Angelo Urrutia is a great fashion person to know, a real-deal expert who can call out not only the brand, but also the look, season, and fabric of the outfit you’re wearing from across the street. He is also a great person to be dressed by, as his nascent brand 4SDesigns proves. A long-standing member of the Engineered Garments and Nepenthes family, Urrutia branched out on his own early in 2020, with a debut fall 2020 menswear show in Paris.
Pre-COVID-19, it seemed Urrutia was poised to be menswear’s next big thing. Then the virus shut down his factories in Italy and France and his travel plans for developing his spring collection. Making spring 2021 was harder, but it wasn’t impossible. Even without visiting his many factories around Europe or speaking face-to-face with his teams abroad, Urrutia has continued to evolve his material developments. A Lurex-shot tweed from his first collection carries over; think the elegance of Chanel, but for men. But new ideas like a navy-on-navy fil coupe floral jacquard, gray-white seersucker, a lightweight rosette-patterned knit, ultrathin plissé, and and allover zigzag-stripe material showcase his obsession with fabrics. It’s hard to grasp exactly how singular and special each of these materials is over Zoom—each custom-made for Urrutia. Still, as he walks through each look, he stresses that the point of the brand is to remove some of the preciousness from fashion. These are beautiful things, but things meant for a regular life.
This is a strength of the collection: All its considered seams and thoughtful ideologies are in service of ease, not pretension. Urrutia says he was inspired in part by the kids he grew up with in New York, who wore oversized basketball shorts, and the casualness of his own current life—so the shorts are not just oversized, but pleated in front and shrunken in back to exaggerate the wide leg. A waterproof poncho has pockets on the inside to make covering up in the rain easier, and the must-have item is a shirt-jacket hybrid that aims to replace the stiffness of the suit. Interspersed are symbols of Urrutia’s own life: the flag of El Salvador, where he was born, alongside those of Japan (where he traveled for many years), Italy (where he makes this collection), and the United States. There is a poignance to an immigrant designer rewriting the stagnant codes of American menswear and tailoring, and his is a journey that, while sidelined slightly by COVID-19, is only just beginning.
