Une collection très séduisante, beaucoup plus assagie et très portable...

Photo: Courtesy of Viktor & Rolf

This being Viktor & Rolf's first collection with Staff International, the conglomerate led by Renzo "Mr. Diesel" Rosso, the word was out that we were in for something less hidebound by the tricksy thematizing V&R are prone to. In other words, commercial viability was now a big, fat part of the V&R equation. So there was, for instance, a shoe collection for the first time. It featured padded orange high-tops. In fact, padding and orange were writ large throughout the entire collection. Along with padded jackets, there were padded belts and ties. Orange showed up in the tone-on-tone embroidery on a polo shirt, and in a quilted nylon jacket in herringbone. And everywhere else.

While there may not have been a theme per se, V&R's congenital appetite for peculiar artifice found ample outlet. Hence, a napa leather shirt with a pleated front, a detail that also cropped up on a shearling and a biker jacket (you must set your mind free to imagine such a thing). The old-school English gent remains V&R's touchstone in the area of tailoring, so they printed a bowler hat on a shirt, and made a jacket out of a jacquard of pipes. It looked like houndstooth—quite good, actually. Then V&R literalized their mix of formal and casual by proposing tails with track pants. In a word, disastrous—it looked like something Anthony Michael Hall would have worn in a John Hughes teen pic. But a double-breasted jacket in jersey, as unconstructed as a cardigan, suggested their concept may yet find its sea legs..-- Tim Blanks www.men.com