed seersucker suit, with drawstrings dangling off the baggy trousers, or the half-tucked, oversize indigo button-down worn with a low-slung shibori-dyed wrap skirt. There was a genuinely new mood here. And nowhere was that better exemplified than in the terrific strapless jumpsuits: Sculpturally draped, they came in an indigo cotton or a white georgette with a brush of "war paint," and they were without a doubt the most chillaxed thing ever seen on a Band of Outsiders runway. The tribes of Brooklyn and Silver Lake have got their Spring 2013 uniform.
6 September 2012
Band of Outsiders' debut on the Paris schedule came not with a runway, but with a window. Scott Sternberg, who has resorted to musical theater and indoor rappelling in the past to show his collections, skipped the catwalk altogether this time. He drafted a manifesto and stuck a model in the window of a small gallery in the Marais for 60 hours. Changing outfits periodically, Sternberg's protagonist ate, slept, read, and did whatever else one does for 60 hours at a clip for the street to see—and, via live stream, the world. (Relieved of duty, the model reported he'd been both asked out and mooned during his stint as window dressing.)"It's the most impactful thing I've ever done," said Sternberg, who, like the rest of his boiler-suited team, had installed himself at the gallery along with the model, changing his clothes, photographing his looks (with a clock behind him in each shot to time-stamp the scene). "OK, guys, we have the Internet, and we have fashion shows, and we have guys walking down the runway—that's cool. But there's so much other content we can be creating." As of yesterday, he said, the stream had had 25,000 unique visitors, versus the 200 or so he could've fit at a traditional show. Put that way, it was easier to see why he'd created the logo and emblem of the collection as a pair of quotation marks with nothing in between them: hot air. He called them a protest symbol—protesting shows.The theme of protest was touched on throughout the collection, from the hooded anorak and poncho inspired by those worn by Wall Street occupiers to the shibori-dyed evening jacket and shorts look, like an upscaled version of the tie dye sixties radicals preferred. But most of the protest resided in the medium, not the message. The collection riffed on the codes and shapes Band has been establishing throughout its nine years, from its rake-thin cut to cute prints. New versions of old favorites returned, like the sweatsuit (here in plain terry cloth as well as argyle print) and the classic chino. "It's not like I'm making a fashion statement here," Sternberg said. "You realize after a while, your fabric is your brand. Your fit is your brand. They want to see the same thing in a fresh way every time."He gave the people what they wanted, and there's more of them wanting it than ever. So first the audience swells; then the range will follow. "I feel really good about the brand's potential not to be this little esoteric project for skinny guys," the designer said.
"The next ten years is about the core and spirit." There's plenty of room to grow. "Germany loves our brand, can't fit into one thing," he added with a chuckle. "The shoes do really well there." In the meantime, he's putting on one of menswear's best shows.
28 June 2012
As one of the few prominent U.S. designers who opt out of New York residence, L.A.-based Scott Sternberg is early and often pegged as an oracle of California design. Maybe it's in homage to that tag that he built his Resort collection for Boy, Band of Outsiders' mainline women's collection, around LACMA's recent California interiors show, which traces the evolution of Golden State homes from the thirties to the early sixties, beginning with Bauhaus, ending with Eames. Maybe, knowing the slight skewering Sternberg prefers to give those who fall prey to easy platitudes, it was a takedown of same—what is California design, anyway, when you show your wares in Florence and NYC, make them in Europe and Brooklyn, and sell them as far afield as Tokyo and Taipei? He shrugged that he'd moved into a new house last fall, built in 1936. Maybe that's enough with the maybes.Resort at Band plays up variations on house classics. Here, they came in upholstery fabrics, like the perennial bandage skirt that got twisted for the season in linen hopsack. But Resort, Sternberg reasoned, is always about "boats and stripes," so he offered plenty of both, too. The former were woven into sweater intarsias and printed on a playful poncho that migrated over from the men's collection. The latter were represented by a primary-colored mini-collection of dresses, blazers, tops, and anoraks, playfully young and more than a little retro—esprit d'Esprit, so to speak. There were winners throughout. A patchworked leather hoodie hit the Band blend of smirk and sleek head on. Leather also lent a little charge when it got zipped onto the hem of a seersucker skirt.The fun never stops at Band, and if there's a rub, it's that in bulk, it can get a little giggly. The palate cleanser came in the form of simple, graphic black and white eveningwear, returning after its introduction for Fall. "I was just screwing around having fun," Sternberg explained, "but then everybody bought it." Food for thought.
