Mountain Men At Michael Kors

Michael Kors loves those tawny-maned 1970’s supes like Lisa Taylor and Patti Hansen. It was an Arthur Elgort image of Taylor in a convertible that he had in mind when he designed his new womenswear. But who would be the man she was with? Kors was momentarily stumped. Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds incongruously came to mind. I suggested Joe McDonald, arm candy for a lot of those American girls in the bad old days. Yes, yes, Kors cried. He’d certainly come up with the right clothes for the granite-jawed, super-sporty paragon of American manhood that McDonald was until his fatal descent into the maelstrom that swallowed up a lot of late-seventies party people. (He was essentially the male Gia.) Mixing military and mountain influences, Kors offered a men’s collection that looked like something an exceptionally well-dressed ski patrol might have worn in the Swiss Alps during the 1930’s. Pants were tucked into chunky legwarmers, arms were similarly covered, heads were wrapped with huge cashmere mufflers. From the first piece (a huge parka with a fur-lined hood) to the third-to-last (a cargo-pocketed jacket in a distressed metallic leather), the clothes had a confident gutsiness that was all the better for seeming so casual. And when I say third-to-last, I mean the last two outfits were crinkled camel coats over black cashmere sweaters, both of them hinting at the seventies loucheness that would have seen Joe McDonald inhaling poppers on the dance floor at Studio 54 while “Native New Yorker” blared. Sure enough, Michel Gaubert played that track for the Kors finale.
For complete coverage of Fall 2010 menswear, visit www.gq.com/fashion.