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NYT Syndicate
What would one give for a cool breeze right about now? Such a thing seems unavailable for love or money, a little gust to break the stultifying heat, to aerate the close, humid echo chamber of the 24-hour news cycle and its rat-a-tat revelations. Just imagine yourself on a boat, floating serenely into uncharted waters ” isn't that better?
Hugo Boss, the German fashion label, thinks so, too.
It may not be able to offer the breeze, but it can offer the wardrobe, in the old spirit of"dress for the job you want." Its spring 2018 collection for Boss, presented as part of New York Fashion Week: Men, was an extended meditation on light fabrics, unlined jackets and roomy Bermuda shorts. Suits came in papery cotton, anoraks in paper-thin leather.
"Everything should be light and easy," said Ingo Wilts, the chief brand officer of Hugo Boss.
"As the world is roasting," said this reporter, thinking back to a startling new set of conjectures about climate change published this week.
"Exactly," Wilts said."There's so much going on in the world right now, we want a kind of easiness and lightness in terms of clothes. We came up with this summer of ease."
"Summer of Ease" became the collection's title.
It had a nautical inspiration, lightly applied: ropes printed on silk kerchiefs, longitude and latitude coordinates (to Columbus Circle, the location of the Hugo Boss New York flagship store) on rucksacks, all of it in a blanched palette of sand, stone and wave.
Looking seaward for inspiration can be tricky: Designers have gone the nautical route many times before. But if Boss did not explore startling new territory, at least it had a touch light enough to make the old feel fresh.
Menswear metabolises change more slowly than its women's counterpart, and men in the world more slowly than their brethren in the ranks of the fashion industry. One might wish for a little more push or a little more speed, but relentlessness is ever-present everywhere else at the moment. Imagine slipping on one of Wilts' double-breasted cotton jackets or wide-legged, pleated shorts, and feeling neither hemmed in nor weighed down. Truth be told, you could see the appeal. Ease? Please.
