While Billy Reid shrewdly mines his own down-home, folksy image for a sort of Southern luxury vibe (Reid hails from Alabama), he's also plugged into a streamlined international style. As it turns out, loose-fitted jackets and blazers made from wool hand-sheared by a "lady in Oregon" look great with street-influenced nylon parkas and snug beanies. For Fall, Billy Reid presented a grounded men's collection that mostly fits with what's happening in menswear at large.
Reid said the collection was all about texture, and that was plain to see. Or rather, not plain at all. In the Bowery Hotel (across the street from one of Reid's two Manhattan stores), knit after knobby knit appeared in a mostly flaxen palette, to the strums of the soulful mother-son guitar duo Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear. More experimentally, several hooded capes with armholes suggested the good ol' boy knows a lot more about highfalutin design than his Southern drawl lets on. (Reid said the capes started out as sweaters but morphed into their current state by accident, a common story not commonly acknowledged.) While some of the textures seemed a little out of step with what New Yorkers are looking for, like wide-leg thick corduroy pants, in all this was a solid outing that will draw clients old and new.
