Our Legacy’s influence on menswear is such that editors, speaking in shorthand, describe some emerging brands as trying to be the next OL. Essentially they are talking about the legacy of Our Legacy—legacy2?—which includes an anti-fashion stance that embraces grunge, moto, and military influences and lends a sense of timelessness to the pieces. There’s also a muted color palette and, since the introduction of women’s, a two-way kind of androgyny. In short, effortlessness (fashion’s holy grail) imbued with cool. Some of these elements can be replicated but the power of the “Our” in the brand name cannot be overlooked. This independent label was founded by three tight-knit friends, and, in his quiet and confident way, creative director Cristopher Nying takes his own experiences and abstracts them in such a way that they are at once personal and universal.
This season the abstraction was physically manifest in the lookbook in which models were photographed behind glass, at a remove, with reflections sometimes adding texture to the images. This could be read as a metaphor for modern life in a digital age, where content is consumed through a glass screen, but Nying had something different in mind.
The collection’s starting point was Greek fishing villages, and photos of DIY cloth-wrapped motors taken there by Nying’s friend Hank Grüner. Beach detritus, such as grape vines, bottle caps, shell fragments, rope, and fishing lures were upcycled or cast into jewelry. Fishing nets inspired a knotted tank, and the shapes of sails made their way into wrapped skirts. Technical gear for marine life was another influence, most dramatically in a life vest-like gilet that swelled out into a peplum.
Nying achieved a “wet look” in various intriguing ways. Airy crinkled sweaters were made of a mix of silk and metal threads, and a cropped white nylon jacket was washed and shrunken to create a clinging effect. There was a requisite marinière stripe created through shadow-like transparencies on a think knit. The classic sailor shirt with the flap collar was edited into a loose-fit, high-buttoning blazer with a “falling collar.” Building on the Mediterranean theme, a few of the women’s looks followed the curvy “bella figura” silhouette, but deconstructed the OL way. Ingeniously, a filmy, tied-at-the-waist skirt was is essentially an oversize T-shirt and could be worn as one. Similarly, a must-have robe coat could be worn inside-out.
Nying’s imaginary fishing village is, apparently, sun-scorched as the models had artificial sun-burns. Their wet-looks could represent sweat as easily as ocean water; in fact, the glass suggested the former. The intention, Nying said, was to create the feeling of being “inside a bubble or inside a terminal. I wanted to leave it a bit open; it could be that you come inside from a very hot, dreamy place, but I still wanted it to feel like you missed the plane to this dream place and are standing in a terminal in an airport or something.” There was something dreamy about the whole scenario that verged on the surreal. This aspect of the spring lineup was captured in two surprising accessories. Referencing Donald Duck’s fishing misadventures where the catch is not a fish but an old shoe, there was a “collapsing consultant” shoe that looked like a Tom Rath-style business shoe, that could be worn as a slip on. The collection’s sunken treasure was a faceless silver watch. Breaking with Dalí, Nying’s timepiece wasn’t melting: instead time was suspended and gratification delayed—at least until this catch of a collection lands in stores.
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