Well, that was fast. No sooner had Band of Outsiders Los Angeles relaunched under the creative direction of a trio of designers than that team was shown the door and another collective installed in its place. You’ve got to give the new owners of Band credit: They cut their losses after a disappointing first season and seem to have instructed the new design team to lean harder on the brand DNA established by original Band man Scott Sternberg. That much was evidenced by this season’s nods to The Royal Tenenbaums, a Sternberg-y reference if ever there were one. This Band of Outsiders take on Wes Anderson aesthetics was rather odd, though—even as it picked up on leitmotifs like the teddy bear coat and the red tracksuit,, familiar from the film, and the dandyish look favored by the director himself, this collection completely missed the tone of neurotic fussiness that underlies Anderson’s visual sensibility and that characterized Band of Outsiders collections when Sternberg was at the helm. This was Anderson unspooled, wearing loose, long, broad-shoulder suit jackets; throw-on outerwear; and baggy jeans.
From a strictly commercial perspective, the turn toward easygoing menswear silhouettes may be a wise one. There’s a larger market for men who want sweats and baseball jackets than there is for ones who want scrupulously detailed clothes fitted to a T. Whether there’s also a commercial benefit to replacing natty tailoring with the attenuated suiting proportions seen here is an open question. What’s not in doubt is that, from a creative perspective, Band 2.0 (or is it 3.0 already?) is still figuring itself out. There were some nice touches—the corduroy and suede lent the collection a pleasant sense of texture, for instance, and the prints were appealingly silly—but you couldn’t look at these clothes and instantly identify the man who’d want to wear them. Who, exactly, is Band of Outsiders trying to appeal to? What is this brand trying to say?
