LEE ROACH F/W 2015 MENSWEAR

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM:  This was the fashion-led section of a three-part traveling “design/art/sound” project. Within the background, shafts of morning light by Perspex sliced starkly across the runway. That was the art bit, by The Butchers, a collective made by Filippo Maria Bianchi and Giorgio Gremigni.  And eeveryone around us jarred the guitars on Alexi Delano’s creepily somber piece of music.

That information is important because Lee Roach saw this runway as an equal collaboration. He argued that the artists, the musician, and fashion deigner put their heads along and elected to explore “ideas of the inverse and everything associated with that.”

Which is why with the exception of the girly shoes and therefore the dainty plane figure pouches that decorated from some belt straps, just about everything else during this runway was reversible.  Therefore the strap that encircled a yellow Alcantara jacket at base-ribcage height worked either as an exposed belt or an invisible cincher. A snakeskin-inspired pattern of perforations in more Alcantara trousers and jackets had the symmetry to go away a similar tan lines whether or not worn within or out. Lines of metal links connected by nylon ligaments were a remarkable ornamental insert whichever method you checked out them. Aand the shiny texture of a Roach-developed knit material was faced with light-swallowing crepe—giving you two shades black in one garment. Added Roach: “The plan is that once every person puts [a garment] on, it becomes a totally completely different thing—they wear the collection, it’s not the opposite way.”