3 June 2012
Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg was tempting fate with the Sergio Leone backdrop at his show today: Before a single model had come down the runway, the headline "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" was surely writing itself in more than a few audience members' heads. But Sternberg foiled those plans. "The Good, the Good, and the Good" may not do much as the title of a spaghetti western, but it serves just fine as a description of this season's Band of Outsiders, Girl, and Boy collections.As suggested by the set design, Sternberg's mind was on ol' Mexico and the rugged American Southwest, and the theme carried through all three of his collections. First up, the men. In the Band of Outsiders collection, Sternberg made his reference overt, but not literal: This was Band sportswear, for sure, executed in sueded, desert-color materials and conductor stripe, plus some winning puffer jackets and scarves. Sternberg's cheekiest play with his Mexican reference was to apply Oaxacan-inspired embroidery to a chino suit, a riff on WASP whale pants. His most direct move was to make alpaca sweaters intarsia knit with Oaxacan-inspired iconography; the hoodie versions were a slam dunk.Next up, the womenswear. In general, Sternberg gave his seasonal themes a looser interpretation in Boy and Girl, though Boy did quote some of the menswear ideas. These were breakthrough collections for Sternberg: For the first time, his womenswear was the clear strength of his show. Girl came down the catwalk first, and boasted a panoply of great microfloral frocks; to-die-for hairy, ink-dyed furs; cozy hand-knits; and bonus items like a microfloral puffer vest and navy alpaca coat with a floral print. Boy, per usual, had a more masculine mien, but even here the feminine rose to the top. Indeed, Sternberg closed the show with a couple of clean, flowing gowns—basic black ones, with suspender-banded halter bodices. The gowns were dead sexy and undeniably glam, both unusual notes for Band of Outsiders to strike, and they hinted at the brand's new horizons.
10 February 2012
Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg was tempting fate with the Sergio Leone backdrop at his show today: Before a single model had come down the runway, the headline "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" was surely writing itself in more than a few audience members' heads. But Sternberg foiled those plans. "The Good, the Good, and the Good" may not do much as the title of a spaghetti western, but it serves just fine as a description of this season's Band of Outsiders, Girl, and Boy collections.As suggested by the set design, Sternberg's mind was on ol' Mexico and the rugged American Southwest, and the theme carried through all three of his collections. First up, the men. In the Band of Outsiders collection, Sternberg made his reference overt, but not literal: This was Band sportswear, for sure, executed in sueded, desert-color materials and conductor stripe, plus some winning puffer jackets and scarves. Sternberg's cheekiest play with his Mexican reference was to apply Oaxacan-inspired embroidery to a chino suit, a riff on WASP whale pants. His most direct move was to make alpaca sweaters intarsia knit with Oaxacan-inspired iconography; the hoodie versions were a slam dunk.Next up, the womenswear. In general, Sternberg gave his seasonal themes a looser interpretation in Boy and Girl, though Boy did quote some of the menswear ideas. These were breakthrough collections for Sternberg: For the first time, his womenswear was the clear strength of his show. Girl came down the catwalk first, and boasted a panoply of great microfloral frocks; to-die-for hairy, ink-dyed furs; cozy hand-knits; and bonus items like a microfloral puffer vest and navy alpaca coat with a floral print. Boy, per usual, had a more masculine mien, but even here the feminine rose to the top. Indeed, Sternberg closed the show with a couple of clean, flowing gowns—basic black ones, with suspender-banded halter bodices. The gowns were dead sexy and undeniably glam, both unusual notes for Band of Outsiders to strike, and they hinted at the brand's new horizons.
