Bomber Jacket Minimalism
Brandlessness, Buzz Rickson, the new Prada, and Kenzo
Cayce Pollard is allergic to brands. The Michelin man makes her nauseous, Times square repulses her, and anything featuring the words Tommy Hilfiger seems a toxic substance. “Don’t they know?“ she asks, “This stuff is simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers.“ The clothes Cayce wears are described as “anonymous“, she wears G-shock clones and blank Fruit of the Loom tee shirts. Her exception, the one branded item she owns is a Buzz Rickson’s MA-1 jacket. I’ll let Cayce explain Rickson’s:
[It] is a fanatical museum-grade replica of a U.S. MA-1 flight jacket, as purely functional and iconic as the garment a previous century produced… Cayce knows, for instance, that the characteristically wrinkled seams down either arm were originally the result of sewing with pre-war industrial machines that rebelled against the slippery new material, nylon. The makers of Rickson’s have exaggerated this, but only very slightly, and done a hundred other things, tiny things, as well, so that their product has become… the result of an act of worship. It is an imitation more real somehow than that which it emulates
Cayce is a character in William Gibson’s fantastic novel Pattern Recognition, a cold globalist fantasy of art, subculture, and industry in the 21st century, though Buzz Rickson’s is very real. They are, as Gibson/Cayce reveal, deeply affective and interior objects - innocuous yet personal. The focus on military garments only heightens this experiment - it is the timelessness of these garments, their functionality, their durability, and their simplicity that makes them more than a reproduction. Yet Rickson’s is unified as a brand, an identity, and a concept, yet that brand is a kind of brandlessness. A Rickson’s tag illustrates a scope and discernment of what to reproduce and from when. Its brand is curatorial rigidity.
But isn’t that still a brand? After all, plenty of Japanese brands market a vintage obsessiveness to recreate vintage military under philosophy and unified aesthetic. These projects, whether heightening the functionality, “coolness“, or national origin of the garments ultimately inject outside intrigue or perspective to the original. Compare these projects to more deconstructionist visions like Sacai, who may turn a bomber into a dress or a hoodie into a bomber to radically consider the transformative potential of the garment as object and symbol. Rickson’s bomber is interested in purism - in creating something “more real somehow than that which it emulates.“ The Rickson’s may have those exaggerated wrinkled seams, but it’s slight enough to be a detail that is either ignored or designed solely for the wearer. The brands which Cayce rebels against are all totally open about their quality as brands, even the most subtle “minimalist“ uniforms are recognizably distasteful to her for their crass suggestion that what they mean is sophistication through less. Comparatively, Rickson’s is a brand in as much as they have a tag.
The Rickson’s question of branding is fascinating when compared to the odd, vocally minimalist experiments of this season’s runway. I say “vocally minimalist“ because the minimalism never exists for its own sake, it is an outspokenly “political“ and “environmental“ minimalism. Here, powerhouses of consumptive spectacle and excess like Vetements describe their pivot in the midst of recession, and chicness through environmentalism. In each case, the garments are odd. They seem without a past or context, existing so to pay for and flex a brand name while receiving some political clout alongside. How does this constructed minimalism clash with the desire of luxury to reference and capitalize off its history? In other words, what are the boundaries of mutating a brand to what wearing can mean?
According to Lyst, a fashion business site that tracks sales and searches for brands and ranks them, Prada became the most popular brand in the world. These lists are somewhat arbitrary and distant, but they are still revealing of a certain cultural pulse. For a while, Alessandro Michele’s Gucci reigned until Demna’s Balenciaga displaced him, and now, Miuccia Prada is at the top. Miu Miu, Prada’s other line clocks in at spot number 4.
All this occurred in a year when Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli stepped down as Prada CEOs (though Miuccia remains the creative director of Prada and Miu Miu). Co-creative director of menswear at Prada Raf Simons also announced he was retiring his namesake label after decades. Multiple interpretations of these events are possible. Prada and Simons are getting older and tired of multitasking and running their brands’ financial and creative success. Another is that attention is being focused intently on Prada as the final creative excursion of two fashion titans.
