Karl Templer played accentuated contour against accentuated texture for this 60th-anniversary (the clue’s in the name) Ports 1961 collection. The contours lived within a consistent silhouette and were delineated by decoratively exaggerated details, including wide turtlenecks, generous collars on overcoats and cropped bikers, and amplified storm flaps on outerwear. There were further lines of layer and fold on sarong skirts in leather or thick knit and fabric that sometimes symmetrically echoed gathering in the garments above.
Much of the texture came courtesy of a technically impressive array of knitwear that saw thick tubes of leather braided against wool and abstract reefs of differently toned tufting fixed on ribbed beds. Faux-fur details on those accentuated collars represented further tactile texture; meanwhile the texture in a tight series of pieces in a naive woodcut doodle jacquard were visual, as were the blurred outlines on a “distorted Bettie Page” graphic.
Both very dressed and faintly primal—some of the looks resembled blankets styled elaborately in the spirit of 1950s couture—the collection came peppered with aesthetic complications, including cantilevered midsole heels and winding twists of fastening up the inner sleeves of shirting. The heavily French codes of bourgeois dressing that Templer had set out to renew in previous collections remained, but were reduced in order to accommodate his fresher emphasis on that fundamental interplay of contour and texture. This was a carefully thought through and immaculately rendered fashion equation whose results should offer anniversary-year Ports 1961 customers some new and stimulating strategies for self-expression in dressing come fall.