10 February 2012
He'll take Manhattan. L.A.-based though he may be, Boy's Scott Sternberg turned his thoughts to the east for a cooler-weather collection. He was thinking of the island nation of New York as seen through Woody Allen's lens, from his 1979 classicManhattan, starring Diane Keaton. "I was re-watchingManhattanfor, like, the 15th time, and that way of dressing that you see in Diane Keaton's character—corduroy suits, button-ups, a certain type of plaid, a high neck—just seemed really fresh, or close to it," Sternberg said. "Certainly in need of an update, but the nice start of an idea about dressing for the fall."Keaton's persnickety, snobbish Mary inManhattanis a self-styled intellectual, and the collection's edge came from Sternberg's usual borrowing from menswear, revamped for girls: here, collegiate cord blazers, shown with matching miniskirts or seventies flares, and a camel coat that might be professorial but for its sloping shoulders and softened lapels. The peplum blouses and pleated skirts in schoolmarm plaid might have looked uptight—and would have been, but for the uneven handkerchief hem and raw, scrabbly edge, delivered like a punchline at the end.There's a funhouse-mirror quality to Sternberg's transformations, like the navyman's peacoat—a vintage staple—that becomes, in his hands, a bubbly kind of opera cloak, with one giant anchor button. Self-seriousness, in other words, is not on the table. In its place, he subs humor. (Keaton, fussy Mary aside, does too.) So among the offerings there was a ladybug print borrowed from a forties archival piece on a day dress and a boiler suit, and a cropped knit sweater—all girl—emblazoned with one giant word: Boy.
14 December 2011
The Band of Outsiders Spring 2012 menswear collection made its debut this summer, at a presentation at Pitti Uomo in Florence, Italy. Consequently, Scott Sternberg's womenswear collections, Boy and Girl, flew solo at his show this evening. That situation isn't likely to repeat itself soon, but this season it offered an interesting opportunity to reckon with the femme end of things at Band.The verdict? These collections felt small. Sternberg is a strict editor of his shows, which is generally a good thing, but with the women's clothes standing alone, you sort of wished you could see more of the pieces he had undoubtedly left on the racks at his showroom. That was particularly true of Boy, the elder of the two women's lines. Seizing inspiration from Peter Weir's hypnotic filmPicnic at Hanging Rock, Sternberg sent out a sampler platter of looks that conjured the film's Edwardian milieu. Its pastoral setting was reflected especially in toile de Jouy prints; Sternberg updated these materials by citifying them, subjecting the toiles to a reverse dégradé so they faded to black, and using them to make, among other pieces, a sharp cutaway trenchcoat. The other look cribbed fromPicnicwas schoolgirl chic—box-pleated skirts, neat blouses—and that was clearly catnip to Sternberg; he relishes an opportunity to exercise his fastidiousness. There was also a thread of pieces that were almost jarringly urbane, such as a slick, patent leather anorak, or a version of the classic Boy by Band bandage skirt executed in black leather and detailed with zips. These pieces worked, as just about everything did—the long duster coats were particular standouts—though the dégradé toiles may have been more compelling in theory than in practice.Then there was Girl. After the show, Sternberg said his aim with that line was to summon the modern version of thatPicnic at Hanging Rockgirl, which he did by sending out 13 looks that were very, very pretty. The pastoral mood reigned here, from a quilted jacket in a microfloral print to a multi-floral dress in varying pastels. There was a creeping darkness—literally—in one look: a lace T-shirt and shorts set, in which the shorts had been dip-dyed in black at the hem. (This was one of those ideas you wanted to see extrapolated in a few other garments.
) Overall, the Girl clothes suggested both that Sternberg continues to gain fluency in softness and curves, and that he could emerge as a serious rival to Ralph Lauren, given his ability to make clothes that tap into the romance of a world and a mood.
9 September 2011
It was a lot like life. The Resort collection Scott Sternberg showed in Florence last night underlined a natural evolution from tomboy to woman. The innate cool of the collection was equally, inadvertently underlined by the way the models kept their composure as Sternberg's troupe of local dancers capered furiously around them. A white blouse matched with a full skirt in dégradé gingham had more than enough prairie propriety to balance out a thigh-high ruched skirt and black leather jacket. Sternberg has still never seen a shirt he doesn't want to chastely close to the very top button, but he seemed intrigued by the racy edge of womanhood with this collection—or perhaps that was just the black leather pencil skirt and shorts scored with zippers. (The Band girl wearing the latter had, after all, defused them with a hoodie from her Band boy's closet.) Still, a brick red sweater dress could, on the right bod, start a heat wave. Sternberg also utilized the kind of banding effect that body-con king Hervé Léger built a business on back in the nineties. Manolo Blahnik's peep-toe pump/skating boot hybrids simultaneously said sport and sex appeal. Band in a nutshell.
