“There is something about the wrongness of the thing that I like,” said Hed Mayner.
Showing for the first time at Pitti Uomo this season, the Paris-based 39-year-old interrogated preconceived ideas of tailoring. “When we talk about the made-to-measure approach to tailoring, the body is seen in a very specific way, with this kind of sharpness,” he said during a preview. “But there’s not just one way of seeing the body, so we work a lot [exploring] different shapes. It’s something that I feel we should do with clothes; it’s about the form, the essence of the thing.”
With all the besuited peacocks milling about, that statement took on a revolutionary quality. It makes sense for him to show here in Florence: as the fair itself is trying to evolve beyond the old-fashioned constraints of the suit, Mayner is attempting to break away from the constraints of the body.
To do so he flipped the heads of jacket sleeves backwards so as to angle the arms into a forward shrug. These bold, cocooning silhouettes gave a sense of power to the wearer in the same way a suit might, but this was a new kind of bodily discourse. instead of following the lines of the human form, this was more about subverting, exaggerating, and warping. The danger of this approach is that it begets clothes that wear the wearer, but Mayner is able to temper this for the most part with clever pattern work that creates fluid movement, not easily captured in the stasis of a photograph.
Particularly exciting this time were the fabrics: heritage patterns like tartan and houndstooth were juxtaposed with space-age silver foils, upholstery-like pleated suede, sparkling silver sequins, and sciura-worthy faux fur. There were crushed velvet halter-neck dresses, layer-cake pleated capes, and bonded mohair sweaters, accompanied by Reebok boxing sneakers chosen for their distinctly tight silhouette. Each piece seemed to play a role in how it refracted the light or moved with the body; an orchestra of seemingly disparate parts that played well together nonetheless.
Overall it read as a collection of chaotic contrasts that focused into a single mission of breaking the mold. So how does one hold themselves when wearing Hed Mayner? With conviction, confidence, and a little bit of wrongness, of course.
