Menswear - Ready-to-Wear Collections - Spring Summer - 2009

Unlike the plethora of excellent options available to Men of Style in the Autumn Winter 2009 Collections, Spring Summer is a virtual nightmare, lacking direction and quality in almost all of the collections. Designers appeared uninspired or worse substituting elements which simply do not belong on the male form. Infusing Menswear with traditionally Womenswear details will not cause a mad-dash by men to the shops. Pseudo-bustiers, strapless shirts (or is that, in fact, a woman's blouse, for men? ALEXANDER MCQUEEN), color-blocking (JIL SANDER), and the tedious continued advancement of the "manskirt" (PRADA) do not look good on a man, period. Most horrible of all was GIORGIO ARMANI with his dreadful "King and I" shorts, which look good on no one, man nor woman, regardless of the season. Mr. Armani offered such misses not once, but twice. In his EMPORIO ARMANI Spring Summer 2009 Collection he revisited the Women's theme, by offering a re-interpretation of 19th century Women's bloomers, for Men! I would like to view Mr. Armani himself wearing such ridiculous attire, before attempting to encourage great numbers of Men doing so. Men, generally don't wish to wear ruffles on anything but a tuxedo shirt and even then would choose and prefer another option.

I am afraid my list of "The Best" of the Menswear Ready-to-Wear Spring Summer 2009 Collections will be short, while The Worst, will be considerably longer.

Alexander McQueen (3)





Jil Sander

Prada and the Manskirt (5)



Giorgio Armani's "King and I" shorts.




The Best

Ermenegildo Zegna

Salvatore Ferragamo



Giorgio Armani – Without the “King and I” Shorts.




Louis Vuitton

Not normally an admirer of Marc Jacobs in the least, but this Collection for the most part was quite good for him.





John Varvatos



Kilgour




The Worst


Jil Sander



Prada

Clearly, she was designing for Women, and forgot.



Emporio Armani

A few good pieces, and I mean, a few. Overall, a hodge-podge of designs which should have remained on paper, especially, the "Bloomers" for Men.



Roberto Cavalli

Take out insurance for all the tumbles you will be taking in those pants!



Dolce & Gabbana

A few good pieces, but overall, a huge miss. Invest instead in their Autumn Winter 2009 Collection.

Their website is currently one of the best and may be found here:

http://www.dolcegabbana.com/



Bottega Veneta



Calvin Klein

A few good pieces, but overall, no thanks.

A couple of suits for Google Earth?

Dries Van Noten

Some good ideas, but those ghastly prints.



Gucci

Labored over this one, for a bit. A few excellent suits; some good pants, and good color palette, but forget the rest.



Versace

Boring with a noticeable lack of quality.