Ernest W. Baker Spring 2025 Menswear Collection

The namesake in Ernest W. Baker, designer Reid Baker’s grandfather, recently passed away. He was 95. This collection by Baker and Inês Amorim was designed as an homage, and created with the intention of both untangling their grief while, perhaps inadvertently, charting a path forward. That is the unspoken effect of living life based on the fashion calendar. One is always one step ahead, living partly in the future by spending today working on someone else’s tomorrow. It forces even the most nostalgic and sentimental to look forward and keep going.

The Ernest W. Baker man is simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary. There is an old world charm to Baker and Amorim’s design aesthetic that is offset by their playful and eccentric execution: The menswear is almost ladylike in its sensibility with frilly fabrics and colorful leathers and brooches and ornaments in abundance. The pair started the label by playing with the idea of taking from Ernest W. Baker’s closet and reworking those garments. This season, said Baker at a showroom appointment, the idea was to build on those elements. The pinstripe took the spotlight, and was rendered in leather, embroidered with sequins, and knitted.

“I think that the loss slowed us down and gave us a bit of perspective,” said Baker, “it allowed us to explore elements of craft.” One of the most enticing parts of this label, after all, is its impeccable craftsmanship. Having established their HQ close to their factories in Portugal, Baker and Amorim are meticulous with construction and materials. They understand that a brand like theirs, one that draws so much from the past, has to find a way to be innovative in a way that makes sense for their aesthetic. The now recognizable slim, slightly rounded shoulder in their tailoring is one signature, but betting on custom fabrics places them on a different level. This season the highlight was a crochet set with hand-embroidered gold studs seen here in look 30. Closely following was a jacket made with a spectacular tweed they had tiny ribbons woven into.

Another hit here was the way they cut their shorts long and slim. This silhouette can go schoolboy uniform easily, but here they found the right proportions to make it cool. It’s not the easiest to wear, but still enticing, more so because in a men’s season that was all about cutting shorts as minuscule as possible, the pair decided to go the opposite way. This is an Ernest W. Baker signature they should make sure to keep building on.