Beau Homme is a new men’s fashion brand founded in October 2011 by young graduates George Bunker and Justin Mansfield with the intention to enliven traditional menswear standards by exploring the genre’s architectural dimensions. To this end, the designers work the structure of the garments by shifting seam lines, folding the interiors of garments over and outwards in alluring angles, and adding novel and unexpected details such as stitching or piping.
For Beau Homme’s inaugural collection for Autumn/Winter 2012, Bunker and Mansfield were inspired by the mechanical age, and by how early twentieth century art movements (such as Futurism and Vorticim) appropriated machine imagery into artistic thought processes and creative outputs. Influenced by this approach to machine and creation, Beau Homme proposes a scenario where the modern digital revolution is evident in innovative pattern cutting techniques that convey the notion of physical speed and the clothing’s freedom from material and historical constraints.
When Bunker and Mansfield met in the workrooms of the London College of Fashion during their first year, they realised that they shared the same vision for integrating disparate artistic influences into a cohesive form. Bunker’s prior background includes studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a degree from New York’s School of the Visual Arts, as well as several years managing an art galley in New York. Mansfield pursued his undergraduate studies at London’s Central St Martins College of Art and Design, where he specialized in Graphic Art and Design.
