Photography by Carlota Manaigo

“Jean-Paul Belmondo; riding a Vespa; sitting in cafes; smoking a cigarette and checking out girls with your buddies…” — just a few touchstones of Paris in the 1960s, Robert Geller says, which inspired the debut collection of his new men’s line. “What I liked about that time,” Geller explains, “was the masculinity. They didn’t watch every word they said. But they also had a sensitive side.” In Robert Geller Collection, one of the most anticipated and watched launches this fall, that translates into mid-length leather jackets, wide-legged trousers, short-brimmed Ecuador hats, skinny suspenders, and cotton voile shirts, all on lean but muscular young men who, like Belmondo in Breathless, are slightly unformed creatures, not yet certain to turn out good or bad.
     “They could have this vulgarness [sic], this roughness, but also be in touch with a vulnerable, feminine side,” Geller says. “It’s the kind of masculinity I like. Today, that’s coming back. People are open to a more diverse image of masculinity again. Guys want toughness with a touch of elegance. That’s something girls like to see in a man.”
     Geller knows a bit about men’s wear and what women like to see. After training at Marc Jacobs, he joined Alexandre Plokhov at Cloak in 2002 and helped revamp the line, earning the duo the Ecco Domani prize in 2003 and a Vogue/CFDA grant in 2004.