This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
On Friday afternoon in Milan, Our Legacy co-founders Christopher Nying and Jockum Hallin were taking a walk down memory lane. “Ah, here’s the hate mail,” said Nying, the brand’s creative director, grabbing a graphic T-shirt on which he’d reprinted a few actual letters from an inexplicably irate fan: “You are sellouts,” “You fucked up assholes,” etc. Standing in their bustling Milan showroom, they paused, trying to remember exactly what they did to deserve it. “I think it could have been a Stüssy drop?” Nying wondered. Hallin, who leads Our Legacy’s fulsome collaboration business, noted that the messages arrived before LVMH’s venture capital arm took a minority stake in the brand last year. “So before we actually sold out,” Nying said, laughing.
This year marks 20 years since Nying and Hallin first launched Our Legacy with a line of T-shirts. In the two decades that followed, they authored one of contemporary menswear’s greatest and perhaps most unlikely success stories by bringing a hardcore attitude and experimental spirit to high-quality, wearable clothing, a mission that they’ve actually doubled down on (hate mail notwithstanding) to mark their latest milestone. Rather than reissue a catalogue of greatest hits to celebrate—Our Legacy’s famous digital denim-printed jeans, square-toe Camion boots, billowy raw silk shirts, the list goes on—the co-founders revisited the B-sides, reviving deep cut designs, fabrics from the cutting room floor, and employee favorites.
“We brought back stuff that was slept on or forgotten or didn't make it, that was edited out,” Hallin noted as we strolled through the brand’s airy Milan showroom, pointing out some pointy cowboy boots from, “like, a space cowboy collection.”
“We also took some old techniques that we never really achieved,” added Nying, grabbing a gossamer silk cupro coat with a crinkly wax finish—luxurious in Our Legacy’s subtle, unpretentious way. “We tried to do it 10 years ago, but it was really bad. But now we know how to actually do it.”
A necktie printed with an airbrushed winged skeleton that looked ripped from a death metal band tee caught my eye. The motif, Nying explained, was featured in their very first collection in 2005. He shook his head. “At that time, I felt like Our Legacy is a good name—but maybe Archangel is even better!”
It’s hard to imagine Archangel cornering the upper-middle menswear market. (Headline: “LVMH Luxury Ventures and Archangel’s Space Cowboys: a Match Made in Heaven?”) It’s also hard to imagine it becoming a star of Milan Fashion Week. But that’s exactly what Our Legacy is these days after making the rare move from Paris to Milan after the pandemic. “We wanted to try something new, and in Milano we have the advantage of being one of the first collections the buyers get to see, they come in with fresh eyes and good energy,” Hallin told me.
It’s not just buyers who come to see them. Despite the fact that it isn’t even on the official MFW calendar, Our Legacy has actually become one of the week’s main draws, evidenced by the brand’s Midsommar bash at hip local joint Pizza Stella, where New York-style pies and glasses of ice cold natural wine fueled hours of revelry on the packed street.
It was a dose of much needed energy. There are only a half-dozen or so significant runway shows on this season’s schedule, and I’ve been hearing the serious suggestion that Milan Fashion Week should merge with menswear trade show Pitti Uomo in order to turn things around for both events. This is not to say the men’s edition of MFW will go the way of London Fashion Week Men’s (RIP), but if it dries up any further it could lose a critical mass of editors and buyers. Already it feels like there are much fewer street style photographers this season—a canary in the clothing mine?
So Our Legacy’s presence in town feels all the more significant, even if it is slightly aloof from the wider scene—Nying and Hallin don’t even go to Emporio Armani, Our Legacy’s latest blockbuster collaborator. But as I browsed the showroom, admiring the incredibly creative fabric finishings that help set Our Legacy apart from other “accessible” menswear labels, I thought about what Nying and Hallin have in common with Milan’s big shots: the utter seriousness they bring to the craft. They just don’t take the rest of the fashion game too seriously.
Next to the hate mail tee was one emblazoned with another archangel graphic. Hallin stopped and sighed. “What could have been!” he said. “For a moment, it would have exploded. And then…”
“Pyjama Boys”: Sometimes the show title says it all. Dolce’s sleepwear-fest was frankly a riot, an army of hunks swaddled in crisp cotton PJs and the odd exotic coat marching down the catwalk to booming Beethoven. It was like a bunch of hot honk shoo guys calmly evacuating a house fire, and it reminded me that Italians do the best pajamas. (And that I need to pay a visit to Schostal next time I’m in Rome.) For the finale, the boys changed into their, uh, evening sleepwear, which was encrusted with mounds of flashy embroidery. Dolce is at its best when Stefano and Domenico embrace their extra-ness.
Paul Smith has been experimenting with more intimate runway show formats in recent seasons; last time out in Paris, the menswear icon got up in front of a small group of editors and told 20 minutes of stories as models filtered through the room. For his official Milan Fashion Week debut, a whole 55 years in the making, the soundtrack featured Smith’s musings on the Cairo street markets that inspired this season’s explosion of color and charm-y embellishments. More designers should voice-over their runway shows. (Just imagine Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana shouting The protagonist of the collection is the pyjama! over a Beethoven symphony.)
In the morning, we walked through the racks, which reminded me of another Show Notes maxim: if you get the chance to kick it with Sir Paul, do it. In between showing me where he’d replaced the buttons on a handsome springy wool double-breasted jacket with eye-catching souvenir trinkets, he let the legendary anecdotes rip: “I used to make trousers for Jimmy Page!” he exclaimed at one point. “I measured him, he had a 24-inch waist. And then at the hem the trousers were 28 inches!” Today, SPS’s sporty and springy trousers are on point for our times, the perfect companions to clean and colorful shirting and the odd mismatched jacket. “I think that the travel thing is such a cliche inspiration for many brands,” Smith said. I was glad to tell him personally that he pulled it off like the pro he is. Then it was back to the stories.
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