Hardy Amies’s Modern Take on Military for Fall
“A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and then forgotten all about them.”
- Hardy Amies, 1964
It’s a good quote… I try to abide by it, and am relatively successful. Hardy Amies said that in the 1960s, a decade of great generational divide. The youth movement was questioning just about everything created by the generation before it, including Western politics, the Vietnam War, its resulting draft lottery, as well as the music, style and cultural norms of the times. Also stating, “I am not sure that the young man today does not know more than his elders,” Amies understood that the future lay in the strong hands of youth, yet also recognized that some things, namely a man’s desire for casual expression, was universal and timeless. Serving as “a bridge between youth and maturity,” Amies and the Savile Row house he founded forged a common ground of heritage and future that still holds up today.
For Fall 2014, Hardy Amies (the brand) draws from the 1940s, when Hardy Amies (the man) was a covert operative for the Allied Forces. Telling a story of the military officer’s reentry to life in London, the collection mixes WWII references (like rugged bomber jackets, cargo pockets and chunky turtleneck sweaters) with tartan suits, double-breasted jackets, hunting vests, Mac coats and a midnight blue tux. What I really like though is that design director Mehmet Ali recognized that guys today are mixing and matching formal pieces with jeans, so he cut the jackets slim and kept them cropped, even the double-breasted one. Also, men are more into layering for the sake of style. The reversible field coat offers a retro melange yarn side as well as a smooth sport-performance side. With eyes surely set on the US menswear market, the UK brand offered the collection in a manly palette of chocolate, granite, cream, navy and rust.
