Christian Westphal: Urban Warriors

Arek Sunday, October 24, 2010
Christian Westphal´s spring 2011 collection is a looser, a little more colourful and a lot more casual chic than fall, but his formula for quirky cuts is basically unchanged. After all, even the most die-hard urban warrior needs a break from black once in a while.

After a couple of seasons of citified dressing, collectors of Westphal may well be pining for his more eclectic but wearable pieces. If so, they’ll find plenty of them: washed out coats, soft boxy jackets, wrapped pants and shorts, and jersey that looked as if they’d been sourced from a trip around the markets of 19th century America.

Westphal explains he had been thinking about recasting basics and working on a kind of primitive collage concept inspired by a visit to the 19th century Wild West. But unlike the fall’s collection, with its bohemian layer on layer vibe, spring isn’t about an overarching theme or look: It is about giving a reason to shop, and as such, there are many arguments here for a guy to unfreeze his AmEx.

New fabrics are crushed techno taffeta, draped jersey, and glove leather-like cotton, and a starched looking white poplin shirt with origami-like folds round the neck. You will also find a pair of trompe-l’oeil sequined shirts, with their graphic shapes evoking a nighttime skyline.

The jeans are no longer artfully destroyed and stained but the corporation with the Okayama denim producers have outcomed camouflage patch worked jeans with rivets in antique gold and brass, however with a flicker of irony.

Patching together Sergio Leone´s picture “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”, the collection moves from complex jersey tanks with knots and spray dye and knit with a kind of moon-glow lightness. In the collage of elements, there are recycled fabrics and natural-looking hemp weaves, and a sidelong tribalism in the urban-warrior outerwear and accessories.

The nature-versus-man concept is for spring/summer 2011 a meld of futuristic technique and art craftsmanship.

View the collection here.

Photos & text Copyright Christian Westphal.
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