“As I delve further into the Tom Ford environment, my dance continues,” said Haider Ackermann. This happy metaphor for fashion’s creative direction was previously recorded, in a note accompanying the recently read photos of the resort menswear collection that was shown on the way to the company’s Milan showroom in June. Until now, Ackerman has been devoting much of his designer energy to glistening the runways of his mainline shows in Paris.
Yet without any direct movement, interaction, or context to frame it, this resort package developed some tempo. The most important element of this was the clash of commercial imperatives. This collection and its womenswear partner are slated to go on sale shortly after this review drops. Some coral highlights defined by color were developed around this beat. A red suede shirt worn over a lilac sweater, a blue suede blouson over a yellow silk shirt, some dashing pink sweater and sock interplay, and a gorgeous deep electric blue raincoat were all signs of Ackerman’s virtuoso palette play.
“My goal is to portray a mosaic of the masculine self,” the designer wrote, adding that his menswear is “driven by the great spirits that inhabit and bring my vision to life.” This spirit-aligned self was broken down into three broad categories. The austere cut had formal self-contained but strikingly contrived tailoring that seemed a little slimmer than Ford’s OG Zegna cut-block, the house’s archetypal semi-formal country-club archetypes in dedicated preppy staples, and cheerful Raoul Fleneurs in dresses or cheerfully off-the-wall hues. Writing in his collection notes, Ackerman pointed to “studied ease, impermanence, and recklessness,” as three closely related attributes he was working to embody in this appealing resort offering.
