NYLON - January 2008 - (Page 64) DUDE-A-LICIOUS SARAH NIR ENTERS THE ANDROGYNOUS ZONE. PHOTOGRAPHED BY RUVAN WIJESOORIYA Hankering to trade in those girly empire-waist dresses for skinny, tailored jackets and men’s style lace-up shoes? You’re not alone. “There’s been plenty of pretty out there for a while. Now girls are looking for something different,” says Band of Outsiders’ menswear designer Scott Sternberg, discussing his motivation for launching BOY, his first women’s line, this season. Sternberg is in good company: Thom Browne, Dior Homme, Obedient Sons, and the U.K.’s Deryck Walker—all iconic guys labels—have recently jumped on the ladies clothing bandwagon. Some, like Walker, say their decisions were born of a realization that over 40 percent of the clientele for their men’s range was in fact female. But it’s not about struggling to fit through a doorway in a power-suit straight off of Dynasty. “1980 was over 25 years ago,” exclaims Nicholas Guilbaud of clothiers Holland & Sherry who have been supplying the bespoke suit-makers of London’s legendary Savile Row since 1836. “A woman doesn’t need to power dress, things have moved on.” Nicola Copping, men’s fashion writer at the London Times, agrees, “It’s too simplistic to think that women dress like men to be powerful. They’re just fed up with looking like little girls.” This season, the move to adopt men’s tailoring doesn’t call for roaring ’20s-era boyishness either, which dropped the waist to the hips and had girls strapping down what their mama gave ’em to achieve a gamine figure. Instead, “we’re seeing 40s,” says Copping, referring to the highwaisted trousers and blazers that saturated the runways this fall. In fact, the elite Savile Row craftsmen who’ve been cutting bespoke suits for men and increasing numbers of women for centuries, are nonplussed by trends. Darren Beaman, a veteran Savile row tailor of 25 years, says: “I never get ladies who walk in and say, ‘I want menswear’,” he says. Instead, they are seeking the principles of men’s suiting, its architectural structure, applied to the female body. “It’s about a celebration of shape,” which is after all, the cornerstone of exquisite men’s tailoring. Thus, to he says, “not just wearing men’s clothes.” retain his signature style in his debut women’s collection, Browne says, The BOY collection treads that fine line, achieving, oxymoronic as it “A completely new pattern was drafted. It was the same idea, but for a may sound, a sort of feminized masculinity without tipping the scales to woman’s body.” drag. “Women generally want to look sexy and feel like a woman, even in Deryck Walker and Band of Outsiders’ collections second this view: a tailored suit or heavy outerwear piece,” says Sternberg. Rather than feature designs that have girls look like they just raided their Thom Browne, renowned suit maker who this year trotted out his first guy’s wardrobe, Walker and Sternberg apply just the trope of masculine women’s line, explains: “People often think that since my menswear dressing—suit pockets, sharp collars, crisp lines. The results are paredsilhouette is very fitted, it can be worn by a woman.” But in simply down silhouettes that define and reflect the body, rather than flow away nabbing lads’ clothes, the female wearer loses the subtlety of structure, from it, with subtle masculine features molded to a woman’s figure.
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