A trip to the Faroe Islands inspired Tommy Ton’s second collection as creative director of Deveaux. The North Atlantic archipelago seems like an unlikely starting point for Ton and this independent New York brand. Fishermen outnumber street style stars by, oh let’s say, 50,000 to one. In fact, Ton visited the Faroes last year for the Blue Fashion Challenge, a sustainable design competition, and he said he was moved by the one-with-nature feeling he experienced while there—that, and the fishermen’s utilitarian manner of dress. He thought he could apply it to Deveaux, where he has been working with the idea of uniforms.
Ton is a big proponent of a daily uniform, which is not as paradoxical as it sounds coming from the street style arbiter of the last decade. He appreciates a woman or a man with a defined sense of personal style. Designers Margaret Howell and Stefano Pilati came up in conversation, and if you know anything about their understated, elegant, yet oftentimes idiosyncratic approaches to dressing you’ll get a sense of what Ton is up to at Deveaux. For Spring, the fit is easeful, the fabrics are hardy, and the cuts often inventive. Shirting is an important category for the brand, and Ton and designer Andrea Tsao came up with a couple of interesting novelties, like a striped button-down-cum-hoodie and another shirt cut with the waistband of a Harrington jacket. As elsewhere, the suit here is “broken,” meaning untraditional, meaning the jacket and the pant don’t match.
As for the Faroe fisherman, their outfits informed the collection’s sturdy carpenter pants, and, to a lesser extent, the synthetic raincoats. Miuccia Prada was a muse of sorts, too, Ton said, quoting her famous line about working with materials that disgust you. He made that synthetic raincoat palatable, and chenille polo shirts, too, which might be the bigger achievement.
This men’s collection was photographed on a woman, the model Janice Alida. Beyond utility, what he called a “two for one” mentality is the other thing Ton is working on here, which is both timely and ambitious. And rather sustainable; the couple that wears together, saves together.
