April 23, 2009
It’s firmed up. Shipley & Halmos are my favorite american menswear designers right now. The old world aesthetic and nod to the quality and craftsmanship of yesteryear has a nice charm (though the bad news is that most of their threads are made in China…not too classy). The fabrics they use look and even *feel* classic. More importantly, the cut of their men’s clothing is superb, especially for the tall lean gent.
S&H was started last year by Sam Shipley and Jeff Halmos, college friends who met in Boulder, Colorado. In 2002, they helped start up Trovata, the award-winning, much-talked-about line that brought together the East Coast prep and West Coast laid back beach look with crazy stripes and mismatched buttons. Soon after the explosion of success though, the two left the California-based company and moved to New York (yay!), starting anew and showing their women’s collection for the first time last February at NYC’s Fashion Week. The general reaction was…yay!
Now in their second year, the company seems to have their aesthetic pretty firmly established and I’m a huge fan. Though their recent showing got some mixed reviews (from refined charm to futuristic turtlenecks?…hmm), what they have on the rack now seems to keep with their old school, East Coast chic. Highly recommended.
You can check them out at both Refinery 29 and Bird, though Bird has much more in-store than on their site. And, for womenswear, be sure to take a look at the new Designers Invitation Project they did with Uniqlo, just unveiled last week.
Oh, and they have a crazy, weirdly interactive site that, in a really cool way, makes absolutely no sense to me.
