Affluent, developed-world, 21st-century urban man has scored himself a pretty sweet deal. The closest most of us venture to primordial fight-or-flight crisis is when there's an inconveniently long queue in Starbucks or we neglect to charge our phones overnight. Yet that wholesale absence of danger makes our atavistic desire for it, or at least its appearance, all the keener.
The press notes for Andreas Melbostad's Diesel Black Gold collection pitched the notion of the metropolitan safari: This was a finely mustered collection for young men in search of edge. The waist and thigh-borne storage system, the abundance of strapping, and the gloriously butch utility shirts were about as functional as your appendix, but they sure looked tough. Although less so in white. Oversized bombers and parkas faced off against undersized bikers and skinny jeans expertly distressed and weathered with leather lacing and metal eyes. The trousers were too long and so were many of the sleeves. You feared that if this Diesel Black Gold man really did run into a spot of bother, he'd still be fingering the zipper of his fanny pack as the first punch landed. All that said, Melbostad remains a deft articulator of aesthetic grit.
