The fall / winter season was a strange one. The looks were bewildering. Shaggy floor-length fur coats, maintenance-type boiler suits and jumpsuits, and a collection by an iconic Italian label seemingly inspired by a mountain-dwelling Mongolian tribe - you'd have been hard pressed to find them being worn even by the men of fashion-conscious Milan or Paris. Still, fashion's outlandish ways have always been easily explained by the sentiment that fashion is never meant to be rational, but rather, inspirational and with winter generally having a dark, mysterious air about it, there was always room to go over the top.
Summer on the other hand has always been more practical. And, with global markets in the midst of a credit crunch, scaled-back, safe and saleable were words floating about among fashion insiders where they considered what the coming spring / summer wardrobe might hold. When it came to menswear, they could not have been more wrong.