"It's what I want to wear", stated Scottish designer Jonathan Saunders of his first standalone menswear presentation in Milan. That's always his party line, but it's a good way to underscore just how personal the collection is to him. The way he stitches together a web of curious influences, for instance. The furniture designs of Le Corbusier's associate Charlotte Perriand inspired the textures; the colors Jonathan Saunders came across in an issue of French Vogue guest-edited by David Hockney in 1985 provided a vintage palette. There was a quilted jacket (a traditional style called the Husky) that he'd seen in a photo of gentleman farmer George Harrison, and a latticed shirt print he'd adapted from an old book of knitting patterns. That all sounds like it was fun to put together. Even better, it actually cohered into a collection. Jonathan Saunders used almost retro fabrics and mélanges, and his silhouette was nostalgic, too : lean pants, four-buttoned jacket with a high break. The modernity and the bonding agent for all the disparate bits were the Hockney colors—bright, spring-y tones of poppy red, sky blue, and acid green on one hand, and off shades of brown, ocher, and calamine lotion pink on the other. A great upbeat collection.
