We first wrote about Robert Geller Collection when it launched in fall 2007. Since then, Geller has gone on to become one of the most watched American Menswear designers. At the time that we about wrote him, he was drawing inspiration from the French New Wave, specifically Godard’s Breathless. As Geller explained to PLANET then, he wanted to portray a sense of masculinity that was free, playful, and hadn’t been hemmed in. Yet he also wanted to show a vulnerability, which, after all, exists in any real man at any age. In his clothes and in his models, Geller was unabashedly drawn to youth — proto-males that were still evolving, or, as I wrote then, “slightly unformed creatures who were not yet certain to turn out good or bad.”
     In his Spring/Summer 2010 collection, presented Saturday at Exit Art in New York City, Geller is still looking to the past for inspiration, but once again as a way of reconstructing the present. As we work through our own economic midnight, Geller says he focused on the German 1950s for his collection’s theme — not that men dressed like this then, but rather, he would have liked them to. It was a time when Germany was picking itself up after the devastation of the war and, through the economic miracle known as Wirtschaftswunder, began emerging from that haunted past. The bold use of color, more pronounced than in previous Geller collections, is a symbol of the renewal of spring and its potential for redemption.

Photography courtesy of Esquivel Shoes

The story of Esquivel shoes is like the American Dream come true. George Esquivel pulled himself up from difficult circumstances and became a success thanks to his hard work, faith, and an independent spirit. Learning the trade from retired master cobbler Emigdio Canales, he went on to open his own workshop and store in Southern California and now makes both ready-to-wear and custom shoes and boots for men. Not an antiquated notion that died with the Industrial Revolution, shoes made by hand can be sculptures for the feet that age well, both in terms of style and materials. And they don’t need to cost $3,000 a pair. With prices comparable to other ready-to-wear designer brands, Esquivel’s designs are classic with creative details, such as hand-varnished brogues and work boots with avant-garde details.

Menswear from Izzy Lane's 2009 Ethical Fashion

Seven-plus days of champagne-soaked, Swarovski-studded Fashion Week opulence can leave your average “green” enthusiast feeling unconscionably wasteful. The daily arrival of extravagant fashion invitations printed on rubber or dusted in 14k gold can make the most cynical of eco-skeptics wonder: “what is the carbon footprint of chic?”
     Happily, a heroic few among the fashionable set have made going green a style priority for Spring/Summer 2010.  Located at Soho’s fittingly titled King of Green Street boutique, the GreenShows will host presentations by earth-friendly, fair-trade labels including Bodkin, Bahar Shahpar, Izzy Lane, Lara Miller, Mr. Larkin, and House of Organic over the course of two days.  Of course, runway beauty will be suitably “eco”, with John Masters Organics providing all hair-styling services. In addition, a kickoff party on opening night will aim to raise awareness about the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)—an organization that attempts to educate fashion and luxury brands who use custom paper packaging about the dangerous environmental side effects that come from farming tree pulp in tropical rainforests.

Simon-Pierre Toussaint took not one but two prizes at the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival this past spring for his menswear collection, “The trees can hear you if you talk to them”. Boy scouts and the male adolescent experience are points of reference for his work, an imaginative spin on practical outdoor wear. It was the twenty-fourth year for the festival at Hyères, which is held at the early modernist villa Noailles in the south of France and focuses on emerging fashion designers and photographers. This year’s fashion jury included artist Nan Goldin and Jefferson Hack, founder of Dazed and Confused, among others.
     Toussaint, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp last year, says that the boy scouts and simple childhood pastimes like playing with wooden knights are what inspired his collection. Like boyhood camping and acting out Medieval battles, his designs are playful but not whimsical. They are inventive, dreamy solutions for surviving outdoors. Take for example his ankle-length parka, pieced together from sleeping bags and lined with nighttime constellations; this huge cape parka is shown over white long johns that look old-school backwoods, except for the stark geometric designs that wrap suggestively around the hips.

No contemporary clothing brand — with the obvious exception of Maison Martin Margiela — is cloaked in quite so much mystery as the Deth Killers of Bushwick. Eight years ago, the Brooklyn-based atelier made its debut as “Inner City Raiders vs. Deth Killers”, purportedly named after the centuries-old violence raging between two of the borough’s most notorious gangs. According to legend (available in its entirety on DethKillers.com), the gang leaders, exhausted after years of unremitting battle, drew up a peace treaty stipulating not only the end of their bloody turf war, but the creation of a fashion company. The mega-brand they summoned “would combine and capitalize on the clubs’ exquisite and deadly senses of style. Styles of dress so sexy, they were known to lure Mamasitas, Hoochie Mamas, and Rock Goddesses from all five boroughs.” And it was so.
     The Deth Killers spent three glorious years on the periphery of mainstream fashion — outfitting David Bowie in tight jeans and punk rock jackets for his 2003 “Reality Tour” — only to disappear altogether a year later. The circumstances surrounding the brand’s dissolution remain unclear: “If you happen to be wondering where the Deth Killers have been for the last few years, it’s a long story,” states their new website. “You might want to go to the bathroom now, because it’s very long and very boring.”

Photography by Peter Gehrke

For Stockholm-based designer Sandra Backlund, the opportunity to work with Italian luxury knitwear producer Maglificio Miles signified as much of an end as it did a beginning. Until now, Backlund has been doing everything herself, producing mind-bogglingly meticulous sculptural fantasies entirely by hand and on a made-to-order basis. In 2007, her distinctive “three-dimensional collage” knitting style made her the grand prix winner of Festival International de Mode et De Photographie in Hyeres, France. Her support network at the White Club, a non-profit organization in Milan that connects talented young designers with established fashion industry professionals, offered Backlund’s portfolio to Miles, who wisely approached her for a collaborative “production test”.
     The fruits of their labor, the Control-C Collection for F/W 09-10, offers a decidedly more severe vision than Backlund’s past collections, which tended toward charmingly oddball. Composed of five machine-knit and four handmade pieces, the collection proves that Backlund’s bizarre, gravity-defying aesthetic is realizable via machine — and, therefore, mass produceable. The handmade aspect, however, will always be an integral part of Backlund’s design process.

Fashion, Jewelry and Shoes by Julie Eilenberger. Photography by Yves Borgwardt. Model. Kati from Seeds

A student at Universität der Künste, Julie Eilenberger debuted her designs in early July in her school’s presentation at Berlin Fashion Week. My Inner and Outer Space, a take on astronomic inspiration, combines structure with the ethereal.  Eilenberger, who is 24, says of the collection, “I wanted something dark and unnatural yet elegant…the outfits are somewhat futuristic but with a feeling of history.” 
     Indeed, the Space collection exhibits multiple contrasts: the intricacy of tiny eyelets and veils of asymmetric black Swarovski crystals against simple chiffon and jersey; flowing drapery elevated by exaggerated shoulders sculpted from hand-cut foam.
     The Danish-born Eilenberger lives the role of artist-as-observer, processing influences and letting her pieces develop on their own. She says she doesn’t, by nature, engineer her creativity: “I’m just giving it way and am always surprised by the outcome, as if it’s not mine.” Appropriately, Eilenberger rarely designs with herself in mind. Instead she draws from art or a mood, or she fleshes out and dresses a fictional woman. The muse she cast for her first collection is “strong and ready to take off for space…to protect Earth,” she says. She also looked to classic science fiction films, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, and Logan’s Run for inspiration. The future might as well be fashionable.