Below is Simons’ and Prada’s FW23 Menswear show from this January, a few days after the window in which Lyst reported Prada’s popularity.
In the landscape of this year’s runway presentations, Prada occupies an interesting space. Prada is not self-consciously or performatively “simple“ or utilitarian, it is both naturally. Simons and Prada have both relied heavily on minimalism as labels and tools of subversion. While there are moments that recall this past, a Simons bomber, color-blocked shirt-and-trouser combos reminiscent of older Prada and Simons, and gorgeous leathers, there is no spectacle or intended celebration of the past. These moments feel less like knowing winks and reproduced artifacts (see Saint Laurent, Gucci, LV, Fendi… you get the idea) nor are they simple for some artificial market response. The collection is called Let’s Talk About Clothes, and the show’s purest purpose seems to be, according to Simons, “make clothes that can have a reality in this world“ while consciously referencing storied aesthetics and worlds .
The potential commercial power of a Simons bomber, the bulky loafers, or the leathers aside, it’s deeply curious to ascribe this show the kind of cultural weight Lyst suggests Prada has gained. What is it about Prada’s sleek colors and skinny and knifelike collars? What aspect of Prada’s futurist uniforms resonate? Why does this fantasy prevail?
One could say that the joy, optimism, and nostalgia of Prada’s world of uniformity is the perfect juxtaposition to Balenciaga’s spoiled, extravagant pessimism. In another sense, the utopianism of Prada’s futurist philosophies still resonates. Prada is decidedly not about spectacle, but it does engage with the idea that bright colors can change you and your environment. The kind of suiting, patterning, and technical construction Prada is known for experimenting with gives the brand a fascinating base in a nostalgia that extends beyond the concept of a product, or even really a name. The Prada ideal is a quiet philosophy, and it has revealed itself to be more pervasive than expected.
Cayce doesn’t like Prada. For her, it is an expensive minimalism that still shrieks of constructed luxury and brand. And yet, what is a Buzz Rickson’s jacket but an expensive, difficult-to-find, ubiquitous object of privilege and luxury? Isn’t the experiment of both projects to reproduce the wearing, styling, and symbolism of past worlds? When a small hole is burned into the Rickson’s and Cayce despairs, doesn’t the bomber become as precious and nonfunctional a product as an exaggerated and luxurious Raf/Prada bomber that supposedly negates utilitarianism? Isn’t the truest and most authentic form of the Rickson’s meant to burn and fray and wither?
Just because Rickson’s is not quite as brandless as it or Cayce would like does not dilute its functionality, wearability, or the success of its experiment. Prada and Rickson’s are oases of the wearable in a sea of discreet brand cyclicism. Their power is far from identical, yet similar in its ability to heighten and make meaningful the simple uniform. Prada’s popularity is meaningful not for the camps of minimalism or the avante, for both labels are easily and frequently co-opted by the desperate and cash hungry. This success is for all who put the garment before the label, for those who can comfortably equate the experimental with the tactile and wearable, and for all who seek clothes that will last for decades.
Between the gulf of Rickson’s niche and Prada’s empire is the no less vast realm of Nigo. Nigo feels no desire to choose between the functional and the luxuriously out of reach. He has crafted forty-five hundred dollar Louis Vuitton bags resembling ducks and founded Bape, while also crafting hundred-year Levi’s replicas and recreations of vintage Peanuts sweaters. Nigo was placed as creative director of Kenzo, a strategic move to increase the popularity of the legacy brand. This year Kenzo made their aspirations for notoriety and attention crystal clear in booking a huge concert hall complete with a star-studded afterparty to promote the new creative director’s third runway.
