There was a brilliant Dries Van Noten show some years back that celebrated Bryan Ferry's early-seventies leopard-clad glamness, but his subsequent career as rock's Most Elegant Man has been a significantly under-exploited inspiration in contemporary menswear. Until today, that is, when Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana made him the launchpad for their latest collection. Ferry's record covers were all over the mood board, his music was all over the show, and there he was on the seasonal "icon" T-shirt. It seemed entirely appropriate, then, that the man himself was front-row center. But the show's theme, Sartoria Eccentrica, actually had much less to do with Ferry's own classic style than the designers' retailoring of anything classic, starting at Savile Row, for a much younger audience.
The singer's taste for West End girls is well documented—the beauteous Amanda Sheppard was at his side today. The clothes on the runway, though, were better suited to East End boys. Low-rise, multi-pocketed pants were slung off skinny suspenders. One model sported Freddy Krueger stripes and a trilby casually tossed back on his head. There was a spiffy edge to a checked, fitted, double-breasted jacket, while cropped, double-vented jackets and those pegged, low-slung pants created a boxy, bubble-butted silhouette that added beef to the already buff models. Add that to the chunky, bovver-ready footwear and these boys were a bit of rough fighters, not lovers. But wasn't Bryan Ferry famously a slave to love?
Domenico and Stefano threw the lovers a bone with a couple of pavé-sequined jackets in pink and black, then they closed the show with their own quintessential march past of black velvet jackets and distressed Dolce denims. Call it glam for a brash, butch new age. As for Ferry's more rarified brand of contemporary glamour? That remains to be explored another day.