14 June 2011
The invite came in the form of a vintage postcard from L.A. The backdrop was a Fascist-era cigar factory that looked just like a Hollywood back lot or a Broadway stage. With classic show tunes playing as guests took their seats, it seemed like Band of Outsiders' Scott Sternberg had taken his invitation to be guest designer at the 80th edition of Pitti Uomo in Florence as an excuse to celebrate America's historical global domination of the business of show. And there was no doubt about it once the spotlights dimmed, the classic intro fromWest Side Story's "Jet Song" clicked into gear, and energy erupted as rival teams of dancers expertly re-created that musical's gang warfare scenario.Pitti offers guest designers an opportunity to be creative for the sheer merry hell of it, and Sternberg stretched it to the limit. His years of toil in Hollywood left him with a fully evolved impresario gene, but his presentations in New York have often been master classes in extracting maximum impact from minimal settings. Here, however, he let his inner Busby Berkeley fly, so enthusiastically that it felt like something he'd been dying to do for years. Even the process of casting his Italian dancers (two days from first audition to opening night!) was, according to Sternberg, like something out ofA Chorus Line. "Indulging my boyhood fantasies," he called it.There were three collections of clothing integrated into the spectacle: the men's range for Spring 2012, the Resort looks for Boy (Band of Outsiders' women's range, reviewed here), and a handful of outfits from Girl. Maybe it was the Italian setting, but Sternberg's revisioning of the all-American boy had a distinct hint of the Via Veneto: The trim white suit, the double-breasted blazer over white jeans, the double-breasted pinstripe, the sunglasses at night, and the ice creamy color accents told a retro Euro-tale. The hoodies, the cutoffs, and the zinced lips felt much closer to home. If there was a significant development, it was surely in the sizing, more generous to reflect Band's burgeoning growth.
14 June 2011
The presentations that Scott Sternberg has staged for Band of Outsiders are legendary by now—there was the time he created an actual beach, replete with water and sand, for instance—so it was inevitable he'd bring a little stagecraft to his first-ever runway show. His outing today comprised all three of the lines under the Band of Outsiders umbrella—the original menswear Band, the menswear-inspired women's line Boy, and the more feminine Girl, launched last season—and it opened with a bit of derring-do, as Band of Outsiders-clad male models rappelled from the ceiling. That was a nod to Sternberg's original inspiration this season, the bookThe Stonemastersand its images of seventies-era California rock climbers. Before the show, Sternberg said thatThe Stonemastersinvited a more general contemplation of bygone California, land of stoner princesses and hippie communes, and then those influences pinballed around a little more, dinging Yoko Ono and Ally Sheedy inThe Breakfast Clubalong the way.Which is to say, Sternberg trod lightly on his references. There were sporty and bohemian motifs throughout the collections, notably French terry sweats and anoraks, blanket wool (tailored into jackets and draped into ponchos) and Native American-inspired graphics knit into sweaters. But the essence of the Band and Boy collections was still preppy. For the men, there was no shortage of punctiliously cut suits and college stripes. And for the ladies, well, Sternberg's floor-length fur peacoat in deep-dyed navy is what girls who graduate from Choate get to wear if they're good and go to heaven when they die. In short, these were identifiably Band collections, with the signature Sternberg fastidiousness at work, but California-ness infected the clothes with a new—and welcome—sense of freedom.What was really interesting to see, though, was the evolution of Girl, and the runway-show format helped to draw a line from that collection to the others. Where Band and Boy are tailored, Girl is drapey, but the newest line spoke to the others in a way it didn't last season. A foulard print used in all three lines appeared in Girl on a floaty wool twill maxi dress, for instance, and the line's floral dresses and peasant-inspired blouses and bloomers were easy to imagine ringed around a campfire alongside the Band/Boy blanket-wool pieces.
Sternberg does seem to struggle with feminine proportions—a long floral shirtdress, for example, looked a little off—but he's gotten the sense of Girl right. The clothes had an appealing softness.Indeed, there was something appealingly easy about all these clothes, even the ones most studied in their detail. Fittingly, given the source material, Band of Outsiders felt genuinely mellow.
