Fashion designer Jonathan Saunders seems to have found the recipe for designing successful men’s fashion while most of his fellow colleagues have been trying for too many years and often too hard to realise its simplicity. The secret of Saunders’s menswear success relies on a straightforward formula that he put to good effect once again in his Spring/Summer 2014 collection that he unveiled on 16 June 2013 during London Collections: Men: traditional shapes of menswear that are deviated from their normality by a clever and stupendous command of colour and print.
Such approach was incorporated into the decor created for the venue chosen for the presentation. If the basement of the London Film Museum in the central Covent Garden neighbourhood of the British capital is normally dark and empty, Saunders brought it to life as a canvas for his garments by creating areas divided by bright colourful lights and industrial plastic strips hanging from floor to ceiling. In addition to being able to see the clothes and accessories on the models, viewers were also granted direct access to the clothes hanging on rails for a closer examination.
The collection included menswear staples such as single-breasted suits, shirts, T-shirts, cardigans, raincoats, blousons, trousers, shorts and an array of ties and bags in the most diverse combination of colours in monochromatic, striped and ombré effects, the occasional enlarged floral print and Saunders’s trademark circular designs. Overall, the collection made many realise that fashion, while stripped of ornament and complex patterns, can still be reinterpreted in very obvious and yet elegant forms. For that alone, Jonathan Saunders proved that there is a bright future for menswear and that his creative genius will undoubtedly be at its forefront.
