Though their label began as a mix of Americana-inspired workwear and traditional English tailoring, David Neville and Marcus Wainwright have adopted a more-the-merrier approach to influences since. Their recent menswear collections have drawn from various and disparate traditions, sporting to Scottish, military to millennial. This season, they pushed further still. One the one hand, Wainwright explained at their new showroom this week, they were drawn to surfing. ("It's a culture that's very attractive," he explained, while admitting that neither he nor partner David Neville is much of a surfer.) On the other hand, they referenced cholo culture, which grew out of the Latino gang scene of Los Angeles and the southwest.
It was the cholos who gave Rag & Bone the giant, diagonally pleated cropped pants that made a curious new addition to their range. The real-life cholos bought their Dickies several sizes too big and folded or belted them into the shape; the label's are sewn in place, for the volume without the uncertainty. Wainwright and Neville aren't the first designers to borrow the style, though you imagine they likely are the first to reimagine the Hawaiian shirt (a surfer staple) in a low-riders, barbed wire, and apartment complexes print. How you feel about that will depend on how open you are to a luxury label lifting street culture emblems for fun and for profit. Likewise the thick-soled slip-ons. "It's that Boyz N the Hood look," Wainwright explained. "A cross between Stubbs & Wootton and cholos."
Scattered throughout, whether in surfing looks (with surfboard stripes, lifeguard yellow wax cloth shorts) or cholo styles (with shirts closed at the top and open below), were the kind of tailored pieces that continue to define the brand, whatever the flavor of the season might be. Wainwright spoke of an "element of England," grounding the more out-there looks. And that's just what they'll do. Everyone (or maybe everyone but a cholo) will warm to a hand-tailored morning coat made at Martin Greenfield's Brooklyn factory. Or the dandy-friendly jacquard suiting, a first for the brand. It came in both blazer and, intriguingly, windbreaker form. "You can imagine Jagger wearing it," Neville piped in. Sartorially speaking, a boy from a slightly nearer hood.
