Mike Amiri has the red carpet on his mind. Not as a showcase for his designs, of course: it was the inspiration for his fall collection.
“Looking at the arrivals at the Los Angeles theaters [is] literally where I grew up,” said the Los Angeles designer before the show. “You were there and you saw how people would dress and how young stars would actually dress. And they would put it together in their own way.”
In his view, that cusp of adulthood (imagine a young Leonardo DiCaprio halfway between a teenage heartthrob and “a master of his own craft,” Amiri said) felt congruent with today's men's fashion scene.
“People are putting their own spin on it and making formal informal in a way,” he continued.
To translate that journey of feeling and reaffirming one's own identity, he once again sought the intersection between the post-war optimism of the 1950s with the volumes and relaxed attitude of the 1990s.
From the pink velvet-covered background emerged tuxedos paired with baggy pants, retro-looking leather jackets that enhanced a grandfather's cardigan, casual suits with an open shirt and T-shirt, a suit adorned with a print that resembled shiny sequins photographed.
It was also the debut of the Amiri monogram, written large on coats or painstakingly forming a jacquard pattern.
Youthful indifference was based on proportions that did not fit too closely to the body and were combined with shorts in the bust, long and tight in the legs.
Loungewear and Old Hollywood glamor added shawl collars, tuxedo scarves and fluid textures.
That elegance seemed artfully thrifted, particularly when paired with brooches and other found trinkets. Elsewhere, knits looked perfectly shrunken, while double-washed silks were roughed up but retained “enough shine and structure to look expensive,” he added.
Fake it until you make it then?
“The question for me is 'how do you make that dream come true?' How do you make that 'something' that is desirable? Amiri reflected. His appealing and relatable fall collection made those questions seem rhetorical.
