The Moorish striped archways of Italy’s Rocchetta Mattei castle play backdrop to Angelo Urrutia’s thrilling new 4SDesigns collection. Erected in the late 19th century, the castle is a hodgepodge of styles concepted by the eccentric Caesere Mattei who founded electro homeopathy and forced each guest at his palatial estate to undergo his experimental treatment. Urrutia doesn’t have to force it; at showroom appointments, buyers and editors will routinely abscond with samples and emerge minutes later re-dressed in 4SD.
The allure of 4SDesigns is its multiplicity. Talking through his references, Urrutia goes everywhere from his Salvadoran grandmother and Juice, the 1992 film starring Tupac Shakur, to Armani’s ’80s sportswear and the New York Knicks. In just two years, he’s proven that anything can be 4S’ed—but he’s deliberate in where he takes his menswear label.
This season, it was about dressing up and a New York-y version of preppiness. Nautica- and Polo Ralph Lauren-inspired rounded, cropped silhouettes clash with military-inspired cargos and light jackets. A crunchy golden material used for shirts and trousers is a single-face matelasse. There are remarkable delicate tweeds crafted into button-downs with contrast collars and eyelash tweed golf jackets, azure French Bucol not seen this side of a ballgown on shirting, and even a filmy faux leather made into a cape-backed trench.
“I wanted to use fabrics not traditionally seen in menswear,” said Urrutia. But rather than play up their feminine associations he cuts a new more rugged kind of men’s clothing. The most mind-boggling use of fabric is the “denim”—actually tender printed deerskin. “It’s just for the wearer,” he says, “no one else will know how it feels but you.”
That attention to detail is one of the things that keeps Urrutia’s customers coming back. The other, surely, is his ease. No matter how finely wrought his fabrics and finishes are, these are unstuffy clothes. He models how easy they are himself, wearing feather-trimmed overdyed vintage hoodies and basketball shorts with snaps at the crotch that transform them into a skirt for running around Bologna, Florence, and Milan.
At the Met Gala, Riz Ahmed wore a virgin wool 4SDesigns shirt and pants in homage to America’s immigrant workers, looking cool and elegant. With this collection, Urrutia is sharpening his craft and his message: 4SDesigns offers global clothes for a new kind of self-confident dude that go beyond logos, multi-ply cashmere, and Euro-centric swank. For now he stands apart from the establishment, but his ideas have potential to become menswear’s new center.