11 February 2011
The presentations that Scott Sternberg has staged for Band of Outsiders are legendary by now—there was the time he created an actual beach, replete with water and sand, for instance—so it was inevitable he'd bring a little stagecraft to his first-ever runway show. His outing today comprised all three of the lines under the Band of Outsiders umbrella—the original menswear Band, the menswear-inspired women's line Boy, and the more feminine Girl, launched last season—and it opened with a bit of derring-do, as Band of Outsiders-clad male models rappelled from the ceiling. That was a nod to Sternberg's original inspiration this season, the bookThe Stonemastersand its images of seventies-era California rock climbers. Before the show, Sternberg said thatThe Stonemastersinvited a more general contemplation of bygone California, land of stoner princesses and hippie communes, and then those influences pinballed around a little more, dinging Yoko Ono and Ally Sheedy inThe Breakfast Clubalong the way.Which is to say, Sternberg trod lightly on his references. There were sporty and bohemian motifs throughout the collections, notably French terry sweats and anoraks, blanket wool (tailored into jackets and draped into ponchos) and Native American-inspired graphics knit into sweaters. But the essence of the Band and Boy collections was still preppy. For the men, there was no shortage of punctiliously cut suits and college stripes. And for the ladies, well, Sternberg's floor-length fur peacoat in deep-dyed navy is what girls who graduate from Choate get to wear if they're good and go to heaven when they die. In short, these were identifiably Band collections, with the signature Sternberg fastidiousness at work, but California-ness infected the clothes with a new—and welcome—sense of freedom.What was really interesting to see, though, was the evolution of Girl, and the runway-show format helped to draw a line from that collection to the others. Where Band and Boy are tailored, Girl is drapey, but the newest line spoke to the others in a way it didn't last season. A foulard print used in all three lines appeared in Girl on a floaty wool twill maxi dress, for instance, and the line's floral dresses and peasant-inspired blouses and bloomers were easy to imagine ringed around a campfire alongside the Band/Boy blanket-wool pieces.
Sternberg does seem to struggle with feminine proportions—a long floral shirtdress, for example, looked a little off—but he's gotten the sense of Girl right. The clothes had an appealing softness.Indeed, there was something appealingly easy about all these clothes, even the ones most studied in their detail. Fittingly, given the source material, Band of Outsiders felt genuinely mellow.
11 February 2011
Scott Sternberg is breeding a fashion family. First came Band of Outsiders Man, his nostalgic but twisted take on preppy dressing. It was followed a couple of years ago by Boy, a tomboy-worthy collection of menswear-inspired clothes for women. Today, Sternberg celebrated his new arrival, Girl, with a wide-ranging presentation that underscored what a subtle but undeniable force he has become in American fashion.Girl is unabashed femininity. "Sugar and spice and all things nice," said Sternberg. He claimed that after dressing men and tomboys, he just wanted to drape a dress for a woman. There was a classically Grecian feel to that drape, a little bit Isadora Duncan at the Acropolis. The dropped-waist plissé dress in a sheer floral fabric also had a touch of the Doras. But Girl's eveningwear was sleekly structured: A white shawl-collared cutaway jacket over a sheer white shirt and pleated skirt and a sleeveless tuxedo dress were standouts. They were sophisticated enough to make it seem unlikely that these Girls would ever have much to do with Sternberg's Men, who are, at best, a band of dressed-up college boys. How much happier those guys would be with a girl dressed in Band's Boy: The plaid jacket and shirt with chinos and the shirt in the tiny camo print paired with matching tie-waist shorts had an androgynously sporty verve. The designer insisted he liked the psychosexual tension between his three groupings. Still, he gave his guys a break this season by loosening up the menswear a little. A suede blouson trimmed in navy and red or an olive green military shirt with matching sweatshorts verged on butch for Band. Sternberg also injected a note of the surreal—pajamas under a blazer, for instance—that felt more like film than fashion.Perhaps that's why guest Baz Luhrmann, who knows from kinetics, noted that, when the line between art, fashion, film, and music is blurred as successfully as it is in Sternberg's presentations, it would be delicious to take it up a notch further and add a little movement. Make the showroom dummies come alive, in other words. The music in question was, by the way, a collection of incidental soundtrack pieces by Thomas Newman, a typically off-kilter but entrancing Sternberg touch.
10 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.
