One gets the sense that John Elliott, only on his third collection, is fine-tuning his sporty-conceptual aesthetic on the fly. Last season’s athletic theme, based on a long-distance run he took through Southeast Asia, turned a dark corner for Fall. Think ’80s punks on the Lower East Side, rowdy soccer hooligans, and Berlin nightclubs. Particularly the clubs, he said, spending days and nights in their corners.
He mined these degenerate tendencies, or his “inner friction,” with a deft hand, rendering and layering each look in deep tonal shades—white, ecru, maroon, black—to achieve his debauched luxury. Hoodies, thermals, and raglan pullovers were richly fabricated in gauzy French terry, flannel, or leather patchwork. All the fabrics were complex and textured—one in particular, a wool-bonded aluminum made into flight jackets and shorts, enabled the wearer to bend and sculpt them if he so chooses. Only exhaustive research could result in something like that. Same with Elliott’s use of a stitching technique known as sashiko, originally developed to repair and reinforce kimonos, which he discovered on a trip to Japan. Completing the fully realized look was the designer’s first foray into footwear, nubuck high-tops with a small strip of leather resembling laces tied at the back of the ankle.
Some of the bulkier silhouettes recalled those of Rick Owens, especially when worn over unstructured jersey tees and knit leggings. And it seemed Elliott took another page from the brutalist master’s playbook—the army of models that stomped out together at show’s end.