When Nigo took over Kenzo, the brand existed on the success of a logomania which had emptied it of clout and influence. Nigo entered as a master of the logo and a figure whose mastery of collaboration and firm grip on the world of streetwear made his expertise suddenly viable post-streetwear boom. Virgil Abloh calls Bape “[his] generation’s Chanel“. When he arrived Nigo immediately reformulated a new logo with a good story, a couple of solid modes of reconstructing said logo, and a handful of branded denim cuts for the vintage obsessives. Slowly but surely a change emerged - tailoring, enticingly bold yet clean patterns, vintage cuts and detailed denim, and odd military accessories. Now settled commercially and organizationally within Kenzo, newer, less obvious skills have come to the forefront. Each season has delved deeper and deeper into Nigo’s fascination with Kenzo Takada and the inversion of Takada’s codes with those of British and American vintage. This was the year Nigo’s vintage obsession began overwhelming a desire to speak to a legacy.
A pastel pink string quartet played The Beatles while patterned mods strutted. Traditional Japanese garments were literally layered on striped suits, British traditionalism grew baggy and began to resemble fRuiTs street style shots, and the suit seemed just as natural a uniform for the street as a hoodie. There was a new silver “dad shoe“ designed as an antifashion item of ubiquity, styled casually and formally alike. On one hand, there are perhaps too many concepts and worlds being juggled to create the specificity in converging times and places that Nigo does so well. The expanse of Nigo’s reach reduces the power of some of his more interesting patterns and experiments, resulting in a show that is either too long or too short. On the other hand, this shakiness represents the fledgling steps in melding a branded, hyperconsumerist world with one that values a past, uniform, and utility as striking as Prada’s.
In Nigo’s world, we will wear our bomber jacket with silver everyday sneakers. A wool coat may pair with a checkered cloak and a leather handbag, but the check will be the slightest bit more auburn to be truly innocuous and pair with silver-plated knuckle plates. Tee shirts with plaid suits, Tartan hoodies with skirts, and traditional Japanese garments in English patterning. After all, it was the Mods with their spartan preppiness who mixed suiting with military fishtail coats and immaculate everyday wear with roaring mopeds. The past Nigo draws upon is as storied and utilitarian as Prada’s or Rickson’s, it was simply far more branded and commercial.
Nigo doesn’t subscribe to Cayce’s stubborn spartan wearing habits, perhaps because they are so deeply unrealistic. We live in a world where too many unworn clothes exist, and not all will be as designed as Prada’s nor as durable as those crafted during WW II. What Nigo combines is more than nation and time, it is a vision of wearing that incorporates the constant combining of timeless and trendy. In this case, this means the applicability of a brand and its philosophy to the modern, and it is Nigo’s very resuscitation of Kenzo as a viably modern force (when it so recently wasn’t) that reveals the way brands are not simply time-sensitive status symbols waiting to connote more or less clout. A brand is an aesthetic world akin to the past aesthetic worlds Prada pulls from, and the brand is ultimately as pliable and powerful an iconic object as Rickson’s MA-1. Nigo realizes that the brand can be a tool for encouraging new, more diverse ways of wearing.
Kenzo is a tighter and smaller business than Prada, which is vast enough to include space for the logo and the commercial alongside a more philosophically minded product. Art and the commercial are split - one funds the vision of the other. Nigo is only able to produce as much as he may sell, and surely not as slowly and for as niche an audience as Rickson’s can. Nigo’s result may be less philosophically airtight, less wholly utilitarian or historicized or luxurious, than some, but his result seems distinctly more successful than his contemporaries. If this is a comparison in the application and articulation of a philosophy of wearing, Nigo is certainly the most efficient, the most conservative, and the least compromised.
Cayce’s celebration of the brandless aesthetic is but one articulation for a better, more ethical kind of styling that celebrates authenticity and wearability and rejects status, capitalism, and trend. And yet, maybe there is an articulation of this concept that still recognizes the power, influence, and subversiveness of the brand and designer. Brandlessness is a brand in itself.
