Francesco Muzi, last seen at Z Zegna following long stints at Miu Miu and Prada, has popped up again—this time at Joseph. He charmingly apologized for his perfectly acceptable English before delivering a run-through of a totally coherent collection. This Italian worked with an idea that was a contrast between the styles of the two rivieras that reflect the identity of Joseph: the Cornish coast and the Cote d’Azur.
Like, oh, perhaps 50 percent of the designers I’ve spoken to this season, Muzi talked about uniform as a theme. This was reflected in the single-color looks of a soft field shirt and wide short in tobacco linen/cotton or the same shirt (but in suede) and some pants in a bold, English mustard yellow that would cause a stir if seen in St. Ives.
Trousers teamed with tailored jackets were hemmed mid-calf: Muzi said he’d imagined his man paddling in them, which was sweet. There were some really lovely loose and long pants with six “disordered” irregular pleats on each side. Tracksuits in a treated jersey in blue, black, or yellow again had a fine, substantial hand-feel and looked pleasing to wear. Some of the shirts came with removable belts that were actually ties: a detail whose tricksiness felt a little redundant. Really lovely was a shirt in two variations of the same stripe and the short-sleeved silk shirt in a floral taken from Louise Trotter’s Resort collection (although not featured in its lookbook). Fine but not dandy, this was a convincing collection of refinedly easy menswear.
