These Three Menswear Designers are Rewriting the Script for Guys—and Women
WINGING IT
Christopher Raeburn burst onto the London Fashion Week scene five years ago with silk anoraks made from military surplus parachutes. But for the designer, who earned his MA in women's wear from the Royal College of Art, it was men's versions of this upcycled outerwear thrown together for an open call at the London department store Liberty that got him his first retail account. Now with 60 stores globally, the 32-year-old credits his success to a calendar that requires him to complete his men's collection first each season. For spring/summer 2015, vibrant pink separates made from parachutes used for humanitarian-aid drops offer a new riff on his menswear looks. "I have to think about how we're going to elevate the women's wear and make it more feminine," he says.
STRING THEORY
The 2014 BFC Emerging Menswear Designer winner Craig Green made his solo runway debut in June during London's men's fashion week. But take a look at the silhouettes he showed—body-con jersey pieces with cutouts and exploded skirtlike volumes held together by strings—and it's easy to see why women shop his line at Dover Street Market. As Green acknowledges, "It's not a man-only kind of thing." Which isn't to say the 28-year-old Central Saint Martins alum, whose works will be included in "Chinese Whispers," May's Costume Institute exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, intended to make a statement about androgyny; he cites rave culture and traditional Eastern costume as his reference points. "It was more about looking back at what was once themed as masculine dress but maybe isn't today," Green says.
A STAR AND STRIPES
Belgian-born, New York City–based designer Tim Coppens has had something of a charmed run. In the past 12 months, the RLX and Adidas veteran was short-listed for the inaugural LVMH Young Fashion Designer Prize, nabbed the CFDA emerging talent honors with the Swarovski Award for Menswear, and won a discerning fan in Jay Z, who has worn his casual menswear silhouettes, including parkas and sweatshirts infused with a smart-techno performancewear sensibility. For spring/summer 2015, Coppens, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1998, also somehow found time to debut his first women's wear collection: 12 perfectly edited looks—snapped up by retailers including Louis in Boston and Barneys—that make use of pleating and layering to reinterpret his classic shapes. Can an Instagram cameo by Queen B be far behind?
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