"There's a feeling of not having finished dressing, of running between classes," said Mark Thomas, menswear designer at Joseph, explaining the unfussy, relaxed styling of his Fall collection. "Classes?" you ask. Indeed, these were public schoolboys, the types that idle around Eton in a particular mix of ill-fitting formalwear and loose sports clothes. Of course, in the hands of Thomas it didn't look ill-fitting at all, but rather quite foppish. Look, for example, at the reworked gray morning coat, stripped bare and left with rough edges. It was paired with brown tracksuit pants, further reinforcing the high-low, hard-soft theme going on here. A cardigan knit—Joseph is closely connected to the idea of knits—was blown up to maximized proportions, a technique that for the first time had been possible to achieve on a machine. Rugby shirts were rendered in classic fabrics, the most obviously luxurious one in black napa leather (this was Thomas' favorite piece of the collection). There were also some quirky touches, like the scarves that looked like sweaters, detachable pleated details on shirts, and luxury bum bags. The color scale was borrowed from the Irish-American painter Sean Scully, whose abstract panels were reinterpreted on various pieces, including a brown knitted tracksuit.
Pitting tailoring and sportswear against one another is nothing new in menswear, but there was an accentuated looseness to this collection that you don't usually see when designers work this contrast. The pants were slouchy to the point where you wondered if they would actually look good on your average guy. Summing up the collection, Thomas said: "It's like he has borrowed clothes from some older relative's wardrobe, and the clothes don't fit perfectly, but that's where their beauty lies."