12 February 2010
Last season, we were on the beach in California. For Fall, Scott Sternberg took us to the snow-covered Manhattan suburbs. A chunky camel cardigan and scarf worn with brown plaid cuffed trousers and oversize blue-lens sunglasses gave off anIce Stormvibe, though Sternberg said the writer Joan Didion was his muse for the paisley print blouses and dresses. He developed that print, by the way, by manipulating Polaroid images of silk ties. The designer's favorite REI hiking socks were another source of inspiration: He found a mill that produces a mélange wool that's not itchy, and he turned it into a turtleneck, a skirt, and even pants with reinforced knees. Among his other quirky ideas were platform sandals made from watch straps, a skirt sewn together from actual neckties, and… cutting a Jaguar in half for the set? This last element didn't, in fact, come to pass—too expensive—but Sternberg did pay a woman from upstate, with whom he connected on Craigslist, to borrow her old Jag for the night.All fun and games? Not completely. What keeps people coming back—aside from the entertaining sets—is Sternberg's knack for tweaking (quite liberally at times) preppy American classics. Two examples: a sharp-looking double-breasted gray flannel jacket was paired with terry sweatpants, and a checked flannel shirt, buttoned to the neck and worn with slim corduroy trousers, came topped by a peacoat cut from silver fox. What Manhattan suburb was that again? We want to move in.
12 February 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.
11 September 2009
Scott Sternberg comes from the movie business; he loves a set. This season it was sand dunes, hammocks, and little toy boats floating in miniature lakes. So, we were at the beach. "Malibu in the seventies," to be specific, he said in between greeting his grandparents and Jason Schwartzman (another previous campaign star, Kirsten Dunst, was also there). "It started with a Jacques Cousteau documentary,Le Monde du Silence," he explained. "And from there I started listening to Dennis Wilson." As in the Beach Boys.Sternberg's familiar shrunken, double-breasted navy blazers were paired with suspender skirts—kind of like a preppy Hervé Léger or, to put it another way, an urbane surfer. The seaside motif continued via a cute seersucker popover top paired with a faded denim bubble skirt, and a boat-print blouse worn with cuffed shorts and a decidedly not-weatherproof anorak with a feather-trimmed hood.Maybe Joni Mitchell was in heavy rotation inside Sternberg's L.A. design studio, too, because there were some drop-waist Liberty-floral shirtdresses in the mix that floated around the body like a breeze. The tide seems to be finally turning away from the eighties. After seasons of the Greed Decade, the Me Decade is starting to look like an early New York trend, and Sternberg seems—if you'll forgive us—well positioned to ride the wave all the way to shore.
11 September 2009
A new partnership with an Italian mill that produces collections for some of the top Parisian design houses yielded Boy by Band of Outsiders' most serious effort to date. "I used to cut my womenswear pieces from the same fabric I used for the men's," designer Scott Sternberg said at the show. "This affords us the ability to approach things properly." That was clear from today's polished tableau-style presentation, which was inspired by the chic French student revolutionaries in Godard'sLa Chinoiseand featured models slouching against old-fashioned lamp posts or lounging on wrought-iron beds.These clothes should appeal to a broader audience than Spring's more trend-driven offerings. There were wide trousers cut in tweed and corduroy, several—if not one too many—oversize striped mohair sweaters, and an array of the sharply tailored jackets Boy is known for. This focus on straightforward basics with a twist—or as the designer put it, "fetishized American sportswear"—should ensure that soon former campaign girl Kirsten Dunst and her ilk won't be the only ones in on the secret.
14 February 2009
If Fall's girl was at home in the Scottish countryside, her Spring counterpart is more about the late lunch at Sant Ambroeus. Scott Sternberg of Boy by Band of Outsiders astutely cast Kirsten Dunst as the face of his lookbook and the star of his video installation, which ran on big screens as guests feathered through the racks. The actress is known for her down-to-earth but slightly mussed personal style, and she brought Boy's edgy basics to life. Blazers came in every variety, from chambray double-breasted to a white linen tuxedo style. Although pants and skirts with paperbag waists felt slightly dated, there was plenty to keep the downtown espresso drinkers happy: Suspender-strapped skirts were a quirkier interpretation of the bandage-dressing trend, and some cotton piqué dresses (one made to look like it was on backwards, another with a twisted button-front placket) suggested Sternberg is aiming to offer women more ambitious options than his usual riffs on the tomboy-schoolgirl look.
