Let's Get Depressed

Fashion Week has come and gone, and it's looking "depressing." Mark Jacobs new line is loaded with bias-cut dresses evocative of '20's and '30's couture. The styles range from seemingly Orientalist-inspired fabrics and designs to this faux-dowdy Depression-era style worn by Jamie Bochert. Jacobs is all about little, round hats this year, very '30's. And, though his fabrics are all fabulous, there's a great deal to evoke the home-made clothes of the Depression both in the fabrics themselves and the design.

The New York Post recently ran photos of a leggy NYC fashonista in paper boy inspired regalia: baggy, high-waisted pants, a boyish, collared blouse, a tight-fitting vest, and a tweed ivy cap.





All-in-all, people are at least looking to the Depression for inspiration, if not totally flocking back to it. I've been attached to these styles for years. I keep one high-waisted, 3-piece suit that belonged to my grandfather to wear on occasion, and I regularly sport a tweed ivy cap. I'm quite happy to see the waistcoat make a big comeback, inspired, no doubt, by both the recession and the success of Mad Men.






William Rast (Justin Timberlake and Trace Ayala) made a fascinating debut. I've never been a big fan of Timberlake, but I like his clothing label. He and I are the same age and grew up in the same small town near Memphis, and I have vague memories of a young Trace Ayala, but the similarity probably ends there. They went west, and I went east.

As much as I don't like West Coast style sensibilities, William Rast does something very un-California and successfully invokes the barbeque-laden town where we all three grew up. The northern part of Shelby County (Memphis metro area) was quite rural when we were young, and it's laden with a "white-trash" element.
Back then there was a Naval Air Base that gave the town a low-down military feel and skanky character.
William Rast takes hold of that dirtiness and twists it into something brilliant. In the brown jacket and waistcoat (above-left), Johan Lindeberg (the designer) has really grasped something from the antiquated Southern style that I love so much. This stuff is part gentleman part trailer-trash, and it works so very, very well. In an interview at his President's Day show, JT referred to this stuff as stylistically part of what he called a "new leadership... new era... new culture... a new America." Like most things New and American, this draws on much older ideas, but unlike most things New and American, William Rast draws on those things most quintessentially American and Southern and elevates them.