David Hart Fall 2015

New York Men’s Fashion Day (NYMFD) by Cadillac is doing its job.  And David Hart is a prime example of the NYMFD accomplishing what it set out to do.

Before NYMFD, David Hart was not on the radar of a significant number of menswear fashion editors. From launching his career designing luxury bowties and scarves to launching his ready-to-wear collection in 2013, until NYMFD Hart had not quite made editors stand up and notice. This season Hart not only caught the eyes of fashion editors and journalists, his fall 2015 collection demonstrated that Hart’s aesthetic goes beyond an American sportswear compilation of well-tailored jackets in bold colors.

Looking to the American Southwest, incorporating Native American tribal patterns, and the spaghetti Westerns of the late 1960s, David Hart was able to meld these points of reference into a singular perspective that was modern and thought provoking, causing one to see tribal patterns of the American Southwest in a new and modern way.

There is really nothing new under the sun; however, David Hart’s marriage of Native tribal patterns and the sometimes-campy style of 1960s spaghetti Western will cause male consumers to find a new masculine sexuality in these looks. And David Hart did not abandon his predilection for color in this outing. His blue sapphire suit and rust orange tailored jacket paired with the blue sapphire pant was dead on.

Standouts in this fall 2015 collection were Hart’s Native American tribal-patterned coat with fur collar, red jacket with tribal patterned-embellishments, and black silk tuxedo jacket with black wooly chaps. Still, there were some garments that will not make it into the retail racks—wooly chaps—but that is OK. A little bit of wacky drama works in most fashion shows. In fact, Jeremy Scott has made camp his raison d’etre, and has built a fashion empire around that aesthetic!! Kudos David Hart.

—William S. Gooch