5 September 2008
A trip to the Scottish countryside, taking in a fabric mill or two along the way, was the inspiration behind Scott Sternberg's Fall collection. But this was no Highland Fling in the Alexander McQueen meaning of the phrase. Sternberg, a CFDA/VogueFashion Fund nominee, has built a cult following on his tweaks on traditional schoolboy/girl style, and he mostly stuck to that engaging, low-key formula for Fall. There were cashmere rugbys worn with windowpane plaid minis and a drop-waist shirtdress in a brushed-cotton checked twill. But, said Sternberg, "I wanted her to grow up a little and to do something romantic, too." So also in the lineup were a sublimely simple camel coat with leather buttons, another in midnight with a luxe raccoon collar, and the show's standout look, a gray flannel three-piece suit with a smart double-breasted vest and full, flaring pants. Adding to the charm was the set: a 1940s living room that looked like it had been invaded by a Scottish forest.
30 January 2008
Scott Sternberg's fall presentation was inspired by the overlapping worlds of the movieJumanji, and his collection created a similar juncture, with his favorite forties guy transported to the Scottish Highlands. Just about everyone is doing tartans and plaids this season, but there can't be many designers who actually got as up close and personal with the Scots as Sternberg did last October, when he crossed the Atlantic in search of an old company called Glenmac. It's that kind of fetishistic specificity that links his aesthetic to someone like Junya Watanabe. (Why else would he insist on a bird's-eye interior for his knit tartan vests?) But Sternberg's been equally turned on by hiking in the canyons at home in L.A., so there was also what he called a "hunter-explorer vibe" in his clothes. It translated as a new emphasis on outerwear: an oilcloth trench in Black Watch tartan, or a chunky melton coat. Mind you, "chunk" is an entirely relatively notion in the universe of Band of Outsiders. Think small, then halve it. That's what Sternberg has done this time, trimming his silhouette still further with a shorter, one-button blazer or a little double-breasted waistcoat.Maybe it was the presence of tartan that helped to invoke the specter of Prince Charles as a boy at Balmoral. Such an image is a kind of validation of Sternberg's nostalgic impulses, which are curious because they are in no way, shape, or form derived from his own background (another trait he shares with Watanabe). Fans will be pleased to learn he didn't do anything to his shirts. They're already shrunken and darted to a glovelike fit. And the Sperry boat shoes have mutated into boots. Sounds wrong, looks right.
30 January 2008
If he was still around, Sigmund Freud would be having a field day with the current state of play in American menswear. Here's a Freudian slip for you: America has presidents, Britain has queens, and that's why young Yankee designers—as opposed to their more theatrical English counterparts—are so hooked on emblems of authoritarian male dressing. In collection after collection, it's all about button-down shirts, suits, ties, a general air of formality. There's a cinematic angle here, which gives Scott Sternberg—Mr. Band of Outsiders—an edge. The former CAA agent has no fashion background, but he has an acute grasp of visual archetypes. In that respect, he's a little like Junya Watanabe, able to train a detached eye on the familiar and find the exotic in the mundane. No wonder Tokyo is Band's biggest market.This season, Sternberg pushed out the boat, literally. To mark a distinctly Watanabe-like collaboration with a fine old American company, boat-shoe manufacturer Sperry, he presented his collection on the water. The heavyweight fashion turnout testified to his burgeoning rep—he's a candidate for the current CFDA/VogueFashion Fund award—which made the specificity of his offering all the more peculiar. Sternberg is a member of the less-is-more school of shrunken tailoring—in his own words, "Brooks Brothers boys' department circa 1970"—and over the course of his four years in business, he's been building his own repertoire of classics. For spring, the designer added a baseball jacket and a trenchcoat, tightened, pared down, and rendered in a waxed cotton that looked like oilcloth but was substantially lighter. Lightness was also the primary asset of batiste shirts, light enough to layer (he showed coral under burgundy). Sternberg claimed Havana in the fifties as an influence, starting with the jacquard ties he's already known for, and moving on to a double-breasted jacket in a windowpane check, apparently the mirror of one worn by a waiter serving Hemingway in an old photo the designer had found. It's this fetishizing of sartorial minutiae that lends the most interesting American menswear its emotional undertow.
5 September 2007