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 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 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. Looks 44 and 48 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% 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 mopheads.
Not-knit exceptions included the clogs, mock-croc shirts and shorts in Miami pastels, 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 likable 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.
