Autodidactic, although thoroughly schooled in the ways of menswear through a lifelong habit of reverse engineering and retail—he’s owned a cultish multi-brand store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as well as in Los Angeles, for a number of
years—Greg Armas creates unassuming classics for his Assembly label. But glimpsed through the darkness of Mr. Fong’s, a cramped Chinatown bar where he showed a sampling on a shaggy-haired live band, those classics have been amped with all sorts of quirky perversions and arcane twists for Fall.
Armas caressed, in mid-strum, a sumptuous brown suede coat worn by the lead guitarist, inserted with a strip of vintage blue denim at the collar and tied with a small Hare Krishna patch, made by a friend, around the wrist. “I’m inspired by the idea of the weird, even ugly things in people’s closets that they can’t get rid of, because there’s nothing else like them,” the designer said, speaking over the blare of instruments and the din of chattering onlookers. Making his point, he nodded to a navy jacket on the bass guitarist with differing hardware closures. “That’s just too effing weird to ever let go of. It’s irreplaceable.”
Other twisty details included a vertical stripe on tuxedo trousers whose width varied on either side, à la “doormen or FedEx guys,” he said; buttons attached by pin, not thread, so they won’t fall off even under duress (a military trick); random bits of tie-dye; a Japanese kanji symbol signifying oneness printed on a T-shirt; and another T-shirt emblazoned with a grainy early image of Sinéad O’Connor, a personal fave of Armas. The two tees came in stark red and black, “the colors of protest,” he said, grinning. Even the media-averse, anti-trend designer isn’t immune to the most topical of current events.
