Take it or leave it, but here’s a word of advice from an editor’s perspective to Angelo Van Mol, who has a new title at Band of Outsiders as creative director: Clothes that hold their own do not need to be shown in an over-conceptualized presentation. Doing so detracts from the garments, and suggests something of an insecurity in conviction.
This was the case today. Band of Outsiders is, or should be, about wearability with a wink of humor and cheek. That’s how it was built. To try to spin it otherwise just doesn’t work. Van Mol showed Fall in a cramped East London film boutique, and screened a short movie to reveal the collection, as the shop couldn’t fit all of the models that would’ve been needed. (I caught about half of the movie before being ushered out.)
Loosely, the collection is inspired by people watching the moon landing from their living rooms in 1969. (A timely theme, given China’s lunar headlines this week.) It’s a solid enough capsule of ’60s- and ’70s-era-inspired regularwear, from corduroy suits to long chiffon dresses (one of these had a stripe-and-rocket-ship motif that effectively captured BOO’s built-in sense of quirk). But, all in all, there was a dissonance between a label that calls for its clients to “not take themselves all too seriously” and a presentation that took itself far too much so.