Dropping sports/streetwear exclusives on fashion runways has become standard procedure for companies like Nike, Adidas and their ilk—but rugby swag is rarely (if ever) part of the conversation. Jonathan Anderson changed that this evening when he took his bow wearing Ireland’s unreleased shirt, by Canterbury, for this September’s Rugby World Cup in France. “It’s because it’s father’s day today, so I thought I would,” said the designer. Willie Anderson, Jonathan’s dad, served as captain of Ireland’s Rugby Union team.
That sweetly personal nod to the intimacy of our experienced domestic worlds ran through a collection that was rooted in Anderson’s own cultural experience but which also resonated more broadly. As ever, Anderson, skewed his subject matter in provocatively perception-altering ways. The set and backstage were decorated in the massively blown up blue and white stripes of Cornishware, a ceramic style once all the rage across the British Isles (I myself distinctly remember eating cereal from it when very small and in the UK). This, said Anderson, signaled “conformity, things that are part of the household and become part of the psychology… things that are around you and become part of you subconsciously.”
Rugby shirts, obviously central to Anderson’s own childhood experience, were bolstered with Bar jacket style hips and presented in knit or stiff jersey. Sweatshirts, fine knits, came with massively oversized v-notches that were then cut-out. In looks 44 and 48, these were knit in a nubbly weave inspired by the ’70s sofa in Anderson’s office. Schoolboy shorts boasted enough room for a spare leg at the left hip, thanks to a flying buttress of extra material at the side. Knit sweaters and dresses came with two bolsters, filled knit panels that snaked diagonally up the front of the torso like the homely spiraling baskets Anderson was inspired by. There were waxed knit shoes and waxed knit clothes in a mesh that vaguely resembled fruit bags and old-school collapsible shopping totes.
Anderson estimated that around 70 per cent of the collection was knitwear. The wittiest of knits included tops fronted with what looked like balls of yarn—because they were. Said Anderson: “Knitting has become such a craze and this is going back to the raw materials.” That this designer was partially responsible for said craze is what made the joke. Looks 27, 28 and 45 were inspired by mop heads.
Not-knit exceptions included the clogs, mock croc shirts and shorts in Miami pastel, cropped collarless shirts, asymmetric folded-hem dresses in pinstripe, and mid-length leather overcoats with tabard fronts, plus one longer leather trench with a cracked worn finish—perhaps inspired by a battered but beloved leather armchair. Anderson’s highly likeable leitmotif is to transform our perception through design in order to turn the banal into the bold, the plain into the peculiar, and the ordinary into the extra.
