Body’s freshest drop is coming on your autumn fashion (and your soul)
Erik Torstensson doesn’t need you to purchase extra of his stuff. “I would like you to slowly exchange your wardrobe with my stuff and for you to have the ability to maintain it for longer,” he says with a smile. That’s the massive thought behind Body’s imminent menswear relaunch, the model of which he’s each founder and inventive director. “This new imaginative and prescient for us is all about kind, match and performance – and about creating items that actual males will need to put on.”
Torstensson is a style trade polymath. For starters, he’s one in all Enterprise Of Vogue’s 500 most influential professionals on this planet. He additionally cofounded Wednesday Company Group, Man About City journal and is the person who launched Mr Porter with Natalie Massenet. All this earlier than he modified tack to discovered Body in 2012. “For a few years, menswear was just like the forgotten stepchild,” Torstensson says playfully. “Our womenswear took off and was very profitable on plenty of completely different ranges, so our males’s was all the time on the again burner.”
In the event you’re aware of the model, this will likely come as a shock. Over the previous 9 years, Body has established itself as a go-to supply of elevated wardrobe staples for each women and men, stocked by the likes of Mr Porter and Matches Vogue. Even so, Torstensson is decided to lift its recreation. “I made a decision final 12 months that if I used to be going to place my identify to it, Body’s menswear needed to be based mostly on what I imagine in: dressing a person’s character slightly than following style.”
To understand this new course, in the course of the first UK lockdown Torstensson pulled collectively a “menswear swat workforce” who had been tasked with designing what a contemporary man’s “wearable” wardrobe may appear to be. Body’s new CEO, Nicolas Dreyfus (previously world CEO of The Kooples), additionally introduced a wealth of expertise to the desk. “My technique was to work with the workforce to suggest a brand new system of dressing,” Torstensson continues. “I wished a blueprint for males of all ages to have the ability to put one thing collectively.”
This blueprint underpins Body’s new Fall 2021 assortment, which options three tight sub-collections. The primary is “Trendy Classics”: “True staples which are maybe simply ten or 15 per cent extra directional than you may discover elsewhere, just like the tailor-made overcoat or cashmere sweater you fall in love with and maintain for 20 years.”
Then comes “Good Consolation”, Body’s response to the “casualisation” of menswear that’s been accelerated by pandemic life; standout items embrace technical padded blazers, nylon gilets and tapered drawstring trousers with discreet cargo pockets. These two ranges are anchored by the third assortment, “Denim”, comprising refined variations of these long-standing designs the model has constructed its identify on – truckers, denims and cords – lots of which use the identical high-performing traits seen in Trendy Classics and Good Consolation. “We’ve acquired antimicrobial and biodegradable denim operating by means of the gathering,” Torstensson says. Different items function stretch materials, breathable fabrications and the model is experimenting with waterless denim for 2022 too.
On the coronary heart of all of this, nonetheless, lies an emphasis on sluggish style – these are items designed to final for a few years. It’s one thing Torstensson thinks different designers ought to embrace too, particularly in a world the place, post-Covid-19, we’ve all had time for reflection. “It’s extra necessary than ever so that you can have a long-term view,” he says. “Social media, quick-turnaround manufacturing and throwaway developments create monumental stress for style manufacturers, however it may possibly take 50 years to construct an organization or flip one round. I believe it’s very wholesome for manufacturers to recollect this, particularly in right now’s panorama.”
The Body menswear assortment drops right now, Thursday 9 September, on frame-store.com
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