Following last season’s first runway outing at Tate Modern in London, Karl Templer will bring Ports 1961 back to Milan next month for fall 2020. This is a brand for which he has big plans. Before we dug into this appointment, Templer toured me through two upcoming—but for now on the down-low—collaborations that cover the two extremes of day/casual and evening/impactful in womenswear.
It’s fascinating to observe what happens when a creative who has for so long acted as a stylist and consultant to others settles behind a desk of his own. Of this first pre-fall he set out his stall as “being influenced by women of style and the way they would put themselves together…something based on classicism, but that’s then thrown off a little bit.” He cited Marisa Berenson and Loulou de la Falaise as exemplars of the high bohemianism Ports 1961 is tilting at, and, as midcentury muses of a collection that excavated delicate, complementary tensions between the bourgeois and the bohemian, both seemed apt.
Nothing here was entirely new, and nor was it supposed to be. Instead Templer was pitching for instant recognition spiked by up close surprise. A series of attractive dresses and blouses came in strips of 18th-century tie print, or distorted herringbone, or an old woodcut print of chess pieces. That by-origin masculine, but appropriated and elevated to the feminine, spirit continued in a twisted Prince of Wales check overcoat, a cool pinstripe suit, a wool Pendleton-style shirt blown up into a voluminous dress, and a white tux. Sometimes the twists were delivered via accessory: double-faced reversible bags, very handsome mid-heeled belt-buckle shoes and boots, some scales-themed gold jewelry. The faux furs and faux-croc finishes added texture and layers to a collection that matched understatement with overstatement in a manner that suited both. There were recognizable echoes of Parisian greats in some of these pieces but Templer’s careful recontextualization of them into the Ports 1961 universe he is building seemed less creative abduction than respectful hat tip.
