Previous to hip hop’s embrace of Tommy Hilfiger, earlier than the jock model craze of the Marky Mark years at Calvin Klein, and previous the growth of the all-American boy-next-door picture of the Abercrombie rebrand, there was the Northeastern prep of Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren. Preppy Ivy League model has impressed numerous designers over the a long time, and brought many kinds. Up subsequent within the lengthy historical past of collegiate prep reimaginations is Daiki Suzuki of Engineered Clothes.
“The roots of my clothes model are deeply influenced by the Ivy League model of Sixties America,” stated Suzuki of his spring 2024 menswear assortment. The designer defined that his youthful attraction to Ivy prep ultimately reworked into an embrace of the Heavy Obligation Ivy model that emerged in Japan within the ’70s—which merged Ivy components with outside gear. A lot of this has been folded into the sartorial language of Engineered Clothes through the years, however by no means as evidently as on this assortment.
Chalk that as much as Suzuki rediscovering Charles Hix’s 1977 e-book Dressing Proper, by which the previous GQ and Playboy columnist broke down prep model and supplied recommendation to males on constructing a wardrobe with items that swimsuit their physique varieties, whereas explaining the variations between collar sizes, lapel cuts, and the like. The tome adopted Hix’s best-selling e-book Trying Good: A Information For Males, which suggested males on grooming and perfecting their look via a set of…let’s name them steamy pictures by Bruce Weber. In hindsight, this quiet males’s model revolution within the ’80s gave approach to the sartorial overhaul that arrived later within the ’90s—the extra !
Dressing Proper additionally broke down styling strategies by designers, Lauren included, and defined the nuances of dressing up and down for males. “It shattered my preconceptions and revealed to me new methods of sporting garments,” wrote Suzuki. That sentiment was encapsulated on this assortment, which mixes traditional Engineered Clothes kinds—camp shirts, cargo shorts, utility parkas—with preppy seersuckers, windowpane and buffalo plaids, and oxford stripes.
The place Suzuki struck a chord right here was within the mixing of his eclectic prints and graphics with extra conventional components of prep. Conspicuous layering stays key to constructing an Engineered Clothes look, and the identical might be stated about menswear at this time. Take a web page out of this lookbook and attempt to discover its road model equal in the actual world—you’ll discover multiple devoted interpretation. Because it occurs, Suzuki’s tackle Dressing Proper this season is extra chronicle than explainer.
