This season sees the death of the dandy as designers look to the 80s for a scruffier, more rugged silhouette
Winter soup palette
Why should spring/summer have all the fun with colour? The autumn collections at LCM have included a rainbow of brights – from primary shades at JW Anderson and psychedelic swirls at Craig Green to forest green and tomato red at Christopher Kane. It was Richard Nicoll who provided the best palette though. The winter soup shades of beetroot purple, pumpkin orange and lentil green appeared over knitwear, shirting and Nicoll's now-signature bombers. Wholesome and hearty, just like that soup, these shades also look zingy when applied to clothes. Just the thing to crawl into on a cold dark winter morning then.
Withnail & I coats
The superlong coat – trademarked by Richard E Grant's Withnail and recently stolen by Sherlock – is a big deal next winter. Designers showing under the MAN umbrella went for ankle-length with gusto. Alan Taylor's off-white overcoats came with lurex thread and Craig Green's super-lengths recalled paint-spattered artists' canvasses. Topman's ankle-length coats were applauded by Moriarty himself (actor Andrew Scott was seated front row), which completed the Sherlock-chic circle. Kind of. The question is whether puddle-dipping coat hemlines will catch on beyond Baker Street and late 60s Camden.
Auf Wiedersehen Pet
Suave, posh-boy pinups – Beau Brummell, James Bond– have had their day. Menswear has gone proletarian this season. The heavy, roughly drawn silhouettes of the Auf Wiedersehen Pet Geordies, with their donkey jackets, their broad collars and shapeless 1980s jeans, are now a more relevant fashion reference than dandyism or Savile Row tailoring. The colours on the catwalks – browns, greys, muddy blues and flashes of safety yellow or garish orange – are straight from the builder's yard. Topman's creative director, Gordon Richardson talked about northern dockyards, and about the clothes men wear for practicality rather than fashion, as key for the season. Next autumn, men's jackets are either 1980s bumfreezer-cropped versions, boxy peacoats, or ruggedly oversized and long. The hipbone-length jacket, a silhouette that references suit tailoring, is looking dangerously sissy.
Awkward English boy
Gangly, lanky and probably straight off the back of a growth spurt, the models on JW Anderson had a charming awkwardness. He even namechecked the "awkward English boy" as a muse after the show. His take on the AEB came wearing platform loafers and carrying a bucket bag but others are more the shrinking violet type. Take the schoolboy version in shirt and tie at Margaret Howell and anguished-and-80s in oatmeal tweed at Alan Taylor. The message? Forget cool. Awkwardness is in next season. Wear with pride.
Eighties indie pop
Sure, 90s R&B is still enjoying catwalk airplay but there's been a noticable take-up of an earlier sound too – the type that would have been front cover of the NME in 1984. Alan Taylor based his collection on Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads film of the same year, while the finale of Topman Design's show had Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, also from 1984. Add another Talking Heads reference – Road To Nowhere on the soundtrack at Margaret Howell – and the big hair and oversized tailoring of Messrs McCulloch and Byrne are looking very next season.
Adam
Christopher Kane talked about Adam – as in Adam and Eve – in connection with the themes of molecular structure and creation he has been exploring in his collections over the past few seasons. But Adam is also important, he says, because he represents "ultimate masculinity". As Kane's menswear empire expands – by the time this collection hits stores, there will be a Christopher Kane flagship store on Mount Street to fill – he is deliberately making the clothes increasingly masculine, "because that's what boys want". The forest green sweats were part Garden of Eden, part army camp. The snakeskin – a house-of-Kane code since the early days – amped up the phallic imagery. Adam – ultimate icon of unreconstructed, ungroomed masculinity – is very much a new entry among menswear iconography. Think: what would Adam have worn, if he wore anything?
John Cooper Clarke
To paraphrase the punk poet's latest work composed for the Topman show: "He's a style icon, Jim, but not as we know it." That is to say JCC is a reference in menswear, though not necessarily his pin-thin jeans, sunglasses and giant hair, which would look ridiculous on 99.9% of the male population. The Cooper Clarke vibe– Salford drizzly skies and flat-vowelled grace – is set to infuse the menswear mood. What clothes will that result in? Late 80s utilitarian dockyard stuff of course (see Auf Wiedershen Pet).
Brokeback Mountain
Keeping it real is very next season. Lou Dalton took as her muse the farmhands she remembers from her youth. Corduroy was jumbo and utilitarian olive, denim was acid-washed and bleached, and zip-up, fleece-styled jackets were worn as a layer for warmth under other jackets. The silhouette was an echo of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, with their bulky clothes and workwear-store belts. Dalton said she wanted her coats to look as if they had been "grabbed off the back of a chair". The look is a romanticisation of anti-fashion, nostalgia for menswear pre-metrosexuality. It is also deeply practical: winter clothing designed to work with the elements, not the mirror.