WORD.

LONDON FASHION WEEK S/S2011 – JAMES LONG

Endowed with the foreboding title 'They Died Too Young', James Long - inspired by the desolate, tumbleweed landscapes and drifting, unstable protagonists of Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idado - presented a barrage of rebellious River Phoenix characters. Flawed and free-spirited, egotistic yet anxious, a clash of print, pattern and material at once articulated and reconciled the conflicting emotions of youth.

Addressing both the workwear and painterly conceits that continue to pervade menswear, bleeding blots and swirling pools of lilac, blush pink and azure spill across cuffed shorts, slender trousers, shirting and sleeveless jackets, an initial spate of all over styling soon making way for aforementioned patch work - achieved not in individual garments but through a combination of singular, separate pieces. From space-dyed knits across twin-sets and oversized cardigans to loose, Seditionaries yarns and James' perennial, undulating, iridescent threads in near-coral, sullied knitwear provided couched comfort whilst informing the collection's damaged aesthetic.

Offering neutral respite, desert dried denim in the palest of Alice blues came deployed across familiar, resilient shapes - a short boiler suit with exposed zip, cuffed shorts, a half placket tunic and a sleeveless jacket - whilst the introduction of cow pelt in liquorice and tobacco tones and a dark, bordering on Gothic look worn by Cole Mohr (leather shorts and a knitted twinset in insidious violet and blood red) embodied a tussle between external and the internal.

Posted by Luke Raymond