Now the 28-year-old founder of a prodigiously risen label aged five, Samuel Ross said that this first collection in Milan represented a profound shift for A-Cold-Wall—a growth spurt from infancy and adolescence to early maturity.
All of this was metaphysically expressed in the themes of the collection, which were about the 300,000 year history of the movement of homo sapiens in slow and incremental shifts around the world. The seaming on an attractive nylon and cotton workwear jacket or an oxblood-tufted, rust-colored zipped duffle coat was meant to echo the meandering movements of man (and woman) across the continents from our point of speciation in Africa.
Ross thought about the geological shifts that made this possible, and advances such as irrigation that allowed areas to be settled. You could see these considerations—or at least discern them—abstractly translated into the scarfed or fringed desert-tone knitwear, and the handsome weathering and garment dyeing utilized on leather and denim, respectively. The models also meandered down the runway rather than simply walking straight, in order to emulate the haphazard and opportunistic evolutionary story Ross was building.
But that story was also a personal metaphor and this collection a vehicle to express that, too. As he said pre-show: “I’m going to map it back to everyday man, and how he moves through space still. So in this show, you are going to see this ode to menswear…. You know at the five-year marker I’ve looked at A-Cold-Wall and defined it as a luxury menswear brand versus an artistic project.... I’d say up until the five-year mark it’s been an artistic endeavor. It’s been my narrative and about our community narrative.”
When Ross spoke of a “a professional man moving into a working environment” and “classic menswear styles” it was in a third-person manner that seemed also first-person: a declaration of intent to make the leap forward from his original space, retaining its essence, but also evolving. Practically, the point is to make (and sell!) lots of great clothes and create a commercially irrigated personal ecology. There’s a sort of second-album syndrome for many designers from London, an environment where creative potential is in abundance but the oxygen of commercial mechanism sparse. Which is why this move to Milan made sense.
The clothes justified it. From the opening double-faced teal overcoat to the cool mixed-material workwear and his excellent bronze gilet and jacket with wire-lined malleable hoods there were some strongly wantable pieces here. The closing distressed leather M65 was particularly strong. Other fabrications, such as the nylon of a matchy-matchy shirt and pants, felt like they had been over-agonized to opaqueness (which they literally were).
So many designers from London shine bright before fading to premature extinction: critical sweet-nothings and Dalston claquers do not a business make. Ross has taken a bold but necessary step in moving from the crucible of creativity that is the British capital to the commercial crucible that is Milan. This season has been notable for the large number of Ross’s peers that have also traveled here, thanks to a partnership with the Camera Nazionale Della Moda Italiana and the British Fashion Council to host a showroom in a space close to Zegna, Moncler, Fendi, and Diesel.
Many of these designers were at this A-Cold-Wall show tonight and although what they witnessed was not quite a Big Bang moment for Ross, it felt like a precursor to something. He could make a fantastic Moncler Genius for a couple of seasons, for instance. Having the guts to up sticks, move on, and seek something better—without forgetting your roots—is a key part of the human story that was both expressed in and exemplified by this hopeful Milan debut tonight.
