New York Fashion Week: N. Hoolywood scales Half Dome for fall-winter 2011
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The spring-summer fashion week runways are no stranger to California-inspired collections, but this week a couple of the menswear labels mined the Golden State to create cool-weather wardrobes.
One of those was N. Hoolywood, a decade-old Japanese label that made its New York Fashion Week debut with a presentation in September, rolled out a full-scale runway show for its sophomore effort, which was inspired by the late 19th century, early 20th century mountain climbers who scaled Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome in outfits that differed little from the street clothes of the era.
That meant a parade of ruddy-faced, bearded mountaineers wearing a collection of tweed and khaki knee pants, safari jackets and lots of layered pieces, accessorized with the ice axes, carabiners, ropes and pitons of the mountain-scaling trade.
The color palette was a wash of muted tones -- white, gray, black and khaki -- with a couple of blanket-wool pieces in a mustard-yellow plaid, and, in addition to the aforementioned khaki and tweed, the collection was heavy on the cable-knit pieces -- including one head-to-toe look that included a cable-knit cap and what appeared to be cable-knit long underwear.
We’ve seen an inordinate amount of corduroy on the men’s runways this week and here the ribbed fabric turning up on safari jackets, Tyrolean-inspired hats, and in trousers with patched-in pieces of horizontal-wale corduroy alternating with the traditional vertical-wale corduroy.
It’s a typical piece for the menswear label designed by Daisuke Obana -- who clearly knows how to take something familiar, turn it sideways and come up with something novel.
-- Adam Tschorn in New York