“It’s a car coat in the front, and a parka in the back,” said Joseph’s head menswear designer Mark Thomas today, flipping the tawny, tweedy garment to show the graft (all heritage at first, but with an athletic, visible cinch around the lumbar region). The piece was one in a uniformly strong outerwear roster at the label’s Fall 2017 collection. In fact, most everything Joseph unveiled today was solid.
The lineup’s beginnings came from creative director Louise Trotter’s move of house last year—an experience she found momentous, as many do, because “you’re leaving behind memories.” One of those flashbacks came in the form of an unearthed photograph of her parents in the ’70s, “when the men had a bit of femininity in what they wore.”
That inception took Trotter and Thomas to a place that clashed British traditionalism (Donegals, officers’ coats, Fair Isles) with a more contemporary, more universal sense of slouch, purposeful street appeal, and subsequent, faint unisexuality. Hence the Jekyll and Hyde car coat-cum-parka, or the “blouse shape” Oxford shirts in ’70s-era colors, striped in the sorts of garish yellows or sun-bleached blues one might see in a Slim Aarons photograph. Other parts worth shouting out: a steely tweed blazer that had zipper inlays on the tail, a pressed black-and-scarlet turtleneck knit, a floor-teasing taupe anorak with flattened sleeves, and a “bled” Fair Isle sweater (also in unexpected hues). The mix was big and jumpy, but its calibration wasn't wobbly. This being Joseph, though, Trotter and Thomas made sure to stay disciplined—“to really think about what we’re outputting”—so as to remain special yet accessible.
