Luke Derrick’s masterful mash-ups of Savile Row tailoring and British sportswear are based on a relatively simple, but still shrewdly observed, premise. “A lot of these very traditionalist ideas of men’s are locked in a certain idea of Britain,” the designer said from his East London studio. “Britain is either capital H heritage, or we’re hyper experimental and subversive. And it’s a reflection of how we interact with our own history. We’re either time machine worshiping it, or we’re trying to shred it to bits.” Thanks to his stints at houses like Brioni and Dunhill, Derrick is intimately familiar with the capital H heritage part. But it’s the way he subtly works in those subversive elements that gives his work lift-off. As he puts it: “Why can’t we be reactive to the country that we’re actually in?”
For spring, Derrick delivered his most playful collection yet. Inspired, in part, by his upbringing in Oxford—and the rowing suits, varsity hoodies, boating jackets, and half-changed sports kits he’d observe wandering through its university-dominated parks—it took those elements and reinterpreted them as a uniform for an on-the-go (and thus slightly disheveled) city slicker. Even its oddball combinations of garments—a buttercup mandarin collar jacket with a pale yellow neckerchief paired with jersey shorts and another pair of bright yellow cycling shorts underneath, say, or a purple double-breasted jacket in a structured fabric teamed with slate gray wide-leg trousers that featured a liquid-like drape, with the seams spun around to the front of the leg—felt palpably real, exactly how you might see someone on the street styling these pieces. The lookbook, meanwhile, was shot in the sweltering fug of a June heatwave, with models squinting in the sunlight and peeling off their layers for an additional dose of the everyday. “A lot of the work is pretty observational,” Derrick noted.
As ever, there was a sociological element underpinning it all. Where previous seasons have seen Derrick inspired by the multicultural makeup of his East London base, this time around, he was wrangling with the thorniest of British social paradigms: class. “You’ve got rugby shorts against suit jackets, and a big old tuxedo shirt you might have inherited from your dad—things borrowed, things shared, things appropriated.” Especially clever was a pair of powder pink sweatpants with a hoodie-style pocket above the waistband, partially inspired by a cummerbund, that were eminently practical but also spoke to the collection’s high-low energy, and what Derrick astutely describes as a “kind of arrogant, ‘I didn’t even try’ culture” that feels innately British. Also on Derrick’s mind was the state of masculinity today (just the small stuff, then), which he explored through a series of layered hyper-short shorts. He was fascinated with how the style has become “both the straightest and queerest thing ever”—as likely to be worn by rugby lads at a party in the shires as they are to crop up on a Tom Ford runway.
But the shorts have something of a personal backstory too: their presence in the collection only came after Derrick worked through some of his longstanding grievances around the style. “I think I said once that I would never, ever design shorts,” he said, laughing. “I’m 6’6” with long bean poles for legs, so I’m very self-conscious about that, but I’ve finally been able to get over myself. There was some self-growth in that.” His pattern for the shorts came from a pair he borrowed from a friend, while a T-shirt design was lifted from an old training top he used to wear but has now outgrown, so the sleeves sit at half-length. “I don’t think we’re a country of luxury; I think we’re a country of improvisation,” he continued. “You forgot your PE kit, or it’s too hot, and you’ve removed one thing too many—it’s this adaptive mindset.” It’s exactly that authentic, lived-in flavor that makes his vision for menswear so desirable. (His skewed Britishisms go down especially well in Japan, which serves as a core engine for his fast-growing business.) Derrick has already proved his pragmatism, but with this collection, he showcased his alchemical ability to blend that with a more puckish note, too.
